Correcting my writing

I hate trying to remember which characters use which gendered pronouns. You’re lucky every single character isn’t “they.”

(A beta reader once asked me why I said “he” for a character who was previously “she.” I told her that all seven major characters in that story used pronouns in a different way, reflecting their different attitudes towards sex and gender. I asked if there was a way to make that clearer. She told me to learn to write in Pinyin.)

My mother just came home from babysitting some relatives

“They were screaming and punching and kicking and hair-pulling … No biting, though.”

“Couldn’t you put them in separate rooms or something?”

“I did. They came back out.”

“Couldn’t you lock the door?”

“I locked one of them out of the house. She stood outside and screamed ‘I’m hungry!’ It must have been loud enough to hear it down the block. ‘I’m hungry, and [Redacted] won’t feed me!’ At four PM, they asked me for ice cream, and I gave it to them. Then her mother came home, and she said “I was hungry, and she gave me ice cream! That’s just sugar!’”

(no subject)

People will say “outsiders shouldn’t be ‘trenders’ who pretend to be like us.” Then they act surprised and frustrated when every non-X who talks about X begins with a disclaimer that “I’m not X.”