just lurking

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.”

"A child who can survive all this is certain to grow up strong"

Hey this anime on art is pretty good and thank God Lili can stay and pursue art in England and there are 6 episodes left so i guess now we need the romance to resol-

this makes me soooo sick bc imagine being diluc. your entire childhood you strived to make your father proud and rise to his expectations and you DO, you get a vision at 10, become a cavalry captain at 14 (we should talk about that actually, what in the child soldier—) and everything is great. but then your dad dies and your entire world falls apart in just one day and you leave everything you know behind on a pointless quest for revenge. you come back years later and everything is the same but so, so different.

and then there's your little brother. undoubtedly capable, but never truly showing what he can do. he's cunning and strategic and always five steps ahead of everyone else, but timid, usually letting you or jean do the talking. he prefers sticking to the shadows (your shadow, specifically—), working behind the scenes. that's how you remember him.

but you come back and there he is. a stranger wearing your best friends face (not your best friend, not anymore, not after—). he's still the same, capable and cunning and smart and strategic, still working behind the scenes, but he's so, so different. gone are the gentle, shy smiles, the timid personality, the preference for sticking to somebody's shadow (there's no shadow to hide in, anymore—).

instead, he's outgoing and confident and there's a near-constant cocky smirk on his face and you don't know who you're looking at. to the people, he's the beloved cavalry captain. the acting grand masters right-hand man, a talented swordsman and vision-wielder. the "top candidate for grandson-in-law" if the word on the street is to be believed. he's reliable and witty and kind, always offering aid when he can. he doesn't look down on anyone, friendly even towards the most unusual visitors.

the model knight, one could say.

he walks into your tavern one night, orders his usual (a death after noon, your father's favourite, of all things, is he joking) and you watch as he chats up the most random people there. all charming smiles and suave words and you have to blink a few times as he absentmindedly twirls his wine glass. your mind is playing tricks on you, you know it, they have zero similarities in physical appearance, but for a second you could swear—

he looks just like your father.

(there's this little girl that follows him around sometimes. well. really, he's following her around, with the way she always runs ahead. she's energetic and chatty and you can't help but notice the pyro vision shining from her backpack (mocking you—) as kaeya looks at her with pure, unfathomable fondness, like she's the only thing that matters in the world.

the first time you hear her calling for his attention, you pause, for just a second. you've seen them around enough to be familiar with the duo, but that. that's a first. an excited voice sounds from somewhere over your shoulder, "big brother kaeya! look, look!" and you take a moment before glancing over. the little girl is crouching on the sidewalk, pointing at something on the ground and staring up at keaya with big, curious eyes. kaeya's there, leaning over her with a gentle smile and a soft, soft look in his eyes—. you turn away.

you can't quite catch kaeya's response, with him having a lot more control over his volume than an enthusiastic child, but his quiet chuckle and following, affectionate tone still register in your mind.

literally since 1.0. andrius being anemo and cryo. jean and kaeya, anemo and cryo, the lion and the wolf. VENTI AND THE TSARITSA. GOD.

here's a rundown on what i saw on twitter!

COUNT ONE

this is where it all started..... screenshot from @/ririmishy on twt, thank you for your service 🫡 unfortunately they went private, so i can't link the post 🥲🥲 here nicole is listing off synonyms for fate.

COUNT TWO

ss from @/windflowerlia on twt

KAEYA AT THE SCENE OF THE CRIME. GUILTY 🔨🔨🔨 (imagine that's a gavel)

needless to say, everything kaeya says and does needs to be microwaved and considered from every perspective bc you never know when he's straight up throwing spoilers in your face. and well, saying "the god of fate decides the outcome of every dice roll" while holding a dice showing anemo and cryo symbols when earlier in that same patch NICOLE, the KNOWER, compares fate to "icy winds"??????

COUNT THREE

then there's the connection between cryo and time, which is much more vague, i suppose? i always associated them w/ eachother in my head bc of hi3 and hsr (the rememberance, ice + memories + time and so on), but apparently there's some crumbs in genshin as well! for one, the cryo archon is stated to "covet" the anemo archon's power. obviously that could just mean the gnosis, but the gnoses aren't really theirs, are they? there's also kaeya's "this moment wil be frozen in time" which. isn't a super conspicuous, but also it's kaeya speaking, so. this post by @/flanring0 on twitter makes a few more connections that flew over my head!

so these three things kickstarted this whole thing in my brain!

and the end conclusion is something like this

i hope i didn't forget anything.. (i wasn't sure what to use as an icon for fate, but then intertwined fates showed up in my search, and i figured that's kinda genius?)

after those two screen shots i realized that anemo and cryo have been pretty closely connected since 1.0, as mentioned in the og post. that part is straightforward, maybe aside the jean and kaeya part.

if you're unsure about that, i recommend you read up on Arundolyn (1, 2, 3) and Rostam (1, 2, 3), the original Lion and Wolf. but in short, the Lion is the Grandmaster, a leader standing in the light, while the Wolf is their right-hand man, the one that gathers information and does the "dirty work". (PLEASE read up on their lore it's so much fun!!) this isn't really canon, but i think of those two titles as something like archetypes or maybe even secret, unofficial roles within the knights.

Lol so yeah actually the phone line argument is a bit confusing because yeah the phones are down at first, but they obviously were fixed at some point since his family tried to call him from the airport in Paris or later on he wouldn’t be able to order pizzas or call the cops from his house at the end of the whole attempted robbery night, so there IS the question of why Kevin’s family doesn’t keep trying to call him daily.

HOWEVER, as people have already mentioned, Kevin thinks he’s a criminal due to stealing a toothbrush and has already been chased by a cop, he’s not gonna contact the police about the robbers.

Calling the police about his family leaving him? He’s not gonna do that because he doesn’t KNOW they’re in Paris, Kevin believes he magically wished his family out of existence the night before they left after they were all right dicks to him. He doesn’t know they have the power to come back, that’s why he asks Santa to return them later on, what use is telling the cops who (in his eyes) will probably blame him for it?

Also ppl be criticizing him for the booby traps like this isn’t the THIRD time Kevin’s had to chase these guys off his property? First he tried to fake a house party, they still came back, he tried to fake a MURDER, they spied on him and declared they were coming back again. Kevin’s given them two nonviolent chances to leave his house alone, they’re the grown men deciding they’re gonna come back and rob a house they KNOW has an eight year old in it. They announce their presence by knocking and taunting that they know he’s alone and “helpless” in there and that they’re coming in anyway, what their original plans for dealing with him were, we don’t know. After they spring his first traps, their plan switches from robbing the house to specifically harming Kevin in revenge.

These guys are trespassing on Kevin’s property AGAIN after multiple warnings, and they’ve announced themselves with a declaration of intent to harm him, he can’t call the police or they’ll discover he vanished his family and committed toothbrush crimes, Kevin needed to defend himself and he had FULL RIGHT to do so however he saw fit (which all proved entirely necessary seeing as literally nothing he threw at these men actually stopped them from trying to hurt him, they kept coming until his neighbor saved him)

Like ofcourse objectively he knows the difference between romantic love and platonic but also Yuri at times is still mentally at the childhood phase of I love my mom and I’m going to marry her because I love her so much and that’s apparently what you do when you love someone.

Because honestly if he really was weirdly romantically in love with Yor I don’t think Anya would bother him so much but like hes just as jealous of Anya as he is of Loid which would just not be the case if he actually knew how to differentiate between all the different kinds of love. If he really was romantically attracted to yor I think he’d make a bit of a bigger show to show how “fatherly” he could be (even tho she’s technically Loid’s child)

Yuri just really loves his sister like when little kids have feelings that are too big for them to understand or to explain or do anything other than experience them at full intensity. There is no one else hes allowed himself to share his life with in anyway. He has no real friends no parents or parental figures and he has no partner he literally only has his sister she’s his entire life.

And yor was kind of like that too in the beginning; wrapped up in Yuri. everything she did was to ensure Yuri didn’t worry it wasnt as intense as Yuri’s cause Yor’s not as single minded but like look at them in the last chapter Yor actually sets and enforces strict boundaries on Yuri and how he can talk about her family when just a couple chapters ago she let him talk smack about her fake marriage and fake husband in her living room and everything was an act to prove to yuri it wasnt “real” not really. But now Yor has grown she has let other people into her life it’s bigger and it’s settled in away that Yuri can’t push back against. And just like she’s always done as his big sister she is teaching him, modeling for him how to open up his life, how they can expand to include other people in this little world of theirs and they will still have space for each other that they’ll still have love for each other.

And yuri’s first instinct is to make their world small again to make it safe take them back to when it was just them so he can protect himself protect the space he occupies in Yor’s life. until he realizes that’s not making the world safe hes just sealing them in an airtight jar. And then he lets go as much as he can anyway even tho it’s just a few centimeters. He calms down and he goes home and I think the fact that he didn’t just stay home eating food that reminded him of his childhood of Yor instead he accepts the invitation, it’s why Chloe and his first commander are so important he letting his world expand just a little bit. That he gets the little sheets Yor wanted to get for Anya. It’s proof it’s all proof that Yuri’s growing up. Hes learning to let the life in.

take it easy but take it <- litany against burnout/apathy cycle

fuck it we ball <- litany against perfectionism

in a loop, ask yourself which

one of these applies?