The next person who tries to correct me when I say “Happy Holidays” is going to be told Happy Hanukkah instead. Very tired of hearing, “No, it’s MERRY CHRISTMAS.” I’m pretty sure Judaism was around a lot longer than your Buckstar’s boycotting butt, Karen.
My boss once shared a great story about that. This happened when he was in a layover in North Carolina back when the “War on Christmas” bullshit was first becoming prominent. He had gone to get a pack of cigarettes, and after he paid for it:
“Merry Christmas.” “Happy holidays.” “No. I said Merry Christmas.” “Do you know what Hanukkah is about?” “No, what?” “Some people tried to make us worship their ways, so we rose up andkilled them. Happy Hanukkah.”
a writing advice post: don’t describe characters’ eye colors, people don’t usually notice that in real life
me: anyway this character has pale blue eyes and this one has brownish-black and this one has sea green and you’re not my mother, you can’t make me stop
The trick is actually when you describe eye colours.
If a character is standing a good distance away from the character describing them, then unless they have massive and/or unusually vivid eyes (in which case, carry on) then no, they’re eye colour isn’t gonna be what jumps out about them.
So save it for later.
It can actually be a really moving experience to notice something pretty about another person’s eyes, the first time you’re close enough to. One of the major downsides of the ‘list format’ of description, where you just dump stuff like hair colour, eye colour, skin tone, height, built, etc in one big block, is that you lose a lot of the little human moments where people are honestly liable to pick up details about one another.
If you just tell me that, say, a character’s eyes have flecks of green in them, that’s boring. If your POV character notices the flecks of green in someone’s eyes because they’re sitting together on a couch and laughing and the light hit them just right and oh, so-and-so actually has unfairly pretty hazel eyes?
Freddie Mercury (debatable, but considering he had had a long-term relationship with Mary Austin and he tended to keep quiet on matters of his private life, we’ll never know for sure)
All or which have either been given the name “gay” or “straight“ by the media despite coming out. There are more than two sexualities and this is a fact that most people (even on Tumblr nowadays) forget. People tend to assume that since someone is with a person of the same gender, they’re gay. (Or vice versa in Angelina or P!nk’s case) This is incorrect to assume because you’re erasing their identities in the process. The people on this list aren’t gay or straight, they’re bisexual.No matter how much the media tries to erase that.