#transcript with dialogue tags

[myflagmeansace]

Samba's OFMD BTS Cat Improv video with transcript with dialogue tags

Scene begins in the middle of an ongoing discussion of Zheng's fighting skills being similar to that of a cat

Stede: ...cat

Ed: Just a cat. She looked just like a cat.

Stede: Feline.

Ed: But not a lazy cat. (dramatic pause)

Stede: An attacker cat.

Ed (says sagely): A motivated cat.

Stede (repeats himself because he likes how it sounds): An attacker cat!

Ed (eager to spin the story to incorporate Stede's idea): Uh, eh, it was...it was a cat attack!

Stede: Ooh yeah! And we were there, too.

Ed (adamantly agreeing): And we saw it.

Stede: We were part of it.

Ed: I was part of it. We were-

Stede: We were like...

Ed: -we were also like cats!

Stede (whispers in awe imagining them as cats): Yeah!

Ed: It was like three stealthy cats.

Stede (nods in agreement with his smart bf): That's right!

Ed (loving his bf's hype): Like three humans who had skinned some cats.

Ed (ADHD mode activated): You know there are many ways to skin a cat. You can start at the head and you just peel from the nose all the way down. Or start at the ass and (gestures as if he were skinning a cat) whip it back like that!

Spanish Jackie/Leslie: Jesus wept.

Ed: It was like three cats had been skinned and we just leapt into their bodies, zipped it up...(train of thought switching tracks)...uhhhm-

Stede (trying to figure out what track they're on): It was cat skins.

Ed: -It was actually the other way around. It was like three cats killed some humans and then-

Stede (loyally agreeing with his bf): That's true. It was the opposite.

Ed: -skinned them. So like three cats had sk...caught some humans, skinned them, and then wore their skins-

Stede (quietly pushing his imagination to the limits): Yeah.

Ed: -as little suits.

Stede (proudly agreeing with his bf): Take that humans! Cats are back!

Ed (needing to emphasize the size of said cats): But they're in the big cats!

Stede (happily reiterating Ed's added detail): Yeah, big cats are back!

Ed (switching tracks again into unknown territory): Or it was like a bunch of...it was way bigger than a normal cat. It was like all of us and we are full...are filled with cats! (abruptly ends his brainstorm and silently rests his hand on his hip)

Stede (proudly standing by his bf, nodding, though he's not sure how he feels about being filled with cats): *buffering silence*

*random meow*

Swede (unsure if he's in the gravy basket because of all the poison he drank): Are you sure I'm not dead?

Spanish Jackie (tired): Yeah. Yeah.

[pixlatedvampire]

You gave those wounds to your god, Enki. Did you think they would heal so easily?

(Uh Oh! Someone gave the priest catholic guilt!)

[thedrotter]

I have a gift for y'all today !!! 😊 Ever wanted to find a line in Re:Kinder in a single place for the sake of reference?? How about multiple chunks of lines. how about all the little variations that arise in the text with it's many endings, item descriptions, text that comes from interacting with the enviroment, and character info from the menu without having to boot up the game and go through it at long minutes!!???

well i sure did😊 Since I do a lot of fanart and think up my own silly theories and thoughts that need me to reference the game lines a lot, i have made a transcript for it for convenience's sake. A weirdly thorough transcript handwritten and proofread by me including all character lines available in-game. And I'm sharing it with you all today for anyone that wants it !!! :3 To use as a reference for creative fanworks or a quick search for a line in-game, whatever you wish to use it for!!

It uses the english translation of the game by vgperson. So naturally all credit for the game lines available in here is to her and Parun who made the game.

I did my best to organize it in a way easy to digest. Do note that I'm still human, and there's still the chance for mistake in it no matter how much I've proofread it, since I'm not even an english native speaker ^^. But I hope it serves you well nonetheless if you wish to use it.

That's my gift for today!!! Not the usual art, but still a project I'm proud of. Enjoy!!! 😊

[smidgen-of-hotboy]

Our Angel of Brahma, pt. iii

Me: I gotta stop writing this so I can finish something else for once. Also Me: continues writing this.

@ceaseless-watchers-special-girl @ananxiousgenz @demonic-panini @the-private-eye @gwenlena

SOUND: COMMS BEEPS. RECORDING BEGINS. SOUND: BEDSHEETS RUSTLING. Younger Revolutionary: Mm'arlie? What're you– Mm'arlie: Go back to sleep, Baird.  (MUFFLED LAUGHTER) I'll be back soon enough, just gotta… think about some things.  SOUND: BARE FEET ON TILE. Mm'arlie:  (SIGH) Where do I begin?  Baird’s mom went missing two years ago. She tucked him in, told him a bedtime story about the Revolutionary, and then closed the door. When he got up the next morning, she was gone. I came over and we waited outside on the steps for hours. She never came back from where ever.  We waited three days doing the same thing over and over. My parents fed him each day. And on the fourth day, his father showed up with his spouse. Baird isn't close with his Dad. And he hates their spouse. He didn't want them to stay with him but my family can't afford to take care of another mouth forever. My parents love Baird. But they can't raise another kid right now.  (GRUNT) SOUND: MM'ARLIE SITTING DOWN. Mm'arlie: So his daddy came back to pick up where his Mom left, and his step-parent tried to make amends. It's… it's been a rough couple of years… Earlier today, the System went down for maintenance, so the Constables were out patrolling all day. Baird was with me, completing an odd job brushing dust off the daycare windows for Mrs. Darius. Baird’s Dad didn't come home last night. So it was just him and their step-parent eating dinner. Lentils and fried spam.  Baird and I finished brushing the dust off the windows around noon. We still had plenty of time to pick up another job before we had to go our separate ways. So we went back to his apartment block to grab something to eat and collect our pay before we went looking. There was a crowd gathered outside Baird’s apartment. We pushed through hoping to slip inside unnoticed. I wasn't paying attention, Baird grabbed my shirt sleeve, and when I looked back– the were four Constables beating a man. Baird’s face went grey.  It was his father.  Wherever he went last night, they found him today, and they were– they were doing it in broad daylight. His spouse ran down the apartment steps and pushed me and Baird aside.  I watched them fall towards Baird’s Dad and shield his body with theirs. I watched the Constables pair up two-on-one and pry them apart. I watched Baird’s Dad sock one of them in the jaw and grab his spouse by the front of their shirt. They kissed. And when the Constables pulled them apart and dragged him away, he was singing. Crying, bruised, but singing.  The two Constable’s holding his spouse threw them aside. They didn’t say anything but there was a promise for later. They’ll come back for them, Later. (ANOTHER SIGH) Baird and their step-parent are staying with my family tonight. We're going to figure something out tomorrow but… I don't think there's going to be much to figure out. My family is Baird’s family. His Mom was my Spare Mom. We can't afford another mouth. There's hardly enough work to go around… My Dearest Baird, if you're listening to this I'm sorry. I didn't want to upset you anymore than you already are. I wish Brahma was a free planet and I wish I could see you dancing and singing on stage, on a stream. It's where you belong. I want to raise you out of this mess and bring your Mom back. I'm so sorry, Baird.  (SNIFFLING)  SOUND: SCENE FADES, RECORDING ENDS.   SOUND: COMMS BEEPING, NEXT RECORDING STARTS.  Baird: I forgive you, Charlie. 

- The Revoluationary is named Baird, and Mm’arlie is Charlie (the one who later gave them the book. Side Note: I HAVE OBTAINED A COPY!! THANK YOU FRANNIE!!) The first recording is “two years after Baird’s Mom disappeared”, unclear when the second recording was made (possibly a day later?) Baird mentioned in the very first recording I heard a “mother who tucked her children into bed a final time” and a “husband who pressed a bruising kiss against his spouse's mouth”, this had to be in reference to their own parents. NEED TO PINPOINT ROUGH ESTIMATE OF AGES, CREATE TIMELINE OF EVENTS STARTING WITH PETER NUREYEV (Should I ask Frannie? She seems just as invested as I am but I’m not too certain when I’ll see her next.) Baird is the one singing in the other recording? His voice sounds… enchanting. Full of longing.

[1ightcap]

i have written 3700 words in two days, which is a pittance to most folk but is fucking outstanding for me

[otasnox]

tell her i was the one who did it / he said he'll always love you (may 3rd, 2024)

cover art by arok318

[katebeckets]

because tumblr is the gif website, I feel like everyone here should understand the work that goes into creating a gifset. because I think not everyone does, and it’s a huge part of why people don’t respect gif makers the way that they should.

the simplest gifs you will ever see me post still take the better part of an hour to create. because in order to make a gif, you need the material—for me, that means taking screen captures of videos or finding a download for them, both of which take time. then you have to open photoshop and create your gif, which can take a really long time depending on how quick photoshop is, how long the gif you’re making is, the size, any number of variables. and then I always color my gifs from scratch. if there’s dialogue, I listen over and over to try to make sure it’s correct, sometimes I look up transcripts, and sometimes it takes time to decide how to break up the dialogue. so even if it’s a simple two-gif set of a short scene, it will take the better part of an hour at least. and again, this is for the simplest gifsets I create.

so when I gif a scene, I am spending at least an hour with that tiny little snippet of material. which means that whatever it is that is featured in the gifset, it’s something that I like or tolerate enough to spend at minimum an hour with it. and this is why it DOES NOT MATTER if you are not critiquing the gif itself, gif makers do not want to hear every negative thought you have ever had about an actor, character, scene, or anything else they may have made a gifset for. if you want to complain about something, make your own post.

do not take someone else’s creation as a chance to complain or make nasty comments about anything featured in it. if I am willing to gif something, it means that I am willing to spend my own free time looking at it and working with it and creating something with it. so even if it isn’t my favorite scene or character or actor or whatever, I like it enough to watch the same three second clip over and over again for the better part of an hour. and yes, you’re just one person, but imagine a gifset with 100 notes. say 50 of those are reblogs, and 20 have some sort of complaint in the tags. you only see the tags of people who reblog from you, but OP will see all the tags. which means it’s not just your complaint, it’s all 20 different complaints about the thing they liked enough to make a gifset for.

and look—I understand it’s your blog and you can say whatever you want. I understand that I am creating something to be seen by other people and I don’t get to control what people say or do in the tags. if you read this and think fuck that, I can do what I want, you’re right. the purpose of this post is to remind you that you can do whatever you want, but the consequence may be that the people who are creating content for your fandoms stop posting altogether because they get sick of reading everyone’s negative opinions.

all that said, for the love of god: if you like something, reblog it. send asks and tell people you like their creations. say it in the tags. send things to friends. DO NOT REPOST THINGS. if you want to reap the benefits of other people creating things, make them feel like their work is appreciated.

[kbsd]

WINNIX: in real life, on-screen, and in fandom

"Dad has this record of "People Will Say We're in Love." Reminds me of a couple I once knew, so there's that tricky smile on my lips and a wee bit of twinkle in my eye as I listen." — Dick Winters in a letter to DeEtta Almon

this video could not have been made without yna @evidenceof: i compiled all your wonderful posts, but every single historical photograph, letter, quote, and transcript you see (including the one above!) was scanned or collected by her. thank you for everything, and for providing inspiration and motivation to work on such an ambitious project!

more credits/sources under the cut ->

the style of this video was inspired in part by (and could never live up to) twelve years a clown and a new season by kira @remythologise. you do well-sourced fandom meta as comedy so well!

HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS CITED (in order of appearance; sourced by yna unless otherwise specified):

Letter to from Bob Gibson to Harry Welsh

Conversations with Major Dick Winters by Cole C. Kingseed (partially via @sheletlune here)

Easy Company Soldier: The Legendary Battles of a Sergeant from World War II's "Band of Brothers" by Don Malarkey, Bob Welch

Band of Brothers panel at the American Veterans Center Conference (2007)

From Toccoa to Europe: On the Ground with Easy Company from The National World War II Museum

Biggest Brother: The Life of Major Dick Winters by Larry Alexander

Letters from Dick Winters to DeEtta Almon

Band of Brothers show bible (via USAHEC)

Ron Livingston interviewed by Ross Owen for The Story So Far podcast (via @sidsledge here)

Letters from Lewis Nixon to Dick Winters

Mark Cowen's interview of Dick Winters

Dick Winters' eulogy for Lewis Nixon

Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife from The Gettysburg Museum of History [disputed]

Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters by Dick Winters

Letter from Grace Nixon to Dick Winters

Letter from Dick Winters to Lewis Nixon

FAN POSTS FEATURED (in order of appearance):

Tom Hanks meme by @bleedingcoffee42

Gay people can never flirt normally by @4o4notf0und

Tags on this post (by @stopstopstopit) from @igotyoubabeheffron, @randlemartin, @mr-chatterboxs-column

Why is he looking at him lighting a cigarette like that by @sidsledge

Tags on this post (by @airborneinfantry) from @roedotjpg, @holdingforgeneralhugs, @airborneinfantry, @boogiesheep

This yaoi shit is life or death by @bleedingcoffee42

Yearning disease by @evidenceof

Fujo goggles by @sidleckie

I'd follow him to hell by @stopstopstopit

What are your thoughts on... by @balladofthe101st

Their souls are literally intertwined by @stopstopstopit

Harry Welsh art by @foxholebuttfinder

Live Harry reaction by @finalgirljesus

Addicted to chilling with gay guys by @ww2yaoi

He gave him chocolates by @sidsledge

Loving your best friend so much by @sidsledge

Happy VE Day by @evidenceof

Getting your shit rocked by @sidsledge

Tags on this post (by @searchingforacircuitbreaker) from @sleepy-hyperfixations, @siiiiideblooooog, @redhcad, @kazanskied, @hanniewinnix, @danopdf, @cock-guillotine

Fellas, is it gay by @luckyreds

Tank fanart by @andromeddog

Bastogne fanart by @roberttingle

He's the exception to everything by @runaeveena

The Inherent Homoeroticism of War Media by @oatflatwhite

Honey, come to bed by @ww2yaoi

Lake fanart by @andromeddog

The most romantic dialogue ever by @ww2yaoi

Like New Jersey by @lesbiandarvey

[myflagmeansace]

Video and transcript with dialogue tags of Stede being called Zaddy 😁

Text of transcript below the cut

Take 1

Stede: I've had my fill of courting death for one day. Let's live, if possible. I mean, I just got back together with my boyfriend. Oh do you mind if I call you...?

Ed (Pantene flirtatious hair flip): Not at all, Zaddy.

Stede (surprised): Whew...yeah, I mean...I'm fairly sure we're not the only ones who want to live forever.

*Taika breaks first then Rhys. Rhys gives him a playful smack on the arm.*

Take 2

Stede: Let's live, if possible. I mean, I just got back together with my boyfriend. Oh do you mind if I call you...?

Ed (closes eyes and gives a big hair flip, hair gets stuck in beard): I love it...Zaddy.

Stede (confused): Zaddy? Any who...

*Taika immediately breaks and Rhys warns "well that's what I'm gonna say if you say Zaddy" and laughs. Taika laughing says, "I'm sorry! Okay. I'm sorry!"

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

STAR TREK DIALOGUE ANALYSIS OVERVIEW

oh boy so i mentioned this project awhile back and after a long hiatus i'm finally done! (the irony that i wrote this and then took a second equally long hiatus but the point stands.)

i went through transcripts for TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise (thanks to chakoteya.net for those!) and calculated how many lines each main character has in each episode (and season & show as a whole), calculated means, looked at who had a lot of high & low line count episodes, made some graphs, and did some analysis on gender and race.

you can find my whole process & results on a spreadsheet here (it's a little messy. i'm sorry. if someone pays me i'll make it look nice and actually learn how to make good graphs in Google Sheets.) and i'll walk through some Big Results & reactions on this post here under a cut. just so this doesn't get too long, i'll breakdown each show, post my gender & race analysis, and a big list of every character with how much of a focus they get on separate posts. they'll all be tagged as "star trek dialogue analysis".

but first just a disclaimer – i do have professional experience doing data analysis but this is by no means a professional analysis and i'm sure there are plenty of mistakes because this was initially a small personal project that snowballed a little bit. if there are any Major Things you see that are wrong (i.e. i copy and pasted a totally wrong value somewhere) please reach out and i'll correct it if i can. also if anyone wants to use this data for anything, feel free but tag me because i'm curious!

see also: gender analysis // race analysis // tos breakdown // tng breakdown // ds9 breakdown // voyager breakdown // enterprise breakdown // who's the most/least used character?

all of the following graphs measure mean (average) lines of dialogue per episode, averaging all seasons (that they were a main character) together. please refer to the spreadsheet for more detailed information about exact numbers.

unsurprising results... this is the one Star Trek show that really never aspired to be an ensemble show. i was actually surprised by how few lines Spock and McCoy have in comparison to Kirk

also unsurprising that the two characters of color have the fewest lines per episodes in the 60s

Kirk had BY FAR the most lines of dialogue per episode out of all characters i've measured (115.20)

again unsurprising that Picard has more lines by such a wide margin

honestly fairly surprised by how few lines Data had (I thought he'd beat Riker by a decent margin) and was very surprised at how few lines Troi consistently has across the season. like i knew it wasn't many but dang... only 18 lines per episode on average.

and here we can see that ds9 really embraces being an ensemble show with everyone (sans Sisko, Ezri, & Jake) having around the same number of lines on average, probably the most equal overall of any Star Trek show.

Sisko obviously has the most lines as the lead and Jake the fewest because of irl work restrictions (and less kid-centric stories).

i was surprised with how many lines Ezri had but then again her entire character was compressed into a single season so it seems fair. (interestingly, Ezri has the most lines out of anyone in s7 (996), even beating Sisko (874))

despite having the most lines in DS9, Sisko has by far the least out of any main character/Captain of the shows i've measured.

Janeway has the highest average line count out of any 90s character and third highest of any character i measured (69.51)

and again, with the exception of Janeway, we see that Voyager tends to be more ensemble focused than TNG which surprised me a bit given how later seasons are often criticized for ignoring a lot of characters but i think the very ensemble heavy early seasons balance things out.

the characters also generally seem to have more lines on average than either TNG or DS9.

and oof... yeah Voyager was it for the ensemble style show

Archer has the second highest average line count (86.68) for the whole study after Kirk (115.20)

apparently the inception of Enterprise was to recreate the TOS style triumvirate and for better or worse they certainly did.

some overall fun stats –

there are 162,455 total lines of dialogue spoken by the main cast from TOS to Enterprise

somehow there's only a ten line difference between the amount of dialogue spoken in TNG (43,148) and DS9 (43,158)

the 5 characters with the most dialogue per episode in Berman era Trek: Archer (86.68), Janeway (69.51), Picard (69.37), Sisko (50.72), & Tucker (46.03). notably only one woman and one character of color (more on this in a gender & race analysis post)

not including kids, the 5 characters with the least dialogue in Berman era Trek are: Mayweather (13.39), Sato (15.99), Troi (18.11), Kes (18.18), & Neelix (19.68). notably including three women and two characters of color (again, more on this in a different post)

the character who has the most dialogue in a single length episode is Quark with 189 lines in Who Mourns For Morn?

[magnus-glitch-archive]

The Magnus Protocol Episode 28

No glitches heard in this episode.

Other audio anomalies:

An electric hum is heard as Trevor hands Gwen his card and says, "This is my direct number."

Whooshes/Breath:

Trevor: A whoosh is heard just before he says, "Such a diverse team it is too, I wonder if we should get in a photographer.

Either as Lena is saying "Hopefully our latest metrics should assuage any concerns in that department." Or possibly just before Trevor saying, "Just as long as it keeps Gorman-Smith off me back."

Just prior to Sam's compelled statement and several more as he fights it at first. This is described in the transcript as the archivist's "breath", it matches exactly the prior "whooshing" noises.

In light of the new information revealed in this episode of the "breath" sounds, I will be going back through past episodes to more carefully listen for this specific audio anomaly, previously referred to as whooshes. They will be added to prior posts for their respective episodes, and tagged with "#TMAGP Breath". It seems this sound precedes sentences, instead of following them like the glitches do, but to be thorough I will list dialogue said during and immediately following a breath.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

It's funny to me how you put these tags just as the newest episode revealed that Nathalie has been working for a secret organization this entire time and is taking commands from her dad who surprise surprise wants the ladybug and cat miraculouses

(Post in question for context)

[Image transcript: a series of tags reading "She is not a safe person and I HATE that she knows Marinette's identity Wtf is this show doing? Nathalie knowing Ladybug's identity should be a terrible thing that makes Marinette quit"]

Oh, so that's why Nathalie refused to turn herself in and convinced Ladybug to lie in the London special!

Nathalie: It's time to tell the truth. Bug Noire: If you do that, you'll go to jail. Nathalie: Isn't the truth worth it? Bug Noire: If you tell the truth, Adrien will have no one left. He'll have lost his mom, his dad, you. Nathalie: He will have you. Bug Noire: It's not' the same. He needs a mother. Nathalie: I'm not his mother. Bug Noire: You're the closest thing to a mother he's got. (Bunnyx runs over to the window as it continues playing)That's why Gabriel Agreste sacrificed himself, it's what finally made him a good father to Adrien and that's what Adrien should remember. Nathalie: Don't you want to tell Adrien that his father was Monarch? Bug Noire: The only thing I can fix is the way Adrien will remember his father. Nathalie: But that would be lying to him.

Oh, wait, no, my bad, that's the exact opposite of what happened in this dialogue! Why would you write the scene like this if Nathalie is still evil? And if Nathalie isn't evil anymore, then why is she keeping the evil organization a secret from Ladybug? This seems like something Ladybug should know about and this dialogue does not set Nathalie up as wanting to maintain secrets. Nothing in the special does!

[Image description: Fear from Pixar's Inside Out yelling "Boo! Pick a plotline!"]

I haven't seen El Toro De Piedra, so maybe there's something I'm missing, but doesn't this secret organization reveal basically destroy the popular argument that Nathalie is obeying Marinette's wishes re the lies because Nathalie no longer trusts herself to make good calls after all her years supporting Gabriel? If that was really the case, then Nathalie would have told Marinette about the secret organization and let Marinette decide what to do, but it sounds like that's not what happened. Nathalie feels totally comfortable making all the calls and controlling the information re the evil organization! She's only leaving Marinette to make the calls when it comes to Adrien's relationship with his father, a thing Marinette knows almost nothing about but that Nathalie actively watched deteriorate over the entire course of Adrien's life.

You can't have this both ways. Either Nathalie is a broken woman who is basically Marinette's puppet or Nathalie is a functional adult who is fully responsible for her own choices. Pick a lane.

I'm posting this now instead of waiting for the script because this is going to bother me until I get an answer. I legitimately want to know if the episode does anything to address any of these issues. Based on this ask, this is just adding fuel to my, "Nathalie should have been the liar" stance. Why is Marinette even involved in the lies if Nathalie is the one with all the actual secrets and information? It doesn't sound like the lies are doing anything interesting for Marinette's character or her relationship with Adrien. Can Adrien please get someone in his life who actually respects him? Can the writers please get rid of the asinine "Marinette must be wrong" rule when it makes no sense for the actual plot?

Gods, if Nathalie was actually written as still evil then this could have been amazing! The plot beats are all there, the writers just failed on every level. I'm still annoyed that her undoing Adrien's senticommands was presented as her being a good mom and not as her just using Adrien to fuck with Gabriel. Let my evil queen be an evil queen, gods damn it!

[tavyliasin]

BG3 2025 - January, New Year New You

Welcome to the first month's prompt for this year of BG3 creativity! I've added in some suggestions if you would like some more inspiration, and if you would like to join the optional AO3 collection you can submit more prompts for others to claim/fill or claim/fill existing prompts! You do not have to claim a prompt or use AO3 to participate, I'll use the tag #BG32025 across all platforms too so it's up to you how you prefer to share your pieces! (Reblog, links, unique posts, whatever you would like to do).

All works are welcome! And you can find the full event details HERE

AO3 Collection Link

Transcript of the text on the image below the cut~

January - New Year New You

Pick a new character, trope, style, medium, or pairing. Something you haven't tried before! In the first challenge of this year I invite you to try something brand new, something you haven't done before! This could be a new technique, a different medium, a character or pairing you've never tried before, a kink or trope you've never tried before. As long as it's something that is new to you in one way or another, that's it!

The new year is often a time for trying something different and seeing how it goes, so use this to see what else you might be capable of!

Optional Suggested Prompts

If you usually create NSFW, try something SFW (or vice versa!)

Pick a character you've never created anything for

Spin a wheel or roll a dice to work out a new ship to try

Try a new art style or technique

Use a specific colour pallette

Include a kink or trope you've not used before

If you normally write, try a little art! No pressure to be perfect

If you normally make art, try writing something! Have fun~

Make 2 different versions of a piece that contrast in some way

Try a new program or tool for creating

Try a new writing technique (eg, drabbles, dialogue only)

Remake an older work in a new way, mix it up!

[incomingalbatross]

So one thing that kind of drives me nuts about your writing is how great you are at capturing character voice. And now I've got to ask, is there any steps you take to study a character voice or do you just have a solid intuition?

First of all this is the nicest ask ever and I have been trying not to let it go to my head too much. :P Thank you!

I think the first step for me in fic character voice is definitely just... marinating in the Canon. xP If I'm at the stage of writing about characters, then I've already been revolving them in my head for a good while and absorbing their voices that way. But I do also like checking my work as I go, so I think I do have some steps for that...

General familiarity with canon obviously helps for big-picture things like "does this character use long words," "slanginess level," "type of slang," "level of honesty/directness/deflection," but I like to check back for specific points of reference whenever I start feeling shaky. Sometimes that's "can I find them talking about X topic and lift some phrases directly," and sometimes it's "how did they talk in this scene that is emotionally closest to what I'm trying to write here?"

This goes both for dialogue and for POV narration: books are more helpful here because you can pull word choices/stylistic tricks directly from the text, but TV is nice because you can mentally run the narration through their voice (and sometimes there are transcripts). I can grab little details like "Watson likes to not use dialogue tags" or "Ford mostly calls Stan 'Stanley' but is more likely to refer to him as 'Stan'" and use them to give more Canon Flavor to the overall piece. Then if I watch a scene of the show, I can use the audio refresher as a guide for things like "can I hear them saying this or are these words not in Stan's vocabulary?"

That said! Different media have different challenges because of how close to or far from my fic they are. Books with the same POV choices as me? I want to get that exactly right because the mismatch will show. Books in a different POV? I want to make the character's thoughts consistent with what we know of them, but because I don't have a definitive guide, it's harder for the reader to say I'm wrong. :P Different medium? I can't even copy the general diction/style of canon narration, because their isn't any. Manga?? No narration and everything is coming to me through translation. I can't even use definitive word choices or dialogue quirks because there are three different versions of everything!

(No one can say I'm wrong then, of course - but they can still feel I'm wrong if, for example, I give Zoro a bunch of five-dollar words that aren't even related to swords. There's no guide to what he's thinking, but we do know some things he ISN'T thinking.)

BUT. I think the thing that helps me the most, in any POV, is letting myself go on tangents and asides. It gives chances to pack in more canon references and jokes; it broadens the horizon from "what does the character think about this specific scene" to "what related canon-type things might they think of during this scene," meaning there's more chances to weave in Things We Actually Know; it lets the characters riff on things; and it generally gets in more Canon Character per Scene.

Bits like this that I'm proud of:

Dakota in my one Milo Murphy fic having "Cavendish words" that he learned specifically in order to describe Cavendish, like "huffily." That was also a leaky-pipe-to-water-fountain maneuver: I used the word, said "wait would Dakota use this word?" and then turned it into a Bit that felt in keeping with the tone of the show.

Stan considering the possibility of a vampire telemarketer in "Guiding Light." It makes the story feel more like Gravity Falls (where that kind of thing happens) and makes Stan's POV feel more like him (he comes up with weird hypotheticals sometimes!) and it only takes a single line that doesn't change the plot.

Sometimes Character Personality takes the conversation in the wrong direction for the plot and has to be pruned, but sometimes it's helpful. In "Wherever We Go" Stan tells Ford it's "literally a nightmare," and I went "wait Ford is a Known Grammar Stickler, if he doesn't instantly understand this then he's gonna complain about it." And complaining is better because A) it brings in more Canon Traits, B) it shows how much better his relationship with Stan is, C) it advances the plot by giving Stan a good opening to explain further, and D) it's silly and Gravity Falls is supposed to have silliness right next to the Feelings.

All Luffy POV I've written to date is at least a little like this. Luffy POV is terrifying because A) different medium B) translation C) even ODA avoids writing his internal thoughts. He has clear thoughts and convictions and conclusions but also his head is empty!! The only way I've found to write him is to just... throw his POV at a situation and let it bounce around until I find a sufficiently Luffy-like angle somewhere in there. You know, like a rubber ball. Then the in-character nonsense balances out the actually relevant but potentially less Luffy-sounding bits.

ANYWAY. I think the much shorter version of this post is that I do like using reference material for smaller, specific details of word choice/style/tone (I assume it's a lot like using references for art); letting the characters go off-topic actually helps me a lot in giving them more chances to sound like Them; AND the more you can blend in bits completely in agreement with canon, the more I think any departures from canon will be forgiven by readers. You build trust by getting everything you can right, and it makes the Unexplored Territory you have no reference for feel more plausible. ;P

[playpurpur]

Hi, because I'm an insane person and a freak for looking at data files, I compiled a masterlist of every single BG3 dialogue file that has Dark Urge origin-specific dialogue in it. This was achieved by using the BG3 Dialog Reader, and honest-to-god manually combing every file for the Dark Urge origin tags (listed at the top of the document).

This document is a list of file names, as they appear in the Dialogs folder, listed by the subfolder they appear in. To read the actual dialogue, you will need to either download the BG3 Dialog Reader, or download the parsed data from roksik's BG3 datamined dialogue drive.

Alternatively, this project has also been part of a larger pet project of mine: to transcribe all of the Dark Urge dialogue in the game. At the bottom of the masterlist doc, you'll find links to all of my docs of transcribed dialogue (including a separate doc for Gortash dialogue). However, I've only gotten through most of Act 1 and a decent chunk of the Companions interactions. How much I continue to add to the transcriptions will be determined by how much free time I have and how autistic I'm feeling on a given day LOL

[imperator-kahlo]

Visages Island - Transcript

I've been puzzling through some Visages stuff the last few days and I like to do my puzzling with a surfeit of information (and also to procrastinate actually writing it down). So I transcribed the ambient and cutscene dialogue for Visages Island. Posting it in case it's useful to anyone else.

I think it's likely I'll do this for a few more areas, but at this stage I don't intend to transcribe the whole game. I'll tag any transcriptions I do #COE33 transcripts. If anyone else is working on transcriptions (or data-mining of dialogue files), feel free to let me know so we can collaborate a bit or to repost/republish any of mine for that project.

Limitations/exclusions:

I don't include the merchant's dialogue or the back-at-camp debrief.

I'm pretty sure this is all the ambient dialogue, but there's a chance I missed some. I haven't replayed the area to verify.

...

Lune: So this is Visages' island… Monoco: He Who Guards Truth With Lies. Sciel: Are those… faces? Monoco: An infinite sea of them.

…

Sciel: Is the island… singing? Maelle: This melody… Lune: This is creeping me out.

…

Sciel: What's it doing? Verso: It's not attacking… Maelle: Was that an invitation? Sciel: So it seems. Verso: Mm-mm. Feels like a trap. Maelle: I don't mind a straightforward path for once. Better than battling through a mountain of Nevrons. Sciel: No, Verso's right. Something feels off. Mask Keeper: Oh, I'm harmless, you don't need those. Verso: Well if you're harmless, then these weapons will stay harmless too. Mask Keeper: Touché. Well. Visages invites you to join him in his chamber at the end of this path. I assume that's why you're here? Sciel: Where do the other paths lead? Mask Keeper: You're free to traverse them. Masks are not just to obscure. They may also illuminate. Look for the masks that you need. Maelle: Meaning? Mask Keeper: The invitation stands. Sciel: Well. Head straight to the Axon or take the other paths?

Vale of Joy

Sciel: They seem so joyful. I'm almost jealous. Monoco: On the surface at least. Lune: He Who Guards Truth With Lies.

Prompt: A mask. It seems connected to the Axon. Prompt: It speaks. Mask of Joy: He who painted this world, seeking what he could not grasp, longing to share with those he loves. Behind his smile, what could it be? --on selecting joy-- Prompt: Something happens…

--loud roar--- Maelle: Did you hear that? Verso: That was the Axon. Sciel: Destroying these masks seems to hurt him. Lune: Then let's keep doing that.

Vale of Anger

Lune: Everything's destroyed. Monoco: Normally I enjoy a little destruction, but this doesn't feel right.

Prompt: A mask. It seems connected to the Axon. Prompt: It speaks. Mask of Anger: He who cannot fight fate, behind his scowl, emotions blaze, but in the shadows, his temper fades. What am I but a mask of… --on selecting anger-- Prompt: Something happens…

--loud roar--- Maelle: Yeah, it definitely hurts him. I think I saw one more path. Verso: That's good, we're weakening him. Sciel: This feels… off…

Vale of Sadness

Sciel: I know they're Nevrons, but… witnessing the sorrow of others… I can't help but feel for them. Monoco: A noble but tremendously fatal impulse.

Prompt: A mask. It seems connected to the Axon. Prompt: It speaks. Mask of Sadness: He who lives in-between, behind his veil, emotions swell, for a life forced to paint, What is he but a reflection of… --on selecting sadness-- Prompt: Something happens…

--loud roar--- Maelle: I think that's all of them. Lune: We should be able to fight the Axon properly now. Verso: Let's answer this thing's invitation.

Approaching the Axon

Fading Man: … Fading Man: I would have traded my years for his. Fading Man: His life was cut short. He had so much more to do, to experience. Fading Man: This senseless war. Why? To what end? Lives shattered, for what? Fading Man: He was innocent… innocent… Fading Man: It was the folly of his elders. But he paid the price for our hubris. Fading Man: I would have traded my years for his… Player: Who are you talking about? Fading Man: This place… this Axon… they are all part of his story. Prompt: The man has gone silent.

Lune: Monoco, what does that mean, "He Who Guards Truth With Lies?" Monoco: Exactly what it sounds like. Sciel: Guard as in protect? Or guard as in control? Monoco: Yes.

---Sciel throws a mask--- Verso: I think you pissed him off.

Mask Keeper: People want so badly to know, "What's behind the mask?" Front, back. Recto, verso. Great art is both window and mirror. Whether it's your mask or theirs. Verso: Harmless, huh. Sciel: He's the real Axon. Mask Keeper: Child, we all need masks, but how you use them, mmm. Maelle: Merde.

Maelle: We did it! Sciel: No, wait-- Mask Keeper: We all need masks-- Sciel: This mask can't hurt me. Because it is me. Verso: You okay? What happened? Sciel: Axon down. Let's bring this to the Curator. Verso: That was Verso, wasn't it? Renoir?