I understood exactly what you meant, Diamond. But I'm not objecting to 'malignance' because it's uncommon or big or intellectual. Look at my username, for Pete's sake. Read my posts. The anti-intellectual ignorance of the narrow-minded is far from the only reason one might criticize a particular word choice, and I find your trigger-happy accusations frankly insulting.
Spoiler: v4e1
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I think 'malignance' is inexact in a way that suggests poor thesaurus use--like the writers, in describing Watts' behavior, started with 'hostile', and decided 'malicious' was okay but 'malignant' sounded cooler, and nominalized the latter to 'malignance'...and never pegged the actual essence of Watts' attitude towards Cinder, which is somewhere between contempt and scorn. The job of writers is not to use a complicated word or a simple word, a common or uncommon word, but to use the right word. 'Malignance' is merely an almost-right word.
Initially, I wasn't sure exactly why 'malignance' felt wrong to me here. My guess was that the connotative association with disease was careless (or perhaps a too-clever reference to Watts' medical background), and that the word didn't match Salem's general linguistic register, which is why I wondered if it was meant to sound archaic. But you've forced me to develop a much more complete understanding of why I felt that way. Thanks for that, I guess.
I also think it's silly that Salem, the being portrayed as ultimately malignant in this series (and that is an accurate use of the term, as it precisely reflects Salem's ill will towards humanity, and even characterizes the nature of her evil with an analogy between invasive Grimm and spreading tumors), is calling anyone else out for malignance. To be fair, though, that irony may be intentional.
Less likely to be intentional is the way Salem's passive-aggressive questioning of Watts makes her sound like she's arguing on the Internet. 'Course, that's probably my own projection more than anything else. But her whole 'how exactly do you justify your position, please explain it to me' routine is totally unnecessary.
You're right on one point, though: I am absolutely being an arrogant snob.
Re: RWBY VIII: Well, THAT escalated quickly
