Lesbian Is Not A Dirty Word

Couple of Thieves

I really like the colours you get on magpies, what at first glance looks like a other black and white bird is actually full of these wonderfully iridescent greens and purples

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.”

screenshot 2: an addition by @/thegardenlesbian reading "in spain they use "buenismo", as in "ya basta de tanto buenismo" (smth like "it's time to get over so much goodism". not a good translation sorry 🫤)

["goodism" would be a literal translation, but "good-doing" would be a better translation imo. it's a word derived from "bueno" ("good") + the suffix "-ismo" ("-ism")]"

screenshot 3: an addition by @/kropotkindersurprise reading "The insult fascist and conservative Germans use for liberals and left-wingers is "Gutmensch", literally "Good Person", used in a similar way as "bleeding heart" or "do-gooder" in English. Dutch fascists copied it from the Germans and use it as a loanword too."

screenshot 4: an addition by @/yuppiepsycho100 reading "French right-wingers (especially in the far right) also like to refer to liberals & leftists as Le camp du bien (The Good Side)"

🏵️ Ceramic hummingbird hawk-moth sculpture 🏵️

An innocent man is home with his family instead of spending his kids' whole childhoods in jail for "resisting arrest" when none of the cops could agree on why he was being arrested in the first place. (But it definitely had nothing to do with him being a Black man in a nice car, honest! 🙄)

And it still took like two hours of delibration after we'd heard all the evidence because one lady was so gung ho about believing everything the cops said, even when not a single goddamn one could agree with their own testimony, let alone their colleagues'.

Pointing out all the inconsistencies and admitted misconduct and letting people slowly come to their own conclusions as the trial played out was fucking hard, I won't lie. I can be patient, but it doesn't come naturally to me.

But. Yelling about how this was obviously a bs case would have shut everyone down and made them stop listening. Asking questions and letting people discuss how the cops tried to make xyz sound suspicious but it was totally normal, or about how if things played out the way the cops said then logically events should have proceeded in a totally different direction, and positing different theories that actually lined up with the evidence presented?

That got people thinking, and everyone realized that for a variety of reasons we all had reasonable doubts that the defendent had committed any of the crimes of which he was accused.