(no subject)

[nishatalitha]

The saga about Black Knight continues with his flatmate B. receiving a phone call on her work answerphone telling them all to go to hell.

I have a bone to pick with a fanfiction community. Someday I may actually get around to telling them about it.

It just bothers me how some authors use a characters surname when they write from that character's perspective. I've read a couple of books that do this. Point of Hopes, Point of Dreams by someone and Melissa Scott. The Wellington Central Library has them.

My point is that it was really disorientating to read the stories, and then suddenly the men would address each other by their first names rather than their last names, and I wouldn't know who they were talking about.

It's not quite as bad in the fandom that I'm thinking about. Normally it's only one particular character that has this happen to him. Nevertheless, it's still strange.

Comments

[dryadwoman.livejournal.com]

Hmm tricky. I know I find it well nigh impossible to refer to Jeeves as Reginald in any situation. And it's almost as difficult to think of Holmes and Watson as Sherlock and John.

[nishatalitha.livejournal.com]

So in that case, do you think that some people think of themselves by their last names?

Actually, what I really think is important is consistency. It's not good writing if you have a character - say his name's John Doe, and you always call him Doe when it's from his perspective and others. But say you also have another character called Jack Dae, and you always call him Jack, whether it's from his perspective or someone else's.

That's not internally consistant.

What makes it worse is when Dae occasionally calls Doe John, and Doe occasionally thinks of himself as John, but the latter only occurs about 10% of the time in fic.

That's just a pain to read.

[dryadwoman.livejournal.com]

I agree, that is just annoying. I don't know if anyone thinks of themselves by their last names, but I think it is a possibility in some situations/universes. I know in German, even now in some situations, if you ask someone their name, they'll give their surname. To get their first name, you ask "what's your first name?".

[nishatalitha.livejournal.com]

So in that case, do you think that some people think of themselves by their last names?

Actually, what I really think is important is consistency. It's not good writing if you have a character - say his name's John Doe, and you always call him Doe when it's from his perspective and others. But say you also have another character called Jack Dae, and you always call him Jack, whether it's from his perspective or someone else's.

That's not internally consistant.

What makes it worse is when Dae occasionally calls Doe John, and Doe occasionally thinks of himself as John, but the latter only occurs about 10% of the time in fic.

That's just a pain to read.

Did that all make sense in some convoluted way?

[tanizard.livejournal.com]

Have you read 'The Crucible' trilogy by Sara Douglass? Through the majority of the first book, the main character is referred to as 'Neville', but either near the end of the first book, or somewhere early in the second book, it suddenly switches to 'Thomas'. Now, since 'Neville' is a first name as well as a surname, it took me a ridiculously long time to understand who 'Thomas' was, and it also took a while to get back into the flow of the story because I had to adjust to this new name. Not to mention that throughout the second and third book, although 'Thomas' was the predominant name used, he still sometimes thought of himself as 'Neville', and had people occassionally refer to him as 'Neville' as well.

My extremely drawn-out point being that I agree about it being a pain to read. But I didn't mind too much, because I really love that series.