Agents of SHIELD. Season 1 Discussion Thread

I've seen enough advance promotional material for the show that I've mostly learned the names by now. I needed a reminder on which one was Fitz and which was Simmons, but I've got it now.

 

Some shows have "stickier" names than others. DEXTER was really good at coming up with names that lodged in my memory right away: Freebo, Teigan, Lylah, LaGuerta, Doakes, Rudy, Masuka.

Other shows, not so much. Four seasons in, I still struggle to remember the names of most of the characters on HAVEN . . . and I've seen every episode!

 

Odd ones are easier to pick up than common ones.

 

Agreed. "Myka" is easier to remember than "Pete." At least in my experience.

 

Putting the heroes name in the title is cheating.

How dumb do you have to be to say "What's the lead character from Dexter called?"

Right up there with: "How do you spell ACDC?"

Although I loved it on Family Guy when Lois' dad says "I'm going to go watch Medium! Medium with save the day! Go-oooooooooooo-ooooooooooo-ooooo Medium!"

(Carter Puetershmidt... Took me 40 seconds to pull that out of the archive between my ears.)

 

Putting on my editor's hat for a minute, it's amazing how many otherwise sensible writers put characters named Lora, Linda, and Lenore in the same book. Or maybe Dave, Dan, and Donald.

Do not do this! I actually keep lists of the characters in my books just to make sure the names don't sound too much alike.

 

But she's adorable all the times she says his in all the ways she says his name, meaning all the things she means when she says his name.

It's like how the Inuit say "Dude, just one word for snow? Fuck!"

 

I vaguely remember someone claiming that that they had an elderly relative who always referred to Jessica Fletcher as "Murder She Wrote"--as though that was the name of the character.

"I think Murder She Wrote has figured out who the killer is!"

And I admit I usually refer to the hero of GRIMM as "Grimm" even though that's not actually his name. He's technically a Grimm, not named Grimm, but who the heck ever thinks of him as "Burkholtz"?

 

George RR Martin of A Song of Ice and Fire fame, has opted to ignore this rule of writing and frequently has characters with similar names. Game of Thrones has 3 Roberts, for example, (King Robert, Robb Stark and Robert Arryn, though the latter became Robyn for the TV show) and there is an Osha and an Asha at different stages, as well as various Brandons, Jeynes etc. His attitude is that we all know different people with the same name in real life and distinguish them from each other, so the intelligent reader ought to be able to do the same.

Interestingly, the TV show has changed several names where they sound like that of another character.

 

He's usually referred to as Nick, isn't he? And I'm pretty sure his last name is Burkhardt, but it's telling that I'm not entirely sure. (One Wikipedia search later...) Yep, Nick Burkhardt. A lot of the other characters have more memorable names, though -- Juliette, Monroe, Rosalee, Renard, Wu, Adalind.

In my first-grade homeroom (I think it was), there were three students named Robert. The teacher decided (maybe with some consultation of the three for their preferences) to refer to them respectively as Robert, Robby, and Rob.

 

Far be it from me to argue with Martin, whose books I've enjoyed quite a lot over the years, but in real life we can often see the people being referred to, and can therefore readily distinguish between Dan the balding retiree and Dan the red-headed college kid, as opposed to them just being words on a page.

I suppose, when the people aren't in sight, we can often figure it out from context, but even in real life it can get confusing.

"I ran into Jim at the store today."

"Jim our neighbor or Jim your brother?"

 

^ Yeah, I just thought it was interesting to compare such different perspectives from you and him, given that I've enjoyed writing by both of you!

 

Thanks. And, yes, just because this is one my rules of thumb as a writer/editor, it doesn't mean every author feels the same way.

Piers Anthony is a big believer in making things easy for the reader. Gene Wolfe tends to demand a greater degree of concentration and attention from his readers.

Meanwhile, just to steer this thread back OT, Stan Lee liked alliterative names (Peter Parker, Reed Richards, Bruce Banner, Sue Storm, etc.) because he thought they were easier to remember.

 

The Minotaur/Monitor thing went right over my head.

 

Except even he sometimes forgot them in the early days and wrote scripts referring to Peter Palmer and Bob Banner.

 

Yep! Clearly, it wasn't a foolproof approach!

 

Is that why peope in real life name children things like Phillip Phillips, Richard Richards, John Johnson and the like? That's always boggled my mind.

 

To clarify a point about Martin's characters though. He doesn't just refer to all the characters as "Robert" unless context is provided first. Robb Stark, I presume, is named after Robert Baratheon, and Robert Arryn is rarely referred to without his surname.

 

^True. It's also usually clear who he's talking about from their geographical locations among other things. Plus Robert Baratheon is a huge man, gone to fat, Robb Stark is in his teens, a strapping young man and Robert Arryn is a sickly boy.

 

No, that's just child abuse.