Cimorene

1. the former school athlete keeps bouncing his leg


2. he couldn't help but let his mind wander to the mousey haired boy who walked in the door


3. he can't help but study the interesting man before him


4. he didn't have to be self-conscious about them with the guitarist turned bat slayer.


5. turning around to see the lanky eldritch being looking around owlishly


6. desperation to touch the most hated boy in school


7. The once fiery girl spent months in recovery


8. the actively undercover man


9. the tall veteran cocked an eyebrow at the slightly shorter, stockier blond man who stopped dead in front of him.


10. slaps his hands on the sparkling surface in front of him.


11. Handing out beer Steve nodded at everyone once they took it, his want for the golden liquid stronger than before

#8-9 contributed by msilverstar

Someone just reblogged this post about Bad Epithets (or rather, about epithets and when to use them and when not to use them) from me. I get reblogs on this fairly frequently, even after qutite a few years.

When you are writing a story and refer to a character by a physical trait, occupation, age, or any other attribute, rather than that character’s name, you are bringing the reader’s attention to that particular attribute. ...You shouldn’t refer to the characters in ways that [the viewpoint character] wouldn’t.

It's just one of many times I've written this rant (although the first two parts of the post are by other people, because it really is quite a common problem), and it's probably somewhere in this journal multiple times. But I was thinking about Bad Epithets recently because of a couple of really hilaribble ones that I've seen while reading fanfiction.

• 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.

Last week I read a short story that contained both

the loquacious publican

and

the cadaverous, saturnine pedagogue

...and it occurred to me that I now have a tie for favorite epithet I've ever read! That doesn't happen often. I mean usually there's ONE most horrifying fictional occurrence (example: child rape, still the top of The Horrifying Things Scale) or ONE hilarious epithet. Shocking things tend to blow whatever previously-most-shocking thing came before them out of the water, instead of leaping into a dead heat.



Speaking of The Horrifying Things Scale, I still place penis shrapnel at a mere 9/10 while child rape takes the cake at 10/10, but until recently I'd read three child rape stories and only one Penis Shrapnel Story, because, really, penis shrapnel: it's not the kind of thing you just come up with. But as of two days ago I've now had to say that I have read two penis shrapnel stories. Admittedly, there was no shrapnel, but there was a surprise!penis disfigurement involving Metal In A Way That Penises Aren't Meant To Involve Metal. And I think that, morally, that has to be grouped with Penis Shrapnel.

aeslis and i were just discussing why i call phrases such as "the other man" and "the green-eyed boy" epithets (or, if i speak about them with their own epithet intact, "bad epithets". it pretty much covers all of them). she hypothesised that it was for a "cim-like reason", which i denied - it has a perfectly logical basis in the analysis of epic poetry! and then, just now, i discovered (look, aes!) the origin of my habit.

why are epithets bad all the time?

because they're unnecessary. they aren't unnecessary as in gratifying, the way the cherry on a sundae is unnecessary; they're unnecessary as in gratuitous, the way it is unnecessary to devote an early paragraph of your story to clumsily expositing the whole of canon, or to search out "substitutes" for the verb "to say" such as "questioned" (which means to doubt, not to pose a question, but that's a rant for another day). it looks ridiculous; it causes your readers to cringe in embarrassment on your behalf. you should never do it. not even "the man". no, not even "the blond". not even "his lover". especially not "his lover". if you don't believe me, allow me to assure you that you will understand eventually¹.

on the other hand, who doesn't love to mock badfic? to that end, i have been saving examples of bad epithets since i began reading prince of tennis fiction in march. i've read some truly egregious epithets before, particularly at the rodney mckay, angsty goth teenie archive, which is a veritable bottomless treasure trove of badfic; but i've never encountered a fandom like this one for bad epithets. take for example:

The little precocious, burgundy-haired acrobat liked Hyotei’s blue-haired tensai.

( more examples, some rated nc-17 )



1. i've discovered recently - to my horror, rather - that i used to use them sometimes too, although only relatively mild ones such as "his lover" and "his friend", as far as i can tell. it seems, regrettably, that almost everyone goes through this phase, so we can sympathise with each other! the important thing is that it remain a phase and that you then outgrow it.

ie: he admired his lover's ass.

dear writers who subject their readers to appositives,

appositives are for clarification of an unclear point, usually in formal speech. cool: the professor, also a licensed blah blah blah technician, did something technically that you have to be a technician to do. uncool: 'blah blah' said a character, just introduced to the story. 'hm?' said the protagonist, looking up to meet his lover's eyes. even less cool: blah blah his lover's ass, when they've just had sex. we know it's his lover. they just had sex. next window. there are these great things called 'names.' they were even immortalized in a popular work of literature called the bible with a fantabulous fairy tale about naming everything (unless i've got my mythologies mixed up). they're not as fancy and polysyllabic as appositives (at least, most of the time), but they do carry the added bonus of never coming off as pretentious, overly self-conscious, or unconfident.

love,
cim