My god, it's full of pronouns!

[prillalar]

I've been writing some het today. Whenever I do, I think: Why don't I do this more often? The pronouns! My god, the pronouns!

It got me thinking about some of the tags you see in fic to differentiate two guys. I prefer just to use names with the occasional "the elf" or "the dwarf" depending whose POV I'm using. But not everyone does.

I used to see these a lot and still sometimes do: the taller man, the older man, the younger man, the blond, the brunette, the agent, the spy, the Gondorian, the Padawan, the skip, the lead.

(Well, okay, I've never seen "the skip" or "the lead". But surely someone wrote some slash about that Paul Gross curling movie. I almost did myself, except that I hated the movie too much to rewatch it for detail.)

Mostly, these terms don't work for me so well. But I do recall reading an X-Files story where Skinner and Mulder were in bed and Skinner did something "to his agent" and, oh, what a button that pushed!

Do you have any favourite tricks to get around the Slash Pronoun Problem?

Comments

[prillalar]

Maybe we should write some pairings based on how well their tags go together. Like burly Blake and surly Skinner.

I wonder if writing porn about "the computer tech" is really a subtle way for some of us to Mary Sue *g*