[ SECRET POST #5344 ]

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⌈ Secret Post #5344 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 24 secrets from Secret Submission Post #765.
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

Re: What are some of the most annoying fic things you hate?

[(Anonymous)]

DA - Yeah, I think these two things together are a big part of what make them so clunky. First and foremost, most of them are flatly impersonal, in a way that almost never strengthens and usually weakens the emotional context of the scene.

When the epithet is not impersonal, that's usually when I feel like it's in a gray area of "might be okay to use, but be careful about it." I'm talking about things like, "Dean looked at his brother," or "Scully looked at her partner." I think the issue with relationship-specific epithets is that even though they aren't impersonal, they do abstractify the relationship between the characters. Which is why, in my examples, I felt inclined to use the verb "look." Because one character looking at the other often implies that character is considering the other. Which is an instance where it could potentially work to have that character thinking about their relationship with the other person in the abstract. But if you switch it to, "Dean called his brother from the hospital," or "Scully cocked a brow at her partner," I'm back to feeling like there are better ways to write those lines without epithets.

And then, on top of either impersonalizing or abstractifying the relationship between the characters, it's also giving you information you don't need. Which, as the other anon said, may feel condescending to the reader. But I think more often than not it's just that our brains instinctively register a descriptor like "the detective" or "the tall man" as information which needs to be mentally processed, yet we get nothing out of that seeming information; it's hollow. The part of your brain that's responsible for making largely unconscious blink-of-an-eye decisions has been bait and switched on a micro level, and it drives a little tiny wedge between your mind and the narrative.