Marci 'ㅅ'

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

I think because Ash knew, if he turned Sing down in front of his gang, it would cost him his position as his crew's boss. Sing's gang would have seen Ash's refusal as a lack of respect for Sing, as if he weren't enough of a threat to warrant the challenge, and if you combine that with the tension and pressure already plaguing Sing from his inability to explain why he hadn't yet challenged Ash over Shorter's death, it was possible one of Sing's group might have challenged him themselves for the top spot, or they simply would have thrown Sing out of the group altogether. That alone could have put Sing's life at risk. I also think Ash just had too much respect for Sing to embarrass him in front of his crew like that. It was largely about maintaining Sing's reputation and standing as a boss. Regarding him with the same respect he would have shown any other boss, by treating him as a legitimate opponent. Also, since Lao had already left before Ash accepted, I don't think him turning Sing down would have made any real difference, sadly, in whether or not Lao later attacked him. All Lao knew was that Sing requested a one-on-one battle, and therefore, put himself up for death.

But I don't think Ash ever had any real intention of going through with Sing's request, either. There's certainly no way he ever would have killed Sing. If they did fight, he would have spared him, the same way he did Arthur initially. As it was, he simply told Sing to forget it.

There are going to be days (or weeks, or months) where you sit down to write and feel... disconnected. From your voice, from your characters, from your ideas. Like the person who used to write your stories just packed up and left.

They didn't. They're just tired. Here's how to keep writing anyway:

Lower the bar (Until it's on the floor) You are not here to write something brilliant. You are here to write something. A paragraph. A sentence. A single line of dialogue. Movement matters way more than quality.

Write around the story Don't force it. If you can't write the scene, try: ⋆ A character ramble / journal entry ⋆ A conversation that won't be included in the final draft ⋆ A list of things the character would never admit out loud ⋆ A messy summary of what should happen Engage with the story from a different angle.

Borrow a voice until yours comes back No, not with AI. Read something that feels close to what you want to write, or watch a scene that captures the tone, then write immediately after. Not to copy, to reignite your instincts.

Write the emotion, not the plot. What is your character feeling in this moment? What are they afraid of? What do they want but won't say? What's being kept from them? The emotion leads, the plot catches up later.

Stop trying to "feel like a writer" first. You don't write when you feel like a writer. You feel like a writer because you write.

i love you all and i need you to stop writing trauma as a single breakdown scene in the rain after which the character is Healed and Ready to Love Again. that is NOT trauma :(

⊹ Trauma doesn't announce itself. it shows up as your character suddenly not being able to eat a specific food, or going very quiet in a loud room, or laughing at the wrong moment because their nervous system decided that was the appropriate response. it's mundane and weird and it makes no sense from the outside. the dramatic flashback sequence is the least realistic part. the most realistic part is your character suddenly needing to leave a grocery store for a reason they can't articulate.

⊹ The body keeps score and it keeps it in the strangest places. a particular smell. the quality of light at a certain time of day. a tone of voice that sounds like someone who hurt them. your traumatised character doesn't think "this reminds me of the bad thing." their heart rate spikes and they don't know why. they feel wrong and they can't locate the feeling. they're irritable for three days and only later, if ever, do they make the connection. write the disconnection. it's more honest.

⊹ trauma also does not make people universally sympathetic and wise. it makes some people controlling. some people funny at inappropriate times. some people very good in a crisis and completely unable to handle a normal day. some people are generously kind to strangers and absolutely terrible to people they love. trauma shapes behaviour in contradictory, inconvenient ways that don't resolve into a lesson. your traumatised character can be difficult to like. that's not a flaw in the writing. that's the WRITING.

Man, I get so fucking annoyed with how Blanca treats Yut-Lung with kid gloves, meanwhile he slaps Ash around and shits all over him and makes him hate himself even more than he already does. But okay, whatever.

This entire sequence pisses me off.

Yut-Lung literally just admits that he wants to kill Eiji because he's upset at the idea of Ash "finding redemption" while he has to wallow in his bitter hatred. But again, for as intelligent and brilliant as Yut-Lung is, and for as well as he's able to read Ash and target his weaknesses, he shows here that he really doesn't know him at all.

He says he can see the "rage" in Ash. That his beautiful face masks a furious demon, and blah, blah, blah. Talk about a terminal case of projection.

The real, root cause of Yut-Lung's hatred toward Ash is that Ash isn't like him, and he knows it. He knows Ash has experienced worse abuse than he has, even, and yet Ash isn't "filled with hate" the way Yut-Lung is, and he never has been. Eiji isn't the reason for Ash's empathy or compassion. Ash had those things long before he ever met Eiji. We see it in the way Ash ran the youth gangs in Manhattan, for example. Under his rule, fighting between the groups became basically non-existent. We see it in the way Dino talks about how much Ash cried the first time he was ordered by Dino to kill for him. We see it in the way he spares the lives of his own boys, even when they went behind his back to work with Dino. We see it in the way Shorter gets frustrated at Ash for playing "soft ball" with his enemies. We see it in the way Ash begged Blanca to show him how to go easy on his enemies, and in the way Ash tries to limit the damage he can cause by using a revolver instead of a semi-auto. On and on. Ash never wanted to hurt anyone. He never let the abuse he suffered drive him toward hate. He was always filled with compassion and kindness, and always led with those qualities first. So this so-called redemption that Yut-Lung expresses so much jealousy over isn't even a real thing. Ash never needed redemption, because he never sought to hurt anyone who didn't hurt him first or threaten him or the people he cared about. And even then, and I know I've spoken about this before, but for example, he never shows any, real desire to go after Yut-Lung, despite the absolute horror he subjects Ash to.

I swear to God, Yut-Lung is so full of shit.

He's trying to make excuses to Blanca here for his own, shitty behavior. Because he knows what he's doing is wrong. So he tries to pawn it off as somehow being Ash's fault because it "isn't fair" that Ash can find love while he can't. He refuses to give Ash any credit for being a good person. As if Ash just lucked into the bonds and relationships he has, rather than gaining those friendships through his own kindness and compassion. The real reason Ash has so many people who care about him is because Ash cares about them just as much, if not more. People are drawn to Ash, ultimately, because they know he would never abandon them. Because they know his care is genuine and that he would do anything to protect them.

And Blanca is only half-right here. He thinks, along with Yut-Lung, that Ash would have ended up like both of them if he hadn't had Eiji. That losing Eiji would turn Ash into a monster. But the truth is, with or without Eiji, Ash was never a monster and he never would have become one, either, because his entire character is defined by compassion. He was compassionate before he ever met Eiji, and he would remain compassionate, even without him. The part Blanca gets right is when he says that 'rather than hate and be triumphant, Ash chose to love and be destroyed'. Ash made that choice, before he ever met Eiji, even. He made it in the bonds he had with Shorter, and with Alex and Kong and Bones, and Skip, and Griff. He made it every time he willingly put his life on the line for theirs, every time he showed compassion and mercy, even to his enemies like Arthur. The reason Arthur is able to come back for Ash later on is because Ash chose to spare his life to begin with. Something Blanca would have cautioned him against. That's a manifestation of what Blanca means when he says Ash chose to love and be destroyed over hating and finding triumph. Again, long before he ever met Eiji. And when Blanca tells Yut-Lung that 'one who does not love cannot be loved', and when he says 'Ash at the very least knows what it is to love', that's a perfect encapsulation of the fundamental difference between Ash and these two. Ash always knew what it meant to love. He never lost sight of it, never lost the ability to love, no matter how bad things got for him, and that's his strength as a person. That's what makes him superior to Blanca and Yut-Lung.

Yut-Lung's real problem with Ash started when he saw that Ash was capable of love, still, despite the hell of his life.

He couldn't handle it because Yut-Lung himself no longer was, and so Ash's very existence served as a constant reminder of his own weakness and failure.

And so all the horrible shit he does to Ash, it's all in service of trying to drag Ash down to his level. Of trying to turn him into a monster like himself, so he doesn't have to be faced with his own shortcomings.

God, bro, this moment, too.

You really just forget how utterly devastating this story is until you read it again.

Lao saying all this shit to Ash right after what happened with Blanca, too, and with Eiji getting shot, it's just the most heartbreaking thing. And the way Ash just sits there and takes it, because he believes everything Lao is saying so completely.

Again, when people try to say the ending came out of nowhere, I have to think they're either in denial or they just weren't paying any kind of attention to the story itself. All of these moments, the one with Blanca, and this one with Lao, they were all building toward Ash deciding he couldn't have other people in his life, and choosing to die, because he couldn't bear the loneliness of it anymore.

I'll just never get over it, man.

It's like every word Lao says here is specifically designed to destroy what little sense of self-worth Ash might have still had left at this point in the story. It couldn't have been more cruel. And the worst past is, everything Lao says is completely wrong. It couldn't be more wrong. But it doesn't matter, because Ash has been convinced by him, and by Blanca, and Dino and every other piece of shit in his life that it's 100% correct. And again, that directly contributes to Ash's death, in the end.

Now excuse me while I go cry into my Cheerios.

me: vibrating no but listen. LISTEN. harry looks down in the graveyard and sees the thread and goes no and that's it that's his whole response and then he spends all of fifth year pretending it isn't there while the bond slowly makes his life worse and worse and voldemort is somehow. patient. about it.

Harry being confused about his role in Snapes life, scared that he’s just making things up in his head and he’s just being a weirdo burden to Snape. and at the same time being scared about Ron and Hermione finding out his thoughts, considering they also hate Snape as much as he does (or does he???). The phase where he’s starting to see Snape as a sort of father figure but he’s scared to replace James or Sirius’s place in his life, even if they’re gone.