"Nick" not "Nicholas"
Pet peeve warning.
Your mileage may vary, of course, but seeing modern Nick called "Nicholas" in discussion and essays (and some present-day stories) gets my hackles up.
Born "Nicholas de Brabant," he has chosen to be "Nick Knight." Only Lacroix unfailingly calls him "Nicholas" in the present. (Even Janette occasionally calls him "Nick," although she does much prefer "Nicholas" in her French "Nicolas" pronunciation.) Yes, characters are likely to be most comfortable with the name in which they met him. Yes, "Nicholas B. Knight" is canonically his legal name in the present. But for us to habitually call modern Nick "Nicholas," as Lacroix does, is to reject Nick's self-definition, to join Lacroix's party, to subtly deride Nick's values and worth. It belittles him and, with him, the series of which he is the hero.
This creaky old peeve pokes up its head now because I posted to the AO3 for the first time. (I wanted the FKFicFest collection to include my contribution.) Overall easy and good, but it seems as if the archive's tags, especially as they appear in the filter function, are cumulative, so whoever gets there first gets to decide which words are used, how they're spelled and how they're capitalized. (For example, "LaCroix" instead of "Lacroix.") Well, all the pairings use "Nicholas" instead of Nick. This irritates me. You do what you want on your stories, naturally, but adjacent to mine? "Nicholas Knight/Natalie Lambert." "Nicholas Knight/Janette Ducharme." ~wince~
I know that the archive cannot - and should not be asked or imagined to! - accommodate all the intricacies of factions and interpretations and so on (not to mention the complications of Rick Springfield's Nick Knight versus GWD's). But I do wish that whoever had gotten there first had chosen to use "Nick" instead of "Nicholas."
Ah, well. On the subject of AO3 use, I discovered that if you accidentally select multiple author names when loading a story, you cannot later delete the extra(s). This is a known bug and I'll be patient until a fix is found; I just wanted to share the caution so no one else makes that mistake.
Comments on Dreamwidth:
Your mileage may vary, of course, but seeing modern Nick called "Nicholas" in discussion and essays (and some present-day stories) gets my hackles up.
Born "Nicholas de Brabant," he has chosen to be "Nick Knight." Only Lacroix unfailingly calls him "Nicholas" in the present. (Even Janette occasionally calls him "Nick," although she does much prefer "Nicholas" in her French "Nicolas" pronunciation.) Yes, characters are likely to be most comfortable with the name in which they met him. Yes, "Nicholas B. Knight" is canonically his legal name in the present. But for us to habitually call modern Nick "Nicholas," as Lacroix does, is to reject Nick's self-definition, to join Lacroix's party, to subtly deride Nick's values and worth. It belittles him and, with him, the series of which he is the hero.
This creaky old peeve pokes up its head now because I posted to the AO3 for the first time. (I wanted the FKFicFest collection to include my contribution.) Overall easy and good, but it seems as if the archive's tags, especially as they appear in the filter function, are cumulative, so whoever gets there first gets to decide which words are used, how they're spelled and how they're capitalized. (For example, "LaCroix" instead of "Lacroix.") Well, all the pairings use "Nicholas" instead of Nick. This irritates me. You do what you want on your stories, naturally, but adjacent to mine? "Nicholas Knight/Natalie Lambert." "Nicholas Knight/Janette Ducharme." ~wince~
I know that the archive cannot - and should not be asked or imagined to! - accommodate all the intricacies of factions and interpretations and so on (not to mention the complications of Rick Springfield's Nick Knight versus GWD's). But I do wish that whoever had gotten there first had chosen to use "Nick" instead of "Nicholas."
Ah, well. On the subject of AO3 use, I discovered that if you accidentally select multiple author names when loading a story, you cannot later delete the extra(s). This is a known bug and I'll be patient until a fix is found; I just wanted to share the caution so no one else makes that mistake.
Comments on Dreamwidth: