#looked up french terms of endearment and ma petite chou came up

[hislittleraincloud]

French is my second language. (Basic French pet names within.)

When I was ten years old, I was forced to learn French, Italian, and German (mostly French, because we were going to live in France, but just travel to Italy and Germany...at the same time, I picked up some Romanian as well, since I loved vampires/the real Dracula at the time). I retained spoken French and Italian, but my spoken German and Romanian suck, and I'm much better at Spanish (which is my father's first language...I was just never formally taught it, and had to pick it up on my own after we came back from France since it's what my grandmother spoke). I am literate in several other languages, but my strengths are French, Spanish, and Italian (including "Italian" from the Renaissance Era...which is another thing that bugs the crap out of me re: the show, because modern Italian on an espresso machine owner's manual does not equal the Florentine dialect that Machiavelli wrote in, so that was a piece of dialogue hit me weird...probably a Me Problem).

The languages are much different than English, especially French. It's not just about how much Netflix Wednesday hates being compared to her parents. It's about the language itself that's kind of important if you want to insist that your Wednesday use French (or other non-English language) pet names for Enid.

In my other post about this, I made one small error in judgment: AB Sheriff Galpin is a little cultured since he was married to a Frenchwoman, so he would know some French. However, I still don't think Wednesday would pull any French terms of endearment on him, for that very reason...she wouldn't to be compared to Francoise and she wouldn't want to trigger Donovan like that. IF Donovan were to relax his trauma around Francoise, he would definitely be calling Wednesday "ma crevette"...i.e. "my little munchkin" (literally means shrimp 💀...he might just do so in some way yet, I'm thinkin' about it).

But before I get into the French, y'all need to be strongly reminded of just how much Wednesday despises the way her parents relate to each other romantically: She hates it SO MUCH that her hatred for it caused birds to die. Birds that look like they're supposed to be mourning doves.

The backs of their tails look like mourning dove tails:

Though their undersides don't, but I'm going to chalk it up to lazy CGI and lazy detailing, like the extremely, extremely lazy prop masters/set dressers who made the damnably inaccurate articles on Sheriff Galpin's cork board. All the articles and information in them were terribly inaccurate to what we were told on screen.

Regardless, birds DIED. That's how strong her hatred for how they behave romantically is.

But if you must insist on having Wednesday behave like her parents, at least get the language correct.

French is a heavily gendered language. I'm not even going to get into the current war over gender neutral French for the nbs, because that's not what this is about. Wenclair is a lesbian couple, and we are definitely dealing with females 99.9% of the time here w/the ship.

Thus Netflix Wednesday, being proficient in at least Spanish and Italian, would know how to use the next romance language properly, and would know proper pet names for males vs. females. She's cultured like that, and anything less would make her look stupid...and none of us want to make her look stupid.

Now to get to what's been bugging the Hell out of me:

It wouldn't be "mon loup". It would be "ma louloute" (though a literal translation of "my wolf" feminine would be "ma louve", which is kind of cute and looks like "love", but when the French want to get cute, they get cute). "Mon loup" is to refer to a male, so if Wednesday was dating Xavier or Tyler, it'd be "mon loup".

When I was growing up in France, one big pet name was "mon chou" (literally "my cabbage", even though it refers to a chou à la crème, i.e. a cream puff). My mother used to call me "mon petit chou", even though at the time I was still *living within my young AFAB body (corrected for clarity, I'm AFAB of course, this was long before my transition); she wasn't and isn't ever accurate with her French, because the feminine of "mon petit chou" is "ma chouchoute/choupinette". (I could see a Wenclair Wends getting creative and creating her own word, "lupinette" based on this.)

Other gendered* appropriate terms of endearment Wednesday would use if so compelled:

"ma biche"/"ma bichette" (my doe/my little doe) (Enid: WHAT did you call me??? 🤣)

"ma tigresse" (my tigress 🐯)

"ma poule" (my hen) or "ma poulette" (my little chick 🐣)

"ma princesse"

"ma douce" (my sweet) (Enid: DID YOU JUST CALL ME A DOUCHE? 💀)

"ma puce" (this is another I heard often, it literally means "flea", but in French it's affectionate)

"ma petite femme" (my little wife)

"ma reine" (my queen)

Finally, it's not "mon chéri", it's "ma chérie". That's the most basic one there is.

There are a ton of others out there, but these are the classics that I remember, and classic is what I assume all canon Ortega Wednesday is. Traditional, allergic to technology, sticks to old fashioned behavior like Donovan (I mean, did you bother to read that one page of her novel from Episode 7? Her writing vocabulary is off the charts and typical of someone raised/trained classically... that's the real reason her publishers probably rejected her).

*I say gendered appropriate (not "gender appropriate") because I'm talking about the language and there are French terms of endearment that do not have a feminine form, like "mon cœur" and "mon amour". These terms you can use for women/girlfriends that are 'masculine' gendered (yes, I realize there are a lot of animal ones, but that's French for ya):

"mon petit monstre" (my little monster)

"mon petit oiseau" (my little bird...oh hello, Sandor, where'd you come from 💩)

"mon poussin" (my chick 🐣)

"mon chaton" (my kitten 🐾)

"mon trésor" (my treasure)

"mon doudou" (my cuddlebug, basically)

"mon coco" (literally coconut, but it's like saying "my dear")

"mon ange" (my angel)

"mon lutin" (my elf...which might by apropos for Enid 🫠)

This is not at all meant to be an exhaustive list; there are several other pet names and probably new ones since language is constantly evolving. It might help to poke around online and/or join forums dedicated to those who speak your target language.

I realize it can be confusing. Non-English romance languages can be, if you don't know anything about them. As a writer, I'm very appreciative of my experiences in France and Italy*, and I think the newer writers need to think outside of the Anglocentric box when writing for a character like Netflix Wednesday. (I need to take my own advice, because I programmed one of my deleted scenes in English audio without thinking of the non-English speakers who read my fic. That's a whole other issue tho 🧠💥.)

Huh. That wasn't as bloody as I could've made it. I must be getting soft in my old age.

Anyway. We all want Wednesday to sound like someone who knows what she's doing. We should do better with our conversational dialogue than the actual writers. We don't want our Wednesday to be embarrassed or embarrassing, again...

*And all the other countries I visited as a kid and adult...I know she's there right now, but I was in Buda in 2014 and while it's one of my favorite cities, Hungarian is the worst language ever 😭 EVER.

#writing problems #writing wednesday #writing fiction #writing #enid sinclair #wednesday #wednesday addams #wenclair #wyler #wavier #wenovan #black bubblegum #writing reference #jenna ortega #emma myers #hunter doohan #percy hynes white #jamie mcshane #and all the rest of the cast