...only one of my agents is actually from World One, and he doesn't swear a lot unless necessary and/or under great stress, and even then, it's usually more like 'damn' or similar mild curses. Lee, on the other hand, tends to call on the gods from her home continuum; Orion is from the Harry Potter 'verse, and uses curses appropriate to there, and Agents Mal are from the Stargate SG-1 'verse, and tend to swear in Goa'uld, as they're Tok'ra.

Personally, I tend to avoid naming a specific curse all together and just say 'he swore sharply' or, 'she swore under her breath'. It's easier and, while it's not as bombastic, tends to make my writing flow easier.

Speaking of writing... I really need to finish my next mission. It's been, oh, almost two years since my last one? I should get better about that...

(Hi people, I was the beta who liked actual swearing being used. :P)

Swearing seems to be a no-no in the PPC in general; strong language gets you automatically kicked from the IRC, and the Constitution has this to say:

"...[N]o cursing, no graphic violence, sex or whatever.""

It's noted that this is to keep the community worksafe and family-friendly, and to be fair the Constitution goes on to note that if a story has such content there should be a fair warning (as opposed to, say, a flat-out ban on any such content), but I think it illustrates why we take the approach we do, with fandom-based cursing (though as pointed out by other posters, if a character's actually from that continuum it makes a lot more sense they'd use those words, then you have cultural factors, etc. etc. :P) and Creative Curses and the like.

I'm of two minds about this - much like excessively gory violence or explicit smut a) isn't really something most in the PPC want to write and b) sure as heck isn't something a reader wants flung at them without any kind of warning or way to know it's coming, gratuitous language comes off as childish and tiresome, and I'm sure nobody here's interested in the extreme approach, where f-bombs, s-strikes and various slurs are tossed around seemingly every other word. On the other hand, when people talk, swearing is a thing that happens, and there's not much use acting like that's not the case - and in particular, I've honestly never liked our "Creative Curses". Not only do they come off as overly cutesy, convoluted and euphemistic, not one of them (except "Flaming Denethor" maybe, but who really wouldn't just say something more conventional in that kind of context? Also, it sounds more like a drink, one I'm pretty sure is actually served in one of HQ's bars...) strike me as something anybody would ever actually say - sure, a lot of dialogue writing doesn't perfectly match how people talk in reality, but trying to picture someone blurting out "Jadis in a block of ice!" or "Reinforce Eins (?) in a sweater!" every time they're surprised by something takes me right out of the story. I mean, try it out - try saying "Glaurung!" or "Flaming Denethor!" or one of the others right now like you're angry or startled, I bet you sound foolish (no offence) and don't have as much impact as using something stronger.

Okay, that was a big paragraph about fictional cursing, I swear it doesn't actually get me that worked up. :P Obviously it's all down to character and how they would talk, I think we'd all kinda eyebrow if the SO started talking like a drunken sailor for example, but I kinda feel like if it's a situation where the writer feels language would be warranted from the person swearing they should at least not shy away from it - of course, if silly and euphemistic is what you're going for, go nuts, and like I said it should fit who they are and where they're from, but still.

As for the last part of the question... I'm actually gonna have to think on that, I have so many agents and concepts drawn up I'm sorta losing track. Most of mine are from various periods in World One and use the according language, though from mine in other continua they stick mostly with the vernacular from their homeworlds of course (one big Star Wars fan in my bunch likes to use swearing from the GFFA though - mostly nondescript Mando'a or Huttese or stuff like "kriff", and I'm writing a Firefly mission with people who might stick with the tradition of censor-dodging via Chinese). Most of them don't swear particularly often though, either due to being too formal, not being easily moved to cursing, or just a sorta general affable and not-easily-roused demeanour, though in my last mission (Jeez, that was three years ago now...) Miriam did cut loose a good bit and called the Sue a bitch a few times; a lot of that was freaking out over how the continuum had been twisted around so much it literally began tearing itself apart under the strain put on by the Sue, though. I might have to get back to that part of the post with something more concrete.

Put me down as another one who doesn't swear much in RL, so doesn't use swearwords in her writing.

Maybe it's because I've worked many years in customer service, so I've had every swear word that isn't male-specific aimed at me.

I've used some of the creative curses because they're a good way to get across the idea that "this agent is really upset about X", and don't feel as awkward as an f-bomb.

My agents, when I was younger, didn't swear as much as they do now, because I didn't have the potty mouth that I have now. Since they were doing missions in the Battlestar Galactica fandom, they (mostly Christianne) used 'frak' a lot.

Christianne has since then fallen into using the f-word instead, along with lots of blasphemy, a couple fecal-related swears, and a couple creative PPC-esque curses as well. Sometimes her cursing varies between the fandoms she's missioning for, other times it's indiscriminate. However, I believe she's dropped plenty of f-bombs in her recent missions.

Eledhwen on the other hand uses Middle-earth-inspired swears, which I'm assuming she got from OFUM, because Elves don't swear, and definitely don't use the Valar's names in vain. Eledhwen has quite blatantly done that several times ("Elbereth's stars", "Nienna's tears", "Yavanna's fruits", etc). Logically she should be using the Sindarin names, but I slip up often because I'm silly and forget to do my research, but yeah.

Both of my agents seem to curse when they're frustrated or angry, so they're not exactly sailors, though Christianne is definitely more on the sailor side of things when it comes to the frequency of swears.

And on an somewhat-related note, Sherlock Holmes in Consulting Sue Slayer uses curses derived from scientists ("Darwin on a beagle", "oh for the love of Rosalind Franklin", etc), and Yuki Sulu in my Star Trek writer!AU substitutes 'science' for 'god' ("oh for the love of science", "I swear to science", etc). I think you can tell what they do for a living.

I don't swear a whole lot in real life, and that does tend to carry into my writing. Swearing isn't the way I communicate, or even think to myself, so swear words aren't really in my immediate conscious thesaurus when I write. I'll use the really PG stuff--crap, damn and hell--when I feel swearing is called for, because it still gets the point across to the reader, I think. In real life, I do say, "Nine hells," sometimes, which I picked up from reading Magic: the Gathering novels, but that's a pretty Dominaria-specific phrase, so it wouldn't make sense for my current agents to use it.

I do like using and reading the continuum-specific oaths, as well as our creative curses. After all, one of the major aspects of the PPC is the multiversal travel. Using language from the various "fictional" worlds is practically part of the setting. We have a majorly polyglot set of characters, and it would be odd and dull if all the dwarves and trolls and wizards and aliens and ninjas and pirates and anthropomorphic animals swore in the exact same language as the Earthish humans.

Eusabius doesn't swear because he is generally a rather mellow guy that can be fazed by almost nothing. Florestan, on the other hand, has no such inhibitions. Wave Crest... I've decided that's a no for him, owing to his nature as a Technicolor pony.

For my now-DMS response center... Xanthus occasionally curses, Anneli uses the type of curse that a high school cheerleader might, and Cindy doesn't really swear, and when she does it's not "words you can't say on TV" swearing. But generally, they don't swear as much.

Anything alliterative is good in my books so long as it doesn't contain cuss words (although euphemisms are all right with me). I would also like to see exclamations from various canons (i.e., kriff, mangatsika, some of Captain Haddock's phrases might be good too).

Personally, I think mild language would be fine on the PPC, such as damn, hell, or suck. But any massive swears such as the f bomb should be censored if they are going to be used.

Interesting questions! I agree with you that dialogue is a very important part of characterization, and when/how my characters swear (or don't) is something I put some thought into. How My Agents Swear:

1. Nume is both the most likely to swear and the most likely to use real-life curses. He's from World One (or perhaps a close relative where things like eidetic memories are both real and not utterly crippling), and he has an unwanted religious background, so most of the time he's happy blaspheming (Jesus Christ, god dammit, oh hell, etc.). He's also been known to say "frell," especially in my earlier missions, but nowadays I feel like substitutes like that are too coy for him. He escalates to s**t and f**k when things get serious.

2. Ilraen doesn't swear. He has a much less excitable, more pleasant demeanor than his partner, and he's extremely literal-minded. He understands idioms and figurative language most of the time now, and he can use them if he works at it, but they're never the first thing that comes to his mind.

3. Derik is from Pern, so he swears like a Pernese person. They don't have religion, and they're not bothered about sex, so most of their curses revolve around Thread and dragons. The most popular curse is either "shards" or "shells," both of which refer to damaged dragon eggs. There's also "scorch it," "by the First Egg / my dragon's egg," "crackdust," "shaffit," and, if you're being mild and don't mind sounding a bit silly, "fardles."

4. Gall is more likely to sling insults than to swear (she prefers to blame anything bad that happens to her on someone she can hit), and being from a family film based on kids' books, her language is probably rated PG-13 at worst, but she does use familiar swearwords. The HtTYD Vikings occasionally swear by the Norse gods in the film ("by Odin's beard" IIRC), so there's that, too.

5. Jenni's use of swearwords is the most eclectic. She doesn't use four-letter words much, if ever, but being a multiverse-traveler, she has picked up expressions from various continua. She's fond of the Pernese set and "frell" and its relatives, and it wouldn't be out of the question for her to drop a "Flaming Denethor!" She avoids religious language, but I think a generic "oh, god" or "what the hell" slips in every so often, and she does swear by the Powers That Be ("by the Powers," "sweet Powers," etc.). Whether she's referring to a particular set or simply any that might be listening probably depends on the circumstances. She might also use "son of a bitch!" and such, but it would have to be pretty serious for her to get insulting. The worst curse I can think of for her to say would be "a plague on it / plague it," and I don't think it's ever actually happened.

On a general note, one thing that drives me nuts about "creative" curses is when people just switch out "god" and switch in the local deity or equivalent, because it's not all that clever and it rarely makes sense. Nobody in Middle-earth would ever say "Oh my Eru," for instance; in Narnia they say "by the Lion's mane," not "Oh my Aslan." I can give it a pass if it's a fan doing it to show their fandom, but never a native of the continuum. Aside from such curses being non-canon, they bug me because they involve an assumption that other cultures would develop the exact same formula for cursing as us. Maybe in some cases they would, but there's no reason they should. It's something that should be considered carefully, not tossed in just because you think you need someone to swear.

~Neshomeh

Anebrin had some generic Wesnoth!elf euphemisms, such as "by all that is green", "by Lintanir" and the like. However, it's rather unlike him to actually swear.
Des swears a lot. However, most of the swears are sorta self-censored - he mostly swears in Hebrew because of obvious reasons. IIRC, there's also an instance of "Reinforce Zwei in a box" (a variation on "Reinforce Eins in a sweater") somewhere in what I wrote, due to him being really influenced by Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.
And the Librarian... does not swear. At all. It is beneath his lofty majesty to be so crude.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_osQvkeNRM

My Agents usually use rather mild language, so there isn't much need for curses.

They do use some of the "creative curses", though - however, that's mainly to replace religion-related ones with ones actually fitting with them: Nikki and Corolla are Madokaists (AKA worshippers of Madoka Kaname from Puella Magi Madoka Magica), while Sergio is more of an atheist (he does respect Madoka and all, but thinks that worshipping her is a bit excessive. Also because she is more of a concept than a proper goddess).

As a result, we see a lot of "for Madoka's sake" or, due to Corolla being from Lyrical Nanoha, "holy Reinforce Eins in a sweater". About "regular" ones, they don't get more swearish that "what the hell".

You might see some heavier swearing in Blank Sprite, but if it happens that's because the situation calls for it.