Hi Mr. Gaiman! I love you! I was wondering whose more sqeamish? Aziraphale or Crowley? Like if they read De Sade who would burn it and go drinking to forget and who would just shrug it off ?
I think Crowley would have pointed to de Sade as an example of how the highest highs and the deepest lows are inside the human heart, and the heart of the same human, and Aziraphale would have pointed to de Sade being imprisoned during the Revolution, after having been freed from the Bastille when it fell and made a judge, because of de Sade’s refusal as a judge to sentence people to death, as evidence that people are fundamentally lovely. Crowley would get bored reading 100 Days of Sodom, not squicked, while Aziraphale would read the whole book rapidly classifying its content as Something That People Do.
Neil Gaiman used the word “squicked” and I’ve discorporated.
Fandom slang has transcended the bonds of the inconsequential and is now used by real-life super-famous authors who published pre-internet, and is thus legitimized
Then again, it’s been a fandom word for a long time, and I’ve been part of fandom for about 40 years, because I am old. Here’s me using it in 2003, on being sent links to Real Person Slash with me in it: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2003/09/bits-bobs-squick.asp?m=1
“Squick” is a very useful term, which fills a space otherwise left unfilled in the English language – “disgust” comes close, but implies moral judgment about what one is disgusted by. “Squick” is judgment-neutral, only implying that the person squicked personally Does Not Want. And we NEED a value-neutral word for “that grosses me out and I want nothing to do with it” that doesn’t suggest that others who like the thing are bad people for liking it. A lot of problems arise when people equate things evoking personal distaste with those things being immoral or dangerous for everyone. Anyway I’m wholly unsurprised to see an author, for whom words are naturally very important things, and finding the RIGHT words to properly express an idea without opening it too far to misinterpretation is his means of making a living, use the word “squick”. (possibly wrong info here, but I recall hearing back in the day that the term was originally derived as a portmanteau of “squeamish” and “icky”, leading to “ew, squicky” having a meaning something like “I’m squeamish about that and find it icky”)
For those who wondered about the word…
