just don't call me late for dinner

[isiscolo]

For reasons which probably don't need exploring at this juncture I've been thinking (for a very long time, now; I promised to write about this last year) about names. Namely (heh): first names and last names, and the usage of each in fic.

There are three issues on my mind, which are only tangentially related: what name the POV character uses in

Comments

[isiscolo]

Oh, was that the Yuletide fic? I didn't read it (I've been avoiding Temeraire stories until I read book 4) but yeah, I can see how that would get tremendously complicated. I mean, that's why we use these first-name vs last-name games, to make things easier for the reader to follow.

Using different forms of a name for variation drives me nuts, but I have been painfully aware lately that this is done in profic all the time.

[azurelunatic]

Anime fanfic tends to like to set up camp in epithet country, and then change up epithets for variation. I think I've finally broken my roommate of that one.

[azurelunatic]

My roommate wrote, at that time, in the Yu Yu Hakusho fandom, and some of the commonplace epithets were (and, I think, probably still are

[kattahj]

it was only halfway through when I'd gone to Wikipedia to see who everyone was because I was so confused that I realised there were only two people in this one scene, not three as I had thought.That reminds me of when I tried to read Doctor Zhivago. I couldn't figure out if there were two characters or ten in a room, and had to give up at around page 60. Everyone had about half a dozen names each, and used them interchangeably