🎂🎂🎂

EXACTLY!!!!!!

@tsippi

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.”

The progression of alliances from double life to limited life to secret life is really funny because it looks like Grian won Scar’s parents in the divorce.

There is a weight to Skizz that Grian simply doesn't have.

The first time they fly together- he and Skizz, showing the new guy the skies above their ever-changing homeland- Grian can feel it. It's not just in the wings- he'd known well enough to expect the three sets, getting consecutively smaller down Skizz's back. From one angle they're just as white as any other angel Grian has met in the multiverse.

Yet they don't stay that way.

As light and shadow play across Skizz's wings they flash in colors Grian isn't sure even Scar could name, there and gone in less than a breath. It's a display, then it's camouflage, then it's just white feathers.

Then there's the sensation.

It's like- the air itself becomes solid around Skizz, a piece of armor. He doesn't let the wind carry him, rather he drags the wind, creating an updraft that Grian is more than happy to bounce around on with outraged laughter as the angel cackles below him, doing loops to send his smaller companion higher.

When their flight concludes Grian lands gently, with hardly a breath.

Skizz lands like he is the last locking piece the earth was forgetting, and when his feet touch the rock there's the barest little tremor as if something immense has come to rest.

-

Grian knows, of course, they all KNOW. Tango had been in those ancient wars, as well, and Etho and Doc- well.

Yet with Skizz it's- hard to remember, in a way it isn't hard to remember with Doc or Tango or even Impulse, cheerful as he is. Occasionally, there's a slip. A Moment. A flash in his eyes that's a bit too red, a word that comes out a touch too rough, a swing of a sword that bites through a post instead of just into it.

Skizz- he doesn't have those reminders. It sometimes surprises whoever might be around when the wings appear, normally just the two great primaries, far larger in span than Grian's and more flexible besides (since he's not, as Grian had taken pains to point out, ACTUALLY an avian, so it's not like his wings need to function scientifically; they're more there because angels fly and angels fly because they have wings, done and dusted.)

There's always a moment. Oh, that's right. Skizz has wings. Skizz is an angel. Skizz once powered the God Beacons in the early server wars, a living battery that kept the Holy on their crusade until the first great Crashes brought about the Dark.

Skizz is older than their server, than redstone, than time.

Skizz knows Impulse's full, true name, and Impulse has seen Skizz with all of his Eyes open.

Oh, that's right.

Skizz is something more.

-

Skizz doesn't make it hard to remember on purpose, any more than Impulse or Tango or Doc make it easy to remember on purpose. He just is what he is- goofy, excitable, ready to lend a hand or a suggestion or just be there as a silent warmth on which you can lean and cry.

That's why it's so jarring when the zombie horde happens.

It's a combination of things- the day has just wound down to night, Scar and Grian are near a village, everyone else has gone to bed and Scar just needs one more poppy for the red dye for his new tents. Easy.

Until there's fifteen zombies pouring out of the spaces between the houses, groaning and reaching, mouths open and eyes- where applicable- vacant.

It's a run and gun scenario if Grian ever saw one and that's what he's doing, half-hauling Scar along, his larger companion firing with that frighteningly accurate bow even as he's yelping in alarm.

Still there's too many, and their respawns are so far, and damn it one stupid poppy-

There's a sound that's an absence of sound.

Grian will realize later that it was a concentrated sonic boom, the sound barrier shattering and then coming together again in a single moment as a whitehot streak comes down from the sky.

This time Skizz does not land like a locking piece of earth.

This time Skizz lands like the end of all things, like the cold iron of space that fills the void between stars, like an angel who was once so feared that his name became a prayer and a curse and a plea until he couldn't bear the sound of it and begged his only friend to give him another.

The zombie he landed on is less than ash.

The three who had been closest are bisected laterally, their top halves burning into nothing and their bottom halves becoming moist slag on the ground.

Scar has already covered his eyes but Grian can see the halo, a writhing spike of golden fire that screams as it circles Skizz's head, its points blurred to a single singing line daring anything to come within reach.

Oh, Grian thinks to himself, not all of the scars are scars.

Some of them are Eyes.

Then he closes his own eyes, behind which he sees nothing but spots as he hears the sound of zombies dying a second time, though presumably it is their first death by holy fire.

-

"So that was. Overkill."

"You think?" Scar wheezes. Skizz laughs awkwardly as he helps the other man up, offering a regen potion. "Sorry, buddy. I was coming back from the mangrove farm and I looked down and- well. Some habits die hard."

Grian could say something. Could gently goad Skizz into talking more, do that thing he is so very good at doing.

Only Grian, despite what some might say, does know when to let the sleeping dog lie. So he only says, "How did you not break your face?" and laugh at the appropriate time when Skizz says with that lopsided grin, his eyes still shining a little too brightly, "Practice, G. Practice!"

-

No one on the Hermitcraft server is a clueless innocent. There are skeletons in every closet and that's part and parcel of belonging- there is no perfection here.

Like Cleo's state of perpetual paused decay, like Gem's refusal to be far from water long, like Doc's long hours and Etho's red stained fingers, Mumbo's sudden quick jerks towards a voice only he can hear and Cub's careful symmetry, they are all of them followed by stories and ghosts.

If Skizz's ghosts howl like lost souls, well.

Grian figures his friend has come to the right place, like Impulse all those years ago.

There's plenty of sky for them and their demons- the kind that don't wait for them patiently to roost.

YOU’RE A WONDERFUL PERSON AND I LOVE YOU!!!

DO YOU HEAR ME????

YOU ARE LOVED!!!!

Awwwww 😍 TYSM!!!! Seeing as you’ve just sent me this, you must be an amazing person too!!! Love you!

Sketches!

//i love the magic mountain crew 🥹

You should be able to say “don’t touch me” to anyone ever in any context and not have it be considered in the realm of surprising or insulting imho if we ever needed to normalize something it’s this

Your point is null and void. I have been traumatised for life. No amount of therapy will ever help me recover.