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For RavenD
Currently, I am enjoying words that dress up fancy. Exsanguinate is a good one (and I see it daily, in the Bindlestitch tag [g]). Defenestrate is another. I've always been a fan of combust.
This probably plays into my thoughts on the favorite-villains question, too; I like Javert in Les Miserables and Snape in Harry Potter and others of that stripe because they are (a) sympathetic from a particular angle -- they're antagonistic to the hero, but they're not bad -- and (b) because they're intelligent [and they know it]. To defenestrate someone, instead of just throwing him out a window, takes a level of boredom with everyday life (and the language used to describe it) that I find particularly appealing in a villain. It makes them so much more interesting. Anyone can be a hero -- sympathetic heroes are created, in fact, to be Everyman. Smart villains (antagonists through a lens) are characters, rather than types. [Cf. Tolstoy: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."]
This probably plays into my thoughts on the favorite-villains question, too; I like Javert in Les Miserables and Snape in Harry Potter and others of that stripe because they are (a) sympathetic from a particular angle -- they're antagonistic to the hero, but they're not bad -- and (b) because they're intelligent [and they know it]. To defenestrate someone, instead of just throwing him out a window, takes a level of boredom with everyday life (and the language used to describe it) that I find particularly appealing in a villain. It makes them so much more interesting. Anyone can be a hero -- sympathetic heroes are created, in fact, to be Everyman. Smart villains (antagonists through a lens) are characters, rather than types. [Cf. Tolstoy: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."]