As incredibly overwrought and silly as that particular epithet is, I'm finding that epithets in general can actually be really useful...if you're writing a conversation (or, uh, other things) between two or more members of the same gender, because pronouns get confusing as hell that way and it can sound really awkward if you bypass that by using their names practically every sentence. Of course, I'm also not sure if, say, "the other girl" or whatever counts as an epithet technically. I think the worst I've done would be like, along the lines of "the taller boy" or "the girl with pink hair." Frankly I'm more offended by the "verdigris" portion. :P
...Over here in the colour pedantic portion, it could be useful to tell me about the exact and rather unusual colour of the guys eyes tho. Eyes that colour is something you´d notice. Somehow i epect that wasn´t the authors intention though.
Epithets are also useful if you've got a PoV character who hasn't learned names yet, or if you're trying to convey something specific about the scene. "The mechanic grunted as she popped the hood of our car." tells us something important about the character and her role in the scene, where "The reddette with lovely golden orbs grunted as she popped the hood of our car." says 'fuck I haven't named her yet and I don't know anything good about her'. (Though things like "everyone looked at the only redhead in the room" or "the taller man reached over him" can also be very good uses of epithets. Like all things, it's in the context. "the mech with verdigris eyes" would be a pretty useful bit of narrative in a fic about religious symbolism in the IDW transformers 'verse.)
All of this is true; unfortunately in this particular case the boy in question is alone with his thoughts and has no real knowledge of metals or their oxides, as he is Harry Potter and hasn't gone to muggle school in quite some time. It would be cool, though, if a fic was told from the perspective of someone who is really pedantic about colors/a science enthusiast/whatever and they mentally refer to him as "the one with verdigris eyes" until they learn his name. That tells the reader about the pov character as well as the exact shade of green.
Even then, I think "eyes the color of verdigris" would probably be safer, at least the first time you used it. Not that you couldn't make "verdigris eyes" work, but it would be harder to do without sounding like... *waves at quote*
This is all true, but it's also just reminding me of the part in Albuquerque by Weird Al where he meets a girl and comments that she has "hair the color of strained peaches."
Currently browsing Smart Bitches Trashy Books and I was reminded of the time as a teen I set up a "famous badfics as interpretive dance" thread, based on this review:
As I recall the "legolas by laura" one was something along the lines of "The PLOT crashes to the stage and burns furiously" and my personal fanfic nemesis involved a catgirl beating someone with a rubber mallet representing FURRY SEX and SENSELESS VIOLENCE.
the confusion with characters of the same gender makes me want to write a story where every character uses a different pronoun set
If only people had a word or words that referred only to that person and not anyone else. Then you could use that magical word to identify them instead of pronouns.
Spoiler: nsfw this fic would have me believe that Rey, a nineteen year old allosexual woman who lives alone in a metal box in the desert on a planet where windstorms can force her to stay inside for days at a time, has never even conceived of jerking herself off. Nah, tho. Nah.
The problem there is that writing ends up really clunky if you avoid pronouns. (So does speech, to be honest.)
The general thing i follow is pronouns of the gender of the mosy recently named person refer to that person Tho of course not event might get it during reading, the rest kinda boils down to context i guess Actions surrounding the pronoun
Epithets are clunkier, IMO. I personally perfer to see a name multiple times in the same paragraph, or even sentence, than to repeatedly see named characters referred to as (adjective) (noun)s. I emphasize that this is a stylistic preference on my part rather than an absolute... thing, that everyone should follow, though. I imagine that I’d feel less pissy about that and more pissy about name overuse if that’s where my personal clumsy usage OD came from.
i think epithets are a sometimes food, they serve a purpose--differentiating between two characters of the same gender, identifying notable features, and for when the narrator doesn't know someone's name. i like to use epithets to both describe the character the epithet is talking about, and to say something about the POV character and why they would pick/notice whatever they're using as an epithet but overusing them can make things VERY clunky, especially if they're using language like 'male' or 'female' which feels so detached and weird to me. ): 'the larger male' sounds like something in a lab, and i've seen ones that are like "the dark haired boy" when they're both dark haired boys, which is just, why
Completely off topic but I hate... first person PoV... It can be done well! It is done well all the time! But the gamble I take with first person is always, like, astronomically higher than the one I’m taking with second or third, and it grates. I’d even go so far as to say it’s a quicker insta-back button from me than poor formatting or grammar. This brought to you by “the solution to ‘I have a pronoun problem and don’t like writing first person’ is NOT ‘have you tried writing in first person?????’ despite what NaNo forums think.”
First person only works if the writer is REALLY COMMITED to a very limited point of view, imho, and a lot of fic writers tend to... Not really get that.
Like, unless you're writing from cole's point of view or someone else that can literally read minds and this has been previously established, you dont get to write first person and also have deep insights on each and every thought someone else has.
