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interstellarsystem · 2 months

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Little Plural Things

Systems can present in a lot of different ways. Sometimes, being a system can be loud and obvious if you're naturally more overt and/or out about yourselves as plural. Sometimes, it can be quiet and barely noticeable, but still there--just harder to see. Our system is fairly obvious if we're unmasked, but there are still things that escape even our own knowledge when we're masking as hard as we can. Little things that to us, remind us that our system is undeniably real. This is a post about those experiences we've had with barely-noticeable signs of a system.

Not every system will relate to these experiences, some might feel similarly about a few points, some may have others of their own entirely, some might not know or not have anything like the experiences we mention, and that's all part of being plural. No two systems are mirror images of each other. This is a post about our experiences.

1. Handwriting

Recently, we've had it brought to our attention that we have different handwriting. We don't write with a pen/pencil often, but we were asked to fill out a worksheet for our psychologist recently. She told us that whoever in our system wants to contribute to it can, and suggested that we signify who wrote what in some way--to which we chose different pencil colours for different headmates. We took the worksheet home and put things on it depending on who was in the front and if they wanted to.

It turned out, that some of our writing widely differs from each other. Out of the 6 people who wrote on the sheet, most of them were wildly different. Rift and Martin wrote the most tidily, with Rift's writing looking more "proper" and "adult". I (Vince) apparently am not the best at neat writing but I managed to be better than what our "normal" writing is like from what we remember. Merlin wrote messily like he was writing very fast. Mystery wrote with very large letters with sharp angles that overall made it look like it was written by a child new to writing. Which makes absolute sense. It's not a child, but its hands in-headspace are bigger than ours and that was the actual first time it had written anything on paper since it got here.

Somehow, it took until our psychologist pointed it out for us to notice how different it was.

2. Vocabulary Choices

Something we are able to notice sometimes is how our vocabulary and sometimes sentence structure changes based on who is speaking. Some obvious examples are our British headmates substituting "bloody" for other words as an exclamation and the difference between what some of our headmates would call a "chip" or a "fry".

Other times though, it's more subtle. Sometimes there's certain phrases that will just have a word or two swapped out and it does tend to point toward who is fronting even if people do use multiple of these. Some examples are:

"I suppose" vs "I think" vs "I believe"

"Kinda" vs "Kind of" vs "Sort of" vs "Sorta"

"Recently" vs "A bit ago"

"Sleepy" vs "Tired"

"Lol" vs "Haha" vs "Lmao" vs a keysmash (Even though these are text-based they are quite telling.)

"Quite" vs "Very" (Speaking of the above.)

Getting more subtle with them, some other examples are:

"You know" vs "Y'know"

"Uh" vs "Um"

"Uh-Huh" vs "Mhm"

Sometimes typing is influenced too. The amount of em-dahses within the text, the consistency of proper punctuation, how mechanical the text feels, how many run-on sentences there are and even how much tends to be written in one message/post can all point toward different people being in control.

3. Accidental Accents and Inflections

While accents are usually very obvious, we're generally good at masking them. Generally.

Due to us living in Australia, our headmates with accents straight from London don't stick out too bad when they're struggling to mask, but they are still noticeable to those around us who know we're plural. Passerby on the street or people who don't see us often don't think much of it, but certain people we are close to know that a few people in our system find it harder to mask and can tell when they're fronting very easily because of it.

Even if we are masking our accents properly, some parts of the way we speak still come out. Some of us end sentences on a higher-pitch more often due to what our accent generally has us do and some end more on lower-pitch notes when speaking. Some of us put emphasis on certain syllables differently. There's lots of little things that go into language that make it hard to completely mask.

4. Food Choices

More of a noticeable one, but something we tend to brush off as "just a bad batch" when it happens. Some of us like and dislike different foods and drinks, some of us to an extreme degree.

Mystery hates the brand of juice we normally buy and thought that it might've just been past expiry (it was not) or just a bad batch of the juice, but they're consistently the only one who doesn't like it.

Rave likes spicy food much more than the rest of us because they have a harder time tasting it. I on the other hand can't handle spicy food at all and am worse with it than the others in my system.

Some of us favour different brands of food and some of us might like/dislike textures of food differently too.

5. Default Facial Expressions

Different resting facial expressions are something we hardly notice because we don't look in a mirror often due to dysphoria. What we do know though, is that some of us just rest our faces differently.

I look more stern and tired than others. I have a bit of an angrier resting expression.

Martin looks a little bit more anxious due to being an anxiety-holder, but he also looks softer and kinder.

Crowley also looks tired but has less of a stern look and more of an almost blank one.

6. Body Language

This is one we don't know too much about because we can only get knowledge on this from other people, but most of our headmates have a different "vibe" by the way they carry themselves.

I end up seeming to-the-point and business-like.

Martin reads as being very anxious even if he's not always.

Crowley reads as smug.

Mal reads as if he's planning something mischevious and silly.

We've been told that Filigree just reads as "gay".

We're not sure what actions make us seem this way, but some of us can be clocked by others around us as fronting without even talking first. I don't know how people do it, but it's something in our body language.

7. Clothing Choices

A few of us have different clothing choices--Crowley still wears sunglasses everywhere due to light sensitivity and wears dark colours, I prefer to wear button-up shirts as opposed to more casual things, Martin prefers hoodies that are lighter in colour and Merlin prefers to dress in pink and black and more fluffy textures.

We don't have too many clothes overall so to others it does just look like we're cycling through our wardrobe, and sometimes we are, but there's certain styles some of us tend to lean toward more than others.

---

Some of these might seem quite noticeable, and maybe they are if you know we're a system, but people change a lot so once again some of this is much more subtle than it sounds. People who don't know that you're a system hardly ever notice, and if they do they put it to "having an off day" and leave it at that.

We wanted to take some time to appreciate those little things we find it hard to notice, though. And maybe it'll end up helping some other system realise how unique they are as individuals and help fight off the imposter syndrome like these realisations did for us.

#alterhuman #system #didosdd #plural #actually did #actuallyplural #plural system #plurality #endo safe #pro endo #quoigenic #pluralgang #op #vince (he/they)#everything althu #althu experiences #everything plural #plural experiences

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sandinthepipes · 4 months

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Hello fellow dyslexic/adhd/others who would like to enjoy fanfics through their ears, I just spent the entire day testing android apps to find one that doesn’t suck as much.

TL;DR - these two T2S, Audify

I feel like I need to share this because 90% the apps don’t even allow a web page as a source, let alone get past the log in page, and I cant be the only one who doesn’t want to download every single fic.

“Oh, but doesn’t android have a built-in text-to-speech function in the accessibility settings?” I hear you ask. Yes, but it sucks ass very badly. Firstly it only reads in the system language, so it doesn’t really work. Second, you need to highlight all that you want it to read, and seeing that I read a minimum of 15k words in a sitting, I’m not gonna do that.

Also I’m broke, I imagine you are too, but even if I wasn’t I’m not paying for this, if I did I wouldn’t even be supporting a human being, so no.

I’ll immediately break your trust with the first point, but it’s what I’ve been doing until now, and now that I know what the android mobile experience is like, I feel the need to include this. The best solution I’ve had so far (which works wonders, let me tell you) is letting Siri read them on the iPad. It’s only doable when I’m at home and it’s still an apple product, so that’s why I began the research. However the positive points are INCREDIBLE so I’m going to ads it to the list because I said so.

First of all it’s built-in and SO EASY to access, you literally just swipe with two fingers and it stars to read. It reads the punctuation, you might think that’s a given and so did I, but no. A question sounds like a question, an exclamation point does why its supposed to do, short sentences sound what they’re supposed to sound like. In apparently all the apps ever created, you won’t find any of it, just flat, monotone voices with flat little pauses. Overall excellent experience 10/10.

Cons: it’s on apple, I consider apple the same as Disney, I would love to not give them more money so that they can make the market increasingly worse. Every now and then a system update will fuck with the tts function and it will be unusable for a while. Sometimes it doesn’t like the text format on some fics. It’s not portable.

Now that we got that out of the way let us get to the meet.

Speechify - it sucks bad. At least the free version, but seen as it costs almost 10€ a month I’m not even going to consider the premium version. Fuck that. You can’t increase the speed, and as somebody who hasn’t watched a single YouTube video on normal speed since they added the function I can’t do that, too slow, I forgot what we were talking about once we get to the end of the sentence. Also you can only use those weird very robotic voices, and they’re not even that many. Don’t recommend. I felt like I had to include it since it was one of the few who allowed browser navigation and well, it’s speechify. Also you can’t t have saved more than 3 “files” per time. Doesn’t have sleep mode.

Audify - works exactly the same as T2S, but it saves the history and has a bit more customisation for how it reads and what it reads (which you don’t really need for ao3, but if you wanted to read, say, Wikipedia with all the notes and stuff, now you know). Has the sleep mode. - EDIT: the double tap to start reading works slightly better than T2S on websites with weird formatting. But unlike T2S you can only have one tab open

T2S - cute. It works. Again, no emotions, but it reads what it has to, nice voice selections, easy to use. The premium version adds literally nothing, they’re a good app, what they have, they give. Also you can customise the interface colour if you want. Has the sleep mode. - EDIT: this app allows you to have multiple tabs open at the same time, unlike Audify.

That’s all folks. Now go and be free of your reading impediment, or be free in your multitasking, or whatever you want to do. I’m done, I’ve given my datas to all kinds of shady apps, I need to go do damage control

#fanfiction #fanfic #ao3 #dyslexia #dyslexic #adhd #texttospeech #text to speech #tts

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ladykissingfish · 3 years

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Akatsuki texting style hc?

Texting/Talking with the Akatsuki

Kakuzu

Doesn’t really understand modern technology; can barely make phone calls, let alone text. The others have each taken the time to try and teach the old dog this particular trick, but it doesn’t carry much weight with him. The other get annoyed with him because he always insists on calling rather than shooting off a text, which can be very inconvenient when one is trying to save time (and words). When calling isn’t a possibility, he’ll squint angrily at his phone (which is, undoubtedly, a flip phone) and type out a text in painstaking detail. Is the type to type out entire sentences, with proper grammar and punctuation and everything. Thinks things like emojis or gifs are stupid and childish, and refuses to use them.

Hidan

Unless you’re on his priority list, Hidan will take approximately ten thousand years to text somebody back. His most impressive non-text was him responding to “do you like spicy food?” with “not really” … five years later. When he does text, his messages are very short and sweet, using mostly abbreviations or emojis to get his point across … except when he’s angry. When that happens, he’ll type out complete sentences, in all caps, and fill up half a page with question and/or exclamation marks. These texts are rife with spelling errors, as his fingers move at the speed of light when he’s upset, and he’s not the most grammar-conscious to begin with. The most likely of the group to send a “u up?” text but instead of talking about sex, it’s him lecturing the person on why they should convert to his religion.

Deidara

Texting with him is like reading a short story every time you get a message. Or, make that messages. Anytime he has something to say, he’ll send his thoughts in multiple short paragraphs, in rapid succession, until the receiving party has a book’s worth of messages to read through. Also the type to text back ridiculously fast, like two seconds after someone texts him. Never capitalizes anything, not even names. Likes emojis but doesn’t use them often because he has trouble finding things that express exactly how he feels. If he’s close to the person he’s texting, will send them countless pictures all day of himself making goofy faces. Also the type to take pictures of things like the sky or trees, send to someone, then ask which picture looks “more artistic”, even though the pictures are pretty much the same.

Sasori

Is a bit like Kakuzu in that he doesn’t find texting to be in anyway enjoyable, but is significantly better at it than the old man. Most likely to Like or Dislike a message rather than respond with actual words. When he does use words, it’s mostly one or two word responses like “ok” or “yeah” or “sounds good”. Also the type to send links to medical studies or articles that he finds interesting … although the receiver rarely does. Also, if he takes the time out of his day to send someone a message, he expects a speedy response; he doesn’t like to be kept waiting, after all.

Tobi/Obito

As Tobi, this guy is all about emojis, gifs, pictures, links to YouTube videos .. anyone sending a message to him or getting one in response shouldn’t expect conversations to be of a serious nature at all. As Obito, this is the guy who will send deep philosophical questions or thoughts at 3 in the morning, then be genuinely hurt that whoever he sent it to didn’t respond right away … even though they were likely asleep. Obito is also the type to start group chats adding together people that don’t normally get along in person, and his pointed questions usually end up getting him blocked or muted by one or two people. Is also a huge gossip with those that are closest to him, and will very often “spill the tea” with Deidara or Konan about things he’s seen and heard throughout the week.

Konan

Konan is a very tough young woman, and often has difficulties expressing things like sadness or vulnerability around others. Texting is the perfect outlet for her to truly be herself, and she’s able to convey her thoughts and feelings through texts. The type to send lengthy paragraphs rather than short messages, and whatever she sends always hits deep with the person who receives it. Konan is also a great text-buddy for watching movies, as she and a friend can both be in separate places, watching the same thing, and fill up each other’s phones with funny observations about whatever they’re watching. Doesn’t really like selfies (she’s very self conscious about her looks, for some inane reason) but will send one if asked, which will always be breathtakingly gorgeous.

Pein

Prefers texting to any other type of communication. Texting is an easy way for this leader to get out fine-tuned messages to multiple people at once. Rarely sends one on one messages because he’d rather hit up everyone at once in a group chat. Types out full, grammatically correct sentences every single time. Has no clue what stuff like LOL or SMH means, and even though the others sometimes respond with things like this, is too stubborn to ask someone what they mean. Can’t take or send a decent picture to save his life; all of his images are blurry and out of focus. A surprising sentimental type though; the screensaver on his phone is a picture of all the Akatsuki together.

Zetsu

This guy never texts unless he’s sending pictures of some “wonderful” thing he saw in nature. But the problem is, Zetsu thinks literally everything is wonderful. His friends phones will be bombarded with pictures of squirrels and spiderwebs and tree leaves and birds and anything else he thought was worthy of a snap. Yet despite the boring (to some) subject matter, everyone has to admit that Zetsu takes professional-grade pictures of whatever he clicks at, and is always the one asked to take the pictures at formal events. Sends a lot of messages out, but is like Hidan in that it takes him forever to respond to things sent to him.

Itachi

It would be more likely for one to see the moon fall out of the sky and into the ocean than it would be to get a text from Itachi. He’s like Kakuzu in that he prefers calling, although not for a reason of convenience. Itachi often feels that technology has split people further apart than ever, and finds most forms of technological communication to be cold and impersonal. If he has something to say to you, he’d rather say it directly to your face, not through the screen of a phone. When speaking in-person isn’t an option, then he chooses to call — but he warned, no conversation with the brunette is a short one. Someone could ask him about the weather and end up having a three hour long conversation about different cooking styles of the world. But no matter the topic, whoever Itachi calls will have a hard time hanging up, as Itachi’s voice is almost hypnotic in its soothing quality.

Kisame

Kisame gets more texts than anybody because he’s the friendliest and most accessible of the group. 2am and can’t sleep? Text Kisame. Need help thinking of what to make/where to go for dinner? Text Kisame. A breakup? Trouble with classes? Health scares? That’s right, text Kisame. Kisame takes a long time to respond to messages; not because he doesn’t care or is being rude, but because he takes every question or comment he gets very seriously, and wants to give himself adequate time to give the best possible response. Doesn’t use many emojis; he feels offended that the people emojis don’t offer blue skin tones. As he’s the one that most others text to solve problems, it’s very unexpected when he texts someone with a problem of his own. When this happens, that person will break their neck trying to find a solution to appease the gentle giant, which Kisame is very grateful for.

#the akatsuki #texting #deidara #sasori #hidan #kisame #kakuzu #zetsu #konan #itachi uchiha #obito uchiha #pein

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sportyclown · 3 years

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how sawamura, miyuki, yuki, and kuramochi text (friends + s/os)

will most likely do a part 2 with more boys at a later date! these got freakishly long because i am, at my core, a very mad. also might revisit as i get re-familiar with the characters, i just had this idea floating around in my head. also the way these got pro

sawamura eijun

no matter who he texts, it’s always extremely extra. not only does he always give more information than you asked for – ex. if you text him wya? he will give you a play by play of his entire route or something

he also uses tons of emoticons. and yes I do mean emoticons, baby boy has a flip phone. ifhe does eventually get a smart phone, then this boy overuses tf out of emojis. he’s the sort of person that sees someone use a combination of emojis he likes and then tries to copy them, but uses it completely incorrectly, but its v cute.

if you send him a meme, he will respond with an unnecessary amount of hahas.

when he’s texting his lil bae, they’re always on his mind so he ofc texts them every thought that comes to his mind! when he sees something that reminds him of you, he won’t hesitate to share it with you.

if you have been together for a long time, then we will definitely text you words of affirmation and be very honest/blunt about how he feels about you. he’s also always sure to ask you about your day - and he seriously cares. but i still i feel like with a s/o he would prefer facetime to texting just because he likes to see you :)

overall, a very adorable texter and his enthusiasm is just as contagious when texting as it is in person. he’s kind of clueless so he doesn’t pick up on subtext. so be blunt, just like he will be with you~

kuromochi youichi

my bias might be showing here, but I feel like he is one of the most well-adjusted boys in terms of being ready for a serious relationship tbh (at least post-high school). i mean we all saw that he regularly corresponded with wakana wish that were me lmao

i think he would most often use proper capitalization, but not to the point where he uses a period after every text

would send his friends news articles about his favorite fighting games where u like gaming or not

a meme fiend in general. the sort of person who uses reaction images of people he knows. (if you’re dating, he would still have a stash of funny pics/screenshots of you on ft, but he’d ofc only use them with you <3). his convos with his friends are rarely serious

i don’t think he’d be the type to text haha out loud, but he does use LOL on occasion. with close friends/his lil bae he might send a voice memo of him laughing hysterically if you send him something REALLY funny. ugh my annoying king <3

unlike eijun he’s the king of being perceptive / picking up subtext.

similarly, i do think he’s pretty reliable, but for friends i feel like he might make a lil bit of a stink lmao. like lets say a friend wants him to pick something up for them, he might play like he won’t do it then miraculously shows up with the requested item. its giving tsundere vibes on the low.

with his partner: i feel like he would use emojis when he’s trying to be ~cute~. i think with a established partner he’d be pretty flirty still but he’s v much whipped for his partner so its way more mushy than it would be early in the relationship.

yes your name has hearts/stars in his phone. mans is a SAP for you

his love language is more quality time imo, so I think he values time spent with you over texting time. so a lot of your texts might be asking you to come over to hang out / get a meal or vice versa

like eijun he wants to hear about YOU, and is very supportive and good at advice when he wants to be. he can be goofy but this is how he shows you he cares/sees you as more than a friend

he’s a blushy/shy boy with his s/o esp early in the relationship, so he might be hesitant or nervous to say “i love you” or anything like that outright, but you know anyway, which just makes the times when he does outright say it that much sweeter.

miyuki kazuya

i mean it goes without saying that this man is snarky. he’s not a meme king himself but he enjoys when people send them to him and will usually play off the meme to make his own jokes.

i feel like he also likes deep-fried memes or the very abstract, post-modern memes. miyuki is good at making other people laugh, but he has a generally very-off brand humor and the things that make him cackle hardest are either at someone else’s expense (very similar to kuramochi, so they bond a lot over that) or just indiscernible without access to a huge layer of context/background

saves the reaction photos kuramochi sends him, but doesn’t usually use them. but seeing an ugly pic of eijun yelling never fails to make him grin LMAO

i think he also texts A LOT about baseball, even more so than these other baseball dummies. texts his teammates a lot of articles he reads or clips from games/cool plays. this is mostly about texts, but in terms of social media I think miyuki uses twitter/instagram the most especially for baseball related reasons, while kuramochi uses snapchat the most.

he probably texts a lot about baseball as well, both seriously and playfully

i can see him using hahas and LOLs in equal measure, but he would also utilize the haha reaction if he had an iphone. this boy does value his wit so he would definitely have commentary about any memes or jokes he’s sent

you won’t win a joke war against him, he will definitely one-up whatever you send him with either a one-liner or another joke. how tf does he do it?

definitely ignores people/conversations if he really wants to - but ofc he never does that to his BAE

if miyuki give you a dry one-line response...he’s not interested at all or he’s feeling frustrated about something else. but when he’s really happy? he will text his friends all the time and spam them! i see him as someone who enjoys texting when he has the attention span/state of mind for it. and when he’s texting his s/o his texting gets even more ~flavorful~

wit his lil bae: i don’t think miyuki would switch it up much w his s/o. is probably even more teasing with you over text than he is with his friends, which is saying something.

like talking with you just by nature of you being his partner. prob prefers texts to facetime because text kinda allows for maximum snark

he LIVES for you guys’ witty back and forth

if he’s traveling for work or something, will definitely relish in you guys binge texting a tv show or something but just making funny commentary (or he’ll just send you funny commentary to get a reaction)

he can dish it and he’s also not a super sensitive guy so he can take it tenfold from you as well. nothing y’all wouldn’t be used to when talking in person!

sometimes when texting him you’ll want to beat his a*s because he can be so cheeky but its endearing in a way. he definitely adds emojis to the end of his more annoying messages to give it that loveable vibe (and it works ofc, we love u miyuki)

he’s kinda clingy on the low so i think he’d prefer a partner that’s more open with their affection via text than he is. he would live for your random ilys or whatver throughout the day. also would not mind at all if you updated him on your actions throughout the day or sent him snaps - might not be able to respond to everything, but will react and appreciate it. very likely to make jokes about whatever you’re doing.

would also apologize over text. he’s not always used to apologizing can be awkward about it, so text makes it easier for him.

he would use emojis w you in a joking/ironic way. would absolute use those dumb but genius emoji combinations

yuki tetsuya

i’m literally cracking up thinking about texting him. he is one of my ultimate baes but im sorry i just know he texts dry asf. but its part of his charm!

has a flip phone. either never upgrades or gets the chunkiest most basic android if he is forced to

the thing is this man thinks that he is infusing all his texts with, like, tajin level seasoning, when in reality its pepper

uses punctuation. always. exclamation marks are used sparingly to express excitement.

but i can’t get the image out of my head of an upset tetsuya texting you a simple angry emoji (or the angry emoticon >:( LOL) if he’s reeeeeeally mad. but its v cute i can’t take him seriously. i just want to give him a hug <3

but you know what he is so PASSIONATE about whatever he’s talking about that his passion bleeds into his text through sheer quantity of words and depth of thought. ultimately, all his conversations end up being extremely flavorful in terms of content. he is surprisingly good at having deep conversations over text.

he’s better at holding conversations with more extroverted personalities, truthfully.

he’s another one who sends random things to people when he thinks about them. miyuki of course gets so many texts/thoughts about shogi. if you get a random haiku, poem, or quote from testu, that means you’re blessed enough to be in his inner circle! he definitely thought of you when he read it and and wants you to respond!

with bae: he doesn’t really change up his texting style tbh, but he has a stronger outward reaction to what YOU text in response.

definitely the type to smile almost imperceptibly at his phone as he texts you, even if you send him something like “hey i’m at the store, want anything?”

he’s not great as verbal affection early in the relationship, so you’ll have to discern his love/affection. however baby boy is NOT afraid to just straight up say he loves you, he does it all the time and early.

he’s KNOWN for being reliable and responsible, so he will be at your beck and call when he’s able to for anything you need, but his heart is also warmed by the thought of you reciprocating that care. if your texts show him you’re thinking of him just like he does too. he’s very gentle and sweet, and checks up on you when he’s able to see if you need anything at all.

he might be reliable, but that doesn’t mean that he’s the quickest guy to respond to texts. he’s a busy guy, and he doesn’t think about his phone all the time, but he will always get back to you (bae does not play when it comes to completing things).

if they came up with a shogi game for gamepidgeon and tetsu had an iphone, your phone probably would be spammed with requests for games lol.

this is my first time doing headcanons like this so please let me know what you think or give me tips on how to improve! I really enjoying thinking about it so I hope to do more in the future <3

#daiya no ace #daiya no ace headcanons #sawamura eijun #miyuki kazuya #kuramochi youichi #yuki tetsuya #sawamura eijun x reader #miyuki kazuya x reader #kuramochi youichi x reader #yuki tetsuya x reader #dna headcanons #miyuki x reader #kuramochi x reader #ace of diamond #headcanons #texting headcanons #my writing #diamond no ace

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astra-novar · 2 years

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Foundational Writing

I'm only a fanfic writer but I just wanted to point out some of the errors I've noticed. I used to get asked a few times to check over or make corrections to other people's fanfics so I finally decided to make this little reference here. It may seem like a really tedious or miniscule task but they're the foundations to writing. Making sure that what you're trying to say comes off as it should can be messed up by small but important mistakes. Which is why revisions are really important. If you can have someone else read over your work then I highly recommend it for a difference of perspective.

This post isn't to offend or question anyone's writing capabilities, but to provide guidance and assistance to new writers. Fanfics are a safe spot for me to write on to see how people genuinely react to my writing style. If you're trying to write a published book, with little or no idea/experience, this is for you too.

Here are some notes to help:

1. SPELLING

As easy as it may seem, and possibly offensive that it needs to be addressed, spelling can get pretty confusing. Especially when you have words that sound the same but have different meanings. However using the wrong spelling for a word, depending on where in the story it occurs, can change how your readers understand what's being said.

For example, bare vs. bear.

Bare: generally used to describe something that's exposed, naked

Bear: describes carrying a weight of some kind

"I can't bear to see this." I can't handle what's happening "I don't want to bare myself before you." I don't want to appear vulnerable.

Both of them sound the same but are spelled different and can have a different context in a sentence. Same thing for your vs you're and its vs it's. There's no shame in looking up the meaning/spelling of a word. And just for spelling in general, make sure you check over your drafts once you've completely finished writing. You can have a good plot idea but if the reader has to fill in the gaps from the spelling errors made it'll only make it more troublesome for them to enjoy the story and they'll eventually get bored of it.

2. PUNCTUATION MARKS

Commas (,)

Periods (.)

Question marks (?)

Exclamation marks (!)

Colons(:)

Semicolons (;)

Dashes or Hyphens (-)

Quotation marks (")

Apostrophe (')

These are some examples of punctuation. There are more to be found in this link. You can take a look at that for what each mark represents.

The most common thing I've noticed with punctuation marks in fanfics is that commas are often not used correctly. Some people may put too much or none at all.

As stated in the link, one of the purposes of a comma is to separate ideas in a sentence.

For example: "All of a sudden, a woman sprang up from beneath her husband's sheets." Separates the suddenness of what occurred from what actually occurred. -Also note the use of apostrophe in husband. It states husband's to show who's sheets they are. A mark of possession.

What I've noticed is that some fanfics would have either written it as this:

"All of a sudden a woman sprang up from beneath her husband's sheets." No commas.

"All of a sudden, a woman, sprang up, from beneath her husband's sheets." Commas being used incorrectly.

To some it may not be a big issue but punctuation marks can actually add drama to your story. The comma between "All of a sudden" and "a woman sprang up from beneath her husband's sheets" creates a pause for the reader. A tiny bit of suspense before they continue reading. -Note the use of quotation marks. They're used to reference a sentence or a part of another sentence into a different sentence.

Commas can also be used to separate items on a list.

For example: "I need eggs, milk, and juice from the store."

Sometimes there's confusion on whether to put a comma on the last item but you should.

Commas have various other uses like to set off quoted words in dialogue but that's a completely different discussion.

Keep in mind, all of this is only a small percentage of things to note as you're writing. There are various other things to note about punctuation marks but I decided to address the most common thing I've personally noticed. Not to say there aren't other things to be corrected.

Hope this helps! Let me know if there's anything else you think needs to be addressed.

#writers #writing #writing tips #writing advice #reference #creative writing #fanfiction writer

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filipinoizukuu · 3 years

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pls tell me more of ur fic pet peeves

K OSMFKS OKAY MAN. man. HSDBBSJDJS

so i have like. a FUCK ton of pet peeves for fics, and i just wanted to say first that fanfic should not be placed in any boxes or standards because it is freely written and it is something meant to be enjoyed. these are my opinions and all peeve me to only a certain degree (meaning it squicks me out at worst)—so if you are a fic writer and you find yourself doing any of these things, do NOT take it to heart and just know i love you for doing what you do and i wish you all the best ♡

im gonna give reasons why certain things peeve me so i dont just sound like im bitching but generally, when reading ANY fics, i dislike the ff:

- long paragraphs with no breaks. bro i have adhd i cant go through all of this im going to get LOST.

- underlining, bolding, italicizing, AND capitalizing statements for emphasis like sir its chill i think i get the point. imho if you wrote your scene well enough and paced it properly, the most you'll need is an italics and maybe an exclamation mark. u gotta trust ur own writing and the reading comprehension of your audience.

- jittery perspective jumps especially when its fic about characters who use the same pronouns and youre constantly shifting the thoughts being presented. it... gets kinda confusing.

- FIRST PERSON POV. ITS NOT BAD I JUST GET SO JARRED BECAUSE SASUKE UCHIHA IS DOING WHAT TO ME??

everything else like grammar and punctuation and spelling is literally just. whatever. like as long as i get your point i really dont care. sometimes writers dont speak english fluently. sometimes writers just fuck up and dont have betas. sometimes writers just post their chapters at 3 am and leave all their mistakes out for god. i have no right to judge.

for personal bnha fic pet peeves, ig most of my annoyance lies on characterization and my own personal beliefs

- i already said it previously but i cannot STRESS how much i dislike the whole "fuck redemption arcs and fuck all authority figures except LoV for some reason" theme. it annoys me and i just flat out dont agree with it

- HATE tropes that reduce deku to being like 🥺👉👈 uwu okie soft helpless bean. theres nothing wrong with it if thats how you prefer deku, but i just get annoyed by it

- ANYTIME BKDK HAS AN UNEQUAL DYNAMIC. again. nothing wrong with exploring it in fanfiction. i just dislike reading fics that make either deku or bakugou blatantly weaker than the other. i love quirkless deku fics but i hate ones where he's also characterized as amounting to nothing and still acts like bakugous punching bag/okay with bakugou disrespecting him. their whole dynamic in canon is built on a great deal of respect

- speaking of bkdks power dynamic, FRICK GOSH I HATE SEEING FICS WHERE DEKU "realizes bakugous been abusing him for years!" and gets him expelled from ua and everyone claps. like. LIKE??? N. NO???? thats not how it works 😭

- all might slander. also unjustified or unnuanced endeavor slander where they dont tackle the complexity of his character. also also unjustified or unnuanced bakugous mom slander. this ones a bit controversial so i wont talk about it much.

- sexist homophobic or racist bakugou. im kicking that away. no. especially fics where bakugous past bullying is explained as "repressed homosexuality". i like making that as a joke but i genuinely do no believe in it.

- BAD MOM MIDORIYA INKO. ITS A TROPE I SEE SOMETIMES AND IT MAKES ME CRY I DONT HAVE A RATIONAL REASONING FOR IT I JUST LOVE INKO

- fics where ochako is obviously very reduced into a supporting figure with absolutely no dimension except being a supportive character and maybe having a shoe-horned wlw romance just for the sake of making her unavailable. shes my fave bnha girl and sometimes in fics i can literally FEEL her character being butchered to only show up when deku needs Love Advice. *note that this only applies when literally every other male character has something else going on for them and its just the females being sidelined into Boy Advice Givers and Talking Sense.

- fics that very obviously belittle asian principles and culture. family means a GOOD DEAL to a lot of asian cultures and fics that spout "if you dont like your family then leave and find your own! its that simple!" usually sound incredibly ignorant or outright claim moral superiority to the weight of familial bond in asian culture. same with manners, respect, and discipline.

- jeALOUSY/CHEATING FICS OK IM SELFISH I ONLY WANT BKDK TOGETHER LIKE IM DEKUBOWL ONLY SOMETIMES BUT BKDK ALWAYS HAS TO END UP TOGETHER

- "murdering is ok if its characters i hate 🥰" ... listen, you do you bestie but like. no thanks. if i wanted to read about mineta getting murdered by momo with a pistol i dont think id be opening a bkdk soulmarks au

- any dekusquad slander 😭 i love them okay

- *kicks mean/bakugou-hating todoroki out the door*

- *kicks 'all mha characters text, talk, and behave like 14 year old stan twt users (no offense ok i speak like that too)' fics out the door*

- *kicks bratty deku and/or bakugou out the door*

thats. all i can think of atm.

#asks #cat #long post #bkdk #i have. thoughts on things.#this will be one of the only times i guess ill discuss my opinions

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david-akintunde · 3 years

Text

10 Tips To Boost Your Email Open Rates

Here is a simple talisman for success if you’re an email marketer — higher email open rates mean more conversions. Sounds obvious? Even then, many organizations don’t end up writing emails that subscribers want to open. A study by MailChimp found that email open rates are just at 21.33% across all industries.

In a quick glance, this figure looks ok. But is it really? Suppose you have an email list comprising a whopping 15,000 subscribers. With a 21.33% conversion rate, only a mere 3199 leads are ever going to see your emails, and fewer will take any action.

Remember, there comes a point, when it doesn’t matter how extensive your email list is, but how many prospects within that list open your emails. If within the same list of 15,000 subscribers, your open rates go up to 50%, you end up with 7500 leads engaging with your pitch.

So, how do you get here? By following these 10 hacks that are sure to improve your email open rates:

1. Don’t Forget to Segment your Email List

Without email list segmentation, you cannot personalize your emails. While you can categorize your email list under parameters most relevant to you, try these three segments for starters.

Segment based on:

Demography

Challenges and pain points

Like and dislikes

2. Get your Subject Line Right

Your subject line alone is what encourages prospects to open your email. It also helps form your brand’s first impression. So, craft it well! How?

Personalize it for your target audience. Write more than one subject sentence for, say, different age groups, even if the product you’re pitching is the same.

Hold back on using too many punctuations like exclamation marks. You’d be surprised how commonly marketers use more than one exclamation point in subject lines for emphasis. Choose to emphasize with your words instead.

Keep it concise and avoid vagueness.

Draft it in the form of a question, if you can.

Use powerful words and phrases. These stir emotion and arouse curiosity. For example, the image below uses a power word like “sanity-saving.”

Source: Smart Blogger

3. Get your Email Timing Right

Remember, leads will read your emails at different times in different parts of the world. Some will read them late at night, while others will do so in the morning. Leverage whichever email automation tool you use to track the time most of your prospects read your emails.

Once you have an optimal time, send emails accordingly to boost open as well as click-through rates. Also, as a general rule of thumb, avoid sending marketing emails over weekends. Several studies have now revealed that weekends are the most inopportune time to send promotional communication.

4. Get your Email Frequency Right

Nobody, and that even includes you wants their inbox to be bombarded with too many promotional emails from one brand. Not only does this single-handedly bring down your open rates, but the prospect can blacklist you or mark you as spam.

Simply put, strike the right balance with your audience. Generally, sending emails twice or thrice and no more makes for a healthy frequency that doesn’t annoy prospects.

5. Re-engage with the Dormant Prospects

All email lists have prospects who haven’t opened promotional emails from certain brands in months. Your list is likely no different. Weed them out! And scout for new prospects.

But, before identifying and deleting them from your email list, make sure to draft and deploy a re-engagement campaign. Maybe, this campaign contains time-limited offers or personalized deals to re-engage passive leads.

6. Send Emails using an Official Email ID

No matter how small your business is at this point, don’t use your Gmail or Hotmail ids to send out marketing communication. Such a practice will likely land you in the prospect’s junk pile. Use a domain email address that carries your brand name to stay out of spam filters and boost your open rates.

7. Ensure a High Deliverability Rate

Unfortunately, over 20% of marketing emails don’t land up in your prospects’ inboxes. These emails bounce because of:

Temporary server issues on both ends

Sending emails to abandoned or obsolete email ids

Prospects who accidentally blacklist you

Upping your deliverability rate will automatically boost open rates. You can do this by:

Sending reminder emails requesting your subscribers to whitelist you.

Confirm if a prospect has willingly subscribed to your list by asking them to click on a link sent to their inbox.

8. Avoid using Certain Words in Email Subject Line and Body

Stay away from phrases and words that make your email seem less authentic. For instance, “Urgent,” “free stuff for you,” “you have won,” and several others. Think of these phrases similar to swear words in email marketing.

9. Send the Same Email Once More

Sometimes your prospects want to open your email, but they simply forget or get distracted. And, once they do, they won’t revisit your email. To avoid this situation, resend the same email to subscribers who didn’t open your first email.

Don’t worry about being too intrusive here. You’d be happy to know that this is not an uncommon practice used by marketers to boost their open rates.

10. Don’t only Send Promotional Content

Sure, the ultimate goal for your brand is to sell its wares, but this doesn’t mean all your emails must carry a sales pitch. Share informational or educational content to make your email campaigns more engaging. Help them gain light on their challenges through blogs, case studies, etc. When you send a mixed bag of email content, you are more likely to increase your open rates.

Conclusion

With these 10 tips, you can undoubtedly experience higher open rates, eventually translating into more conversions. As for subscribers who, even after all the attempts, don’t open your emails, it’s best to let them go! After all, not all subscribers turn into qualified leads, and that’s ok.

Three Tips For Writing Marketing Email Subject Lines People Actually Want To Open

Sales, marketing and branding expert. CEO of GoPromotional, distributor of promotional products with a focus on online business development.

When was the last time you sent an email? Did you know that, according to Statista, roughly 306 billion emails were estimated to have been sent and received every single day in 2020? There are only about 7.7 billion people on Earth. Let that sink in. Now, ask yourself this: How many of the emails you receive every day do you actually read? More specifically, how many of the promotional emails you receive do you open at all?

With all the benefits of the information age, it’s important to remember that we’re utterly swamped with information to an extent we’ve never experienced before. So if you want to get through to people — if you’re an e-marketer whose goal is to reach as many targets as possible via mass emails — you’ll have to put in some thought and get creative. This is a game of subject lines, and your job is to master it by crafting engaging, inviting, tempting and even daring email subject lines that will grab attention — even if it’s just long enough for a click.

The fear of missing out is your ally.

FOMO is real, and it’s powerful. For the uninitiated, “FOMO” stands for “fear of missing out,” and while it may be a behavioral trend brought about by our rapidly developing internet infrastructure, it is a valuable marketing tool. No matter what you’re missing — a new blow dryer, a different kind of juice or a wedding — the point is that you’re missing something. Maybe you just don’t know about it yet.

FOMO will be of great use to you as you draft up effective subject lines. Don’t just stop with basic additions such as “act fast,” “for a limited time” or “while supplies last.” Go all the way and use numbers. What makes you want to move faster: “while supplies last” or “three hours left?” The fewer details, the better. This is all about getting your target to open the email. Don’t worry about telling them what ends in three hours. Let them find out for themselves.

Less is sometimes more.

We’re all busy. Nobody has time to read your spiel. Yes, that even includes your 10-word subject line. How many of the hundred emails you received today had 10 words in their subject lines? It adds up, and, at some point, it just looks like alphabet soup. Crafting an email subject line is all about visuals. In my experience, a short, quippy subject line can catch the eye of someone looking at their email inbox because it helps break up the sea of text.

Consider shortening a subject line such as “New jeans from Lucky Brand, Calvin Klein, Collection by Michael Strahan and more” to something more like, “Lucky. Calvin. Strahan.” You can call it a laconic method if you want, but when you treat every word like it’s a scarce commodity, they instantly appear more important.

Laugh it up.

I think we can all agree that email is no longer the stuffy, daunting, formal affair it may have once been. Email is something we do without even thinking. It’s on our phones. It’s how we confirm toothpaste orders. It’s like socks: totally ubiquitous. And consider this: More and more, your target audience is made up of people who weren’t even born before email was invented. These consumers grew up in the beginnings of a post-advertising era, when I believe traditional advertising began to lose its grip. They know a promotional email when they see one.

The solution? Laugh it up. Be a little self-aware. I’ve found that millennials and Generation Z pick up on self-awareness, and they appreciate it. Make fun of yourself a little; it can’t hurt. Switch out your stock enthusiasm for deadpan humor. Be honest. Instead of, “This week’s top picks just for you,” for example, you could try, “We want your money.” The content matters, but what matters more is getting your target interested.

Remember, the meat and potatoes are in the body of your email, but the subject is your alluring dessert. You can have dessert before dinner — as long as you eat.

Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?

Your Email Marketing Is Destined To Fail Without These 3 Essentials

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Think email marketing is all spam? Think again! In a world where marketing pitches come at us from all angles and on every device, email marketing has held steady as the favored channel for consumers. When used well, this platform can help you attract, convert, close and delight your buyers. Don’t underestimate it — your company’s email strategy can make or break you.

When it comes to building a successful email-marketing strategy, there are three specific elements that will help you achieve your business goals or move you further away from them, depending on how well you use them.

Let’s take a closer look at each of them.

1. Frequency

Nobody wants to get ten emails a day from a subscription. It doesn’t matter if the content is brilliant, useful or undeniably accurate. Your leads will get annoyed if you send them too much information. Even though they might read it (with some luck), at some point, they’ll feel bothered and eventually click the unsubscribe button.

Avoid losing contacts by not only asking their desired frequency to get your emails, but also by relying on your metrics. Don’t pay too much attention to your open rate alone — look closely at your click-through rate too. This will indicate how interested your leads are and how often they take action to prove it.

While every industry and situation is different, a good place to start with email-marketing cadence is about once per week. This establishes a relationship with your subscribers that can turn into a habit-forming routine. Being too timid about frequency can lead to a sporadic cadence that will end up irritating recipients. If you wait too long between emails, even opt-in subscribers may report you for spam — simply because you’ve let them forget all about you!

2. Relevance

While subscribers may certainly become frustrated by the frequency of your emails, they are more likely to become annoyed if your content is not relevant to their interests and needs.

Relevance is a tricky concept because it depends on many factors like the consumer’s knowledge level, his or her stage in the buyer’s journey and good timing. You must know your audience in order to understand what type of content they want.

Specifically, you need to know what they want from you, which is often dictated by where they are in the buyer’s journey. Are they ready to buy? Are they trying to get valuable information? Are they looking to solve a problem? Are you able to solve that problem?

In every industry, there are two types of buyers: “now” buyers, who are progressing down the purchase funnel, and future buyers, who have no interest in or need for your product currently, but may down the road. For future buyers, the relevance of your content is what’s most important to them; it’s what builds the brand trust that will bring them back to you when they are ready to buy.

Finally, timing is everything. Relevance is about getting the right content to the right person at the right time.

3. Action

We receive emails basically everywhere — at home, work and while on the go. When receiving an email, we may take a look at it immediately, but sometimes it requires further action like submitting a form, watching a video or visiting a website. Try to reduce or streamline required actions in order to make it easy for contacts to follow through at any time of day.

First and foremost, make your offers simple. Your buyers don’t like to be given too many choices; when they are, they often won’t buy anything at all. Even in the physical world, this is the case. In the famous “jam study” by Columbia Business School Professor Sheena Iyengar, for example, she set out two tasting booths for a brand of jam. One table offered six flavors to choose from; the other offered 24.

While the tasting booth with 24 flavors attracted more people, the booth with six flavors sold much more jam — 30% of those who stopped at the booth bought a jar, compared to just 3% of those who stopped at the table with 24 varieties. These visitors were too confused and overwhelmed to make a purchase decision.

The difference between stopping at a booth and buying from a booth is similar to the difference between opening an email and clicking through to an offer. Your email campaigns must be able to achieve both to be successful. The more personalized and concise you can be in your offers, the simpler the choice will be for your email subscribers.

BONUS To enjoy the best email marketing software, click here

#email campaign #email marketing #mailchimp #email marketing tips #email marketing tutorial #email marketing trends #email marketing automation #email marketing strategy #email marketing plan

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kyoupann · 4 years

Note

Please do more of the writing head canons. It’s really interesting to see other people’s ideas on the topic, so if you can be bothered, I would highly appreciate more, thanks bye <3

Y’all don’t know how happy I am to talk about these headcanons, they are my babies and I love them so much :’) thanks for asking g <3

Handwriting Headcanons

Same dynamic as before, try to guess whose handwriting it is before reading and tell me how many you got right! <3

You can find the first post here (no need to check it tho)

Quick disclaimer: halfway through making my initial notes, I remembered I had one (1) single lesson of graphology in my applied linguistics class, but that was a year ago and some information might be off. I just thought it was neat to include.

Another quick disclaimer: I don’t know much about Hylian, but I like to think it has a similar stroke system to Japanese, so the pressure and accuracy of your strokes play a major role in your handwriting (among other things, ofc.) so there are some parts where I focus more on that

(First Row, from left to right)

Sky

Our first boy is mother hen! Believe it or not, he has the prettiest handwriting out of all of them! Sky: probably has nice, even elegant handwriting because Sun forced him to practice when they were little. In the end, that paid off because his handwriting is the prettiest one. There’s no pressure, but he is confident in what he writes that his lines aren’t thin. Mistakes? what is that? this boy has impeccable grammar and spelling. No mechanic errors to be found in his letters! I’d like to think that many of Hyrule’s classic/staple poems were originally written by the firt king aka sky child. Like, imagine, after a retiring from being a Person of Power (as the first ruler), Sky finds comfort in the arts: revisits his old woodcarvings and starts writing poetry about the world he still doesn’t fully understand. wowie. tldr: sky writes poetry and you can pry it from my cold dead hands.

This is what one of his letters would look like:

Next one is the one and only, our Hero of Time

2. Time

I’ll die on the “Time didn’t know how to read and write” hill. His handwriting is simple, not pretty but not messy. It has some grammar and spelling mistakes here and there. Can become unreadable if writing in a hurry, he sorts of forgets spaces between words are a thing/letters have different sizes and lowercase letters end up the same size as capital letters. I’m not saying he sometimes forgets to write articles: he just doesn’t want to. Honestly, he just has this dad-neat handwriting. He is a gentle dad and writes like a dad, if he puts too much pressure onto the paper, his handwriting become too sharp/angle-ish and ends up looking ugly. And as much as he would like to not care about it, in the end he does (:

Malon taught him how to write and it was quite the experience. At first he didn’t want to because he was ‘too old’ to learn and it was torture at first, but now look at him devouring his cowboy novels.

A chunk of his handwriting:

*sniff* such a dad quote.

3. my mansss, your 4x1 deal at Target: Four

Look, my boy is patient! He could do some nice and fancy lettering if he wanted to. He was taught that handwriting and spelling said a whole lot about him as a person, you know, like a first impression kinda thing; so he always proof reads more than twice before sending a letter. Super rare grammar mistakes.

The faster he writes, the more slant his writing becomes. Under stress/ when not sure how to write things down, run-on sentences are everywhere and his handwriting is inconsistent in general (I don’t headcanon each part of him having completely different handwriting because handwriting becomes muscle memory over time. It’s just slightly different variations of the same, like idk Vio’s handwriting is neater than Green’s and Red writes hearts instead of any dot/circle and no, I do not take constructive criticism on that, jk i do.) Adding on to each of the colours’ handwriting, I’d think Red and Green write with words slanted to the right( inclined), Vio is a mix of the opposite, so reclined and straight, and my mans blue a true neutral writes straight (kinda like Time’s).

The logic behind this is that inclined writing supposedly means honesty and need for giving (and getting) affection; reclined means, as you can probably imagine, defensiveness and repression of true feelings, but also shows great concentration; straight handwriting means self-control, observation and reflection as well as distrust and indifference. But as complete being (tm), Four just writes as in the image example which is not too straight and not too inclined, and I believe that’s a good middle for him

HOWEVER, if I’m feeling in the mood for crack, I totally accept this boy to have the ugliest, chicken scratches-looking handwriting! :’D It’s just funny to think that someone like him, who has to be precise and careful in his work, can't write neatly to save his life.

One of his letters would look like this:

Also I just LOVE how his hero titles look in this font ksksks

and that’s

(Middle row, from left to right)

4.- Mister Bunny Boy - Legend

His uncle taught him how to write. I’d call his handwriting pretty and neat at a first glance, but he presses too hard on the paper, most of the time staining the back or the following page. Sometimes will retrace some words if he doesn’t like how it looks (which only makes it messier). According to my notes, a thick or strong handwriting represents determination/commitment.

As I also headcanon him to know many languages, mechanical errors are more present than grammar ones; that is, weird capitalisation of words. Punctuation is somewhere in between; uses too many commas when he should just cut the sentence. he mixes punctuation from two languages or more in writing when too distracted (or too focused, because, well, pressure.); when he writes for himself, he has almost no problem following said language’s punctuation rules. Also, this is just polyglot culture, and I’m projecting a bit, but when he forgets a word in the language he’s writing, he just replaces it with its equivalent in another language because we don’t care about fluency, but rather functionality. in this household (more on that in my language hc, ksksks).

An example of his writing:

so powerful

4.- Mr. Wolfman, howl me a song - Twilight

I don’t have much for him because 1) I don’t think he writes a lot and 2) he is a hands-on/visual learner, I’ll die by that. He only learnt how to write because Ulli insisted it was important and he was not about to disrespect his momma; he IS That Guy, but doesn’t really write enough to have neat handwriting.

Many people seem to overlook the fact that his house is filled with books and write him as completely illiterate (which if not explored properly, ends up feeling a bit disrespectful and full of prejudice, but go off I guess; and that’s on my core Headcanons for Twi); however, he sticks to simple sentences. Knowing how to read and understanding a text is different from knowing how to write them. Like, when we would see a semicolon and understand its position in the text, but didn’t understand the nature of it. Is this clear? idk i’m sorry. So yeah, boy reads a lot, writes very little.

As for his Actual Handwriting, as opposed to Legend, his handwriting is thiccc but not because he presses into the paper; he is just that messy, he has no sense of ink-flow-control, he does what he can with what he has. To the untrained eye, his handwriting illegible letters like v, n, u are very similar; when he makes notes for himself he does it in the form of doodles or small ‘icons’. But! He reads a lot, so he rarely makes spelling mistakes (: he is your go-to guy when you don’t know how to write a word.

An example of his writing:

He keeps a journal, sue me.

3. My first born- Warrior

Okay, first off... I accept this is completely biased. I saw the idea and said “That’s True”. If you haven’t, please read Effective Communication; or The Lack of Thereof by htruona, a fic where the boys reflect on the language barriers between them. It’s incredibly funny and probably what made me start making these silly notes. So, if you’ve read that fic, you know where I’m going.

My man, Warrior, can’t fucking write. I mean, he physically can, but it’s very bad. Here’s the reason for it, tho, and it’s not his fault: Technically, he knew how to write alright but he joined the military and whatever note he had to write had to be concise or in the worst case coded. He mixes capital and lowercase letters. If we consider that he joined the military at around 15, his handwriting and grammar had yet to continue developing. Just think about how after summer break, your handwriting was always slightly worse than before because you didn’t write for an entire month. Now think what 2 years can do to that. Hmm, not cool, dude. He makes quick notes, when writing he’s all gotta go fast. he is the lighting mcqueen of writing; good for emergency messages, not ideal for love letters. His punctuation also suffered a lot, he only know full stops and commas and hardly uses them. A sentence for him is either one word or fifty without a single comma, no inbetween.

His hero title and an example of his writing.

(Bottom row, or what I like to call “fuck cursive” row)

7.- Magic man - Hyrule

I’m basic and I do agree with the popular headcanon of he not knowing how to write because well, y’all know his Hyrule. He only knows how to write his name because that’s important, same with numbers. I don’t see why would he write/read except checking the roadsigns. (he can even use this as an excuse for getting lost frequently; he thought it said something different.) But I do think that because his habitual reading consists of roadsigns, his ‘punctuation’ is weird af and places full stops/points/periods at the same level of his words and his commas/question/exclamation marks below them. Yk, creative license. Sadly, I don’t have much about my magic hands man so here’s what his writing would look like if he actually wrote a paragraph:

Man, I love Hyrule.

8.- Man, I don’t understand this boy - Wild

Cursive? ain’t nobody have the time for that. He woke up and had to save the world in his underwear while not knowing how to read nor write. He learnt during his journey and was taught by multiple people from different regions, that explains his inconsistent spelling of things and names for them. So Wild knows language variations for many items and uses them interchangeably (even if they aren’t exactly the same). Another headcanon related to writing/language skills that I’ve been thinking about is that if the shrine was able to cause amnesia, I’m sure there were other areas in the brain affected which leads us to language disorders such as agraphia and aphasia. But that’s a story for another day ksksksk

An example of his writing (after relearning)

9.- The best of sons - Wind

I don’t have much for him and that makes me sad. Look, he’s a kid, doing kid things like stabbing dudes on the head. This boy was taught cursive by his grandma, but could never do it and no one needs it anyway. His handwriting is good enough for his pirate life, Tetra is the one to handle Official stuff, he just gotta sign. Spelling and grammar mistakes abound. He is still relatively young and can correct his handwriting if he desires. But same as Wild, with how many times he’s been thrown out and hit his head, I’m starting to consider some language disorder for him as well.

An example of his writing:

aaand that’s it.

Thanks, y’all for showing interest in this silly thing uwu it was fun to finally talk about this. If you ever want to discuss ideas/headcanons(especially if they are related to language and culture), I’m your person (: I’m always happy to hear new headcanons. Feel free to add anything to this post either in a reply or in a reblog, I’d love to hear from y’all <3<3

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everysongineverykey · 4 years

Text

headcanons for how the squad texts, definitely not for anyone who asked for it in the tags of the kotlc gc post:

- keefe obviously uses no punctuation whatsoever, expert memer

- he uses a lot of fuckboy-type language and emojis. ironically or unironically? no one can ever tell. it's terrifying and works both to his advantage and disadvantage

- he's the type to text the group chat at 2am just for boredom's sake. he texts whenever he has nothing else to do, and a lot of the time even when he does have something else to do

- sophie uses proper grammar and punctuation, except for periods and question marks/exclamation points, etc.

- she texts no more than she has to, she's not very attached to her phone

- she'll reply to other people's texts, but she very rarely texts first

- if she needs to talk, she'll phone someone. very inconvenient for most of the group since they hate phone calls but sophie finds texting kinda inconvenient itself because the person she's talking to can just not reply to her and lie about not having seen her message

-linh doesn't capitalize her texts, other than that her grammar is pretty consistent though

- she's really attached to her emojis. she uses them a lot. like, A LOT

- especially the hearts (all colours but she's partial to pink) and the sparkles and the animals, unsurprisingly

- she texts in roleplay sometimes (i.e. *throws phone* *smiles* *hugs*). the others find it a bit annoying but they love her too much to tell her

-fitz uses so many emoticons. ^_^, :), <3, that kind of thing. he's too lazy to scroll through the emojis to find what he's looking for

- his grammar and punctuation are perfect. the others bully him relentlessly for it

- he also signs his texts. everyone else has his contact saved as "old man" or "grampa fitz" or, in keefe's case, "spicy old man mcnuggets"

- he does it ironically, though, because he knows it drives them crazy

- half of biana's texts are preceded and succeeded with the sparkle emojis

- her grammar is perfect when she's being serious, bad when she's joking and chill

- she has shortcuts saved for all those really complicated face emojis. yknow, like the shrug emoticon? you know what i mean. she uses those often, sometimes ironically, sometimes unironically

- she's mastered sarcasm in her texts

- "hhh" and "wh" are frequently used by her and keefe

- dex's grammar is a lot like keefe's. he's tinkered his phone to let him text in any color he wants. the colors of his words are often how he conveys his emotions over text. they're color-coded, it's exhausting for colorblind fitz (i've just decided fitz is colorblind and no one can stop me)

- he helps the others with their homework a lot

- sometimes he pranks the crew by using his knowledge of electronics to edit their texts. it's chaos

- basically he can do anything he wants if he's given a phone and some time

- tam is the group chat cryptid. he's always watching, reading everyone's texts, but never replies. he's chaotic like that

- he'll only add to the conversation if he absolutely wants to

- his grammar and punctuation are perfect

- he hates phone calls and he doesn't see the point of texting, so he's a nightmare to get ahold of for sophie. sometimes she just mails him simple questions to spite him. he doesn't take the bait and sends a letter back every time

- you can email him if you want but he's got about a thousand unread emails so good luck

-marella is much like biana in her grammar habits, except sometimes she'll slip into proper grammar just to fuck with the squad

- she texts k a lot. is she aware of its power? probably. that's for you to decide.

- she always replies to keefe's late-night group chat texts and wakes everyone up on purpose

-wylie texts like an adult (sans capitslization) because he is an adult, obviously. he signs off with a smiley face. it's the purest thing. he's not in a lot of group chats but when he is, everyone's super nice to him. they would all die for him

- maruca replies with one-word texts, usually. once in a blue moon, she'll text k and the whole chat will be destroyed

- she is the queen of leaving people on read

#i hope you're happy lynn #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities

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ajokeformur-ray · 4 years

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Don’t you DARE hide from me // Joker x Reader // soft comfort.

Summary: You feel so sad and heavy that there’s a lump lodged in your throat which is making you feel like you’re going to be sick. Joker knows your every mood, your every thought process, your everything and he knows what you need better than you do.

Self-indulgent and self-insert gentle fluff because sometimes you just have to give yourself what you deserve.

Word count: 3, 272.

NSFW but this GIF is what he looks like when he’s been thoroughly fucked out by you 🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵

Sat cross legged were you on your bed, your back pressed up against the pillow upon which you rested your weary head every night. Your head was bowed, your shoulders hunched in on themselves. The emotional weight which had been on you this day was great and now you were at the day’s end, when the sun had long since sunk below the horizon and the gloomy grey Gotham sky had turned into a vast and limitless black expanse. Not punctuated was it by stars due to the polluted atmosphere of the city and you felt sick with all that you were thinking and all that you were feeling. You didn’t feel safe within yourself. Your thoughts seemed not to be your own, your emotions seemed altogether greater than you and everything was just too much. You felt so sad and so heavy that you felt nauseous. Every swallow was coupled with the acidity of bile swirling around in your stomach. You felt truly awful this night and you didn’t even have it in you to approach Joker for what you knew you needed. It was instinctive for you to distance yourself from the ones that you most loved in the world when you were feeling bad, even if you didn’t want to, and as such you hadn’t sought your Joker out.

No, you had stood up from the worn sofa almost an hour ago without saying anything to a lightly chuckling Joker, so weary and so knowing was he, and walked into the bedroom. The door had closed behind you with a quiet but firm click and you had been alone. You weren’t alone though and though the distinction was subtle, it was an important one. You were never truly alone so long as you had Joker in your life. He was entire life, your reason and your purpose, your motivation and your inspiration. He was your everything. Even so, with him being your greatest comfort, you knew that you would break if you allowed Joker to comfort you, to even come near you. You had barely allowed him to touch you this day, so badly had you been feeling that even your skin had been itching, as if to mimic the itching which was going on inside of yourself. The mind and the body were so connected, this was true, and as such if one was even a little bit off balance, so too could the other.

With your hair falling about your face, framing it like curtains, cold tears ran steadily down your cheeks. Quiet sniffles broke the silence of the room, which rang in your ears and made the pressure that was within your very being feel heavier. Oh, you needed your Joker, you needed him now more than you ever had before, at least for a while, but you felt like your limbs were made of lead. What would be the point in getting up to go get him or calling him to come over to you? You would still feel just as sick, just as sad, just as heavy. But... but you would be able to breathe again. You would feel his unconditional and undying love for you seep into the cracks of your psyche and begin to soothe your raw and bleeding wounds from the inside out, and you would feel a little bit better for it. Joker had always, always been able to make you feel better within yourself. He knew you better than you knew yourself, he knew everything that you ever needed from him from even a single glance, and there was nothing that he couldn’t or wouldn’t do for you if it meant that you were, at the very least, okay. Joker was completely devoted to you, just as you were to him. At the core of all that you did for each other was love, just love, and it was this which kept you both coming together again and again. You would always catch each other’s fall, even before the other knew that they were falling, and sometimes you even fell together.

Together.

Like a switch had just been pulled, all at once was your mind full of thoughts of all the time that you and Joker had had together in the past; all the good and the bad, all the ugly and the beautiful and everything in between. As these wonderfully maddening and alluring thoughts filled your head, your body took a natural and deep breath. More tears poured down your cheeks and you found one word crawling its way out of the pit of your stomach, up, up your throat. It lingered on the very tip of your tongue, your tongue fuzzy, weighted was it by all the love which was held within this one word. It was a word which made you smile so naturally, intertwined was it with your heartstrings and connected were they to the very corners of your lips. It was a word which gave you hope when there were no emotions to be felt, it was a word which made you get out of bed, which made you want to try. It was one word, just one, but it had the power to make or break your every day. It had the power to fill your heart with so much love that it got stuck in your throat and made you choke upon it. It had the power to make you laugh when you could only cry, to make you stop and think... to make you feel when you were only heavy and numb. It was the one word which you often spoke aloud to yourself in the dead of night when you needed some courage, something to hold onto, when you needed anything. It was the only word you could believe in on your worst days, and the one that you needed the most even on your best:

Joker.

The word left your lips so quietly that it was barely a whisper, but then you cleared your throat, raised your head to the ceiling in some sort of thanks, though you knew not whom or what you were thanking, and spoke the word borne from magic once more. “Joker.” Your body took another natural and long breath and as you exhaled, your breath shuddered and tears spilled hotter and faster down your face. They dropped off your chin and fell into your lap like rain. As you brought your head back down, finally giving in to everything that you were thinking and feeling, a sob ripped from your throat. You clapped a hand over your mouth, desperate to muffle the sounds of your distress, but it was too late. So thin were the walls in the cramped but well kept apartment, so highly attuned was Joker to his Y/N, and no matter whether you communicated to him verbally or not, Joker would always hear you. You were not feeling safe inside yourself, but you were safe with Joker and that would never ever be any different. You released a soft noise of pain and through your tears did you choke out, “I need my clown so badly.”

“Your clown, huh?”

You jumped, your heart pounding in your head. When had Joker opened the door? The walls were so thin that if you sneezed outside the apartment on your way in, Joker could hear you from the bedroom, but you had been so outside of yourself and so lost within all that you were thinking and feeling that you hadn’t even heard him approach from the living room. How long had he been stood there? Knowing Joker and his hatred of seeing you in pain, it would have been mere seconds, but as you looked at him could you see the redness in his eyes, the way that those green oceans were overflowing with love and with concern. He was crying for you and he didn’t even know why. But it didn’t matter, not really - you were hurting and Joker couldn’t abide even the idea of that, so devoted to you and to your well being was he.

At the sight of your Joker, your breath left your lungs in another rush and you spoke his name at the same time, an exclamation of relief and of love, even with the tidal wave of sadness which crashed over your rocky shores in that moment. Joker cooed softly as he made his way over to you, crossing the room in a few easy strides. He was with you in no time at all, his hands reaching out. They curved to the slopes of your shoulders, familiar and well loved terrain which he had explored often. “Please, Joker, I - I need - “ Your breath caught in your throat again at the touch of his hand, at the sound of his voice, and tears flowed down your already damp cheeks at a faster, more temperate rate.

Joker shushed you, the sound low and soothing. “I know, Y/N. I know.” He stepped forward so that your legs were in between his and he bent down at the waist, pulling you into that soft red material which you knew and loved so well. You threw your arms around Joker’s neck and squeezed yourself into him. Joker shifted his stance to better accommodate you, so thoughtful and so considerate was he, and he gave you the simple yet valued experience of crying yourself out in his chest. He shushed you continuously, barely stopping for breath, rocked you in his arms and pressed kisses anywhere and everywhere he could reach, as if the love within his simple but weighted affections could sink into your skin and soothe your wounds from the inside out, just as you had always done for him. You were deserving of nothing less than all of his attention and so that was what Joker would give you for as long as you needed and wanted him to.

When your sobbing showed no sign of stopping and Joker’s back was beginning to ache from the awkward physical position which he was in, he pressed a tender, lingering kiss to the crown of your head, his breath ghosting across the surface of your scalp and making you shiver, and then pulled away from you just enough so that he could look at you, so that he could really look at you. Whatever he saw only tugged more firmly at his heartstrings for did a weighted sigh escape Joker. He swept a hand through those romantic dyed green waves you loved so well, and then made his way to the other side of the bed, toeing his Oxfords off as he did so. Joker hadn’t even fully eased himself down onto the mattress before you were scooting across, needing your clown to protect you from yourself. You needed him so badly that it was only making you cry harder. Your anguish sunk deep into Joker’s ears and yanked at his heart strings.

“Easy, doll. Just breathe for me, can you do that?” Joker’s voice was stained with worry for his Y/N, his arms and legs wrapped tightly around you so that you knew beyond all shadow of a doubt that you were protected within the safety of his embrace, that Joker was there for you in all the ways that you needed him to be, that he loved you and that he would stay beside you. His hands cupped your face, his calloused thumbs stroking away your tears. Any which fell which his thumbs didn’t catch were caught by his lips, so reverent and so gentle with you was he, especially when you were feeling as terribly as you were. Joker continued to shush you but otherwise did he remain silent. He gave you no sweet nothings, he only soothed you as best as he could with his gentle touches, loving kisses, and the pleasure of his company. Both of you were independent creatures but the love which existed between you was so strong, so vast and so limitless that it brought you home to one another each and every day.

Joker stayed with you, he stayed. There was no judgement, no rush to soothe yourself or to simply stop the way that you were feeling. You were unravelling in Joker’s hold and he allowed you to use his body to hide even from yourself as he gave you the space to just be. His arms were warm and solid around you, the steady and regular beating of his heart was the lullaby which quieted your tried and tired mind. Periodically did he shush you gently when your breath caught, but it wasn’t a noise designed to tell you to stop, no. No, it was a noise designed only to comfort. You were breaking apart and Joker was holding you together with his own body as he met you with acceptance, with empathy and with love. You weren’t okay and if you being honest with yourself, as always did you at least try to be, then you knew that you wouldn’t be for a while. But that was okay; sometimes you needed to not be okay, to let yourself feel what was demanding to be felt. Just so long as you didn’t allow it to wholly crush you, just as long as you knew that once you hit rock bottom, there was only one way you could go: up. As defeated as you were, you weren’t defeated and that was a subtle but an important distinction, and one which Joker reminded you of in moments like these.

Finally, with your eyes sore and rimmed with an angry red which matched the macabre painted smile which Joker wore so that he didn’t have to smile with his own mouth; so sick was he of hiding his true, beautiful self, with your lungs burning and your entire body exhausted, you had finally, finally cried yourself out. Joker eased himself out from under you while you lay there, staring unseeing up at the ceiling, and his resounding giggle as you whined and reached out for him, flexing your fingers in the universal motion of grabby hands, was stained with sympathy as he dashed from the room in a whirlwind of colour. You heard the sound of running water coming from the bathroom and then the muted padding of socked feet on worn carpet before the sound of water came from the kitchen and then Joker was back, with a wet flannel in one hand and a glass of water in the other.

“I’m here, Y/N.” Joker’s soft rasp made you open your eyes, as did the gentle setting down of the glass of water on the bedside table. He let out a soft noise of pain and of empathy as he gazed down at you, and the tears he had already shed for you had marred those deep blue triangles, which traced down his face like a mockery of his own pain, so interconnected and so intertwined with you was he. Softly, gently, Joker wiped your face over with the wet flannel. His strokes were fluid, his skin barely grazing yours as he made sure to get every single piece of your skin which he could. The sweet man even run the flannel over your ears and dipped behind them, too. When at last it was done to his satisfaction, Joker hummed and grinned smugly as he chucked the flannel, now warmed with the heat of his hand and of your face, into the dirty laundry basket. “Feel better, angel?”

You nodded and sat up as Joker handed you the glass of water - you would take care of yourself. He knew that you weren’t feeling up to it, however, and he was more than content to love on you hard enough for the two of you until you were feeling a bit more like yourself. Joker understood better than most how bad it could be sometimes and through it all, the two of you had always done your best as individuals to be there for each other. There had been times when both of you had been suffering, but your love was so strong that you had been able to find the strength to look after each other and in that were you yourselves taken care of. You had such a deep and rich love, it was bigger than your own selves and it defied all explanation... what you shared together just was and neither of you would trade it in or give it up for the world, though you would each make the opposite trade in a heartbeat. You were each other’s world, for better or for worse. As you finished the glass and Joker disappeared back into the kitchen (for the man of the house cleans up messes, he doesn’t create them, thank you very much) before he was back in a literal whirlwind of colour, so dramatic and so free was he, you realised that nothing was ever really wrong so long as you had your clown to look at you like you were the only thing he could see.

Briefly, in your leftover anxiety while Joker had been out of the room, had you considered that he would leave you to it, now that you had cried yourself out. You knew, deep within your heart, that that would never be the case and so you laid back down, safe in the knowledge that Joker was coming home to you. He was your clown blanket and it was a duty which he took seriously and always did Joker know with a single glance how you wanted him; beside you, underneath you or, in this case, above you. You wrapped your arms around his shoulders, your legs around his waist and squeezed Joker into your body, wanting all of him to be all that you knew. Oh, but he was your whole heart. Joker wrapped his arms around you, sliding them beneath your back so that he could lift you more firmly into his chest. His body was hot against your own, you could feel the heat of him seeping through all three layers which he wore, and though you were pressed against him as tightly as you could be, it still wasn’t enough for you. You wanted more of everything and you squeezed yourself into Joker, making the man grunt low in the back of his throat under the force of just how hard you were hugging him; though of course it didn’t hurt him. You would rather die than hurt your Joker in any way, even accidentally.

“Thank you for loving me, Joker.”

Joker hummed sleepily; he had been falling asleep on you, so comfortable was he. You felt a stab of guilt but you forced it away, knowing well as you did that Joker would be tenderly frustrated if you even thought about apologising. You were always his number one priority during any time of the day or night. His arms slid out from underneath you and he slid down your body so that he could rest his face in the warm crook of your neck, his thin painted lips pressing clumsy kisses to the flesh which he found there. He hummed again, a soft smile on his face. You shifted your hips, got more comfortable underneath your clown, and as you closed your eyes did Joker’s most important, most wholesome truth follow you into sleep:

“I love you, too, Y/N.”

For there was nowhere you could go where he would not follow.

AF/J @impulsiveclown @notyourlittledoll @astheworlddturns @fluffedstar @jokersqueenofchaos @germansarechill @tsukiakarinobara @d-dreemurr @lynnesm @sagyunaro @docsportello @ezziesworld @flowerglitterwoman @ben-solos-writing-avenger @jokers-doll @jokershyena @arthurjokersgirl @antonija89 @lilliryth @hotpacino @obsessedandthirsty

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zontiky · 4 years

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what can you see the sibs' texting styles as ??

luther: Always has auto-caps on. Uses all the punctuation properly; would probably be better off writing a research paper than trying to convince Klaus the Earth is round. Uses emoticons :) but only the tamer ones. Actually, he probably adds noses to his. :-) He texts like a dad okay.

diego: doesn't have auto-caps on but still uses punctuation. never uses emojis or emoticons, unless he's being sarcastic? the day you see him use a semicolon is the day the earth explodes. he types fast tho so sometimes an acronym slips in, also autofill is a blessing.

allison: LOTS of caps and exclamation points!! some abbreviations and acronyms lmao but never anything super obscure!! she has auto-caps on in case she's typing something work-related or serious on her phone but she makes a point to click them off each time she starts a new sentence in the chat. actually knows how to use emojis?? but chooses not to bc she has an image to maintain,,, its a rare occasion when you see her use less than 2 punctuation marks. also many heart emojis 😊💞💞💞 they take up a full row of the frequently used on her phone

klaus: batshit gay mess, i think thats a texting style all on its own lmao TYPOS GALORE and lots n lots of keysmashes and shit akznfbns literally no effort is put in lol he follows the "if u cant understand me thats on u" rule if yk what i mean. ben and allison are the only ones who understand him, the only emojis he uses are the cryptic as fuck ones that make people think what the hell, that's an emoji? why?? 💒🕷️

five: Old man typing. Who let these whopperdinkers into the chat room. The hoodlums. The--I don't know any old people slang I'm sorry. but also he's gen z presenting so I remain firm that all his gen z friends teach him to text and once in a while he whips out the 😔😌👌😜🤪👁️👄👁️ and gives half of his family a stroke.

ben: he's dead

im kidding im kidding lol

ben: a vague mix of diego and klaus? uses acronyms and shit and keysmashes in fits of passion and refuses to have auto caps on because What Is The Point but also is a fan of those cute emoticons that are like くコ:彡(=^･ｪ･^=)(◍•ᴗ•◍)✧*。he's the only one other than five who truly understands the art of emojis 😔 but he's the one who fully appreciates it

vanya: Unsurprisingly the most... normal, texter. She probably sets up lessons over text so she has to be slightly professional about this, and she just never slips out of her teacher texting mode. It's readable. Thank you Vanya we appreciate it. When she's tired she will use only punctuation and emojis and nobody can understand her except for Five who chooses to pretend he doesn't and Ben and Klaus, who keep silent for the shits and giggles. She once sent every single emoji except for the middle finger, just because.

#I PUT THOUGHT INTO THIS XBNJDNS #klaus and ben are me that's just how i text alsmnfndnss #the emoji thing vanya did is a true story i was 11 and too scared to use 🖕#asks #tua #team zero #misc #hcs #anon

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funnuraba · 3 years

Text

A Rough Moral Overview of Archie Comics: Teen Propaganda Machine

Part 5: Al Hartley Rears His Ugly Head

And then... there's the grim shadow of Al Hartley and his Christian Archie comics.

In any discussion of the politics of Archie Comics, Al Hartley stands in a class of his own. If you know much about Archie Comics, and even if you don't, you may have seen some of his work, because by modern standards--oh boy, do those Spire Christian Comics make an impact. They're officially licensed, all of them, and some are reworked from stories he wrote under the official Archie banner, often stories that were already groaning from the strain of not mentioning Jesus.

The "Christmas spirit" was sometimes used as a stand-in. In the Spire Archie comics, the characters are allowed to preach openly.

Usually Betty. Dear God, Al Hartley's Betty. But one interesting thing is that Ethel and Dilton, of all people, are usually the runners-up in Jesus loving. Apparently the Evangelical split with science hadn't taken effect yet, because Hartley-Dilton is an ally to religion, and his cleverness only brings him closer to God. Hartley's Ethel is, bizarrely, an incredibly sympathetic take on the character, perhaps one of the kindest ever looks at a girl so desperate for acknowledgment, validation, anything, that she's willing to put up with Jughead.

Except for the comic where she talks about how her parents neglect her, and Archie and Betty explain to her that God wants her to honor and respect the parents He chose to give her, no matter what they do. That's kind of a slap in the face.

Ethel is either the innocent in pain, ripe for conversion, or a zealous convert. Archie often takes her place as the clueless wandering fool. Reggie, Jughead and Veronica are sometimes converted at the end. Sometimes Veronica is the worldly, promiscuous no we can't go quite that far, but that's the suggestion. Reggie and Jughead also slot very well into an exhibition of humanity's sins, with Reggie of course being vanity and Jughead gluttony. Usually Jughead's gluttony is a forgivable sin, but one in need of fixing nonetheless.

KRAK! This mansion, owned and operated by one "Professor Beelzebub", represents, of course, Sin in all its forms, and Jughead is swallowed up early on by a room full of food. Betty approaches Archie, from outside the house, and manages to free him with the power of prayer.

Notice the sinful masses crawling from the wreckage almost as an afterthought. Can you guess who Hartley's favorite character is?

Yes. Al Hartley was just a little partial to Betty. Hartley was supposedly born again after tiring of the cheesecake work he produced for the first part of his professional life, but he managed to be astonishingly horny for Betty despite that. And his writing is responsible for Insufferable Christian Betty, AKA the worst Betty.

Hartley's comics are.... not subtle. They're Archie at the height of camp and the height of hilarity...

....and they're hateful, reactionary trash covered in a sugary Archie coating. A Sugar, Sugar coating, if you will.

Even in his "official" work for Archie Comics, you can smell the conservative right through the page.

One recurring theme is that Jughead's love of food and disinterest in girls are not two separate traits, but rather one single pathological obsession with food that causes him to eat because he isn't dating.

That, of course, is a problem to be fixed. Jughead Jones sits around thinking about how 36-24-36 girls are the best type of girl???? Really, Mr. Hartley???

And forget what I said about sympathetic portrayals of Ethel. This is how she gets her happy ending. As a hot dog.

Hartley's reign of terror actually started in the 60s, but by the 70s his art (and often writing) have become immediately distinguishable. The tells are in the girls' eyes (Betty's especially) and in Jughead's nose, which under Hartley's pencil starts to shrink near his face.

Oh, and this face thing, and the triple punctuation marks.

This is a typical set of Hartley panels showcasing all his trademarks except Jughead's nose.

And the fact that his Reggie never stops making this face.

His official Archie work, while slightly restrained, still shows an inherent worship of authority (A sixteen year old girl looking at her principal and thinking she feels sorry for “that cute man”??????? What????)

....and a sense of emptiness within the characters, waiting to be filled by... something.

His openly Jesus-y comics would revisit this theme, over and over again.

And one wonders if he was really as burned out on cheesecake as he claimed.

Yeah, he was barely holding himself back in a few different ways.

(These are three different stories taking place on the beach where the Archie characters spend about half their natural life cycle. The last one has no writer credited anywhere, but they’re Hartley’s pencils and the themes are quite similar to his two confirmed “Veronica being a bitch to Archie at the beach” stories.)

A couple of Hartley stories stand out in a very weird way: his Veronica isn't just spoiled and domineering, she hardly even wants Archie to start with. And in these stories, Archie's interest in Veronica is paper-thin, held together only by the main conceit of the love triangle and the fact that man is born to sin. One senses a touch of the aggrieved self-shipper at work, and more often than not it comes at the expense of humor. Other writers and artists had fun with a mean Veronica; Al Hartley just wants her sinful ass to stop getting in his best girl Betty's way.

Boy, does he want her gone. She and Reggie often end up together in the Spire stories, in defiance of the prevailing canon since at least the 50s, which is that that Veronica’s willing to date Reggie if Archie doesn’t show up or blows it, but for whatever reason, Archie is her primary interest. She doesn’t like Reggie for his personality in any story where Reggie’s personality actually figures beyond “other boy”. Yet Hartley sees them as the snooty secondary couple, brought together by their love of vanity and other sins, and the fact that Betty must be Archie’s final choice at all costs.

At their best, Hartley’s stories touch on realistic insecurities and add a little human dimension to characters like Ethel and Betty.

At their worst, they remind you exactly how cynical those additions are. Hartley has no compunctions about mocking Ethel if that’s what the story needs. "That fellow just offered two cows for Big Ethel!" Betty cries, in the middle of a band/missionary performance by The Archies in India. "That's the best offer we ever had for Big Ethel!" Jughead laughs, as Ethel (on triangle, because of course) looks distressed in the corner. Archie tells Jughead not to joke, because the man is serious! Hartley Triple Exclamation Points!!!

These insecure characters could be anyone at all, because the only reason they show these insecurities is so Al Hartley can sell you, the reader, on fixing your own insecurities with his brand of Jesus. In his non-Archie comics, they’re replaced seamlessly with non-characters, and the only result is that it's less funny.

And of course, don’t forget: just because Al Hartley only draws white people in these Spire Christian Comics, that doesn’t mean there’s any kind of racism going on in good old Riverdale.

#archie comics #archieganda #content warning just about everything

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watusichris · 3 years

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My Brilliant Career in Chicago Pro Wrestling: A True Story

Damn, I could have sworn I’d posted this 2015 Night Flight story, which remains the funniest thing I’ve ever written. Every word is true. ********** In the early 1970s, before Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation (today World Wrestling Entertainment) turned professional wrestling into a pay-per-view cash cow, pro grappling was a wide-open game run by maverick regional promoters and catering to lunatic fans. I got to experience this incredible world intimately: For two years, I served as “publicist” for the promoter in one of the biggest wrasslin’ towns in the country, Chicago.

I was fresh out of college back in 1972, and returned to my old room in my mother’s apartment in Evanston bearing a seemingly worthless bachelor’s degree in English and no immediate prospects for gainful employment. Fortunately, my father believed in nepotism.

After a long career as a TV executive that had garnered him two Peabody Awards, my dad was then the general manager of WSNS, a Chicago UHF station that broadcast on Channel 44. It was a low-rent operation that my old man helped legitimize by securing telecasts of White Sox games. (He loathed Sox announcer Harry Caray, who would get hammered out of his skull while working in the booth, and rightly thought major league screwball-turned-color man Jimmy Piersall was out of his mind.)

Though such questionable WSNS programming as a daily late-night weathercast delivered by a buxom negligee-clad blonde stretched out on a heart-shaped bed was a thing of the past, colorful holdovers from the old schedule remained. And thus my dad called me one day to say he could get me some part-time work doing PR for Bob Luce, the local pro wrestling promoter, who mounted the weekly show All Star Championship Wrestling on the station.

Naturally, I was hired on the spot at my first meeting with Luce, who was something of a legend in Chicago sports circles at the time. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Bob Greene captured had him perfectly in a famous column in which every sentence ended with an exclamation point.

Stocky, florid of complexion, and as loud as his off-the-rack sport coats, the outsized Luce was the dictionary definition of the word “character.” You’d sit down with him in a restaurant, and the other diners would duck and cover. Constantly agitated and gesticulating wildly, his stentorian conversation was a manic torrent of hype and madness, punctuated by explosive laughter than sounded like a machine gun going off next to your ear.

Fittingly, before joining the wrestling biz, Luce had edited a tabloid, the National Tattler. Like the National Enquirer of that frontier era, the rag made its bones with totally fictitious “news” stories featuring lots of cleavage and outré bloodletting. At one lunch, to the very evident embarrassment of the neighboring clientele, Luce regaled me with the tale of one inspired Tattler cover story, which I will recount Greene-style. Imagine it at full volume: “I got this idea, see, for a story about a sex orgy! [He pronounced “orgy” with a hard “g,” as in “Porgy” of Porgy and Bess.] But it had to be a different kind of orgy! So I got my wife Sharon to take her clothes off and covered her with peanut butter! And we took some pictures, and the lights were HOT, and the peanut butter melted all over her! They were great pictures! We called it – ha ha HA! – ‘PEANUT BUTTER ORGY!’”

Luce had graduated to promoting pro wrestling events in Chicago and other Midwestern markets, in partnership with the American Wrestling Association’s star attractions, Verne Gagne and Dick the Bruiser, of whom more in a moment. (His sweet, funny, but definitely tough wife knew the business: She had wrestled under the name Sharon Lass.)

As the noisy host of All Star Championship Wrestling, Luce would interview the stars of his upcoming promotions, show footage of recent contests, and pump the next matches. Thrusting a finger at the camera in one of his windups, he would shriek, “BE THERE!!!” Ever the sales impresario, he also served as the show’s principal pitchman, appearing in tandem with some of his hulking charges -- and occasionally with special guest hucksters like former heavyweight champ Leon Spinks -- to spiel for a long line of sketchy local advertisers. They are among the greatest and most hilarious commercials ever made.

As Luce’s publicity rep, commanding a monthly paycheck of $200, I was charged with lightweight duty: writing and mailing press releases promoting the bi-weekly Friday night matches at the Chicago International Amphitheatre, assisting the WSNS camera crew at the gigs (sometimes by protecting their extra film magazines from flying bodies at ringside), and calling in the results of the matches to the local papers. (The last task proved to be the most onerous. I’d ring up the local sports desks late on the nights of the matches and harangue some half-drunk, bored assistant editor whose interest in the “sport” could not have been more infinitesimal. When I finally managed to get the Sun-Times to print the results of one match, I felt as if I’d qualified for a Publicists Guild award.) I also performed certain functions for Luce when he was out of town or too busy to handle them. One weekday afternoon I accompanied Superstar Billy Graham, later a big WWF name and a sort of proto-Hulk Hogan, to Wrigley Field, where he was interviewed by nonplussed announcer Jack Brickhouse between innings of a Chicago Cubs radio broadcast.

Every other week for nearly two years, I’d take the El down to the Amphitheatre, located on Halsted Street on the far South Side, adjacent to the old Chicago Stock Yards. (I held onto the job even after I secured a similarly nepotistic but full-time position – writing about cheap component stereo systems for Zenith Radio Corporation.) The antique, immense Amphitheatre had hosted big political conventions, auto shows, circuses, rodeos, and concerts by Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin, but Luce’s dates at the venue, as you will see, attracted a distinctly different class of customer.

The pre-match staging area, where I’d meet Luce and the crew, was the Sirloin Room of the adjacent Stock Yard Inn, not far from the site of the old South Side cattle slaughterhouses. This is where Luce’s employees and pals would also convene before the night’s entertainment began to swill a couple of cocktails and shoot the breeze. It was a cast worthy of a Damon Runyon story.

Luce employed a bodyguard, a towering ex-Chicago cop named Duke, who had reputedly shot six men before being relieved of duty by the PD. He stood about six-four and dressed exactly like John Shaft. He emanated an aura of extreme menace. Once, when I asked him what he would do if someone actually started any serious trouble, Duke wordlessly pulled back the lapel of his full-length leather coat to reveal a shoulder holster bulging with a .44 Magnum.

The promotion’s bagman, charged with collecting the night’s cash receipts, was a diminutive cat everyone called Bill the Barber. I never knew his last name, but he did in fact run a South Side barbershop. He’d invariably show up dressed in a sport coat that looked like a TV test pattern and a skinny-brim fedora, with watery eyes that sometimes flicked nervously above his pencil-thin mustache. He kept a .38 strapped to his belt.

Many nights, a mysterious character referred to only as “Carmie La Papa” would put in an appearance. This elderly Italian gentleman was always treated with great deference and ate on Luce’s tab. I never found out exactly what he did. But he looked a lot like the mobster played by Pasquale Cajano in Martin Scorsese’s Casino, and I thought it wise not to inquire about his line of work.

There were also bona fide wrestling groupies, well-stacked, slightly haggard old-school broads who draped themselves on the bar, sipping pink ladies. One night, Luce leaned over to me in the Sirloin Room and said, in a whisper that could be heard 20 feet away, “After the matches, these girls and the guys go to a motel up in Prospect Heights, and they have orgies.” (Again, pronounced with a hard “g.”) The most popular of these was reportedly Gloria, a tall, pneumatic redhead of uncertain but rapidly advancing age; Luce confided, “She will do anything.”

The matches themselves were something to behold. I’d usually watch them in the company of WSNS’s young, jaded camera crew, from the dilapidated press box high above the ring in the center of the Amphitheatre. The crowd – thousands of poorly dressed, myopic, malodorous, and steeply inebriated men – was a product of what may be called the pre-ironic era of pro wrestling. There was no such thing as a suspension of disbelief among these spectators. Disbelief did not exist. Though the matches were as closely stage-managed as a production of Richard III, these rubes accepted every feigned punch and bogus drop kick as the McCoy.

Pro wrestling is the eternal contest between virtue and evil, and the wrestlers were identified in equal number as good guys and heels. Most of the good guys on the undercard – there were usually half a dozen matches, with one main event – were young “scientific” wrestlers whose Greco-Roman moves were no match for the brazenly illegal play of the dirty heels, who almost invariably won their bouts with tactics that would not pass muster with an elementary school playground monitor, let alone a legitimate referee. About the only one of these “babyfaces” (or, alternatively, “chumps”) who was vouchsafed an occasional victory was Greg Gagne, son of the promotion’s star attraction and part owner.

By the early ‘70s, Verne Gagne had been wrestling professionally for more than two decades; drafted by the Chicago Bears and then rebelling against team owner George Halas’ prohibition of a sideline on the mat, he had chosen the ring over the gridiron. He was 46 years old when I started working for Luce; he was still in decent shape, and, unlike almost all of his opponents, he still had all of his teeth.

I only managed to spend time with him once. For some reason now lost in the dense fog of time, Luce dispatched me to meet Gagne at the elegant Pump Room of the Drake Hotel near Lake Michigan. There, as cabaret star Dorothy Donegan serenaded us on the piano, the 16-time world heavyweight wrestling champion of the world got me brain-dead drunk, and then poured me into a cab home. He was an excellent guy.

Many of the other good guys on Luce’s undercards were reliable patsies for the baddies. Pepper Gomez, one of the domestic game’s few Mexican stars, was a venerable attraction who was allowed the rare triumph; billed as “the Man with the Cast-Iron Stomach,” he once allowed a Volkswagen Bug to be driven over his gut on Luce’s TV show, where he was a frequent guest.

One of my favorites was Yukon Moose Cholak. Then a veteran of 20 years on the mat, Moose owned a bar not far from the Amphitheatre, but he still worked regularly for his close pal Luce in the AWA. Huge, pot-bellied, and benign, he boasted a ripe Sout’ Side accent rivaled only by Dennis Farina’s. He was hardly an exceptional combatant: He moved around the ring with the fleetness of a dazed sloth. He was a regular on Luce’s show, and often appeared with the host in his TV spots.

The only time I appeared as a guest on All Star Championship Wrestling, Moose was the victim of the on-camera carnage that was a requisite feature of the show. At the time, conflict of interest be damned, I was writing a column about wrestling for a short-lived local sports paper called Fans, and was brought in to lend something like legitimacy to the proceedings. Luce offered me a chair on his threadbare set to push a forthcoming match between Cholak, who appeared on camera next to me, and Handsome Jimmy Valiant, a new heel on the rise in the market.

I figured something ugly was going to happen, but I went about extolling the virtues of Moose’s nearly non-existent mat skills in the front of the camera. Suddenly, Valiant crept up from behind the black scrim behind us and whacked Cholak over the head with a metal folding chair. To this day, I believe my expression of outraged surprise was worthy of a local Emmy, but a nomination eluded me.

I was actually very fond of Valiant, whom I interviewed with his “brother” and tag team partner Luscious John Valiant for Fans. Jimmy was a peroxided, strutting egomaniac in the grand Gorgeous George manner, and he had some classic patter: “I’m da wimmen’s pet and da men’s regret! I got da body wimmen love and men fear! And you, you’re as useful as a screen door in a submarine, daddy!” A rock ‘n’ roll fan, he went on to a very successful solo career, appropriately enough in Memphis, the capital of all things Elvis.

After Gagne the elder, the AWA’s biggest attraction was the tag team of Dick the Bruiser and the Crusher. Bruiser had gotten his competitive start as a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers, but had been a top wrestling draw since 1955. Somewhere along the way, he had been converted from heel to hero, and the Chicago fans adored him. Among the merch sold at the Amphitheatre were Dick the Bruiser Fan Club buttons; measuring six inches in diameter, they could either be pinned on one’s chest or, with the aid of a built-in cardboard stand, be displayed as a plaque. I kept mine on my desk at my straight job to freak out my co-workers.

Early in my gig with Luce, I was taken to meet Bruiser in the locker room. He sat on a table smoking a huge cigar. When I was introduced to him, he exclaimed, “Hey, you’re Ed Morris’ kid? You got more hair than your old man!” My father, who was in fact almost completely bald, had been known to associate with winners of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes. I was a little surprised that he ran in Bruiser’s circle.

The Crusher’s career in the squared circle dated back to the late ‘40s. I was even more impressed by him than I was by the Bruiser, for he had been the inspiration of the Novas’ wrasslin’-themed single “The Crusher,” a huge 1965 radio hit in Chicago for the Minnesota garage band the Novas (and later eloquently covered by the Cramps). Bruiser and Crusher were a unique combo: They were “good guys,” but they earned their keep by being badder than the “bad guys” they gutter-stomped.

The villains in that era of pro wrestling were often the object of atavistic xenophobia and hatred. Long before the U.S.’s conflicts in the Middle East, the Sheik (né Ed Farhat in Lansing, Michigan), who took the ring wearing a burnoose, was among the most reviled of heels. Some of the older fans were World War II vets, and they lustily booed Baron von Raschke, who climbed through the ropes with a monocle in one eye, draped in a Nazi flag. He was actually a U.S. Army vet born Jim Raschke in Omaha, Nebraska. His fake German accent was utterly feeble.

The AWA’s all-purpose villain, who would go on to bigger things as one of McMahon’s first WWF stars, was “Pretty Boy” Bobby Heenan, dubbed “the Weasel” by the Bruiser. Heenan was featured in his own matches, but he was most reliably entertaining as a manager, of the most duplicitous and cowardly variety, in another villain’s corner. You didn’t need a script to know what was going to happen: Just as it looked like the good guy was going to triumph, Heenan would leap into the ring and smash the apparent victor’s head into a turnbuckle or hit him over the skull with a water bucket.

Heenan featured in the most outrageous story I heard during my brilliant career in wrestling. One night I was sitting with the film crew when Al Lerner, the mustachioed, shaggy-haired, bespectacled WSNS sports reporter, entered the press box with a portable tape machine on his shoulder and a stunned look on his face. “I’ve interviewed people in front of burning buildings,” Al said. “I’ve interviewed people as they were jumping out of airplanes. But I’ve never interviewed anyone while they were getting a blowjob.”

It seems that while Al was in the locker room recording some audio bites from Heenan, a voluptuous girl standing nearby walked over to the wrestler, kneeled down in front of him, pulled down his trunks, and began giving him the kind of pre-match service Mickey Rourke probably dreamed of but never received. As she went about her business, Heenan continued to spout invective to Al as if nothing extraordinary was transpiring. With that moment alone, Bobby Heenan earned his place in the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame.

I visited Heenan in the locker room on a somewhat less eventful evening, but that night I learned the secret of many pros’ mat success. As I was talking to him, I noticed that his forehead was crosshatched with tiny scars, some of them new and still livid. I later mentioned this to one of the crew, and was told that these wounds – referred to as “juicing” -- were actually self-inflicted, so that the wrestlers could easily draw blood during critical moments of violence in their matches.

As Heenan said in a later interview, “If you want the green, you gotta bring the red.” Gore was a staple of pro wrestling, and there was nothing like sitting in an arena filled with 10,000 or 15,000 crazed spectators and hearing a drunken chant go up as a good guy pummeled a heel to the mat: “WE WANT BLOOD! WE WANT BLOOD! WE WANT BLOOD!”

My last hurrah in pro wrestling was one of Luce’s rare alfresco promotions, a multi-bout 1974 card at old Comiskey Park, the White Sox’s stadium, which climaxed with a 16-man battle royal. I don’t remember who triumphed in the main event, but I do remember that someone on the crew brought a bat and some softballs along, and we ended the evening shagging fly balls under the lights where Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio once played.

The outlaw era of regional pro wrestling is a dim memory for most. The racket would get wilder after I left it: In an interview with Nashville wrestling figure Jimmy Cornette, Heenan said that a fan at a 1975 Amphitheatre match pulled out a pistol and began firing at him, but the shooter only managed to wound four people in the rows in front of him.

McMahon’s WWF brought the regional promoters’ day to a close, pillaging most of the big names in the game in the process. Today, the WWE has been displaced in popularity by the even gaudier UFC contests. Most of the stars I met – including Bruiser, Crusher, and Cholak – are dead now. Heenan, a throat cancer survivor, has been in poor health for more than a decade. Verne Gagne died this April; in 2009, suffering from dementia, he accidentally killed a 97-year-old fellow resident in a Minnesota assisted living facility. Even the old stomping grounds are gone: The Chicago Amphitheatre was razed in 1999.

Bob Luce passed away in 2007, but his wild-ass legacy may live on via an unlikely champion. There are many analogs between pro wrestling and rock ‘n’ roll, and this April, mat mega-fan Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins announced on Twitter that he had bought Luce’s memorabilia and an archive of 9,000 vintage wrestling photos. Maybe he and former Hüsker Dü front man Bob Mould, a fellow wrasslin’ aficionado who once worked for McMahon as a writer, can make something of it. That would rock.

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southslates · 4 years

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hi dee! i’ve recently gotten into writing fanfic and whenever i try writing dialogue, it just seems...out of place. do you have any tips for writing dialogue?

Hey! Anyone who reads my fics knows that I shift between writing fics with no dialogue and fics that are mostly dialogue :) I thought about this for a hot second, and I think that there are two things that matter to me a lot when I'm reading/writing dialogue:

First of all, grammar/punctuation. I don’t want to sound really stingy here, and perfect punctuation or dialogue is certainly something that I’m not the best at, but some things are important for readership! These are just a few things which I see a lot in fanfic :)

Don’t end every piece of your dialogue in a period -- and if you do end your dialogue in a period, don’t add a verb after that period -- use a comma there.

“I feel like this is going to be a night to remember.” She said.

“I feel like this is going to be a night to remember,” she said. ☑

When you add an extra period you disturb the flow, and the verb flows as another sentence, though it should be lumped in with the initial statement. I’m not the best at the opposite of this, lol, but I see more prominently than its opposite.

Along with that, just . . . generic dialogue things!

Always capitalize the beginning of your dialogue, unless it’s within two commas.

“yeah, this looks like it’s going to be fun.”

“Yeah.” She smiled. “this looks like it’s going to be fun.”

“Yeah,” she smiled. “This looks like it’s going to be fun.” ☑

“Yeah,” she smiled, “this looks like it’s going to be fun.” ☑

And I’m sure these are all obvious, but general proper and consistent capitalization, proper spacing, and punctuation at the end of the dialogue is always important!

“Yeah” he told her.

“Yeah,” he told her.

“Okay, fine “ he glared over at the other side of the room.

“Okay, fine.” He glared over at the other side of the room.

“I’m so excited!” She said.

“I’m so excited!” she said.

“ How are you doing?” She questioned.

“How are you doing?” she questioned.

Secondly, flow!

Everyone’s dialogue is really personal to them. I think making sure your punctuation is mostly correct adds a lot to flow. There are no rules to dialogue or writing :)

Here are some things I do in order to maintain ‘flow’ --

I have my characters interrupt each other with em-dashes a lot. This is something I feel is really reflective of the way most of my conversations in real life occur, and it’s something decently unique to me, but I really enjoy doing it. (These are excerpts from ‘we walk a fragile line’ because I have no imagination, lol)

“Did you tell the ambassador —”

She was dreading this. “I don’t know, Zuko. He said that he can’t give me the job back. There are too many applicants.”

Same thing with ‘. . .’ because a lot of people trail off a lot when they talk as well.

“You can’t work while . . .”

“I know. But I can’t quit.”

Have your conversations out loud if they feel awkward! Sit down and talk to yourself or a trusted friend, and either say what you have out loud or record your conversation. You can incorporate the nuances of your voices into your conversation.

Every character has a unique voice. You can choose one thing about a character and give them a voice. In ATLA, Uncle Iroh speaks formally, slowly, so his words are enunciated and very thought-out, while Zuko just speaks his mind. Azula has a haughty tone that’s combined with a large vocabulary, and she tends to use words with cruel connotations. Aang is really excited, so he speaks clearly and with a lot of exclamation points.

Dialogue is really reflective of you. Personally, I do debate and had a terrible lisp growing up, and I’ve gone through years of speech therapy. I personally speak very fast and using run-ons. I know other people who tend to speak very slowly. Characters can have these differences too.

Don’t be afraid to let characters stutter, forget what they say, or stop talking in the middle of their sentences and blush xD

I think the biggest thing to remember is that dialogue is not description. Characters don’t tend to use gigantic academic words when they speak even if those words are a part of their vocabulary, and your general writing is going to be more varied and include more words than what your characters are going to say. Don’t be afraid to have characters repeat speech patterns, especially with different people, because we do that. A lot of dialogue can end up stilted and formal, and sometimes that doesn’t always flow in fic.

Explore your writing and your dialogue! Read your work to yourself! Get a beta-reader! Explore your capabilities :) I will do that as well! Sorry for this long and rambling answer, but I hope this made some sort of sense. Thanks for asking this, @i-guess-the-tables-shifted, it made me think about my own writing a bit!

(General PSA that I’m sixteen and write fanfiction, so this is not the word of God, or even someone incredibly credible, but take it as you will, and let me know if you disagree with anything here)

#dee writes #zutara fics #fanfiction #writing #writing dialogue

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kennytucker · 5 years

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few ideas on how the crew texts.

kenny: no capitals turns off spellchrck makes constant mistakes cause he can 😳😳😳😩 liberal use of emojis tht stsrted out as ironic but is now 💯% part of his style 💦🍆. uses abrev. that only he understands

stan: idk his texts are plain I guess. vanilla. he doesn't capitalize tho cause he wants to seem more chill. doesn't use emojis that often. uses lmao a lot tho. that's how he usually ends his sentences lmao and it drives kyle up the wall

cartman: who fucking knows it's a fuckinf mystery sometimes he wouldbe typing like he is writing his thesis paper on why he hates Kyle Broflovski and the next second it's literally kenny levels of illegible. uses emojis ✌️ but is an asshole about it. he's the type to use the pepe emoji on discord as well. he's That Guy

Butters: uses lots of exclamation points !!!! he always seems super excited n eager to talk to u !!! he likes to end his messages with lotsa hearts and other cute shit 💕💕😊😊😊 when he types LOL he is sincerely laughing out loud

Kyle: Insists on typing like a fucking nerd. He tends to intimidate people online because he has perfect punctuation and grammar and rarely uses abbreviations. He also spends minutes retyping or rewording his messages so he tends to take a little while to reply. Sometimes when he's angry he'll absndon all sesnse of good typing habits but its usually when he's calling out cartmanm for being a fucking dickhead. He uses emotes like (-: because he thinks it's funny and passive aggressive.

#kat rambles #jskskdkdkdkdjjee like sometimes butters is like hey kyle ?? Are u mad at me #and kyle is like:#No. Why do you think that?#and butters is like (screams) HE SOHNDS MAD

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borisbubbles · 5 years

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Eurivision: 40 - 36

40. Maja Keuc - “No one” Slovenia 2011

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Psychedelic, secretly evil masterpieces <3

“No one” is often overlooked in many rankings, by people with utterly vanilla tastes, and while vanilla is an excellent flavour, sometimes vanilla needs to bloom into something better with more flavour and texture. ENTER, this sneakily fierce song, featuring Bettan’s hip-waving choreo <3

"No one” slowly but gradually lulls you into its dark, alluring storyline, tricking you into believing this is a break-up song in which the woman is crying over the loss of the relationship, ONLY PLOT TWIST the girl is a textbook psychopath and this message of empowerment is actually one of psychotic obsession and petty revenge. Is this Gone Girl?

That’s in a nutshell, why “No one” is such a fantastic entry. It gradually, slowly unfolds like a paper fortune teller, except every flap contains a message of unfiltered, devious, psychotic energy. 😍 It’s so unabashedly dark and I cannot wait for ~Amaya~ to epically return to ESC (within the next three years) and give Slovenia their first top 10 since Nuša Derenda.

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39. Elina Nechayeva “La forza” Estonia 2018

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[2018 Review here]

Elina is so beautiful.

Wow. I mean, WHAT IS LA FORZA though if not a magnificent wonderland of stunning visual effect. It’s the best example of Estonia’s technological prowess at Eurovision. I mean, look at these projections. They are breath-taking, in the literal sense of the word:

Naturally, I must address that “La Forza” has received the criticism of “ugh, it’s boring”. However most of those people like Tamtaratam, so their opinions can be safely discarded into the rubbish bin. 🤭 I personally think “La forza” is a perfect execution of opera, providing captivating vocals and a sincerely stunning act. Opera is supposed to be a mind-blowing spectacle and “La forza” is exactly that.

However, it might actually be... a bit too perfect for my tastes. Its greatest strengths also made “La forza” a bit aloof and distant, and while this is far from a dealbreaker, it does prevent me from ranking it further.

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38. Loreen - “Euphoria” Sweden 2012

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[this entry was inspired by a popular youtube cooking channel]

Yes, this is not a ranking with Loreen as their #1. This could have been a ranking with Loreen as their #1 if she had gone to Eurovision with either of her other two melfest entries, but look at the flag and look at Sweden’s general taste in melfest winner:

It’s even a wonder a selection which produced THOSE winners also produced "Euphoria” to begin with.

Anyway, now that we’re on to the subject of Sweden, it appears that over the years, the general of opinion of Sweden has dropped. This is because out of all the countries participating in Eurovision, Sweden is by far the most smug.

Which is why the first step in covering the song that is generally considered their best entry, is to humble Sweden:

Hey Sweden, See this country? It’s called Switzerland. Switzerland once won the Eurovision Song Contest with Céline Dion. Céline Dion is one of the best selling artists in the world. She made double the sales ABBA made and has non-stop performed, while ABBA broke up less than 10 years after they won. You’re not better at iconic winners than Switzerland, Sweden. Remember that.

See this country? It’s called Moldova. It is the poorest country in the Euroverse and has amazing staging everbody talks about. Nobody ever talks about your staging because it just conveniently pretty people in various degrees of treadmill. You don’t stage better than Moldova, Sweden. Remember that.

See this country? It is called Malta. Malta have sent a woman to Eurovision for five years straight. They are one of the most unapologetically pro-female countries in the world. Even all of their JESC entries except for two have been women. Meanwhile you aren’t sending women and you know why? Because melfest is a rigged and fangirl pandering sausagefest. You’re worse at inclusion than Malta, Sweden. Remember that.

See this country? It’s called Ukraine. Ukraine have reached the grand final every year they’ve participated. Have you got a better track record? No, because you cannot guarantee qualification without properly without eating crusty professional jury ass first. You’re not better at reaching a Eurovision Grand Final than Ukraine, Sweden. Remember that.

See this country? It’s called Portugal. Portugal are the one of the few countries to have never sent songs with English as the primary language to Eurovision. They have proudly stuck with their native language even though it sounds like drunk Spanish. You know why you aren’t signing in your native language, Sweden? because you have no guts and let’s face it, no glory, that’s fucking why. Also your language sounds like Norwegian with a mouthfull of surströmming. You’re not better at native languages than Portugal, Sweden. Remember that.

See this country? It’s called Luxembourg. Luxembourg is a microstate that everyone wants to see back in the contest. Does anyone get excited when you return to the contest? No because they know you’ll get an underserved top five hand-fed to you, no matter what generic gobshite you’re sending. You’re worse at generating buzz than Luxembourg, Sweden. Remember that.

See this country? It’s called Norway. Norway’s last three entries have scored more televote points than yours have. You know why? Because their entries speak to people and are entertainment. Your entries only speak to people with boring taste and no friends (Denmark). Which is why you will never find or be repped by a KEiiNO. You’re not better at fun than Norway, Sweden, remember that.

See this country? it’s called Ireland. They.... okay, they aren’t better than you. I’ll be honest, Ireland is just a worthless, flavourless slice of slock in Eurovision. They’re flavourless, bland, completely without taste or texture. They’re the iceberg lettuce of this world. It’s a shock they won so many times, but I guess that’s anglophone privilege for you. Still, they have won Eurovision 7 times. Have you won Eurovision seven times, Sweden? Nuh uh, not that, peace! Remember that ;)

Now that Sweden has been properly humbled, it is time move on to the Loreen write up:

“Euphoria” is an everlasting piece of art and everyone who thinks otherwise needs a therapist.

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37. Bojana Stamenov - “Beauty never lies” Serbia 2015

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FINALLY I CAN SAY, THIS SONG IS FANTASTIC AND IT’S... fucking more than “okay”. Bojana is a FORCE OF NATURE.

It is therefore UTTERLY baffling to me that so many jurors ranked this song LAST??? Like,

a of all, look at how the crowd POPS at the key change, that’s as much an objective parametre of quality if ever there was.

B of all, I legit do not understand watching 2015 (a rather mediocre year of Eurovision) and thinking that Serbia is the worst, over, say... Bogus?? Because Bojana is a Goddess while Boggie is boring cunt and Goddesses > Boring cunts.

The jural dislike is even more baffling considering that “Beauty never lies” is a touching and deep exploration of overcoming self-loathing, I rant about meaningitis a lot, but one of the BEST ideas Serbia had was to revamp “Ceo svet je moi” into a body-positivity anthem because that theme + Bojana is a match made in Euroheaven. “Beauty never lies” starts off captivating, a gripping narrative about self-loathing with hints of avant garde artistry. It also has some of the best lyrics found in any Eurovision song. “Finally I can say-” is forever, but “beneath this veil of skin my heart’s entangled in, beauty’s embodied” is pure poetry. Excellent, just excellent.

and then, after a full minute of build-up and completely without warning "Beauty never lies” transforms into... a SHAMELESS CAMPY SCHLAGER MASTERPIECE 😍

This has to be one of the best key changes in Eurovision, right? As “Beauty never lies” starts off sentimental and contemplentative, it suddenly blossoms into an unapolegetic bop that completely DIS-MAN-TLES body-shaming in one fell swoop. Songs like these make me feel ALIVE and proud of being Eurovision fanboy. Thank you for your wise lesson Bojana, you stunner you. Signed with sincerity, BorisBubbles.

This will come as no surprise but she was also the highest Serbian entry on this list, which means it’s also recap time:

Statistics never lie, Serbia was pretty good in this decade. I rarely care for their entries with the intensity that I did for Bojana, but they are also consistently inoffensive. It it what you can expect for a small country bursting with musical talent (and Zheljko Joksimovic).

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36. Giorgos Alkaios & Friends - “OPA!” Greece 2010

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OPA!

I cannot let anyone with that haircut reach my top 35 in good conscience ,but jesus what a FIRECRACKER! I think the general apathy towards 2010 comes from the general lack of ENERGETIC bangers, but between “OPA!” (caps and exclamation point are mandatory) and “Allez Ola Olé”, I don’t think anyone can complain. This song is an EXPLOSION.

Much like how “Dancing in the rain” was a showcase of Spain’s greatest talent, so is “OPA!” an excellent calling card for Greece’s Eurovision prowess: they excel at drunken party anthems. “OPA!” is a bangin’ bacchanal, punctuating every sentence with kickass virile energy, examples of which include ejaculating drums:

Electro-Fiddle solo’s <3

and hammy nokia noises <3 (attempted pandering to the hosts and getting the country wrong <3333333)

This song and “Alcohol is free” were the final times where Greece excelled at high voltage fun (there’s also “Rise up” I guess but lol @ that). GET IT TOGETHER GREECE, but I guess I’ll elaborate further once it’s Koza Mostra’s turn to be judged, juried and executed.

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#Eurovision #Eurovision Song Contest #Maja Keuc #No One #Slovenia #Elina Nechayeva #La Forza #Sweden #Loreen #Euphoria #Serbia #Estonia #Bojana Stamenov #Beauty never lies #Giorgos Alkaios #Giorgos Alkaois' friends #OPA

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