acealistair

[acealistair]

Solas DA4 but Wolf Puppy tweets

[acealistair]

ahh yes my favorite time of year

[acealistair]

This week, I read a fic that was around 20 years old, which had originally been posted on the author's personal website and which she added to AO3 a few years ago. She listed her email address with the fic, so after I finished reading, I sent her an email saying how much I enjoyed the story, how much I appreciated the work and effort she obviously put into it, and thanked her for uploading it to AO3. She responded the next day and thanked me for my message, then said she had a few more stories in the same series that she hadn't gotten around to uploading. I checked this morning--she added a 35,000 word novella and thanked me in the summary.

👏 comment 👏 on 👏 old 👏 fics 👏

[acealistair]

Please please please PLEASE keep your cats indoors right now. H5N1 (HPAI, highly pathogenic avian influenza) is zoonotic to cats, and it is just as deadly for them. Additionally, if you have a way to keep your shoes away from your cat(s), or sanitize them after being out in the world (bleach footbath for example), a little biosecurity wouldn't hurt.

A sanctuary in Washington just lost 20 of their rescue big cats to this virus. It is not getting less dangerous for your cats this year than it was last.

It has ALWAYS been dangerous to let house cats free roam without supervision, but it's becoming dangerous right now to be taking them on leashes if they will have access to ground birds have recently been on, or water they have accessed. Catios might be okay, if they're covered and well-screened, but I would take a moment to subscribe to your local state ag department's email or phone alerts for HPAI in your area, and react accordingly even for covered outdoor areas.

Keep the Kitties Safe!

[acealistair]

you ever think about how alistair was putting on a brave face

[acealistair]

you ever think about how alistair was putting on a brave face

[acealistair]

hiii not my usual thing to post but i'm a big fan of Charts and Categories so i made one of those relationship chart thingies people love to fill out. you may use it for ships or for platonic relationships. have fun

(i recommend zooming in when filling it out / reading it)

[acealistair]

[acealistair]

guys. please

[acealistair]

a guide to formatting dialogue (it's harder than you'd think!)

a request from instagram that i'm posting here. buckle up, because this is a long one!

if a spoken sentence ends in a period, don’t use a dialogue tag. either replace the period with a comma or replace the dialogue tag with a separate sentence indicating a related action or description.

incorrect: “I need to go.” he said.

even more incorrect: “I need to go.” He said.

correct: “I need to go,” he said. or “I need to go.” He pushed back his chair and stood.

this rule does not apply to other types of punctuation such as question marks or exclamation points.

leave the dialogue tag lowercase, no matter what. (proper nouns remain capitalized)

incorrect: “When are we leaving?” She asked. ("She asked" is not a complete sentence)

correct: “When are we leaving?” she asked. (the line of dialogue is included in the complete sentence)

when formatting dialogue, you can add natural pauses by breaking up a spoken line with a dialogue tag or an action.

correct: “Wait,” they said. “I feel like this is getting overly complicated.” (within the lines of dialogue, ‘wait’ is its own sentence, so you use a period after ‘they said.’ you can remove the dialogue tag and it would be written like this: “Wait. I feel like this is getting overly complicated.”)

also correct: “I’m running out of sentence ideas,” they muttered, shifting in place, “but writing doesn’t sleep and neither do I.” (if you wrote the dialogue without the tag and action, it would look like this: “I’m running out of sentence ideas, but writing doesn’t sleep and neither do I.” adding the dialogue tag lengthens the natural pause created by the comma. also it’s 3am while i’m writing this. “go to sleep,” you say. to which i say, “did you not read my example sentence?”)

still correct i think (probably but english grammar is a total bitch): “I am going to stop now—” Here, she began rummaging through her bag, before producing a slender vial filled with shimmering liquid, “—and show you something of great importance.” (if you removed the interrupting action, the sentence would be written like this: “I am going to stop now and show you something of great importance.” there is no comma, so the pause being added is for effect, rather than for grammatical purposes. use an em dash (two hyphens, formats like: —) or ellipses (...). additionally, the action is its own separate sentence, rather than being attached to the dialogue as a tag, so it is capitalized.)

an additional note on em dashes: if they are used in a sentence, be it for an interjection, an interruption, a pause, or a secret fourth thing, there is no space before or after the dash. here’s an example from my wip: “Now, though—and overnight, it seemed—the two were acting as a unit, leaving her on the outside.”

if, for whatever reason, a character is speaking in paragraphs, the formatting gets a bit wonky.

“This is going to be the shortest example paragraph ever, but here goes. I am going to write three sentences so this qualifies as a paragraph. Two sentences might also qualify, but I am nothing if not committed to the bit. “New paragraph,” she continued, “same speaker. Wow, look, I incorporated an earlier concept to demonstrate it in a different context. How cool is that? You should totally follow whoever is posting such great writing advice.”

there is no end quote after the first paragraph, but there is a start quote at the beginning of the second paragraph. the end quote comes whenever the speaker is finished. why? i have no idea; i didn’t invent the english language, i just work here.

you can use colons and semicolons in dialogue. it gets a bit awkward, but we’ve just covered paragraph formatting, so how hard can it be?

correct: He asked: “What on earth are you talking about?” (colon in place of a comma when a dialogue tag is placed before the dialogue)

also correct: They said, “It’s getting late, isn't it?” (comma when a dialogue tag is placed before the dialogue)

incorrect: “What on earth are you talking about?”: he asked. (the question mark functions as a comma and eliminates the need for a colon. also, as a rule of thumb, the ending punctuation does not get placed outside of the quotation marks)

still incorrect: He asked; “What on earth are you talking about?” (use a comma)

you can also use colons and semicolons within lines of dialogue (as you would in a normal sentence)

stylistic choices

you do not have to use quotation marks in dialogue, but whatever you choose to do, do it consistently.

For example, some writers format their dialogue in italics, they said. But grammatical and punctuation rules still apply.

Others don’t use italics and just hope people can spot the dialogue or action tags, she supplied. This can get a bit confusing, but I think that’s the point.

— Some use dashes to indicate the start of a line of dialogue, and, of course, the standard varies from place to place and language to language.

‘Still more use single quotes,’ he offered, ‘though I’m not sure why. Maybe it looks better.’

that's it for now! really, you could probably write a book on this topic alone, and cover every minute detail of grammar within dialogue (how would one format an interrobang, i wonder?), but here's a kind-of-basic-but-still-dense guide :)

buy me a ko-fi | what's the deal with radio apocalypse?

[acealistair]

i love when a song is an acquired taste. you can listen to something once and go huh. there's something here even if im not quite ready for it yet. and you listen a couple more times. and then bam a couple weeks or months or years later you listen, youve finally worn the song in and it's the most beautiful thing you've ever heard

[acealistair]

my favorite kind of character is the kind who deep in their soul is constantly screaming LOVE ME LOVE ME LOVE ME and outwardly expressing literally anything else

[acealistair]

The memes are funny but tbh I can’t bring myself to find actual humor in this considering it’s actually so sad when you consider the fact that this was just like?? So fast?? Like do people realize how fast it is to find the guy in one week (assuming Mangione is even the right guy). Like that’s fast. Like that’s proof that the “justice system” can be fast - but only where white multimillionaire CEOs are concerned

[acealistair]

OGHREN KONDRAT • DRAGON AGE: AWAKENING

Came here thinkin’ I’d try my hand at becoming a bona fide Grey Warden.

[acealistair]