A Small Rant

[lanerose]

All right, I know it's hard to figure out how to refer to characters in prose. It can be annoying, and hard to do without having confused antecedents or over-iterated names. Physical description is a great way to avoid these traps.

However!

The words blonde and brunette don't apply to male characters. These are feminine descriptors, indicating that a character is female. I am sick to death of constantly seeing characters I know and love referred to in the feminine when they are, in fact, men. The proper words are blond and brunet, though the latter has fallen from common usage and is frequently replaced by brown-haired or some variant thereon.

PLEASE stop emasculating characters for the sake of inaccurately describing their hair colors.

Comments

[bard-linn.livejournal.com]

But its so much fun!

[lanerose]

It KILLS!!! ::sporks out eyes::

[werven-scy.livejournal.com]

i like brunet, though for some reason it brings combs to my mind.

[lanerose]

If it makes you happy...? ::shrugs::

[ofmanynicknames.livejournal.com]

But Legolas is such a pretty blonde!

[lanerose]

::smacks you::

[http://users.livejournal.com/liriel_/]

I feel with you.

For me the whole thing is kind of mindwrecking. Back when I learned the language the blonde vs. blond issue was one of the "things you have to be careful in English" that got stressed again and again and again.

[lanerose]

Really? O_o Maybe I just missed it in class. XDD They never made a big deal out of it, which is funny, because they're some of the few words that still have that whole feminine ending thing that we got from the Romance languages. Silly of them, really, and quite frustrating ^.^;;;

[http://users.livejournal.com/liriel_/]

If tought as second language they tend to stress it. Especially if - before that lesson - you've learned for *years* that english only uses one ending for feminine and masculine. XD

[lanerose]

Well, that makes sense! ^_^ Funny that they never seem to teach the natives that one... ^^;;;;