World Enough and Time

Re: "profanity" – I presume they mean swearing. If it's appropriate to the characters in their speech and situation, it's no problem. But it can be a lazy way to "shock" readers, or to appear to be "cool" (in the same way that it is lazy to swear to often in speech). I had an interesting discussion with a friend lately about my own use of a coarse expression in a fic, in the thoughts of an otherwise refined, sensitive character. I intended it to jolt the reader, as a sign of the character's self-disgust at something he had done: it was not his normal mode of thought or speech, and all the more expressive for that.