In writing, epithets ("the taller man"/"the blonde"/etc) are inherently dehumanizing, in that they remove a character's name and identity, and instead focus on this other quality.

Which can be an extremely effective device within narration!

They can work very well for characters whose names the narrator doesn't know yet (especially to differentiate between two or more). How specific the epithet is can signal to the reader how important the character is going to be later on, and whether they should dedicate bandwidth to remembering them for later ("the bearded man" is much less likely to show up again than "the man with the angel tattoo")

They can indicate when characters stop being as an individual and instead embody their Role, like a detective choosing to think of their lover simply as The Thief when arresting them, or a royal character being referred to as The Queen when she's acting on behalf of the state

They can reveal the narrator's biases by repeatedly drawing attention to a particular quality that singles them out in the narrator's mind

But these only work if the epithet used is how the narrator primarily identifies that character. Which is why it's so jarring to see a lot of common epithets in intimate moments-- because it conveys that the main character is primarily thinking of their lover/best friend/etc in terms of their height or age or hair color.

My anthro professor has three forbidden words for his essays: problematic, interesting, and large. Point being they’re all filler words, he wants you to just skip straight to why it’s interesting or why it’s problematic. But anyway, any time I disagree with him in class I say to him “mm, interesting, but largely problematic.”

“It's taboo to admit that you're lonely. You can make jokes about it, of course. You can tell people that you spend most of your time with Netflix or that you haven't left the house today and you might not even go outside tomorrow. But rarely do you ever tell people about the true depths of your loneliness, about how you feel more and more alienated from your friends each passing day and you're not sure how to fix it. It seems like everyone is just better at living than you are. A part of you knew this was going to happen. Growing up, you just had this feeling that you wouldn't transition well to adult life, that you'd fall right through the cracks. And look at you now, it's happening.”

Guess who watched Good Omens

you ever get surprised by your own recurring issues. like come on man. I thought we were past this.

Do you ever write a sentence and then realize “Nah, that’s too self aware for you” and backspace a bunch of times.

thanks for the tag sandryk! i don't have 6 that i'm really listening to because a) i don't listen to music very often and b) i'm not listening to any at all recently, but i've scraped up a few kill the director - the wombats all these things that i've done - the killers zombie - the cranberries

6 random songs from my 'On Repeat' Playlist

1. aerials - system of a down

2. hypnosis - sleep token

3. climbing up the walls - viscera

4. the jester's dance - in flames

5. cirice - ghost

6. how i fall apart - currents

tagged by @iite-cool (well vi tagged my main but i use this blog more LMAO) // no pressure tags: @whats-belay @stargirlrchive @oddityinthesky @tomiesdiet @dmitriene <33 mwah i love u all !!!

an excuse to look at their slutty pics

a f1 alignment chart

the hc bugs in mcc :3

Caves are weirder and more varied than you think

Had a dream that Taylor Swift announced she was doing a "pronoun reveal" and all the annoying swifties were losing their shit for weeks and saying "I told you so" and then Taylor just tweeted "she/her"

Imagine a bee rn in a hive muttering "the beekeeper is not real because he is not intervening or helping me at all with this disastrous relationship I have with another bee". now imagine that's you talking about the good lord. now imagine a dog with a propeller hat on

Gonna need yall to stop putting Biden is Just As Bad propaganda on my dash. Had to unfollow someone because I don’t want to a start a fight with them over it, but I’m about to bite the next person who puts that shit in front of me.

If you don’t like Biden, vote in your god damn local and mid term elections for third party or further left candidates so that we get better democratic candidates for future elections. But this one is already fucking decided, and I’m NOT ending up under a Trump led dictatorship because yall value protecting your personal sense of moral purity over the collective good. Whether it offends your personal morals to vote for Biden is IRRELEVANT in the face of the alternative.

This isn’t a lesser of two evils situation. One guy sucks. The other guy is LITERALLY PLANNING TO OVERTHROW OUR DEMOCRACY AND INSTALL HIMSELF AS A PUTIN STYLE DICTATOR.

PLEASE look up Project 2025 and stop acting like abstaining is some kind of personal ethical decision!