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[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

[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?".