That deathless Weber prose

“Brooding about Her Majesty’s stubbornness again, are we?” Harper inquired genially, and Judson scowled at him.

“It’s a sorry turn of events when a man’s own ‘cat rats him out to such an unworthy superior as yourself,” he observed.

“Genghis never signed a word,” Harper pointed out mildly, and Judson snorted.

“He didn’t have to,” he growled. “The two of you have been so mutually corrupting that I think you’re developing your own ‘mind voice’!”

[a few paragraphs later]

“Well,” Harper said after several seconds, still smiling with the echoes of his mental vision of a squalling, kicking [spoiler] tossed across Lara’s shoulder and hauled off to safety somewhere, “I’m afraid that rather than giving our lives in the defense of our beloved—if stubborn—queen, our day is going to be one of those less scintillating moments of our life experience.”

“I always get worried when you start trotting out extra vocabulary,” Judson observed.

“That’s because you’re a naturally suspicious and un-trusting soul, without one scintilla of philosophical discernment or sensitivity to guide you through the perceptual and ontological shallows of your day to day existence.”

“No, it’s because when you get full of yourself this way it usually means we’re going to be doing something incredibly boring, like counting noses on a new transport or something.”

-Torch of Freedom, David Weber and Eric Flint

I love that the “extra vocabulary” is basically indistinguishable from the way he talks the rest of the time, just with “scintillating” used instead of a coy “…interesting” or suchlike. Whatever would’ve been there, it would not have been less than three syllables.

Would she have the same problems with male strippers, women hiring them, or lesbian patrons?

Blogger: There's nothing wrong with this woman for being a stripper.
Me: That seems reasonable.
Blogger: There is something wrong with those men for hiring a stripper.
Me: ...Bwuh?