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That's a weird-looking dog.

Sound on 🐱😊

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Your cat's bilingual; I'm not sure what's so confusing about that.

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I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!

(save the images to zoom in on the pics)

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Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”

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"Please hold..."

After about 10 seconds, the phone picked up again, "Asexual vampire help hotline, what can I do for you?"

Finally, a place that gets me.

“Vampire help hotline, what can I do for you?” “I just… I miss garlic bread…”

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I wish I had this like a year ago when I was playing in a MHA campaign. Would have been real helpful to find gemstones fitting for my character's different incarnations for the purpose of part of her quirk. But, that said, still very valuable for people to utilize.

By LabradoriteKing on Pinterest

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Seriously, the solution is "Ask for permission." If you as an AI trainer do not wish to do that, oh well. People have a right to their art. You do not have any right to use their art for training AI.

If you're upset that people are protecting their intellectual property rights, your opinion doesn't matter. It's not like the people you are stealing from are megacorporations like Disney or Nintendo. (Well, you are stealing from them too which is incredibly stupid in its own right.) You're stealing from working-class people, many of whom are barely getting by.

Alternatively, you could be even more ethical and actually make the art you're training your AI on. This way, you don't need to ask for permission because it's your own art. But we all know these AI tech bro losers are so focused on making AI that can make art for them because they're incapable of making art themselves.

And, to be clear, I'm not someone who opposes AI. Handled correctly, it's an amazing technology. Too bad the people who are making AI are the people who don't want to use it correctly.

So a free tool called GLAZE has been developed that allows artists to cloak their artwork so it can't be mimicked by AI art tools.

AI art bros are big mad about it.

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People forget that the largest cause of evil isn't a lack of humanity but of being too human. Look at the Isreali government--they're committing a genocide because they were fed a narrative for 75 years that if they don't do this then another Holocaust might happen to them. The current genocide is caused by indoctrination that ultimately originated from fear.

This does not make it okay.

This does not justify what the Isreali government is doing.

This does not defend it.

I'm Native American with both Korean and Jewish family, so you can imagine how badly I despise genocide. But I'll never pretend that if things were just the slightest bit different... that could be me. I hope I'm a Good Person™, but I'm also aware that I'm not perfect. We all have blind spots. I'm under no delusion that I'm special... I'm just lucky. And that's the same kind of understanding others need to have.

Everybody is capable of evil. If you think you are exempt, you are not. You can pretend you are all you want, but that hubris comes from your specific living conditions or from you being too young to understand what you're talking about. But all it takes is the right kind of wrong circumstances, the right kind of wrong arguments, the right kind of wrong people to make anybody, even the most "goodest" of people to do evil things or be convinced of evil beliefs as if those things or beliefs are good.

Seriously, talk to transphobes, homophobes, racists, or Nazis... challenge their beliefs and condemn what they advocate for, but listen to what they're saying. So many of them are just afraid because they were convinced of threats and dangers that are not real. And it's easy to stand on the outside and say, "but that's not true." But the truth of what they believe doesn't actually matter. You can't rationalize a person out of a position they weren't rationalized into. The most you can do is plant seeds for their future growth or provide education for those who hear these arguments to understand why they are wrong.

But the only way to cure bigotry is for the bigot to learn that these groups of people they fear aren't actually bad. Because, and here's the thing Good People™ don't realize, these people who do and believe evil things think that we're evil. Logically, that does not hold... but it's not about them being logical. It's about them being emotional--specifically fearful. And if you don't realize that when talking to or about them, you're going to just further radicalize them.

u ever see someone with extremely fucked up views (or actions) and think wowww if a couple of things in my life went the tiniest bit differently that would have been me

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This isn't an issue of the Death of Filler. This is an issue of people presuming anything that isn't explicitly plot and narrative MUST be filler. But things that add to characterization and humanization are NOT filler even if they don't contribute to the overall plot.

If it contributes to the story, it's important.

If it contributes to our understanding of who the characters are, it's important.

If it contributes to our understanding of the world, it's important.

An episode, or even just a scene, does not need to contribute to two or more of these to be important. As long as it contributes to even just one of these things, It IS Important.

And it's important to have all three of these and not always all at once. The more of these a scene has, the more dense it feels and the more the audience feels is being thrown at them to process. Especially when it's plot which is the most dense as the audience needs to know what's going on there to avoid being lost, whereas the others can be used to afford the audience breathing room when they are by themselves, decoupled from the plot. It's why musicals are amazing because one song will always give you two or more of these at the same time.

Look at Hazbin Hotel Season 1 Episode 1 (not the Pilot): it felt so much more dense because Happy Day in Hell clearly moved the plot forward and explained what the story was to be about from Charlie's intention, while it also explained what the world of the show was like, and gave you Charlie's characterization and the characterization to expect from the denizens of hell; then Hell is Forever gave you the rest of the relevant worldbuilding that lies outside of Charlie's understanding, set up Adam's characterization, and (again) drove the story forward. It made the first episode feel as if you got more than the ~22 minutes of content that the show gave.

The worst thing that ever happened to television is studios not respecting the shows enough to let there be the necessary breathing room between these content-dense sections. Hazbin Hotel, for example, suffered from the fact that it was scene after scene directly contributing to the Season's A plot (Redemption), B plot (Extermination), or C plot (Overlords). That's not necessarily a bad thing especially since the deeper into the alphabet a plotline is, the less dense it feels to be explored, but then every scene also contributed to characterization and/or worldbuilding which made it feel like the viewers never had a moment to breathe without something important with the overall story happening.

Like, we had a couple scenes that weren't Series plot, sure, but then those scenes were full of Characterization Plot and often tackled heavy subjects in their own right. Angel Dust and Sir Pentious being two characters who received episodes basically dedicated to them but the episodes themselves playing into their characters to such a focused extent that they themselves became really dense due to those episodes themselves having in-depth plot which definitely affected the way the rest of the series's plot would turn out. (Poison bops, I tell you hwat.)

What people want, what people NEED, is for shows to go back to giving us scenes like Nakamura Hiro and Ando just talking about Hiro's chuunibyou behavior. We need to go back to scenes like Barry Allen moving at superspeed so that he can confess everything to Iris in a monologue without her being able to hear him. We need beach episodes where we just focus on how characters interact with one another and with others in low-stakes situations. We need moments where we get to focus on a random news story for a few seconds that may play directly into the narrative or may not. We need to see the characters outside of the plot so that we can get a better read of who they are not as characters, but as people.

But the bigwigs at modern studios do not respect creative projects enough anymore to give their creatives' projects the breathing room that they need and deserve.

genuinely one of the worst things that’s happened to television in the last few years (exacerbated by streaming services) is death of Filler. going from 20 episodes to 8 because “we didn’t really need that episode where the main characters went to the beach right? it had no long lasting effect” but we DID!!! we needed to see how they act without the Big Bad Plot and to establish the dynamics between the characters and lay in the sun (do they forget sunscreen? how do they react to a thieving seagull? do they get buried in the sand or do they do the burying?). the plot isn’t everything. the action doesn’t hit as hard without the quiet moments. give us character development and our little scenes back

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I didn't know what I expected to see. I thought, perhaps, I'd see the woman of my dreams. Someone who could steal my heart without a word. I thought perhaps I'd see the embodiment of beauty and grace, like a Hollywood actress or maybe a princess like from a fairy tale. Someone who'd make me fall, for the first time, in love.

But not... her.

She looked at me with a knowing smile. Perhaps she had seen so many others look toward her with the same confusion. Maybe. She's clearly been around for a while. I'm probably not the first.

"Are you going to continue to sit there and sulk, dearie? Or will you join me for tea? You prefer elma cayi, yes? I think I have some still." She dragged a stepladder over toward a cabinet and began to climb.

I won't deny it... I flinched. It's just a small thing, offering tea for someone and offering the kind they like... It's a small kindness but one that seemingly goes unoffered so often. I can't even recall the last time I was offered even this much. "Let me get that for you." My words were shaky as if I hadn't said them before, only to realize... when was the last time I offered to give someone a hand myself?

"Thank you, so much." For a brief second, seeing the gratitude in her eyes and the smile on her face, my heart skipped. It's not the kind of love I expected but something more common. In a way, more beautiful than I had hoped for.

After a while, the tea finished boiling and she served it; she wouldn't accept any further help.

"So, I hear you have been slacking on your studies," her face was firm but it didn't seem like she was judging me.

"I have, yeah," I admitted quietly.

"That's no good, child. What has you distracted?"

I felt my cheeks go red from embarrassment. This isn't the kind of conversation I expected to have with a goddess. Why are my grades what matter here?

"There's no need to answer if you're not comfortable, dear. Just answer me this. Are you all right?" I finally realized what her expression was--concern. Genuine concern.

"Not really, but I'll make it through somehow." It's the lie I've been saying for the past year. Not just to my friends and family but to myself as well.

"And what about relationships? Are you spending time with friends and family? Is there a special somebody in your life?"

"I spend time with friends online but I'm not really close with my family."

"It's a shame about your family but it's good you at least have friends you can spend time with. And what about your love life?" Of course she pressed in on the point I tried to gloss over.

"No, ma'am. I am not seeing anybody. It's why I came here actually."

"Explain."

"I had hoped that whatever was wrong with me... maybe it could be fixed." I shifted in my seat; my eyes transfixed on my tea.

"And what needs fixed?"

"I'm not into men or women... I'm asexual. I'm still panromantic but I'm tired of not being able to give the people I date the kind of love they want and need from me. I'm tired of not being able to find love because of how I am."

"So that's how it is." She just sat there, the silence hanging in the air. "What you need isn't fixing. You aren't broken, child. You're just different. Your problem isn't with what you are. It's with how you look at yourself. The only love you can't provide is self-love. But that's not your fault, and that's not something anybody can fix for you. You have to make the choice to start that process. Then, in time, that broken feeling will fade."

My eyes stayed on my tea. I could say something but what would I say? My thoughts stormed and my anxiety rose until I felt it, her hand on mine.

"It's a process. It will take time. There's no need to rush it. But the first step is deciding you want to try."

As I looked up to her, I saw for the first time what I expected to see--beauty and grace--but it wasn't how I expected to see it. My eyes began to water as tears welled up. And as she came over to comfort me...

"It appears your time here has gone its course. This will be goodbye, for now."

As I wiped the tears away, I found myself in darkness. The faint glow of my computer monitor in one corner of the room, as its tower softly hummed, and the sound of my phone played music beside me.

"I hope that you'll tell me all about your progress when you come home again." Her voice whispered to me but as I looked around she was nowhere to be seen.

Was that really just a dream?

“I thought the goddess of love would look…different.” The wrinkled old woman waved a dismissive hand, leaned closer, and smiled. “You are thinking of my daughter, the goddess of passion and romance. Dearie, I am the goddess of LOVE.”

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Yo! Yaaas! I love this! I wanted to learn Japanese before I move there later this year. But getting to learn GAY Japanese? Yes please!

My friend needs your feedback!! He runs a website [Lingopie] where you can learn a language by watching TV shows and movies.

As a polyglot, he is super passionate about learning and teaching languages and wants to help students and language learners succeed. He has been working on this project 24/7, so your feedback would make his day! Here is the problem:

His website is still young, so they have limited funds to obtain licenses for movies and television shows. To help as many people as possible, he is wondering what languages you would like to learn or have exams for, so he can focus on expanding the media collection for these languages. I really like him and want his project to succeed, so I created a form where you can vote.

The following languages are available at the moment: Japanese 🇯🇵, Korean 🇰🇷, Spanish 🇪🇸, French 🇫🇷, German 🇩🇪, Italian 🇮🇹, Portuguese 🇵🇹 and English 🇺🇸

Which language are you most interested in? Please vote here!

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"Finishing Artistic Projects is HARD!" ~Me

Also Me: Spends over an hour creating the fundamentals of an entire language just to write 2 words for a writing project that probably nobody will ever see anyways.