Megu. 35. Filipino. Cishet. Her/She. Gray Ace. Demiromantic. My little corner in the internet filled with pictures, music, and stuff related to my geeky hobbies.
Why do American comics have this thing where they seem to emphasize way too many random words that don’t make any sense and I spend the whole time reading up and down in a lilting mental voice
IN THE DAYS OF HAND-LETTERING AND POOR PRINTING, IT WAS IMPORTANT TO MAKE THE LETTERING EASY TO READ, SO IT WAS DONE IN UPPERCASE LETTERS. THIS TENDED TO MAKE THE TEXT HARD TO READ. SMALL PUNCTUATION MARKS WERE HARD TO SEE, IF THEY PRINTED AT ALL.
LETTERERS – THOSE UNSUNG HEROES – LEARNED THAT BY VARYING THE WEIGHT OF THE TEXT AND USING EXCLAMATION POINTS AND DOUBLE-DASHES, THEY COULD MAKE THE COMICS EASIER TO READ, WHILE EXPRESSING EMPHASIS TO ENHANCE THE ACTION-PACKED DIALOGUE!
IN THE HANDS OF A GOOD WRITER AND LETTERER TEAM, THE EMPHASIZED WORDS ARE NOT RANDOM, BUT INSTEAD WORDS THAT WOULD BE STRESSED IN NATURAL SPEECH. THIS IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE STRESS CAN CHANGE THE MEANING OF THE SENTENCE!
YOU CAN LEARN MORE ABOUT COMIC BOOK LETTERING GRAMMAR HERE!!
And if you check the box, the search only returns fics where the pairing you entered is the first one tagged. This is better than the otp:true operator imo because it will show fics with secondary/background pairings too as long as your preferred ship is the main one.
You can even use the add-on in Firefox or Kiwi browser on Android mobile.
My number one tip for straight men (I mean, it could conceivably work for other genders and sexualities, but you’d have to adjust it quite a bit) is: inagine they’re a man.
Imagine that you just randomly told some bloke in a pub that he has beautiful eyes.
That you walked up behind your coworker Jim and started caressing his neck and shoulders while talking to him about the budget.
That you just sent a large and unexplained bouquet of flowers to Darren in Accounting.
That instead of complimenting a coworker on her breasts, you complimented him on his dick.
Does the action now seem weird? Uncomfortable? Do you no longer want to do it now that it isn’t directed at somebody you are sexually attracted to?
That strongly suggests that your action has a sexual aspect to it and therefore probably counts as sexual harassment!
I have a large, colorful tattoo on one arm. I’ve had multiple strange men cross a room to tell me how awesome it is, frequently while I’m at work, and it has never made me uncomfortable.
A couple of weeks ago, someone yelled out a car at me ‘I FUCKING LOVE YOUR BOOTS’, which was awesome.
It’s just… it’s really not hard to compliment people in a way that isn’t creepy, if your goal is actually to compliment them and not to slide a ‘btw I’m thinking about fucking you’ under the radar.
Good advice! Applicable in many ways…..
This is actually pretty good!
one time i bought some raspberry leaf tea for a friend who was pregnant, and when i happened to run into her with her boyfriend later and met him for the first time, he guessed who i was.
when asked how, he said that i “look like someone who would bring you tea”.
that weird, sweet compliment has stuck with me for years.
I have also learned this is great for [PICK A COOL NAME FOR A SHIP] and [LOOK UP THE FACTS ABOUT OXYGEN LEVELS] and [WHAT’S THE WORD] and [DOUBLECHECK CHARACTER’S EYE COLOR] and ALL KINDS OF THINGS.
Anything that isn’t critical in the moment, and could be filled in later while I’m currently trying to burn through writing pages that will be lost if I don’t get them out right now? Brackets.
This is seriously the best advice, and it really helps put it into perspective that the first draft is just that- a draft. There’s no reason to agonize over a particularly tricky bit of writing when you could just leave it in brackets and skip to the good parts, the parts you’ve visualized. I also use brackets for [fact-check this], [use a stronger verb], [is this in character?] and other notes as I write, just so I don’t forget what I want to work on when I go back and edit.
Note the good sense of [brackets] not (parentheses).
Parentheses AKA round brackets can appear in fiction, usually as an afterthought in a character’s thoughts or narration (as I saw them used just recently), but square brackets hardly ever do.
