i like the part of a hyperfixation where you briefly forget that you're a bad person

Love Begins

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I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
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Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
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YOU ARE THE REASON
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@duchessathena
i like the part of a hyperfixation where you briefly forget that you're a bad person
Joseph Plateau — Phenakistoscope art (1887)
Limmy deleted best tweet of all time I'm so mad
(1983)
2016
2025
I WANT TO WRITE MY STORIES!!!!!!!!!!!! -> continues doing literally Anything Else besides writing
the circus was in town that day 🤡
happy lesbian visibility week to them
on “the blond,” “the older man,” and other crimes against third-person limited
You know that thing where a story is written in tight third person limited — we’re meant to be inside someone’s head, seeing the world through their thoughts — and then suddenly the narration says “the blond frowned” or “the shorter woman sighed” about a person the POV character knows really well?
That’s called antonomasia — using a descriptive label instead of a name. And it’s fine when we’re talking about strangers: “the cashier handed her the receipt,” “the tall guy blocked the door.” The POV character doesn’t know their names, and we just need a quick way to tell people apart.
But the moment it’s used for someone the POV character already knows, it breaks immersion. Because that’s not how our minds work. We don’t think “the older man smiled at me.” We think “Mark smiled.” Or maybe “my boss” if that relationship matters in the moment.
Third person limited means the narration sits inside someone’s perception. Their inner monologue is the story’s voice. So when you switch from “Mark smiled” to “the blond smiled,” you’ve pulled the camera away from their mind and turned it into an outside shot.
If you want to create distance or irritation, you can do it on purpose —
“The idiot from accounting emailed again.”
That’s character voice. That’s judgment. That works.
But otherwise?
As soon as your POV character knows someone’s name, use it. While we do tend to worry about repetitions, names rarely register as such to the readers.
If you need variety for rhythm, use relational or emotional identifiers that make sense in their head: her friend, his partner, their teacher, the person they loved.
Because inside someone’s thoughts, there are no “blonds” or “brunettes.”
There are only people they know.
Really good explanation of the fundamental problem with this type of writing.
(and why it's one of my huge pet peeves)
Same! As far as I'm concerned, the only time you should describe a named character by their hair color is when it relates to the conversation/plot. For example:
"They told me someone spotted a tall redhead doing something mysterious to the sidewalk where the coins were glued down," he said, casting a glance at the tall redhead beside him, who was hiding the superglue behind his back.
This is the worst during sex scenes. Do not be afraid to repeat names to make things clear, especially in same sex pairings! Names and simple tags like "said" are nearly invisible to the reader's repetition detector, but more complex epithets like "the taller man" and my least favorite, "the emerald eyed woman" make the reader do unnecessary decoding in any situation but yeet one completely out of immersion in a sex scene.
You do not have to avoid repetition of names and short speech tags. In fact, when you are in the first rough draft, you should be putting zero mental effort into worrying about fleshing out your dialog, but when you do, later, most of your substitutions for "said" should be things that show actions and descriptions of the characters' tone, added like spice, not flour. The second draft is when they usually go from standing in a blank void without moving, unless it's really flowing easily in the first. If you're having anxiety about whether you've used their names too much or "said" too much, you're slowing yourself down completely unnecessarily. I'd much rather have a repetition than try to remember who is older and who is taller especially when those things might be variable between iterations of canon. (Book Lan Wangji is taller than Wei Wuxian, show actors reverse that. We know when their birthdays are from non canon sources but not who is actually older (literally wwx tells lwj to call him gege but then calls lwj er gege and he's being playful both times so in neither case do we actually know.)
So "the older man" sows confusion in the vast majority of cases with those characters.
If you've got a tight pov character the names should be consistent for how they think of the character unless it's in speech from someone else who uses a different name to refer to the character.
So in mdzs, from Lan Wangji's perspective I might consistently use Wangji in speech tags (Wangji said, "...")
But I would always and only use Wei Ying for speech tags as long as we are in Lan Wangji's perspective except perhaps in their first meeting or before they use familiar names.
The exception is strong pov-appropriate descriptors. In one of my fics the pov character is repeatedly struck by the youth of another character and he thinks of the other as "the boy" occasionally when he is actively noticing how young the kid is for the shitty situation they're in. I would never use that to avoid repetition, only to add emotional context. But he's literally decades older.
One time this man approached me in a bar talking in Spanish. So I assumed he was Spanish and we started speaking, we had a whole ass conversation and at some point he was like. So what part of Spain are you from? And I said well I’m Italian actually. What part of Spain are you from? And he was like. I’m Greek.
One time I was in Argentina and I was so tired of trying to speak Spanish because I’m not very good at it lmao so I broke into exasperated English and the retail seller girl quickly understood me and engaged me in conversation. We talked for a while, she introduced me to a makeup brand, and then I decided to buy it. While she was packaging the purchase, she asked me if I were from the US or perhaps the UK and I just said “oh no I’m Brazilian hahah” and she looked me straight in the eyes and said, in clear Portuguese, “I’m Brazilian too”
When my dad went to China on a work trip, his Mandarin speaking wasn’t great but his listening was fine (his first language is Cantonese) and he encountered a German guy who had moved to China to work. My dad knew how to speak German because he studied it in university (but wasn’t great when it came to listening to new vocab he hadn’t studied before), and the German guy knew Mandarin because he lived and worked in China, so they had a conversation where my dad spoke to the German guy in German and the guy responded in Mandarin. I’m sure it confused a lot of their coworkers who just saw the Asian guy speaking German and the white guy speaking Mandarin.
Some years ago, I worked for a manufacturing company that had a service depot in China. One of the engineers from the main office here in the US spent most of his time at the depot. The problem was that he didn’t speak *any* of the various Chinese languages, and no one at the depot spoke any English. They all, however, spoke Spanish.
I love the world
idk if this is an usamerican thing or not but it always blows my mind as a small european country resident that yall have many names and types of apples???? what do you mean its not just red yellow or green??? why is it so complicated??? who is granny smith????
'whats your favorite apple' 'red' 'no i mean like what type' '??????' actual conversatiom i've had with a mutual from usa
THIRTY TWO??????
Listen that doesn’t even account for all the weird shit local farmers are getting up to.
May I present the best apple:
the world is so big and beautiful
I hope I'm online when it happens. I want to see a sudden flood of crab rave memes right after refreshing my dash, and in the middle of it all, the Castiel news meme. That's how I want to learn of it; not through anything solemn or serious, but via overwhelming silly celebration.
I'm going to tell you all that I'm wearing Eau Libre.
Its pride month
You know what that means >:)
You have got to get it through your head that social media is literally pushing negative content to keep you engaged. Most people are not assholes! Not by a long shot! Most people do not look like those insane beauty standards they’ve pushed on us. Social media is a trap for your mind. It convinces you the worst is normal and the rare is common, until you forget what real life actually looks like. Of course, always be aware of your surroundings because unfortunately, there will always be crappy people, but this world is a lot bigger than your feed would have you believe.
on principle i'm completely with the tumblr users who wanna mock folks who don't listen to rap/hip-hop/jazz/country/etc but some of the discourse on the subject on here seems to indicate that people think merely consuming media is like an act of social justice or some shit and thinking about it like that is just as fucked. you're not like, doing a favor to Black people by putting on jazz records you know
Consuming! Media! Is! Not! Praxis!
sorry about not replying I think I’ve gone missing
I should lock the fuck in *half an hour passes* I should lock the fuck in *half an hour passes* I should lock the fuck in *half an hour passes* I should-