like for example this fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12206736 which is a leverage fic and i loved it despite having never seen leverage
another example is unexpected wishes by deception-kitty, a norm the genie/aged up!jack spicer fop-xiaolin showdown crossover. i could read it before i watched xiaolin showdown without being overly confused. the weirdmageddon tango on here also is like that, i think. it is very tied to the canon events of gravity falls and has multiple other canons plus original universes involved but it has a few players who haven't, as far as i'm aware, actually watched gravity falls and they do fine. and most of the players haven't seen fairly oddparents and norm the genie, one of my characters in there, is from there. and norm the genie got in a romance in it with papyrus before i'd played undertale and the fact i hadn't played it until after norm and papyrus had gotten together didn't cause any problems for that.
tfw an author buys their pov character's act and consequently mischaracterizes them. also has them rape their best friend. because that's something that's likely to happen.
Writing gripe more than reading gripe: sometimes epithets are very useful (like in the instance when there's three characters, all of the same pronoun, being mentioned in the same paragraph) and I hate that even if I use them appropriately and correctly, someone will inevitably pop up to explain how they're "bad writing".
Spoiler: NSFW implications what position are these characters in I think he just dislocated both his knees
My favourite variations of that are the one where one participant would have to be hanging upside down from the top of a toilet cubicle with the other's full weight hanging off them, and the one where a guy somehow fell forward on top of the guy who just kicked him in the back.
Every time I use an epithet (because it conveys something I'm trying to highlight, because I'm deliberately not naming these characters because they'll only be here for two paragraphs, because it does something to show how my viewpoint character is thinking at the moment) I get that niggling little voice in the back of my head that goes "but they're baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad". And you know what? You know what. I will take the goddamn blunette over 'never hits enter between dialogue tags or restates who is saying what in a string of twenty back and forths and only uses pronouns with a name or descriptor every seven pages or so'. At least when someone uses 'blunette' or 'the red paladin' or 'the one-eyed qunari rogue agent' I know who the fuck they're trying to reference most of the time.
"He grab his hand and pulled him across the room to where they had their powersuits. 'Here,' he said handing one to him, looking afraid, 'we need to put these on if we want to survive. It's too dangerous out there without them.' He nodded. If he was this scared about something, then it must be serious. He'd have to listen to him if he wanted to survive."* WHO THE FUCK IS TALKING AT ANY POINT IN THIS SCENE AAAAAAA *an exaggeration, but not by much
There's a lot of things that I think authors now are too shy of using due to conventional writing tips that get tossed around. Adverbs and epithets I think suffer some of the worst abuses in their lack of use. Like it'll somehow scar your writing beyond repair to dare use something within English's repertoire.
my writing gets very complicated by avoiding epithets. i mean, now @KingStarscream 's explained it, i see why it's not a heinous writing sin but hearing so many people mention it as one has made me brain latch onto it as a thing to never, never, ever, ever do.
Dialogue tags get it too, I've noticed, especially from the folks who've been told over and over again that they aren't allowed to use adverbs either. It's all or nothing with those--fuck everyone, we're alternating between scream, whispering, and giggling our words, OR, people only say things in the exact same tone every time with no fluctuation, modulation, or emphasis on any aspect of their words, because Adverbs Are Bad and if you type 'he yelled' then you're a BAD AUTHOR for NOT CONVEYING YELLING without... using any verbs or adverbs or adjectives to indicate that?
fuck, just names would help that sentence! Why are people allergic to just using their god damned names!
I mean, generally I stick to names more than epithets, but epithets are very useful. If you're doing a fic where a substantial portion of it involves shopping or otherwise interacting with one-line scenery characters? Hell yeah, call that woman 'the barista'. Offhandedly reference 'the sales clerk'. Make note of 'the bus driver'. Mention 'the group of men standing by the door, two taller and one short with a mean looking scar'. Or hey, maybe you're driving home that this girl, who you've been writing a soppy coffeeshop meet-cute fic about, is still dangerous--have the assassin smile when someone tries to hit on her girlfriend while she's serving them! Let the elf nod sagely as someone insult their race! Bring up the fact that the race-car driver thinks he can handle a four-door sedan! They're tools, and just because some people would rather use a screwdriver for every single thing they build doesn't mean you have to stop using your hammer too!
This is why when I give actual writing advice as opposed to just bitching or like give actual critique I try to qualify statements. I explain why I feel something is working here or why it's not, and why I feel that my suggestion may work better. And I try to make sure that I state it's just my opinion, here are the biases I'm aware I have, and so on. I like epithets for like unintroduced characters or like if there's a perspective use behind it. Like if I were writing hypothetical DA fanfiction it might make sense to have a racist human character's sections focus wise make heavy use of epithets for elves that qualify their elfiness. They're a racist. Of course they're going to be bitching about the damned knife ears or specifying people as 'the elf'. Because he's a fucking racist and doesn't view them as just people.
Those don't even fall into the category of "epithet" in my head, even though I know they literally are. They're just "character not named." I wrote a fic last year where the viewpoint character only ever refers to one other person by name in the narration and everyone else got a description, because he doesn't trust anyone else as far as he can throw a car and assumes they're all lying to him.
I did something like that for the Handmaid in a fanfic. She only ever used often bland epithets for people like The Woman because I mean...she doesn't really talk to many and she's busy hopping around the timeline murdering people because her dick of a boss told her to or she gets beat. Why the fuck would she use names? Now when she does use a name. That is significant and it means shit.
yeah, epithets used for characters who either haven’t been introduced yet or are single-line chars, etc., totally make sense. and if it’s in-character for a POV to refer to others with epithets, that def makes sense as well. i mostly eyeroll when i see stuff like “the taller man,” when used in Character A’s POV to refer to Character B, who is his lover. that just seems v impersonal to me and seems silly, though it could potentially have uses if the author wants to emphasize B’s height, and doesn’t really get on my nerves unless seriously overused. also it’s probably not even in my top 5 for things that annoy me in fanfic. (#1 is when writers make their works nigh-unreadable for me by not having any spaces in between their paragraphs.)
