Lippiness

[vilakins]

Recently I went through a stage of reading long Harry Potter fics recommended by a couple of people. Some were very good, some were so infected with runaway epithets* that I bailed, and some were distractingly lippy.

Both Harry and Hermione chew and gnaw at their lower lips about once every couple of pages (OK, screens) and Hermione is also unnervingly prone to folding hers. What on earth is lip folding? The most folds anyone can do is in half by squeezing with fingers at the corners of the mouth, but I suspect they mean she compresses her lips or do they mean pursing with lots of tiny folds? Are lip chewing, gnawing, biting, and folding Harry Potter fanfic tropes? [is puzzled and intrigued]

And while we're on the subject of lippy strangeness, Bujold has Miles ripple his fairly frequently. Huh? I imagine waves traversing them, like Barney's burps in The Simpsons but. Is he pursing them? Doing something else like duck-face?


* Seriously, perps? Epithets are not just annoying, they're confusing as well when the reader is left wondering if a new character has been introduced by prose like this:

Harry said hello to Hermione and sat down by the head girl. (It took me a while to figure out there was only one girl there.)

Note: Luna doesn't fold, spindle, or mutilate her lips (as far as I know) but she's the only HP icon I have. Sorry, Luna.

Comments

[pebblerocker]

Haha, oh dear. Checking for new updates before going to bed and your post pops up... very embarrassing to read considering I was folding my lip at the time. It's a valley fold rather than the mountain fold you describe, I'm pushing the middle of my bottom lip to the side so it goes, hm, under the corner of my mouth, sort of. I try not to do it because I know it looks silly.

Not sure if lip biting/fiddling is a Harry Potter trope but it comes up a lot anywhere influenced by Twilight, especially the films as lip-biting seems to be screen-Bella's only expression to vary the default slack-jawed vacant look. I imagine Miles is making horse noises so his lips flap against each other; if not, who knows!

I avoid epithet-riddled fics like the plague. Worst recent offender involved a lot of "the smaller man" in a slash couple who are canonically almost exactly the same height.

[vilakins]

Really? Folding is a sideways twist? ( can do it with both lips in different direactions. :-) I really can't see Hermione doing that though.

I have never seen or read any Twilight. Oy, that sounds about as bad as I'd assumed. As for Miles, I'd have thought the sound (snorting?) would be more important than the lippy vibrations.

Old B7 fanfic was rife with the smaller man, the little thief, the burly rebel, the blonde pilot etc etc. [rolls eyes] Someone once made fun of it by having someone ask for the burly rebel and get Gan when they expected Blake.

[pebblerocker]

There may be many other lip-folding techniques; I don't claim any expertise in mouth origami!

I like your cast list of the rebel leader, rebel pilot, rebel computer and rebel rebel thief.

[feng_shui_house]

Avengers' fanfic is full of epithets, too. Which can get VERY confusing when they mention 'the genius' and I don't know whether they mean Bruce or Tony, or 'the big blond' and I don't know whether they mean Steve or Thor, or 'the assassin' and I don't know if they mean Clint or Natasha.

[vilakins]

Like 'the rebel', then. [rolls eyes] Why do people do it? I used to think it was only in old fanfic but HP and Avengers are fairly new. I suspect Americans are taught name-phobia along with said-phobia in school.

[feng_shui_house]

A lot of the Avenger epithet writers also use 'armour' and other non-US things. I've seen a lot of it from writers for whom English was obviously a second language, too.

I don't think anyone is taught to do the 'elegant variation' in school; they just pick it up from reading fanfic.

Check out this article and you'll see it goes back a long way and in many types of writing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elegant_variation

[mab_browne]

There are always these buzz word in fic writing - I can remember at one point thinking that if I never again saw boneless or bonelessly as a synonym for completely physically relaxed/pliant, that I'd be a very happy fanfic reader indeed. What's worse is going back through my old fic and going 'Noooooo!' on the basis that I ought to have known better, but didn't.

I was moved to go back through my old B7 zines, (Chronicles, mainly) and there was some stuff that's still surprisingly readable there. Along with stuff that's not...

[vilakins]

New writers probably feel they need to conform to fanfic conventions of various sorts which might have been what happened here in HP.

I have lots of old zines, bought second-hand when I discovered the fandom in 2001 when there wasn't a lot online (and people on mailing lists got snitty when I suggested it). Some stories are very good (and sadly some are serials I'll never lay my hands on) and some are seriously bad.

[kerravonsen]

I've never heard of lip-folding. Nor of lip-rippling either.

The most lippy thing I've seen in HP fic is Hermione biting her lip in concentration or nervousness.

[vilakins]

In some fics she did it a lot and also cried far too frequently which got annoying. She doesn't just bite either; she chews and gnaws. I keep wincing and wondering if she's drawing blood.

Lip-folding and rippling remain a puzzle.

[kerravonsen]

I don't like it when Hermione cries too much! Give me my Hermione determined and hiding her upsetness on the inside, thank you muchly.

I remember one fic I read (well, started reading) where everybody was crying, as if "crying" was shorthand for any kind of upset feeling. Lazy writing.

[aralias.livejournal.com]

maybe folding lips is...putting one over the other? i asked the internet and it offers some indication (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110227171551AAVuAE9) of what hermione might be feeling, but no one saying 'what IS this?' bally useless.

also - i feel (as a recent perp) i should leap in defensively and say: i put epithets in my kill the dead thing, because tanith did. a lot.

that's my excuse and i'm sticking to it, but i must own... with that excuse in my arsenal, that i found it quite useful. for rhythm and for tone - it's difficult not to get some fun epic-ness out of 'the ghostkiller'. it's not something i'd want to do every day or in most fics, and it still drives me mad in most places (including 'kill the dead', but particularly when we discriminate between blake and everyone else by terming blake 'the rebel' - cally's a rebel! avon's a rebel! vila's a rebel! not all of them by choice, but they are all rebels. who are you talking about? yes, i know you're talking about blake, but i wish you'd just say 'blake'), but... i did guiltily enjoy it for 4,000 words.

[lolmac]

"The rebel, the rebel, the rebel, the rebel, the rebel and the rebel walked into a bar . . . "

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Or, the burly rebel, the blonde pilot, the little thief, the telepath, and large man, and the computer tech walked into a bar...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

You did your epithets so well, I didn't notice! They never made me think there was another character suddenly there. They can be useful at times but some people wield the bloody things like a sledge-hammer.

I wrote a b7friday Mary-Sue story, and a Mills & Boon one (Avon/Servie) full of epithets and said-phobia and I've had compliments on the M&B one!

[lolmac]

Oh, dear heavens, save me from "the troubleshooter". Or the Ultimate Horror from House fandom: "the diagnostician" and "the oncologist". Unless they're walking into a bar.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Man, those are bad!

Are you doing intoabar? :-)

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Argh. It's an attempt to break up dialogue, I would guess. An attempt that fails in that instance. Mind you, it's a damn tricky thing to do...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Adding beats? I usually try to think about what they're doing (leaning back in a chair, pacing, fiddling with tech, whatever) but it's never occurred to me to have them abuse the hell out of their own lips. I think it's more than a beat in the HP fanfics though as Harry and Hermione do it distractingly often, usually because they're distraught. Yes, there's a lot of woobification there.

[thisbluespirit]

... yes. I mean, there are moments for epithets - sometimes it's telling from a certain POV and things - but, yes. (I sometimes use them in Sapphire and Steel, because of the way function seems to sometimes define them - Operator, Investigator or Specialist/Technician).

Also this has nothing to do with anything, but I just wondered if you'd ever seen Public Eye? (I rewatched Enemy at the Door recently and am having bad withdrawal symptoms and the internet implies that if I want more where that came from the nearest match is Public Eye, so I'm curious.)

ETA: The lip stuff is very odd. I don't know what folding would be. Or rippling, though I wonder if it's supposed to be wibbling/trembling/quivering, although if it is, why you wouldn't just say so, I don't know.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure, you'd have to use them from the POV of a character who didn't know people's names, and I've done that. It's annoying though trying to think them up without getting repetitive so I get the names into the mix as soon as I can. :-)

Miles Vorkosigan's lips would never tremble or quiver unless he was trying not to laugh and that doesn't fit with the situations I remember. I'm going with him pursing them, though even then people differ on what that is. For me it's drawing them together like a draw-string purse, but for others it's compressing them tightly like snapping a modern-day purse shut.

Body-language! It's a hard thing to describe. For ages I thought arms akimbo (such a weird word!) were folded.

I haven't seen Public Eye. I'll have to look it up.

[uses Miranda doing something lippy]

[san-valentine.livejournal.com]

I recently tried reading a 'classic' of Southern (USA) literature, 'So Red The Rose'. There was a big cast of characters, in interrelated families, who were introduced in a rapid succession of short chapters. POV tended to shift within each scene, and the different characters were referred to on the page by the name, relationship or nickname that the POV character used for the. Or according to the author's whim.
So a character might be referred to as Uncle Bobbie one minute, Shelton, the next and Cousin Robert in the next chapter. With 20+ main characters taking their time in doing a number of loosely related things, and being referred to by up to three names each, it was almost impossible to keep track, even with the help of a Dramatis Personae list at the beginning.
I decided it was too much effort for too little reward in the end, and gave up about a 10th of the way through. The book went to a charity stall.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

[nods] Life it too short to waste on bad novels or fanfic. The only regret I have if I bail from a book is how much time I wasted before I did. I have several books (bought for 50c each from the library) which are going to the SPCA shop this weekend after I only read two. But those two were worth it.

FATHER JACK! I'd use my go on, go on, go on icon but it doesn't match the comment.

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Is ripple like curl perhaps?If so, then maybe Miles is going for the Elvis look? I must admit I do describe some lip action, but it usually is germane to the plot and not just thrown in.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I do occasionally too. I'm sure the rippling was germane, but as I didn't know what it was, it just confused me. I've never managed to work it out from context.