four new rambles

[arduinna]

After reading one too many stories full of epithets, I started writing an essay/ramble/rant thing about "elegant variation", which expanded into these cheesily named things:

Variety Is the Spice of Life... and I Need Some Tums (This one's sort of the 'base' essay.)

Purple Fanfic's (total lack of) Majesty

Epithets: Fandom's Designated Hitters

'Said' Is Not a Four-Letter Word

And, thanks to a bunch of friends who chimed in with examples from their fandoms, I pulled together a list of epithet examples from all over, just for fun:

Epithets

Comments

[the-shoshanna.livejournal.com]

Oh, lord. These essays are wonderful; I'm not sure whether to fall over laughing, sputter helplessly, or marry you. If only more people would read them and take them to heart; you have the rare ability to speak in ways that people who makes these sorts of errors will understand, unlike me, who can only sputter, "But -- it's so awful!" which doesn't help anyone who doesn't see why.

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

Gah. Those purple prose excerpts made my brain hurt. Thanks a lot. *g*

Just linked over from elynross...

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Why didn't you *tell* me you had a LJ?

"Only for Yuletide post," yeah, right. I would've missed these! And they are scrumptious. I'm enjoying the hell out of them.

Are they going up on the Symposium? Seems to me they deserve a wider audience.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

elynross linked the essays and they are truly wonderful! I think the purple prose in particular is outstanding, because you manage to *analyze* what most of us simply react to with incomprehension, laughter, and backward click.

the epithet issue has been addressed so many times, but i really loved they way you showed when and how they *are* appropriate. only in contrast did the wrongness of the bad examples really come through (asnd the warrick/gambler one was wonderful!).

as a non-native speaker, i was particularly fascinated by the transitive/intransitive examples; i didn't read a couple of them intuitively as wrong, because in my native language they are intransitive (or can be). not that that's ever an excuse. i barely post without a proofreader :-)

thank you so much for a enjoyable read as well as an excellent reference tool!