So, the more slashfic I write, the more I come up against the prospect of the dreaded epithet.
I'm fortunate, in that before I ever got into writing slash, I had friends who wrote a great deal of slash and I watched them go through the process. But I've found that DAO sometimes muddies the waters, because epithets are often used canonically.
In-game, nearly all the characters refer to other characters by epithets at some point or another. I mean, just look at Shale's dialogue (which I sometimes suspect was written specifically to poke fun at the overuse of epithets.)
My rule of thumb has been to avoid epithets as much as possible in slash (though I use them regularly when dealing with the POV of NPCs who use them canonically; for instance, I find it perfectly in-character and appropriate for Zevran and many other characters to think of Morrigan as "the witch") but I've been called on the repetitive use of names by my betas a time or two. So I thought I would bring this before the community and see how the rest of you tackle this issue.
My epithet bible tends to be this:
Epithets: Fandom's Designated HittersSpecifically, the following passages:
Please. I beg you. In the name of everything anyone has ever held holy -- never use a job title in place of someone’s name in a consensual sex scene, unless the job title is “prostitute” (or a variant thereof), or your characters are role-playing for kicks.
and
In short, context and characterization are everything when you're dealing with epithets. Don't just use them because you think your readers will be bored reading a name, or a pronoun, again. Use them because they're necessary to the story you're trying to tell, or leave them out entirely.
So. Appropriate use would be Shale calling Wynne "the elder mage" or Sten thinking of someone by their job title, because those are in-context and in-character.
Less appropriate (to use an example that came up between me and my beta today) might be Alistair thinking of Duncan as "the Warden-Commander" after he just finished giving him a blowjob.
Other resources:
Fandom Grammar @ LJand
Fanfic Symposium: Banishing the Wild Epithetmostly because it makes me laugh.
The epithet had been the cause of Minerva McGonagall's untimely death. The Head of Gryffindor House had seen one too many horrors, and finally the Animagus had breathed her last. Dumbledore's right hand had laid down her life that others might not die from the same tragic error. The gray-haired witch's sacrifice would never be forgotten.
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nithu
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