"he husked" seems to be endemic in category romance novels (Mills & Boon/Harlequin). (Last time I checked, the writer's guidelines for M&B specifically privileged "ability to tell a gripping, emotional story" over ability to construct decent prose.) Its appearance in fanfic makes me wonder how many of us in fandom had those books as our first exposure to remotely naughty/sexy fiction. When I was 12, my best friend had a shelf full of the things, but I didn't see the appeal. I read a whole bunch when I was working on my MA, though, but I read them critically, which most people, and especially most kids, can't or won't do. I wonder what the influence of that kind of reading is on a person's prose. *shrugs*

The best explanation for why epithets are so irritating, from a technical standpoint, is that they're POV breaks. Dean wouldn't think of himself as "the green-eyed hunter" even if someone else might describe him that way; he certainly wouldn't think of Sam as "the other man" or "the taller man".

This is well put. I think it hints at a deeper issue: many folks have no clear understanding of POV. Which is understandable, I suppose--when you watch Star Trek, it's not really from any particular character's POV, right? So it's fairly natural to start writing in 3p omnisch to replicate that effect, I suppose. But many of us as readers want/assume everything to be in 3p close, so it can get painful for us being bounced around from head to head. I'm sure we've all read fics in which the POV changes between paragraphs, even between sentences. (In my view, that's fail even if you are attempting 3p omnish) I've also read fics where there's only one person in the scene and the author assures me it isn't from that person's POV--for instance, a fic in which Karl Urban went into a "gas station"'s "convenience store" to buy "soda" and "jerky". That sent me flying out of the story, because I simply cannot imagine a New Zealander raised in New Zealand thinking in those terms (should be petrol station, shop/superette, fizzy drink/name of fizzy drink, and huh? We don't have jerky). But as far as the author was concerned, she wasn't writing Karl's thoughts, she was only writing his actions, and objectively he was in the convenience store buying jerky. I'm not sure that's an invalid theoretical position... just that it's not what I want to read.

Your point about what people call each other is good. I think a lot of new writers miss some of the subtleties of the canons they're writing in. If you go far enough back into my fic vault, for instance, you will find a story I wrote from Leonard McCoy's POV in which he's called "Bones". Lots of "Bones thought" and "Bones said". Classic mistake for newish writers of TOS/Reboot Star Trek--only Kirk calls McCoy "Bones", and you'd need a pretty good reason to explain why McCoy would take to thinking of himself by this nickname only one person uses. Other things, like how "mister" is used in a military environment, are much harder to catch and I imagine most of us still get it wrong half the time.

I also think that many of us are heavily influenced by existing fanfic. There's no snobbish genre system in fanfic to tell us that the Mills & Boon equivalents are to be sneered at, there's only feedback... and a lot of folks just don't leave concrit or negative reviews in public (or at all). Add to that that many of the less polished, less awesome writers are the ones posting to huge arenas (The Pit) and to multiple LJ comms, and the situation often arises that the fic that most discerning readers would agree is badfic has five times as many glowing reviews as the fic most discerning readers would consider borderline genius. If you're a newish writer who sees that a particular long, purple, head-swapping fic is hugely popular, what are the chances that you're going to try and emulate it and produce an over-long, purple-prosed, POV-nightmare of a fic yourself? :-)