[ SECRET POST #3209 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3209 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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04. [WARNING for incest]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 054 secrets from Secret Submission Post #459.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

What is wrong with epithets?

[(Anonymous)]

I have no clue. As a reader they are pretty useful in scenes when there are 2 or more characters with the same sex.

[(Anonymous)]

They sound forced and ridiculous. I feel like I'm reading The Odyssey.

[vethica]

For starters, they're very good at throwing the reader out of the story. If the characters know each other, which is the case in most pairing fic, they probably won't think of each other as "the American" or "the smaller man" or whatever - they'll think of them by their name. In these cases, it's a pretty clear signal of author-brain, rather than character-brain. There's also the fact that a lot of the time, epithets are completely irrelevant to what's going on in the scene. Do we need to be told that someone is "the mechanic" if he's currently making out with his boyfriend and not mechanic-ing at all?

Conversely, epithets can be super useful when there's a reason to use them. If character A doesn't know character B's name, or doesn't care about them enough to use it, epithets can be a great way of showing that distance. If your mechanic guy happens to be in the middle of fixing a car, by all means call him "the mechanic"! Like any other writing tool, epithets have their place, and the problem is that a lot of authors don't know what the hell that place is. :|

[(Anonymous)]

But most of what I read isn't first person....

[vethica]

If it's third person, it's pretty likely to be third person limited.

[(Anonymous)]

this has nothing to do with perspective but with the narrator's position. take HP for example. we only ever get to see what goes on inside harry's head. Look at ASoIaF, where 3rd person POV is the central element of narrative style. Now look at LoTR, 3rd person, but the perspective shifts through the main characters a lot, sometimes giving insights and limiting perspective, sometimes broadening it, giving an overview of how everyone is feeling.

of course there's also the tab-switch perspective of contemporary fanfiction, which is really horrible and originated from fics that were originally roleplayed and then published as fic. here we get insight into A for one tab, then the perspective switches, and we get - worst case, oh dread - the whole thing again from B's perspective. even without the worst case scenario it's really jarring...

[(Anonymous)]

Well said.

[vethica]

Thanks. ♥

[iambecomebees]

Also they can be confusing if the author didn't think it out too well. In the secret, the examples given include "the Texan" and "the American." Are they the same person then? Last I checked Texas was in America.

[(Anonymous)]

Tell that to Texas.

[naemi.livejournal.com]

I can't second this enough.

[esteefee]

This times a thousand. All epithets do is make me laugh and backbutton. "The ex-CIA assassin opened Harold's pants and took out the genius's cock." This makes me think a) three people are having sex or b) one of them is going to assassinate the one who stole someone else's cock.

What the heck does someone's profession have to do with anything when they're having sex?

Not to mention, in Highlander fiction it becomes even more hilarious because people's physical age has zero to do with what they look like. So you have "the older man" being 5000 years old and *looking* like much younger than the younger man. Try working that out as you're zipping through a fic. It's almost impossible without stopping dead and shaking your head, hard.

Unnecessary epithets are a joke. It's easy enough to restructure the sentence to be less confusing or repeat the person's name. I keep to using epithets only when the POV character is meeting someone for the first time. Or if they have amnesia.

[purpleseas]

They really don't work with the points of view most people are writing from. A stranger watching from the bushes might think of the parties involved as the taller man, the shorter man, the blond who's probably a mechanic or something, etc., but when the parties involved know each other and you're in the head of one of them, it makes no sense to refer to them by their height or job or whatever. People don't think of each other that way in those situations, so it comes off as artificial and awkward, and sucks the intimacy right out of romance and sex scenes. At its worst, it makes it sound like dozens of strangers are barging into the room while poor A and B (and C or whoever) struggle to get it on or just have a simple conversation. There's nothing wrong with using the characters' names, and it's not that hard to vary your sentence structure so the pronouns don't get confusing with m/m.

[(Anonymous)]

They're ridiculous that's why.

Why describe someone as "the dark-haired Russian" in the middle if a sex scene, for instance? Not unless his ability to have sex is dependent on the colour of his hair or what country he's from.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know man, some fic folks treat them like they're the cancer that's killing fandom. The advice on its face is sound - it does help differentiate characters when you have 3 or more of the same gendered pronoun interacting. Repeating a single character's name more than 5 times in a paragraph is also jarring and bad writing, so epithets become necessary.

like anything, overuse of a thing has caused a backlash, I guess.

[(Anonymous)]

There's many more ways to vary prose. The problem is really a lack of creativity.

(But still, repeating names is better than repeating epithets.)

[iambecomebees]

If you have to use a character's name FIVE TIMES in a single paragraph your problem isn't whether you should use an epiphet or not. Your paragraph is probably just too big and there is too much shit going on anyway. There is no situation besides the POV not knowing the character's name that an epiphet is ever necessary.

You never see epiphets used to differentiate characters in professionally published, well-written fiction for a damn good reason.

[(Anonymous)]

If you're unable to differentiate between several characters without epithets, that's just poor writing. You either need to make sure your characters don't all sound alike (because they're not supposed to, right?) or that you're structuring your dialogue properly so it's not confusing.

I don't think names are that jarring, to be honest. People skim dialogue tags. It's possible to go overboard, but again, that's the point of good writing. You write it in such a way that the conversation makes sense, that characters don't all blend together into one homogeneous mass, and you do it without resorting to a bunch of ridiculous "the blue-eyed man", "the short man", "the woman in red", etc. etc.

[(Anonymous)]

They sound ridiculous, that's why. It's an unnecessarily complication of a relatively simple matter. Either use the damn character names, or just plain "he/she/they said", or chill and realize that most people can follow a basic conversation if it's written coherently and you really don't need to mark out every single time someone is speaking. Otherwise, you clutter up paragraphs going:

"What do you want to do for dinner?" asked Steve.

Tony looked up from his tablet. "Let's get falafel."

"But we had falafel yesterday," objected the tall blond. "Let's get something else."

"But falafel is good!" said the man with the stupid goatee.

"I'm not saying falafel isn't good, I'm just saying that we had it yesterday. I'm kind of in the mood for a burger, to be honest," said the tall blond.

"My doctor said I had to cut back on red meat." The man with the stupid goatee shrugged apologetically.

"Why not try the grilled chicken burger, then?" suggested the tall blond.

"Don't be absurd, grilled chicken isn't a burger, it's... grilled chicken. It takes all the fun out of eating a burger," said the man with the stupid goatee.

etc.

etc.

etc.

[naemi.livejournal.com]

This must be like one of the worst conversations I ever had the dubious pleasure to read =D

[iambecomebees]

"The talll blond..." So Thor walked into the room? That's another problem with epiphets.

Also when you do dialog tags it's actually "the tall blond said," and not "said the tall blond." You wouldn't say "said he" instead of "he said."

[brandiweed.livejournal.com]

Would you even need the "said" clauses after each dialog sentence? Why not


"What do you want to do for dinner?" asked Steve.

Tony looked up from his tablet. "Let's get falafel."

"But we had falafel yesterday. Let's get something else."

"But falafel is good!"

"I'm not saying falafel isn't good, I'm just saying that we had it yesterday. I'm kind of in the mood for a burger, to be honest,"

"My doctor said I had to cut back on red meat."

"Why not try the grilled chicken burger, then?"

"Don't be absurd, grilled chicken isn't a burger, it's... grilled chicken. It takes all the fun out of eating a burger."

....

Quality of conversation aside, unless the reader is unusually dense they can figure out who's talking from context alone.

[quantumreality]

Aside: I can never get used to the definition of "epithet" as 'alternate name for someone using a descriptive term' as opposed to 'swear word'.

[(Anonymous)]

Really 'epithet' just means 'descriptor', but since epithets can be disparaging*, people started thinking of epithets as nasty descriptors... and thus a semantic shift is born.

*e.g. "Why should I be tarred with the epithet 'loony' simply because I have a pet halibut?"