Some more classic Bad Epithets

[cimorene]

• That begins to chafe at the civil servant


• the perpetually childish man


• the newly rehabilitated young man


• The stodgier man


• the Cypriot beamed

I'm actually not sure what fandom "the Cypriot" could be from, because I'm pretty sure I've actually never read in a fandom with a cypriot. Maybe it's from a book.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

YIKES

[stranger]

I think "Cypriot" was one of the Regency euphemisms for sex worker. (It's also possible Georgette Heyer made it up, in the spirit but not the letter of actual Regency usage.)

Agree that "person from Cyprus" doesn't immediately suggest a particular fandom.

[cimorene]

Cyprian was! But this is definitely not from anything related to Regency. It's slightly possible it could be from a between-wars golden age mystery novel, but the capitalization suggests nationality.

[pensnest]

What's wrong with 'the civil servant'? Is he actually a servant, who's polite, in which case Oh Dear.

[cimorene]

It's using an epithet when there's no good reason to, producing awkward and clunky prose. This is the essence of what I refer to as a Bad EpithetTM.

[stranger]

Oh, oops, you're right. Cyprian was the word I was thinking of. The vague gloss of exotic glamor would be the same, but a young man referring to a Cypriot would undoubtedly thus brand himself as not quite up with the town lingo and greener than grass. Even the debutantes (the ones with brothers) would giggle at him.

[cimorene]

That could actually be a funny gag!

[phosfate]

Someone posted a handy Bad Epithets to Watch Out For And Also the Word 'Said' Is Fine thing on (I think) Tumblr, and someone I follow on Twitter reposted it while opening up a can of HOW DAAAARE YOU FANFIC IS FREE YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO CRITICIZE IT fauxtrage, and...there was no reason not to just ignore it, if it upset them that much. All it told me was here's a person who is deeply insecure about their own writing yet has no interest in improving.

Meanwhile, enjoying GOmens fic that refers to Aziraphale as "the blonde."

[cimorene]

That kind of writing advice is quite popular on Tumblr, I think. Actuallly, all kinds of writing advice are quite popular there. There's no question that a lot of the 'style' advice disseminated to native speakers does more harm than good (usually by being actively wrong about various things, or just leaving people confused and ashamed so they can never use pronouns or reflexives or multiple possessives without panicking), and while the overall quality of the ones you see in fandom are more often than not debunking unfortunate writing advice given by professional educators, they still probably aren't going to make an appreciable difference to the quality of the fanfiction pool. But ultimately I think the fact that they reassure, or help, individual non-native speaker fans - they unquestionably do - justifies their existence. There are more and more of them and fandom is still just getting bigger.

"the blonde" 😭😭😭