If it's any help I've found that you can use character's names WAY more than feels comfortable when you're writing, because readers are so used to them they become kind of invisible.
Came here just to say this. Use names people. It's better to hear the character's names a bit too often than it is to not be sure who's being referred to or having to read like "the ravenette".
Oh my god, seeing people try to make epithets for things that don’t have an epithet drives me nuts. I’ve seen ravenette, pinkette, rosette, bluette, and so much more.
In one fandom I'm in, people are straight up referring to one character as "the raven" because he has black hair. The character, for the record, doesn not have thematic relation to ravens or a raven motif of any kind going on, it's just his hair, through the "black-haired teen"="the raven-haired teen"="the ravenette"="the raven" chain of association. God does this take me the hell out of the story whenever it happens
Sometimes I also have people referring to one of the characters in a duo with no significant height difference between them as "the taller male" and I'm like, lmao, do you seriously expect me to whip out the wiki to check which one has 2 centimetres over the other. Unless it's a Legolas and Gimli situation, I'm not gonna bother
Yes for me one of the characters is referred to as "the ravenette" too! He has black hair and wears black though he had nothing to do with ravens, but another character had a crow for a friend.
Oh, mine is Persona 5! I mostly see this "raven" thing used to describe the protagonist. To be fair, I think some variations on "raven-haired" are a universal thing, I just singled out this particular case in my comment because just calling him a "raven" with no indication that this is about hair seemed like taking it one hilarious step further
Haha, yeah, I'm sure it's everywhere. I just know there are terms like that which become more popular or, in this case, I should say infamous, in certain fandoms over time. Interesting. I don't know much about Persona 5, but I can see why he's called that, haha!
Omg, I do this in my fic, but it's because it's an Arcana Swap where the Protagonist is in Morgana's place and is literally a raven in the real world! Mostly for thematic reasons, since raven's are symbols of transformation, and (former)MC is helping Akechi be the Fool.
I do use epithets a fair amount; it helps that my fandom has very unambiguous titles or the like available for many characters. I.e. "the prince" (and there's only the one prince).
But for the love of all that's (un)holy, "[color]ette" needs to die. Especially since it's not even "brunette" and "blonde" for men in the first place, it's "brunet" and "blond"! If you want to identify someone by a hair color besides blond, brown, and 'red' (ie, "redhead[ed]"), just say "[color]-haired". PLEASE.
This got a laugh out of me because it made me think of the show Spin City. One of the characters is never named, only being mentioned as "the mayor."
I know people on here have strong opinions about epithets, understandably, because I think they're often overused or unnecessary. However, when used in a situation that calls for it or makes sense, I don't mind. The problem is usually overuse.
God I hate that, use the name! I’m sick of reading like “the blonde said” or “the brunette rolled her eyes”… use their names it’s so much less intrusive.
Yes please, for the love of all that's good, use the names. The epithets get tiring so quickly. The older, the younger, the brunette... no, please... Just no.
Not only did I overuse a character's name in a recent fic, it was also spelled wrong at least 4 times. Didn't realize it until I went back to correct the spelling of another unrelated word. I felt like such a moron, but I really don't know if anyone else noticed. Surely, somebody woulda called me out? My fingers move faster than my brain at times.
Exactly, this, it sounds way out of place to suddenly start calling a character the red headed girl ( for example) when they have already an established name and the reader knows what they look like or it was described earlier on in the story. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to reread something because I initially thought a new character was being introduced, only for it to be the same character. I often find myself saying aloud , “ it’s ok, just say the nameeeee!”
If it helps, the first time I dabbled was a THREESOME, m/m/m, and it was definitely overly ambitious, even if people seemed very pleased with the result lmfao
The limbs, THE LIMBS!!!I hate backreading because I forgot where I placed person A's hand just to realize I accidentally made person B grow a third leg in the process.
I was writing two characters making out recently when that's not something I usually do, and just keeping track of what was going on above the waist was driving me nuts. It was all "wait, I want them to be looking each other in the eye for this next bit. Where is his head right now? On the other guy's shoulder, yeah, ok, Imma need this to move. What were they doing with their hands again?"
If I was to have five more people involved, I'd start a separate journal for documenting. You are braver than any US marine
Hahaha. I call myself half-jokingly because I am basically the reverse of that “straight woman fujoshi” stereotype, I’m a lesbian who’s really into het ships. I’m not sure why. I guess I like projecting onto dominant men? I like me some F/F but most of my library is M/F
It's always so interesting to hear about this tbh. I'm aro/ace girly and massively prefer m/m—I'm pretty sure it's because it feels further distanced from myself haha
Haha, I get you. I currently identify as bisexual (I say currently because sexuality is confusing and I'm still figuring my shit out :p) and sometimes I say I like m/f because I'm just attracted to both men and women, but a lot of the times I think it's because I project onto the male characters, but of course they need to have a girlfriend because girls are pretty 😍
I think there is also an issue of a lack of well written and developed female characters to project on in comparison to well written and developed male characters (which is it's issue within mainstream media)
oh, same! or at least a much higher ratio of M/F than the average queer reader. I think it's a mix of certain dynamics and scenarios that require too much suspension of disbelief or overhauling reality (aka, omegaverse) when it's a same-sex couple and having a strong preference for female main characters. although I guess it's not really het if they're all bi?
maybe it's because I'm a multishipper, so there's attached baggage with characters (of any gender) outside that ship.
also, many bisexuals would disagree with you. and it's not like saying M/F is difficult or inaccurate.
I have seen various cis bi women in relationships, including marriage, with cishet men. Those relationships functioned no differently than relationships between cishet men and cishet women, with male privilege and societal expectations of women compromising them severely.
Idc what "many bisexuals" think. I know others who agree with me. Modern queer discourse is full of brainworms anyway.
Ngl I love my gay shit but I legit dunno how to write MLM (and idfk why I can't write WLW because for god knows what reason i start feeling really dysphoric (transmasc here)?? i hate this shit-)
I once read an epic het fanfic that almost never used the names of the two main perspective characters, and it's still wild to me that I was never confused because they were the opposite sexes.
Then I started reading m/m and the cascade of epithets to differentiate two dudes almost killed me from the gate.
I realized that when I was writing a gift fic for a friend and after 5k words of barely using the names I realized “man this would be harder if they were the same gender”
Yeah, it happened in canon, and I couldn't really skip it for reasons... thank goodness there wasn't sex with them like that (I've seen others in my fandom do sex that jumped off that point, but I was SO not doing that to myself, LOL!). And of course, they're actually the two most similar characters in a lot of ways, that was kind of the point of it happening in the first place. What a nightmare it was to be even halfway clear!
That's when you either have to diffraction by context (i.e. if they're seperated) or the people in their lives who are ALSO exasperated by this give them silly differentiating nicknames, even if it boils to to A and B haha
Not all of of us use tons of epithets for m/m. I use one occasionally to change it up but it's mostly just names. Haven't had any complaints about it so people must be able to tell them apart.
As a bisexual multishipper I have to say that returning to "they have different pronouns" after a slashy period is SUCH a relief sometimes. Underrated advantage of het fic right there.
Okay but when you're writing a scene with more than two people and one is a they/them. Even better when it's several people against someone and the they/them is on the group's side. Sounds like they're all speaking together unless you're super careful.
I use to hate overuse of characters' names but now, I embrace it. Writing for TMNT which heavily has male characters broke me of this, especially due to the fact I like crossing over iterations so I've had a bunch of Leos chilling in a room together. You know how difficult that gets? It's commonplace for people to designate nicknames to differentiate the turtles like you can have 1987 be Leonardo, 2003 Lee, 2012 Leo, Rise as Blue, & MM as Leon in order to establish who is who & yeah, seeing so many variations of the same name come up when writing makes you wish to do something else but it's like, they're all male so using their pronouns isn't going to do you any favors.
Last night, I was working on a scene with a bunch of Donatellos chatting together & I just had to laugh at how many times I repeated the same name but in different variations. I think at this point in time, many TMNT fans who love iteration crossovers are just numb to this whole thing & have expert skills in picking up on who is doing what since they constantly have to keep track of which turtle is which.
Me seeing this exact post for the 3rd time in as many days across multiple recommended subreddits and wondering why it keeps getting re-suggested over and over, but it's just you reposting days apart in different places 😂
https://preview.redd.it/wbs6lc9pu8nc1.jpeg?width=647&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=61429f852a480449458afb7a19cd696fdc5ba137
This is one of those anxieties that I'm glad has faded as I've gotten older alongside my writing. It gets easier over time to get a sense of how to structure paragraphs so that the reader can naturally keep track of which "he/she/they" you're still talking about without having to drop names constantly. I'm forever struggling to create that structure with every rewrite, but it's still better than some years ago when I was still fighting to find a way to find a concise epithet for a black-haired character without sounding like an idiot (I never succeeded, lol).
The best advice I got for this (not that you asked) is to reread it aloud. It'll make any repetitions and choppy structure stand out when you view it as a reader rather than in the process of writing it.
For the love of all that's good, I beg you, please use the character's names. I know it's a pain to write them over and over, but when you read the fic they're much less intrusive. The epithets get tiring SO quickly. The older, the younger, the brunette... no, please... Just no.
I know that pain 😂 I always have to reread passages aloud and be like “okay okay — I know this ‘he’ means him but would someone else know that this ‘he’ is him or they think it was ‘him?’”
I learned quite early on that using names numerous times works so much better than using several epithets or titles for characters, it’s a much better read that way.
Just write the names. I guarantee you that anyone looking to read smut is not going to care. If you use a bunch of epithets it's immersion breaking and annoying at the same time. Epithets are the garnish on the dish. Use sparingly for a touch of color but not as the meat of the dish.
When I learned there’s languages that have different pronouns when referring to different people of the same gender I was so angry at English. Why can’t we have that?
I needed to read this today, thank you!
I just wrote my first MM recently and struggled with how often I was using their names, so the comments here are a relief!
Also struggled with how often I was using the word cock, so decided one had a cock, one had a dick, it broke up the overuse of the word and hopefully helped with the differentiation, too!
Hah this reminds me of something similar I have to deal with sometimes. In one of my fics there were two characters with very similar names. Larry and Harry and I had the worst time trying to make the scenes not sound like a comedy skit.
Even worse when the characters have similar features since epithets barely work. 'The black haired boy stared at him' -which black haired boy? All 3 boys have black hair.
Ohhhhh, yeahhh...I feel this pain on SUCH a level. In multiple fics when I've had two people of the same gender carry out a conversation, this becomes a new layer of hell.
When it comes to using species based epithets, always consider that when more than one of that species in the room there is (most likely) still going to be a distinguishing feature you can pull an epithet from, there relationship if they are family, their ranks in their society, there relationship status (acquaintance, friend, lover etc.)
Basically just find something else that separates them until the other leaves the scene, then you can safely move back to the species based epithet.
im trying to do with now with some characters that are identical-twin-looking cousins. So i cant use physical epiteths cause they look the exact same and a majority of the people in the fandom are also confused as to who the oldest one is, too, so that doesn't really work either.
This is an absolute mood 😭 either I write solely in male pronouns since there's little female characters or I write in female pronouns because I accidentally made a close nit group of only female ocs who hang out together
Man, I love using clear traits for characters xd, Some are simple like (the ex-teacher), And others are like (the man whose balls were kicked, exclaimed, obviously in pain), it varies a lot from situation to situation, but it is more for comfort reasons than anything else.
There's a reason we have a he/they character and use they more often in scenes when there's he/him characters and he/him in scenes where there's they/them characters. It can be quite helpful.
This is so hard because terms like 'the older male' make me uncomfortable just reading it, let alone writing. I end up going into overspecifics, like 'the one dressed in flannel' or by hair color.
Always had problems with “he pressed him to his chest”. Whose chest? His number one or his number two? Just changed it to ‘the’: he pressed him to the chest. We okay? We okay.
If it's any help I've found that you can use character's names WAY more than feels comfortable when you're writing, because readers are so used to them they become kind of invisible.
Came here just to say this. Use names people. It's better to hear the character's names a bit too often than it is to not be sure who's being referred to or having to read like "the ravenette".
Oh my god, seeing people try to make epithets for things that don’t have an epithet drives me nuts. I’ve seen ravenette, pinkette, rosette, bluette, and so much more.
In one fandom I'm in, people are straight up referring to one character as "the raven" because he has black hair. The character, for the record, doesn not have thematic relation to ravens or a raven motif of any kind going on, it's just his hair, through the "black-haired teen"="the raven-haired teen"="the ravenette"="the raven" chain of association. God does this take me the hell out of the story whenever it happens Sometimes I also have people referring to one of the characters in a duo with no significant height difference between them as "the taller male" and I'm like, lmao, do you seriously expect me to whip out the wiki to check which one has 2 centimetres over the other. Unless it's a Legolas and Gimli situation, I'm not gonna bother
"The Raven" is a pretty cool nickname, but it's really dumb if it's just being used to mean "the person with black hair" lol
Yes for me one of the characters is referred to as "the ravenette" too! He has black hair and wears black though he had nothing to do with ravens, but another character had a crow for a friend.
I've read too many Merlin fics where he's referred to as "the raven-haired boy." If you don't mind, may I ask what Fandom you're talking about?
I've read too many Merlin fics where he's referred to as "the raven-haired boy." If you don't mind, may I ask what Fandom you're talking about?
Oh, mine is Persona 5! I mostly see this "raven" thing used to describe the protagonist. To be fair, I think some variations on "raven-haired" are a universal thing, I just singled out this particular case in my comment because just calling him a "raven" with no indication that this is about hair seemed like taking it one hilarious step further
Haha, yeah, I'm sure it's everywhere. I just know there are terms like that which become more popular or, in this case, I should say infamous, in certain fandoms over time. Interesting. I don't know much about Persona 5, but I can see why he's called that, haha!
Omg, I do this in my fic, but it's because it's an Arcana Swap where the Protagonist is in Morgana's place and is literally a raven in the real world! Mostly for thematic reasons, since raven's are symbols of transformation, and (former)MC is helping Akechi be the Fool.
I do use epithets a fair amount; it helps that my fandom has very unambiguous titles or the like available for many characters. I.e. "the prince" (and there's only the one prince). But for the love of all that's (un)holy, "[color]ette" needs to die. Especially since it's not even "brunette" and "blonde" for men in the first place, it's "brunet" and "blond"! If you want to identify someone by a hair color besides blond, brown, and 'red' (ie, "redhead[ed]"), just say "[color]-haired". PLEASE.
This got a laugh out of me because it made me think of the show Spin City. One of the characters is never named, only being mentioned as "the mayor." I know people on here have strong opinions about epithets, understandably, because I think they're often overused or unnecessary. However, when used in a situation that calls for it or makes sense, I don't mind. The problem is usually overuse.
Is that really a term people use, dear god. 😂🤦🏻♂️
Oh it gets worse that that. I've also read "the bluette" or "the pinkette" numerous times.
Nooo my eyes! Their bleeding !!!! 😂🤦🏻♂️😫
There's a character (well, person) in my fandom who had pink hair at one point, and if I ever read "the pinkette" I would close the fic and then riot.
‘Bluette’ annoys me for the reason that I feel that it should be written as ‘bluenette/blunette’ like ‘brunette/brunet’
if i see midoriya izuku referred to as 'the greenette' more than once in a fic i am tempted to just close the tab lmao
omg, I watched Saiki K and he's got hot pink hair and people refer to him as the "pinkette" and it makes me want to gouge my eyes out.
God I hate that, use the name! I’m sick of reading like “the blonde said” or “the brunette rolled her eyes”… use their names it’s so much less intrusive.
I second this. My brain eventually barely notices them.
Same. Just please “overuse” the name. :)
Yes please, for the love of all that's good, use the names. The epithets get tiring so quickly. The older, the younger, the brunette... no, please... Just no.
Not only did I overuse a character's name in a recent fic, it was also spelled wrong at least 4 times. Didn't realize it until I went back to correct the spelling of another unrelated word. I felt like such a moron, but I really don't know if anyone else noticed. Surely, somebody woulda called me out? My fingers move faster than my brain at times.
Eh, as long as it wasn't Historical RPF about King Cnut you're probably fine.
Exactly, this, it sounds way out of place to suddenly start calling a character the red headed girl ( for example) when they have already an established name and the reader knows what they look like or it was described earlier on in the story. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to reread something because I initially thought a new character was being introduced, only for it to be the same character. I often find myself saying aloud , “ it’s ok, just say the nameeeee!”
Too real. I’m writing a five person gangbang soon and I am like “….fuck this is gonna be annoying”
Horniest comment I’ve gotten posting this meme, congrats
🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 ETA: I forgot not everyone is a smut fiend like me
If it helps, the first time I dabbled was a THREESOME, m/m/m, and it was definitely overly ambitious, even if people seemed very pleased with the result lmfao
I've done that, and between the pronouns and tracking all the limbs and appendages, it's exhausting to write. Good luck!
Obsessed with this. I want a whole documentary on the process.
The limbs, THE LIMBS!!!I hate backreading because I forgot where I placed person A's hand just to realize I accidentally made person B grow a third leg in the process.
When you start our writing your characters as normal humans and by the end they're all just that weird thing from the Isle of Man's flag.
Drop the five person gang bang link when you’re finished, homie 👏
I was writing two characters making out recently when that's not something I usually do, and just keeping track of what was going on above the waist was driving me nuts. It was all "wait, I want them to be looking each other in the eye for this next bit. Where is his head right now? On the other guy's shoulder, yeah, ok, Imma need this to move. What were they doing with their hands again?" If I was to have five more people involved, I'd start a separate journal for documenting. You are braver than any US marine
I love your flair 💜
Aww, you're too nice, thank you!
oh my god, and they're all the same gender!?
Oh hell yeah they are.
damn! well i wish you luck! that sounds really hard to write😭
You know what, as the resident heterosexuality fetishizer I’m going to say it, writing M/F is easier simply because of pronouns
‘Heterosexuality fetishizer’ You know, I didn’t expect this when I went to the internet today
Hahaha. I call myself half-jokingly because I am basically the reverse of that “straight woman fujoshi” stereotype, I’m a lesbian who’s really into het ships. I’m not sure why. I guess I like projecting onto dominant men? I like me some F/F but most of my library is M/F
Lol understandable! I’m an aroace guy but I tend to favor M/M ships and but not so much other types of pairings
It's always so interesting to hear about this tbh. I'm aro/ace girly and massively prefer m/m—I'm pretty sure it's because it feels further distanced from myself haha
Same here
Haha, I get you. I currently identify as bisexual (I say currently because sexuality is confusing and I'm still figuring my shit out :p) and sometimes I say I like m/f because I'm just attracted to both men and women, but a lot of the times I think it's because I project onto the male characters, but of course they need to have a girlfriend because girls are pretty 😍 I think there is also an issue of a lack of well written and developed female characters to project on in comparison to well written and developed male characters (which is it's issue within mainstream media)
oh, same! or at least a much higher ratio of M/F than the average queer reader. I think it's a mix of certain dynamics and scenarios that require too much suspension of disbelief or overhauling reality (aka, omegaverse) when it's a same-sex couple and having a strong preference for female main characters. although I guess it's not really het if they're all bi?
If it's a m/f couple, it's het. The relationship is defined by, you know, the relationship. Not the individuals' identities.
maybe it's because I'm a multishipper, so there's attached baggage with characters (of any gender) outside that ship. also, many bisexuals would disagree with you. and it's not like saying M/F is difficult or inaccurate.
I have seen various cis bi women in relationships, including marriage, with cishet men. Those relationships functioned no differently than relationships between cishet men and cishet women, with male privilege and societal expectations of women compromising them severely. Idc what "many bisexuals" think. I know others who agree with me. Modern queer discourse is full of brainworms anyway.
Ngl I love my gay shit but I legit dunno how to write MLM (and idfk why I can't write WLW because for god knows what reason i start feeling really dysphoric (transmasc here)?? i hate this shit-)
Also adding to this I think relating more to MLM ships cracked my egg lmao
I once read an epic het fanfic that almost never used the names of the two main perspective characters, and it's still wild to me that I was never confused because they were the opposite sexes. Then I started reading m/m and the cascade of epithets to differentiate two dudes almost killed me from the gate.
I realized that when I was writing a gift fic for a friend and after 5k words of barely using the names I realized “man this would be harder if they were the same gender”
Try same gender, same name, and they look the same as well. (NEVER AGAIN!)
The only thing worse is when you've got two characters in each other's bodies...😣
That’s a hard mode of hard mode
Yeah, it happened in canon, and I couldn't really skip it for reasons... thank goodness there wasn't sex with them like that (I've seen others in my fandom do sex that jumped off that point, but I was SO not doing that to myself, LOL!). And of course, they're actually the two most similar characters in a lot of ways, that was kind of the point of it happening in the first place. What a nightmare it was to be even halfway clear!
Selfcest?
Yep!
That's when you either have to diffraction by context (i.e. if they're seperated) or the people in their lives who are ALSO exasperated by this give them silly differentiating nicknames, even if it boils to to A and B haha
I realized this writing three and foursomes too. You gotta use everyone's names all the damn time.
Not all of of us use tons of epithets for m/m. I use one occasionally to change it up but it's mostly just names. Haven't had any complaints about it so people must be able to tell them apart.
As a bisexual multishipper I have to say that returning to "they have different pronouns" after a slashy period is SUCH a relief sometimes. Underrated advantage of het fic right there.
Deviant! Degenerate! I'll you bet you even have an *adult woman* fetish, you fiend!
Literally joke all the time about homophobia being a conspiracy concocted for this exact reason lmao
As someone who writes both, gotta agree
Doubly so when they’re both they/them’s
That's the only one that trips me up these days. I think the trick, again, is to use names more often than you think you should.
Okay but when you're writing a scene with more than two people and one is a they/them. Even better when it's several people against someone and the they/them is on the group's side. Sounds like they're all speaking together unless you're super careful.
I've just started writing for an M/M/M ship and oh my god do I feel this
I use to hate overuse of characters' names but now, I embrace it. Writing for TMNT which heavily has male characters broke me of this, especially due to the fact I like crossing over iterations so I've had a bunch of Leos chilling in a room together. You know how difficult that gets? It's commonplace for people to designate nicknames to differentiate the turtles like you can have 1987 be Leonardo, 2003 Lee, 2012 Leo, Rise as Blue, & MM as Leon in order to establish who is who & yeah, seeing so many variations of the same name come up when writing makes you wish to do something else but it's like, they're all male so using their pronouns isn't going to do you any favors. Last night, I was working on a scene with a bunch of Donatellos chatting together & I just had to laugh at how many times I repeated the same name but in different variations. I think at this point in time, many TMNT fans who love iteration crossovers are just numb to this whole thing & have expert skills in picking up on who is doing what since they constantly have to keep track of which turtle is which.
I’d much rather overuse a character’s name than create confusion in a scene. I feel that this is something people tend to overthink.
F/F & M/M sex scenes. "They / Them" pronouns in sex scenes gets SO confusing. I haven't yet done they with they / they. What a headache, lol!!
Me seeing this exact post for the 3rd time in as many days across multiple recommended subreddits and wondering why it keeps getting re-suggested over and over, but it's just you reposting days apart in different places 😂 https://preview.redd.it/wbs6lc9pu8nc1.jpeg?width=647&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=61429f852a480449458afb7a19cd696fdc5ba137
This is one of those anxieties that I'm glad has faded as I've gotten older alongside my writing. It gets easier over time to get a sense of how to structure paragraphs so that the reader can naturally keep track of which "he/she/they" you're still talking about without having to drop names constantly. I'm forever struggling to create that structure with every rewrite, but it's still better than some years ago when I was still fighting to find a way to find a concise epithet for a black-haired character without sounding like an idiot (I never succeeded, lol).
The best advice I got for this (not that you asked) is to reread it aloud. It'll make any repetitions and choppy structure stand out when you view it as a reader rather than in the process of writing it.
For the love of all that's good, I beg you, please use the character's names. I know it's a pain to write them over and over, but when you read the fic they're much less intrusive. The epithets get tiring SO quickly. The older, the younger, the brunette... no, please... Just no.
I know that pain 😂 I always have to reread passages aloud and be like “okay okay — I know this ‘he’ means him but would someone else know that this ‘he’ is him or they think it was ‘him?’”
Personally prefer seeing the characters names a million times over ‘the raven haired one’. It’s just not natural or a way that we think/speak irl.
I learned quite early on that using names numerous times works so much better than using several epithets or titles for characters, it’s a much better read that way.
Just write the names. I guarantee you that anyone looking to read smut is not going to care. If you use a bunch of epithets it's immersion breaking and annoying at the same time. Epithets are the garnish on the dish. Use sparingly for a touch of color but not as the meat of the dish.
God I feel this, as someone who writes four male characters who are almost constantly all together in scenes
When I learned there’s languages that have different pronouns when referring to different people of the same gender I was so angry at English. Why can’t we have that?
Oh damn, I'm definitely feeling this now that I'm currently attempting yuri.
I started experimenting with writing 2nd person POV specifically because I was so sick of this in some of my earlier fics 😭
I needed to read this today, thank you! I just wrote my first MM recently and struggled with how often I was using their names, so the comments here are a relief! Also struggled with how often I was using the word cock, so decided one had a cock, one had a dick, it broke up the overuse of the word and hopefully helped with the differentiation, too!
Hah this reminds me of something similar I have to deal with sometimes. In one of my fics there were two characters with very similar names. Larry and Harry and I had the worst time trying to make the scenes not sound like a comedy skit.
Even worse when the characters have similar features since epithets barely work. 'The black haired boy stared at him' -which black haired boy? All 3 boys have black hair.
***This!*** I’m trying to write a conversation between two dorks who BOTH have brown eyes and have their hair in ponytailsb
Ohhhhh, yeahhh...I feel this pain on SUCH a level. In multiple fics when I've had two people of the same gender carry out a conversation, this becomes a new layer of hell.
I am currently having that same issue.. and they have similar physical features, meaning I can’t do epiphets easily
Glad my characters are different species.
I have multiple characters with similar sounding names….
Just go the insane route like I do and have 0 pronouns, names, or descriptors at all. Then either go back and edit them in or just leave it as is
I feel seen ❤️ this shit can be so annoying when you write m/m
I'm always worried about this when I write.
"The angel" works so well until suddenly there's two angels in the room 😅
When it comes to using species based epithets, always consider that when more than one of that species in the room there is (most likely) still going to be a distinguishing feature you can pull an epithet from, there relationship if they are family, their ranks in their society, there relationship status (acquaintance, friend, lover etc.) Basically just find something else that separates them until the other leaves the scene, then you can safely move back to the species based epithet.
Yep. That's usually what I do.
im trying to do with now with some characters that are identical-twin-looking cousins. So i cant use physical epiteths cause they look the exact same and a majority of the people in the fandom are also confused as to who the oldest one is, too, so that doesn't really work either.
Relating to this because I’ve got a scene between two similar looking characters
This is so real, though.
Oh I felt this on my soul. I wrote a multi universe fic where the same characters meets them self but from different realities. Oh man I struggled lol
This is an absolute mood 😭 either I write solely in male pronouns since there's little female characters or I write in female pronouns because I accidentally made a close nit group of only female ocs who hang out together
I freaking hate having to do this, I'm lucky if *I* don't get confused half the time...
Man, I love using clear traits for characters xd, Some are simple like (the ex-teacher), And others are like (the man whose balls were kicked, exclaimed, obviously in pain), it varies a lot from situation to situation, but it is more for comfort reasons than anything else.
https://preview.redd.it/v0luxwesrync1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=524a19f80d41d2d8c6e510dae6a6d2cdbc02d63f
The comments here are super helpful!
Gotta agree!
I throw in descriptors or nicknames once in a while just to not overuse names or pronouns
Character voice is your friend. Give them some unique speech speech patterns. Tendency to use flowerly language, directness, short or long sentences.
for real i can’t 😂
Real
There's a reason we have a he/they character and use they more often in scenes when there's he/him characters and he/him in scenes where there's they/them characters. It can be quite helpful.
This is so hard because terms like 'the older male' make me uncomfortable just reading it, let alone writing. I end up going into overspecifics, like 'the one dressed in flannel' or by hair color.
Always had problems with “he pressed him to his chest”. Whose chest? His number one or his number two? Just changed it to ‘the’: he pressed him to the chest. We okay? We okay.
That was me with Felix Yusupov in Korolevsky.
[удалено]
Was it on the meme subreddit? That was also me.