Pet Peeve

[sg_lab2]

It drives me nuts when in a fic. the writer differentiates between two characters by age when there's only two or three years difference between them. Like when referring to Sheppard being the older and Lorne being the younger. A line like "The older man walked up to the younger man" When there's less than five years difference between them I think one should find a better way of differentiating between them.

In fanfic for Due South I've seen fic that has Ray Vecchio, Stanley Raymond Kawalski and Benton Fraser. All three actors who played these characters are within months of each other in age, but I've seen the younest of the three being referred to as the younger man and the oldest being referred to as the the older man.

If there's ten or more years between them I could see that, but when they're within the same decade please don't differentiate them by age.

Comments

[koalathebear.livejournal.com]

How about the browner haired man walked up the other :D I suppose it's difficult to find ways to distinguish between people especially if they're roughly the same age and racial type.

[sg-lab.livejournal.com]

LOL, I don't think I've seen that one. Personally I think it should be kept simple when differentiating. I don't think a writer needs to come up with something different each time the two are being reffered to.

What set this off today was I a fic differentiating between Lorne and Mckay. Mckay was referred to as the older man.

[world-of-blade.livejournal.com]

That is something good to think about. I am not sure if I even do it in my own fics, but it is a good thing to keep in the back of my mind.

[sg-lab.livejournal.com]

Part of the gripe I have is that someone may think one person is older but it's actually the other way around. They either go by looking at the two actors and guessing who is older or if they are correct someone reading may not know which one is older. It gets confusing.

Take Atlantis' JF and DH. When the series first started a lot of people thought DH was older, but JF is about a year and a half older.

[sg-lab.livejournal.com]

I don't remember where it was now, but I remember reading someone was surprised to realize JF's age because they thought he was twenty-five.

I was thinking he must have been a pretty mature thirteen year old when I saw him in a TV movie twelve years ago. :D

At times I think he looks three or four years younger than his age, but definitely not any younger. There's just no way he's younger than me.

It's perfectly reasonable to me to differentiate by age between characters like Jack and Daniel. RDA is twenty years older than MS although there isn't quite as much of an age gap with the characters it's still significant enough to not confuse.

Now if someone tried to differentiate between John and Rodney by age I'd have no idea who the person was talking about when they said the older man. And while I don't recall those two being referred to in that way yet, I'm sure I'll run into it at some point.

I just thought of another time that's really bad when using the term "the older man" it's when there's a boy say Jinto and a man say Sheppard and the writer referrs to Sheppard as "the older man" when Jinto is not even a man. He's a boy.

I saw a lot of this at the beginning on S/W fics, people were always clarifying that Weir was older than Sheppard,

I don't think I've come across that kind of fic myself.

In the back of my mind while writing my Lorne/Weir series I think Lorne is a couple years younger than Weir. It's not a big deal. I don't intend to make a big deal out of it. I may possibly make a little joke between them about it. But no angst as if she's wondering it's a good idea to date for that reason. She may angst over whether it's a good idea for other reasons, but not because of age.

[sg-lab.livejournal.com]

One of my cable channels reruns that show and I've been trying to remember to watch that so I can find those JF ep. I just keep forgetting.

[sg-lab.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if it's the same one as you're talking about, but I saw a troll on that thread a couple of times referring to Weir as old lady Weir.