Writing Tip

Writing Tip

because I see this everywhere and most people don’t know about it. The hyphen(-), the en-dash(–) and the em-dash(—) are three completely different things with completely different uses. If you write fanfiction, it’s likely that your readers won’t care, but if you want to submit a manuscript for publishing, you need to know the difference. 

The hyphen (-) is the basic symbol you find on your keyboard, and it’s meant to only be used for hyphenated words (well-being, two-thirds). 

The en-dash (–) is a slightly longer dash. It’s usually the width of an uppercase N, hence the name. You can find it by looking through the ‘insert symbol’ option in MS word or many word processors, and it is meant to be used to show a particular distance, or for intervals (May–August, 1900–1916, pages 12–22)

The em-dash (—) is what people most commonly use, but they refer to it as a hyphen. It’s the longest dash, about the size of an uppercase letter M, and you can either find it through the list of symbols in your word processor, or some word processors actually automatically transform two hyphens (–) into an em-dash  (—). It is meant to be used as a break in the sentence, in a place where a comma, semicolon or colon would normally be used or as a break in dialogue. (Her niece—the daughter of her oldest sister—is the one over there.) 

*All three types of dashes are normally meant to be used without any spaces on either side of the dash. 

I was looking at this scene to make a different post about it, and I just want to draw attention to how good the storyboarding is here. Look at the way adult Grace turns and looks up as her mother walks by. The directing implies that Grace's mom is absolutely towering over her, without having the two of them really get close enough, or providing any visual clues in the foreground or midground, to let us make a proper comparison. It creates this dreamlike impression that adult Grace is child-sized compared to her mom, without distracting the viewer from the emotional impact of the scene by giving us a shot that confirms Grace's mom is like Lady Dimitrescu levels of absurdly tall in this flashback.

Actually, seriously - even compared to child Grace, her mom still looks kinda Lady Di scale. The way little Grace is proportioned here, her size compared to the props, and the age of her voice, all make me think she's old enough and big enough that even an adult woman would have to be really tall to loom over her like that. But it's clear in a bunch of other shots, especially the mall cop office scene towards the end, that Grace's mother isn't particularly tall.

Older Grace isn't just small here because she's reliving a memory from her childhood. She's small because this memory makes her feel that she is very small and her mother is very big. The visual motif of size as a metaphor for a character's dominance, power, superiority, or prominence is important to Grace's character arc, although I think it's not quite as salient to her story as it is to Simon's.

"polyam is a choice-" okay no shut the fuck up

for some polyam people, yes, they would be comfortable being in a monogamous relationship, and poly may be a preference, but not all polyam people are like this.

it pisses me off that people keep saying it as if i didn't sit here and try to repress this part of myself and live in misery and ruin every relationship i have and just hate this part of myself for almost fifteen fucking years

i didnt CHOOSE to be poly just like i didnt CHOOSE to be trans or omni

stop saying all fucking poly people choose its pissing me off

While “rules are made to be broken” is sexy and punk and rebellious and hot girl shit and all that, relationship rules/boundaries are not meant to be broken and if you do that’s bad, unsexy, not punk-

Anne Boonchuy and the Art of Affection

Don’t mind me just imagining an older Anne, Sasha, and Marcy after Amphibia.

If there was one thing Anne Boonchuy had learned over the course of her life, it was that different people desired affection in different ways. No two people were quite the same in how they showed, gave, or reacted to a good hug or a kiss on the cheek.

Take, for example, her girlfriends Sasha Waybright and Marcy Wu. Those two were very different, and, as a result, required their own special tactics to make them melt in her arms.

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