i asked dustin at sdcc 2018 this year if he had any prints of Colin (he didn’t) but his response to me was
“You remember Colin?”
And my heart broke. WHO COULD FORGET COLIN?!
[Tweet from Dustin Nguyen, @ duss005, saying, “wanted to confirm to the 3 Colin fans out there that- he will indeed be in our new book #Batman: Once Upon a Crime #LilGotham (myself and Derek being 2 of those 3 fans.”
Above it is a chibi style image of Damian and Colin, with Alfred approaching. Alfred says, “Good afternoon, Master Damian. Master Colin.”
When you are writing a story and refer to a character by a physical trait, occupation, age, or any other attribute, rather than that character’s name, you are bringing the reader’s attention to that particular attribute. That can be used quite effectively to help your reader to focus on key details with just a few words. However, if the fact that the character is “the blond,” “the magician,” “the older woman,” etc. is not relevant to that moment in the story, this will only distract the reader from the purpose of the scene.
If your only reason for referring to a character this way is to avoid using his or her name or a pronoun too much, don’t do it. You’re fixing a problem that actually isn’t one. Just go ahead and use the name or pronoun again. It’ll be good.
Someone finally spelled out the REASON for using epithets, and the reasons NOT to.
In addition to that:
If the character you are referring to in such a way is THE VIEWPOINT CHARACTER, likewise, don’t do it. I.e. if you’re writing in third person but the narration is through their eyes, or what is also called “third person deep POV”. If the narration is filtered through the character’s perception, then a very external, impersonal description will be jarring. It’s the same, and just as bad, as writing “My bright blue eyes returned his gaze” in first person.
Furthermore,
if the story is actually told through the eyes of one particular viewpoint character even though it’s in the third person, and in their voice, as is very often the case, then you shouldn’t refer to the characters in ways that character wouldn’t.
In other words, if the third-person narrator is Harry Potter, when Dumbledore appears, it says “Dumbledore appears”, not “Albus appears”. Bucky Barnes would think of Steve Rogers as “Steve”, where another character might think of him as “Cap”. Chekov might think of Kirk as “the captain”, but Bones thinks of him as “Jim”.
Now, there are real situations where you, I, or anybody might think of another person as “the other man”, “the taller man”, or “the doctor”: usually when you don’t know their names, like when there are two tap-dancers and a ballerina in a routine and one of the men lifts the ballerina and then she reaches out and grabs the other man’s hand; or when there was a group of people talking at the hospital and they all worked there, but the doctor was the one who told them what to do. These are all perfectly natural and normal. Similarly, sometimes I think of my GP as “the doctor” even though I know her name, or one of my coworkers as “the taller man” even though I know his. But I definitely never think of my long-term life partner as “the green-eyed woman” or one of my best friends as “the taller person” or anything like that. It’s not a sensible adjective for your brain to choose in that situation – it’s too impersonal for someone you’re so intimately acquainted with. Also, even if someone was having a one night stand or a drunken hookup with a stranger, they probably wouldn’t think of that person as “the other man”: you only think of ‘other’ when you’re distinguishing two things and you don’t have to go to any special effort to distinguish your partner from yourself to yourself.
This is something that I pretty consistently have to advise for those I beta edit for. (It doesn’t help that I relied on epithets a lot in the earlier sections of my main fic because I was getting into the swing of things.) I am reblogging this so fanfic writers can use this as a reference.
A good rule of thumb: a character’s familiarity with another character decreases the need for an epithet (and most times you really don’t need one at all).
Good writing advice.
Remember that this varies by culture and language! In some languages, calling someone by a descriptor is normal and possibly even more respectful.
Also, this can be reversed to effectively show a mentally ill viewpoint, too!
Like, I’m almost always slightly dissociating. I think of myself in the third person and narrate my own life while living it. (Not sure if this is ADHD, anxiety, or loneliness, but I have since I can remember.)
Interesting things I do that could work in a story:
Have conversations and arguments between two voices (neither of which is me), usually to problem-solve or quiet intrusive thoughts
describe my surroundings, physical appearance and mannerisms to myself
get my own name wrong IN MY OWN HEAD (I also get everyone else’s names wrong)
call other people by descriptors instead of names – ‘husband,’ ‘cousin,’ ‘person from husband’s work I really like and who plays games with me every month, I’m sorry, names aren’t working today’
refer to myself in the third person or using the ‘royal we’
narrate my trip to the basement to do the laundry to keep me from forgetting what I’m doing
Writing advice is a great thing to play with when writing neurodivergence and mental illness. It’s often subtle enough not to throw the reader out of the story, and posts like this explain exactly what you’re affecting.
To describe my ADHD, I include a lot of run on sentences, general terms (”this’, ‘them’) instead of specifics, tangents in the middle of descriptions, and acting ‘too’ childish.
My Son’s Autism could be shown by only identifying characters by clothes unless they’re close family, walls of text, and ‘overly’ academic speech.
For my Husband, Autism looks closer to including ‘unnecessary’ details and always choosing the logical option even when emotions would be expected to interfere.
All of our body language doesn’t match the posts going around.
I’m rarely described in these types of posts. You can use that to add diversity to your writing.
People who are going to regret being up at 3AM in two or three hours
ADHD.fuck
Night Shift enjoying thier boss not being around
Americans that are just now googling MST and discovering there’s a fourth continental time zone.
Vampires
Americans just now discovering Hawaiian Time Also Exists
Hawaiians that need to GO TO BED
The Australians ™
Irish John, who drank a ton of coffee at that concert so he could drive people home and is supposed to be sleeping on my couch, but drank a ton of coffee and is marathoning Gravity Falls instead because I accidentally told him that the plot appears in episode 7.
confused werewolves
Chupacabra, but only becuase they forgot to organize the queue on thier Pastel Aesthetic Blog earlier and want to post on time
The triangle will show up later John, please go to bed
You too Hawaiians.
Honestly? Most of the rest of the world is awake right now and the American-centric prespective on Tumblr and in media at large really obscures how the world really operates. People in Finland are having lunch. Some guy in Benin is sleeping in with his cat. Several Million people in Bejing are getting ready for dinner, and absolutely none of this is weird at all, time is an illusion, even if we stay within the context of normal human interactions. Do what you want, and be excellent to eachother.
Here is my FAN ANIMATION I did as a collab with CARTOON UNIVERSE on YouTube!!! This is my animation with MY White Diamond ^__^ this is not meant to trick people into thinking it is a leak and it’s not meant to be fake! This is just my fan animation of my white diamond lol I just wanna be clear lmao
*FEEL FREE TO USE OR REPOST MY ART JUST PLEASE GIVE ME CREDIT AND LINK MY YOUTUBE IF POSTED TO OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS*
Is there anyone around who can subtitle or describe this? My sound isn’t working, and I’m better with written text anyways.
All of the blinds and curtains had been closed. Finn tried to turn on his living room light, and frowned when it didn’t work. He rocked the switch back and forth to no avail, squinting up at the ceiling.
Eyes started to glow in the far corner of the room.
He screeched and dropped his bag on the floor.
“… Bat… man…?” he asked finally. His answer was silence. “Are you… here about the show…? You’re here about the show. We’re — this is all above-the-board, legally speaking.”
Batman stood. At least, that was what Finn assumed happened. The eyes moved from eye level to significantly above that.
“Also legalities aside I think we’ve done a good job of being as respectful as we can within a satirical context,” he added hastily, backing toward the door. “And at this point it’s out of my hands so I couldn’t put a stop to production even if I wanted to. Which isn’t to say that you couldn’t find a way, because you’re Batman, it would just be really nice if you didn’t do that.”
“Convince me.”
It took him a minute to realize that Batman had spoken, to register that they were words in a specific order with a specific meaning. “… convince…? You want the elevator pitch?” Finn wasn’t getting a lot of useful feedback and he was trying really hard not to burst into fear tears and he didn’t understand how anyone could possibly jaywalk in Gotham.
He took a deep breath. “Right. The elevator pitch. I can do that, no problem, not a problem.” He clapped his hands together. “So it’s a show about, uh, Batman — it’s a show about you — not the real you, obviously, it’s — I’m just going to say ‘Batman’, I think you probably get that I mean Batman as an idea and not — anyway.” Finn cleared his throat, tried to swallow the lump in his way.
“The core of the idea is, uh, what if — what if Batman was just a guy. Some guy. No powers, none of, uh—” He flailed his arms into the darkness in an attempt to gesture at whichever part of it was Batman. “Just, you know, a guy. So our story is about, uh, he’s a guy named Johnny Butler — we wanted to name him Johann, you know, for Die Fledermaus, but that seemed a little on-the-nose so we went with Johnny — and he’s this blind guy, and he’s an inventor! He invents, uh, this thing, and it lets him echolocate and he can see all this stuff other people can’t see, and he makes this thing so he can fly, and, you know, other stuff. He lives in Gotham with all these crazy villains, so he decides he’s going to use his inventions to fight them! Because, uh. He can? And Robin is this child prodigy who can talk to birds, he’s sort of, he’s the Marty and Johnny is Doc, or like Penny to Inspector Gadget. That’s. That’s the basics, basically. Is that okay so far?”
“Johnny Butler.”
“Yeah! Yeah. It’s, uh, because of Johann? I already told you that. And how, you know, a batman was like a kind of valet, like a butler, so we were trying to do sort of a pun thing? There’s going to be a lot of puns. I mean, you probably saw the fake intro we made on YouTube? With the theme song? It’s all going to be like that, with the retro aesthetic and camp and the cheesy effects, we’re keeping all of that for the real show. I have this brother, my little brother, he’s really into Batman, uh, you, he collects articles and stuff, and he’s eight, and I wanted to make something that he could watch. So it’s going to be kind of a show for kids, like a funny show — not making fun of you! I can show you a script, if you want.”
“Show me.”
“Yes! Yes sir, absolutely, not a problem, sure.” He bent, and tried to dig through his bag in the dark. “I, uh — here, I think this is it.” He offered a thick stack of paper to the darkness, which took it.
“Rowsdower’s Revenge,” the shadow read.
“Wrong script!” Finn said, snatching the script back. “Sorry, sorry, ignore that, sorry. Here, this one, I think this is the one.” He handed off the other script. “I would turn on the light, but…”
Finn squinted, trying to make out a face in the dark. He would have thought that the light from those weird white eyes would have had more of an impact. But while there was definitely the pale lower half of a face, everything else was just a shape, darker than the rest of the room.
He could make out the sound of pages flipping. And another, different sound. A pen?
“Holy homicide, Batman.” It wasn’t quite a question.
“Yeah, it’s, uh, kind of like a catchphrase? Thing?”
“Batcomputer.”
“Yeah.”
“Bat-o-vision.”
“Y… yeah. It’s like — I mean, you have the batmobile and those batarangs — I don’t know if you actually call them that, but, uh. We thought, you know, wouldn’t it be funny if Batman just puts ‘bat’ in front of everything? As a joke.”
“Batman and Robin consult the giant lighted lucite map of Gotham City, parentheses, labeled.”
“Obviously you don’t actually go around putting labels on everything, it just, uh.” Trying to explain jokes to Batman was the most painful thing he had ever done in his entire life and he wanted to die.
“Johnny Butler is blind.”
“Right.”
“The actor isn’t blind.”
“He… is not.”
“Why.”
“He’s — casting is — that’s not really how we—”
“Fix it.”
“I. Okay.”
“King Tut.”
“We’re trying to get Rami Malek but he’s been pretty busy but I’ll make sure we get someone Egyptian because I can tell it’s important to you.”
“The theme song.”
“We can get a new one!”
“No.” Batman handed the script back, and Finn took it, hands shaking. “Robin likes it.”
“He does? The, the na-na-na-na-na—”
“Stop.”
Finn shut his mouth so fast his teeth clicked.
“I said Robin likes it.”
“Right.” He looked down at the script in his hands, or tried to. His eyes were adjusting, but still not enough. He brought the paper close to his face, squinting. Had Batman written notes on his script? It smelled like permanent marker. He could barely make out a few crossed out words. “You know, if Robin ever wanted to come by set after we start shooting, we could—”
The lights came on.
“Augh!” Finn shut his eyes, then blinked furiously. His apartment was empty and the window was open. He looked back down at the script, and flipped through it. The notes looked like they’d been left by a monk, taking a break from illuminating Bibles. They sat next to words crossed out and sometimes replaced, saying things like ‘mental illness is not a joke’ and ‘don’t use this word’ and ‘words with more plosives are inherently more humorous’. A note beside the description of Batman’s lair mentioned a carefully labeled ‘Historically Inaccurate But Well-Meaning Tyrannosaurus Rex’.
Finn hit the speed dial on his phone.
“Marco. Dude. You are not going to believe the notes I just got on this — okay, wait, first of all, we need to recast Batman. We need a blind guy. No, like a real blind guy. A tall one. Really tall. And Robin needs more screentime, we’ve got to curry favor with Robin. No, the real Robin. I have never been more serious. Making sure Robin likes this is going to be vital to not getting our asses kicked.”
kiragecko 