Mostly Void, Partly Stars

He/Him, 50+, queer leftist cranky old guy just here for fandom funstuff. Hannibal, 911, ER, The X-Files, The Pitt, Supernatural.

[fedzzzart]

buckley-diaz fam at the beach🏖️☀️🩷

[archaeologyfandomsandsleep]

Happy Pride Month!! 🏳️‍🌈🎉

Find me on Instagram, Bluesky, X/Twitter.

[medrawawi]

baby centaur!

ilya's words mean something like "my heart is so full"

[nocturnalanimalsx]

That poor employee who stood in front of the camera and blocked Hudson's red carpet walk on the livestream is going to be the least popular Canadian on the planet tomorrow.

[drawballa]

1:24 AM 🌙

[smlmsworld]

♥♥♥

Oh, this just melts me to goo!!!

[bucksgreyhairs]

making breakfast

[finny-red]

Home Sweet Home 🌃🌙

[bexism]

the pitt | i got soul but i'm not a soldier

[alaspapilio]

You know yes

[beardysteve]

the proverbial Golden Son [x]

available on Society6 | alt. color versions

[starpains]

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.

[wisteria-lodge]

Really good explanation of the fundamental problem with this type of writing.

(and why it's one of my huge pet peeves)

[marlynnofmany]

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.

[jenroses]

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.

[nocturnalanimalsx]

I think Amazon is onto me....

[nocturnalanimalsx]

Too soon, Pitt. I’ve still got PTSD from Love’s Labor Lost

[potatomode]

Pls. do not re-post/reupload or use outside of tumblr without my permission.

Black and White: Link WIP: Link

[hrgifs]

hudcon in their poster boy marketing campaign era 🫰

[artwinx]

wip: dunno if i continue this after i get a new tablet, what you guys think?

only 67% to go on my ko-fi 💕

[smlmsworld]

@artwinx ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

[fuckrozanov]

come to my cottage where there’s no slamming doors and we don’t walk on eggshells and you don’t have to think about how as a child you memorized the sounds of footsteps on the hardwood and who they belonged to and how much to shrink yourself depending on the answer. don’t go back to russia because you always come back to me in pieces and pretend you don’t need to be put back together. i know a place that won’t break you. come to my house. we’ll have so much fun. i want to watch tv with you. i want to knock elbows with you while we brush our teeth. i want to taste your mouth while its still warm from your coffee; to suck syrup off your fingers at the table. i want every mundane luxury we’ve never allowed ourselves to have. it’s so private, no one will know. because they can’t. and for now it’s okay; i’m not ready for the world to have us when there’s so many ways i’ve yet to have you. we’d have a week, or even two, and it still won’t be enough. how do you make up for almost ten years of never seeing a sunrise together. never kissing with morning breath. all the things i might already know if i never left that time you asked me to stay. we’ll be completely alone, together, with our clothes in the same laundry basket and your hair on my pillowcase and the enormity of everything i want touching every corner of every room.