My god, it's full of pronouns!

[prillalar]

I've been writing some het today. Whenever I do, I think: Why don't I do this more often? The pronouns! My god, the pronouns!

It got me thinking about some of the tags you see in fic to differentiate two guys. I prefer just to use names with the occasional "the elf" or "the dwarf" depending whose POV I'm using. But not everyone does.

I used to see these a lot and still sometimes do: the taller man, the older man, the younger man, the blond, the brunette, the agent, the spy, the Gondorian, the Padawan, the skip, the lead.

(Well, okay, I've never seen "the skip" or "the lead". But surely someone wrote some slash about that Paul Gross curling movie. I almost did myself, except that I hated the movie too much to rewatch it for detail.)

Mostly, these terms don't work for me so well. But I do recall reading an X-Files story where Skinner and Mulder were in bed and Skinner did something "to his agent" and, oh, what a button that pushed!

Do you have any favourite tricks to get around the Slash Pronoun Problem?

Comments

[codyne]

I'm like you -- I prefer to use the names for the most part, with an occasional descriptive term thrown in. But this reminds me of a discussion on my Yu-Gi-Oh! list recently, when someone said that she liked to use hair-color to describe the characters, only she couldn't figure out what to call Yugi's hair (big black red-tipped spikes with yellow bangs), which then led to all sorts of fun talking about Anime Hair, with all its gravity-defying whirls and flips and colors not found in nature.

In Blake's 7 fandom, certain tags almost reached the point of parody because they were so overused. Blake was the "burly rebel," Vila the "thief," Avon the "computer tech." And you wonder, is there any reason we need to be constantly reminded how "burly" Blake is?

The thing is, I think if you're going to throw in a descriptive term, it should be something about the character that's meaningful at that point in the story, and not just some random fact. Otherwise, it's just distracting.

[eliade.livejournal.com]

This entry made me smile and wince, and nod in empathy. Het pronouns are to bask in. They're such a ridiculous ease and relief after writing slash.

I have no tricks or suggestions to offer--I wrote a slash story recently where it seemed that all I did was wrangle pronouns and if I'm still doing that after eight years of writing, it's pretty hopeless. I use the characters' names as often as possible while trying not to let it be obvious or intrusive. That's about it.

Damn slash pronouns. Someone ought to write a bitter poem about them.

[runpunkrun]

Damn slash pronouns. Someone ought to write a bitter poem about them.

Okay, bitter slash pronoun poem. That's totally calling my name. I have to write this now. It will inevitably be called "he said he said." It will also be brilliant. But only because it's three in the morning and at three in the morning I can do no wrong.

[vissy.livejournal.com]

Just stick with names. Otherwise, the only trick I can think of is to write in first person all the time, which? Not good.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

First, I mostly write in tight third and avoid changing pov if possible - and if not, it's between scenes, never during (excepting my dubious Jane Austen pastiche and a rather fraught Chakotay/Paris, which I wish I could rewrite.) Since we stay in one guy's head all the time, it makes it a lot easier to identify who is doing what to whom - we only know the pov's feelings or sensations. Those times I don't write in tight third, I write first person, which really solves the problem nicely.

However - I do *not* use epithets unless they're appropriate to the scene. I much prefer names, or, if clear enough, pronouns. I can understand the "his agent" button, because it's a rather meaningful thing, but "the detective" and the "anthropologist" can toss me right out of a story.

[prillalar]

Maybe we should write some pairings based on how well their tags go together. Like burly Blake and surly Skinner.

I wonder if writing porn about "the computer tech" is really a subtle way for some of us to Mary Sue *g*

[prillalar]

"Wrangle pronouns" -- I like that. I guess there are just some things that will always be difficult. Changing lightbulbs. Laying out tabular data. Wrangling pronouns in a slash story. *g*

[prillalar]

We await the brilliant bitter poem with bated breath. :)

[prillalar]

I wonder if as slashers we have a much greater tolerence for names in scenes like this. I wonder if we'd notice if a het scene used the names in the same way.

[prillalar]

I find with my own writing, even using a tight third, I still have trouble, particularly when I want to tack participial phrases on. I struggled especially with the Denethor/Celeborn because they both had such unwieldy names -- it just looked more odd to write them out all the time than, say, Scott and Logan.

And your icon makes me want to have a cup of tea. :)

[vissy.livejournal.com]

The naming of names is such a stylistic obligation in slash that we must necessarily embrace it. Pronouns are too indistinct, as are descriptive tags, and the use of these devices injects a slippery element into stories. Readers feel instinctively the weakness, even *wrongness*, of a story riddled with tags; the writer could be describing any dwarf, or blond, or Vulcan. You could argue that names are redundant in any piece of fanfic since the story is described within the bounds of collective fannish recognition, but still we crave the articulation of the name and feel its absence when it is denied by elusive pronouns and uncertain tags. A story's resonance can be whittled away one 'blond' at a time.

It's a question of grammatical and literary choice, but it's also about something deeper, unspoken but heartfelt. One of the most common themes in world mythology is that of the sacred name. The name has power and demands reverence ('Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain'). A name can be pronounced in worship, and it can also be pronounced in a bid to invoke its inherent power (A Elbereth Gilthoniel!). We recognise instinctively the taboo of the name; why else do we give ourselves and each other nicknames? (The old definition of 'nick' is to deny.) Now take a 'taboo' subject like slash (and there are still plenty of people who would consider it as such). Is it conceivable that those slash writers who feel the 'profanity' of what they are doing fear the use of the name and deny it with tags and pronouns? I don't mean to imply a conscious choice here, of course, but simply a quiet, insistent voice inside that tells a writer not to take a name in vain. These are the fics that irritate and elude us, because a name unsaid is a power unused. Then there are the fics where the name is invoked loudly and often; these are the stories that resonate.