Re:RWBY

[s-n-arly]

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

[jezifster2]

You know. Reading is important. Because I'm like always trying to make every line I write this groundbreaking mindfucking art but like. A book is 90% just saying what happened. "I hugged him around the waist." "The chair was brown and overstuffed." "I woke up alone." Etc etc. Like normal ass lines. I just keep comparing my boring, necessary to set a scene lines, with famous authors' absolute best lines and like.... every line doesn't have to shatter the earth. Sometimes someone just sits in a chair and the lines that wreck you come later, one at a time, here and there. It's alright.

[foxys-fantasy-tales]

This is super common and I wish we were taught when we begin to write that those quoted lines are also in a sea of the same sort of setup we obsess over not being 'good enough'. I saw multiple people drop out of writing courses over this in college. Sure, sometimes you need a better way to describe something prevalent or to pinpoint an emotion, but if EVERYTHING was written in that sort of tone for a whole book it would prove utterly exhausting to read.

[pens-swords-stuff]

Also, if every single line in the book was hard-hitting and mindblowing, then it wouldn't be memorable because it would be drowned out.

The best lines are famous because they stand out.

[normal-horoscopes]

I don't mean this in any jokey or disrespectful way; is there any truth to the alchemy in say, the Full Metal Alchemist anime? The symbols or transmutation circles?

Actually the author of FMA did a ton of research into historical western alchemy. The whole law of equivalent exchange is a real alchemical concept from hermetica, and one that sir Issac Newton expounded into the law of thermodynamics.

The elrics dad, Van Hoenhiem, is based on a real alchemist named Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hoenhiem. At one point Pride even references the real alchemists name.

Basically everything about alchemy in FMA is taken from primary sources, down to the symbology of transmutation circles to the color scheme of Edwards design.

[nyxshadowhawk]

The way alchemy works in FMA doesn’t resemble the way real-life alchemy is or was supposed to work, however, FMA is still packed full of references to real-life alchemy. The most obvious one is Hohenheim’s name, but there are plenty more! (Ed and Al also share their names with real-life famous occultists, Edward Kelly and Alphonse Constant (Eliphas Levi), but this might be a coincidence.) 

It is probably no accident that Ed’s color scheme is black, white, and red. The three main stages of alchemy are names the nigredo, the albedo, and the rubedo. Nigredo, the black stage, is when the matter of the Stone “dies” and putrefies, representing spiritual death. Albedo, the white stage, is when the matter of the Stone is washed, boiled, and turns to vapor, which condenses back into water, and the cycle repeats. This represents spiritual ascension and unification with the divine. Finally, during the rubedo, this “volatile” matter becomes “fixed,” crystallizing into the Philosopher’s Stone. Ed also has gold hair and eyes, which is fairly self-explanatory. Gold is a metaphor for the state of spiritual perfection.

The “Flamel” symbol of a serpent nailed to a cross that’s on the back of Ed’s coat, painted on Al’s pauldron, and tattooed on Izumi’s chest is the “crucified serpent,” which actually does come from Nicolas Flamel. It represents the completion of the Great Work, the union of the fixed and volatile, the mercurial serpent physically nailed down to the cross with its four arms representing the Four Elements (with Quintessence in the center) and the reconciliation of polarities. It also demonstrates the death and mortification of the old body that is necessary for the Philosopher’s Stone to be reborn:

The wings at the top of FMA’s “Flamel” is probably meant to represent Mercury’s Caduceus, and maybe also the resurrection of the snake. The crown references the “King” that is a metaphor for the Philosopher’s Stone. The Flamel symbol also bears resemblance to the Staff of Asclepius, which represents medicine in the real world.

Another example is the “Green Lion” on the flag of Amestris that acts a symbol of the military and is referenced a few other times:

In real alchemy, the “Green Lion” is a symbol of antimony ore and represents the Philosopher’s Stone in its “imperfect” state, before it’s been purified. The Green Lion eats the Sun (representing perfection and Gold), causing a solar eclipse, representing the nigredo (death), the first stage of the Great Work. Amestris was created for almost exactly that reason, and it is far from “purified,” with corruption running deep into its core.

The image of the lion eating the sun appears in the show, when Ed and Ling are in Gluttony’s stomach:

There’s also the transmutation circle itself, which looks so realistic, I actually thought it was real when I first saw it online:

Here’s a real magic circle:

Real magic circles are from ceremonial magic, not alchemy, but the text around the outside of the Human Transmutation Circle does reference alchemy. The “peacock’s feathers,” the spotted panther and the green lion (as previously mentioned), the progression of black, gray, white, and red, all are metaphors for chemical reactions that are supposed to take place in an ideal alchemical procedure.

Some of the more complicated transmutation circles that appear throughout the show are also based on real designs from manuscripts. There’s this design on the wall of the Fifth Laboratory:

Here we see the Sun and Moon (more on that in a minute) and three symbols of Mercury, which represent their unification. This looked very realistic, so I did some searching and this is what I found:

It’s not exactly the same, but it’s clearly an image from an alchemical manuscript, and it’s very similar.

The designs on Ed and Al’s doors are real. The design on Ed’s door is the Kabbalistic Tree of Life as depicted by Robert Fludd in his seventeenth-century book Utriusque Cosmi:

The design on Al’s door comes from an alchemical manuscript called The Marrow of Alchemy by George Ripley (as in, the Ripley Scroll). It depicts the alchemical process:

I haven’t managed to find where the design on Mustang’s gate comes from, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that one was real, too.

One more thing I want to draw attention to is this dialogue between child-Ed and child-Al in ”He Who Would Swallow God.”

Edward: “The Sun is male, representing masculinity.” Alphonse: “The Moon is female, representing femininity.” Edward: “When the Sun and the Moon overlap, then the two genders become one.” Alphonse: “In other words, the union represents a perfect being.”

The Sun and Moon are kind of a big deal in alchemy, and they are associated with maleness and femaleness respectively. Their role in real alchemy is as the metaphorical “parents” of the androgynous Philosopher’s Stone, the perfect being:

The Sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth is its nurse. The father of all perfection in the whole world is here.

—The Emerald Tablet

Through the “chemical wedding” of the Sun and Moon (sulfur and mercury), the Philosopher’s Stone is produced. I actually didn’t consider that a solar eclipse might be a symbol of the chemical wedding, until Ed and Al explicitly pointed it out in that episode. That’s not what an eclipse traditionally represents in alchemy (that’s the Green Lion swallowing the sun, the nigredo and dark night of the soul that follows the first chemical wedding), but I still think it makes sense. 

(An image of the Chemical Wedding itself actually appears on the door to the exam room in the 2003 anime.)

Alchemy in FMA mostly doesn’t resemble real alchemy beyond those references. Real alchemy isn’t equivalent exchange — changing something into something else of equal value — but rather, metamorphosing something into a more improved version of itself. Theoretically, this would be turning “lead” into “gold,” the most base form of metal into the most perfect form of metal (as was believed). But real alchemy isn’t about chemicals, and it never really was. Real alchemy is a spiritual process, meant to transmute the soul from its “base” human state into a “perfect” spiritual state. The way to do this is to separate out the “subtle” from the “gross,” i.e. the higher spiritual self from the mundane and earthly human self, and then joining them back together so that the spiritual self purifies the mundane self. This is summarized by the Latin phrase “solve et coagula,” to dissolve and to congeal, or alternately, to separate and to bring together. FMA parallels this with its two parts of alchemy being deconstruction (solve) and reconstruction (coagula). Therefore, the character whose goals and motivations come the closest to those of real alchemists is… believe it or not… Father.

What Father wants, or at least what he says he wants, is knowledge. He wants all the knowledge in the universe. That’s what most occultists want, actually. Most occultists want to either merge with or become alike to God, although they all have different theories and methods of doing that. In FMA, the Philosopher’s Stone is an alchemical catalyst powered by human souls, but in real life, the Philosopher’s Stone is (long story short) a metaphor for the perfect being that Father wants to become. The real Philosopher’s Stone is a being that is a perfect balance of male and female, sun and moon, dark and light, human and divine. It is therefore whole and complete. As I understand it, a person who has become the Philosopher’s Stone can, theoretically, have the power and knowledge of a god whilst still being able to live on earth as a human.

By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly from you. Its force is above all force, for it vanquishes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing. So was the world created.

—The Emerald Tablet

Father’s “perfect” form is a perverse version of this ideal.

(This form gives me some very confusing emotions.)

“As above, so below” is the Hermetic Principle of Correspondence, the closest thing to a real Law of Equivalent Exchange — it is the idea that the Macrocosm (God, the Universe, Truth) reflects the microcosm (humanity), and that by affecting one, you affect the other. The goal of the alchemist is to become the Philosopher’s Stone, the place where Human and Divine meet and become one thing.

I can’t believe it took me until now to see “As above, so below” represented here. Even the episode’s title makes that obvious! But despite that blatant symbolism, there is no healthy convergence of divine and human here. Many occultists believe in something called “ego death,” which I used to think meant losing one’s individuality, which sounded a lot like being trapped in a homunculus with a torrent of other screaming souls. Only now, after watching this show, do I understand what “ego death” really means. This scene is pure ego on Father’s part:

HEAR ME GOD! I DEMAND YOU ANSWER THE CRY OF MY SOUL! COME TO ME! JOIN ME! YES, I WILL NO LONGER BE BOUND TO YOU OR YOUR CONSEQUENCES! I’LL FORCE YOU DOWN TO THIS EARTH AND INTO MY BOWELS! YOU HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO BE ABSORBED!

—”Eye of Heaven, Gateway of Earth.”

This isn’t a genuine attempt to understand God, this is just an inferiority-superiority complex. Father doesn’t care to understand anything about God. All he cares about is himself, and acquiring power for himself. Power is all he’s after, to assuage his inferiority complex. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting power (e.g. Mustang), but godlike power to command the universe is a byproduct of having properly completed the alchemical process and become the Philosopher’s Stone. It is not the end in and of itself. “Ego” isn’t having a sense of self, it’s the inability to understand the spiritual. It’s viewing everything in a mundane lens, having all your motivations be ultimately small and petty, no matter how grand the spectacle. It’s wanting power or glory or whatnot just to make yourself feel better, but not having the self-awareness to actually admit that. The first stage of the alchemical process is nigredo, death — watching your old self die away so that it can be reborn as a better version of itself. Father never understands this, and The Truth says as much.

The Truth is a personification of the Hermetic Principle of Mentalism:

Who am I? One name you might have for me is The World. Or you might call me The Universe. Or perhaps “God.” Or perhaps “The Truth.” I am All, and I am One. So of course, this also means that I am you.

That’s basically it right there. God is All. All is God.

The reason why the Homunculus never grew beyond his days in the flask is because, despite wanting to acquire knowledge, he never actually learned anything. Trying to drag God down to Earth is sheer hubris, not because Earth is too far beneath it, but for the opposite reason — it can come down to Earth whenever it likes. It is everywhere and everything. And the Homunculus never did any of the introspective work needed to find God within himself. He tried to separate out (solve) his perceived “flaws” (the Seven Deadly Sins, i.e. the other homunculi) but did not reintegrate them back into himself (coagula), thus only completing half the alchemical process. He is neither human, nor divine, he only steals Hohenheim’s human shape and Truth’s divine power. He never broadened his thinking or improved himself mentally/spiritually, and thus can’t become alike to God. He never became more than what he is, the dwarf in the flask, and thus his Gate is blank.

Edward, by contrast, loses almost everything in attempting human transmutation (nigredo), and then accepts his own humanity at the gate of Truth (albedo), losing the ability to perform alchemy but becoming a better version of himself (rubedo) — thus, completing the alchemical process. In the end, he’s free, which is all Father wanted to be. He acknowledges that you don’t have to use alchemy or whatnot to become more than you are, because who you are is enough.

Thus, Edward becomes the best version of himself, which is what real alchemists aspired to be. He’s completed the Great Work, and therefore has no need for alchemy anymore. “That is the correct answer, alchemist!”

[cryptotheism]

I can write a decent hook when the occasion calls

[flagellant]

Can you give me advice on how? Usually I have to rely on stainless steel or sometimes carved bone.

[cryptotheism]

Yeah. Two things: Focus on the thing in the scene that is most remarkable, most out of place, and then promise the reader an explanation.

Examples:

"She awoke to find herself in a box car full of corpses, which was damn lucky."

"The prince, beautiful for a six-foot clam, was hungry and freezing."

[flagellant]

Okay great! I'm gonna go try again now

[homunculus-argument]

Worldbuilding stuff:

If your story has an idle nobility class, their culture shouldn't just be different from the general population, it should be an over-the-top caricature of the common folks' culture. Whatever the population generally agrees is ideal, fair, admirable, or good, the nobility will take into stupid extremes.

Contrary to the beliefs of many, people are actually not at all happy when they're idle - a person with no assigned task or duty will go out of their way to come up with one. And all around the world, whenever there's been an upper class with nothing to do, they've started to compete with each other over stupid shit, but always stupid shit that the culture they live in considers positive qualities.

From the noblemen in Europe challenging each other to a possibly lethal duel over insulting someone's hat, to a Chinese noblewoman being moved to tears by the beauty of someone's calligraphy, bored elites everywhere have always wanted to outdo each other in their expressions of possessing all the noble traits that this culture in particular holds in value.

You can, and should, use this as a way to highlight what the actual values of this society is. In a setting where being religious is held as an admirable trait, there is nobility coming up with new ways to one-up each other in their expressions of worship. Society that values art and music will have them competing over who hires the most artists, and who employs the most talented musicians. Aggressive, war-like people will have fuels to the fucking death over a stupid hat.

Literally anything can be competed in, and bored people with far too much time and money in their hands will become competitive over the most ridiculous things. This isn't just an useful tool in worldbuilding, but also a fun one.

[homunculus-argument]

Hey btw, if you're doing worldbuilding on something, and you're scared of writing ~unrealistic~ things into it out of fear that it'll sound lazy and ripped-out-of-your-ass, but you also don't want to do all the back-breaking research on coming up with depressingly boring, but practical and ~realistic~ solutions, have a rule:

Just give the thing two layers of explanation. One to explain the specific problem, and another one explaining the explanation. Have an example:

Plot hole 1: If the vampires can't stand daylight, why couldn't they just move around underground?

Solution 1: They can't go underground, the sewer system of the city is full of giant alligators who would eat them.

Well, that's a very quick and simple explanation, which sure opens up additional questions.

Plot hole 2: How and why the fuck are there alligators in the sewers? How do they survive, what do they eat down there when there's no vampires?

Solution 2: The nuns of the Underground Monastery feed and take care of them as a part of their sacred duties.

It takes exactly two layers to create an illusion that every question has an answer - that it's just turtles all the way down. And if you're lucky, you might even find that the second question's answer loops right back into the first one, filling up the plot hole entirely:

Plot hole 3: Who the fuck are the sewer nuns and what's their point and purpose?

Solution 3: The sewer nuns live underground in order to feed the alligators, in order to make sure that the vampires don't try to move around via the sewer system.

When you're just making things up, you don't need to have an answer for everything - just two layers is enough to create the illusion of infinite depth. Answer the question that looms behind the answer of the first question, and a normal reader won't bother to dig around for a 3rd question.

[ineffablecalculus]

Right? Vampires are out. Sewer nuns are my new obsession.

[swallowtailed]

[id: screenshot of tags reading “this is a great post but i am compelled by the sewer nuns” /end id]

[bakapandy]

Some more eye drawing notes/mini tutorial

I often get comments on how I draw eyes and expressions. A lot of expression can be shown in eyes alone, even without eyebrows or other facial features.

Of course, the full range of expressions comes from combining all the components that go into an expression (eyes, eyebrows, mouth, face angle, body language), which makes an infinite number of combinations

[nereydes]

Vieux-Nice, France

[transgenderer]

never not thinking about giant cisterns. THATS immanentizing the eschaton. when we get to heaven and its a bunch of giant wet concrete tunnels with vast columns holding up the ceiling, then you will see...

[official-kircheis]

you know about the tokyo storm drains, yeah?

[transgenderer]

yeah that's what inspired this post :)

im very exited to go here when i die :)

[1rakus]

basilica cistern in istanbul

[rerwby]

Why do you hate RWBY?

it really doesn't occupy a space in my mind anymore

why did it once? idk, i enjoyed it to a degree, saw it be shitty, was critical about it and probably way too loudly for my own good, and then got over it. still don't think it's particular good but now i'm just causally critical of rooster teeth in general.

this is mostly a place i reblog writing-related stuff to now. kept the url for branding. probably should change it.

[rerwby]

yoooo

okay so my “”rewrite”” only went as far as to parallel volume 4 idk and obviously i don’t keep up with this show anymore but i wanted to run through this with the ideas i had in my head

- Never touched this but I fucked with Aura ideas

- I don’t think it was a power fantasy

- Hell no

- Hellllll no

- I guess it was the same amount of time at Beacon but the advantage of writing meant it felt more fleshed-out and as if more was happening in that amount of time.

- Yeah I did Neo stuff because I like Neo. It was more peripheral, like her existence was justified by stuff happening in other parts of the story, but it absolutely served to have her do shit. Roman Idr.

- Absolutely not

- Maybe? I had a theme about how the fucked up Hunter culture incentivized capable people to be cowardly or greedy but I very much framed altruism as a good and heroic thing.

- I genuinely just never got this far. But Adam is fucked and I wasn’t about to undo that.

- Relics yes but Maidens I fucked with. I think they’re neat. Might have combined them with the silver eyes.

- Deliberately avoided bumping up any male characters

- lmao no

- I couldn’t care less.

- Gross and also I don’t care

- I thought a lot about how to make sure that wasn’t a thing. I don’t think it was? I mean by conceit a rewrite is an AU isn’t it? Maybe this is in regards to genre.

- I don’t remember. I know I had an idea to make Jaune the new Ozpin to have him actually be relevant and do some themes and character arcs but it’s hazy. Also remember I stopped thinking about this in V5 so Oscar was far less important at the time.

- I didn’t think about this much, it was just a forgone thing but I never got around to planning anything.

- Is this a theme in the show? The show where Monty had them invent Aura because he wanted “boss battles” where he could be flashy but wouldn’t have characters murder each other immediately? Uhh. I don’t recall any character arcs being about the morality of murder no.

- I did not get far enough for Ironwood to be a factor or my version of him was really far removed from canon since, again, I stopped planning this around V5.

- no honestly this one sounds fake who the hell is doing this thanks v*c

- it’s blake’s responsibility to murder adam

- Nah give that girl her growth and arcs. Ofc she starts out idealistic but the point is to learn to keep that outlook while not being reckless and throwing your life away.

- nope

- may or may not have done this in my shitty written version as a throwaway line but it was dumb and held no bearing on the rest

- I’m pretty sure I replaced Salem’s entire crew with characters who weren’t lame. It was the one example where I went the OC route and I don’t regret it.

[communistkenobi-archive]

the actual reason I consume mediocre media is because I have bad taste. the deeper secret pretentious reason is because I think there’s something very revealing about bad media that you don’t get with good media. when you watch a poorly executed plot point unfold, you see the machinery behind it. you see the gap between what’s actually on screen and the true goal the author is striving for. if it’s particularly awful, you can even measure just how poorly mismatched the author’s skills are with the story they’re trying to tell you. watching a poorly executed narrative play out feels like you’re discovering something, because you see all the wiring and guts underneath that better authors hide from you, in the same way that movies hide boom mics and books make you forget you’re turning the pages. if a story is good and executed well you just see the story. but I want to see the guts and wires!

[communistkenobi-archive]

also I like complaining a lot

[apricops]

The worst part about writing fantasy is being keenly aware that you’re writing fantasy, which means that you always have to straddle a thin three-way line between anachronism, cliche, and clunk.

Take money, for example. You can’t just have people in a fictional fantasy world walk around using Euros. You consider something generic, like ‘silver coins,’ but before you know it your world starts sounding like a shitty ren faire.

So you think about the world you’ve built and its needs and its history to come up with some unique and relevant terms. But if your terms are too unique and relevant you wind up writing “yarr, you’ll be ransomed for a hundred Trade League Silver Gyrblonks” and realize your worldbuilding is now getting in the way of basic readability.

[shieldfoss]

“They’re using golden valley coins!”

…didst thou mean dollars?

“Nevermind. They’re using some basic silver coin and then enough gold to be worth ten silver coins is called a ten-piece”

…Si, si, el Peso!

Trying over, they’re minted by the king so they’re called crown coins, or, these days, abbreviated, they’re just Crowns

Naturligvis, vi skifter Daler ud med Kroner!

—

The Lesson Of The Day is that all the names are already claimed by IRL, and all the almost-good-names that you could invent to get around that were used by some SFF author in the seventies e.g. I bet you can’t do Suns and Moons for your gold/silver coins, I bet some author did that already.

[garmbreak1]

My fantasy nation uses solid gold coins marked by the dental impressions of the reigning king, as a sign of their purity and authenticity.

They’re called Bitcoins.

[brazenautomaton]

oh you can go the fuck to jail that’s what you can do, where you’ll be shackled to a chain gang hitting the blockchain with a pickaxe

[guerrillatech]

[prokopetz]

Staple some dice to it and call it a tabletop RPG and not only can you publish a worldbuilding bible with no story attached, people will pay you money for the privilege of writing the story for you.

[prokopetz]

@interminatetrophicchain replied:

please add the tag “life hack” /j

Who’s joking? Writers actually do this – if you’ve ever run into a tabletop RPG that has twenty pages of rules, two hundred pages of setting lore, and zero guidance regarding what player characters actually do, you’re looking at a game that was written as an excuse to publish a worldbuilding bible. I’m sure you know the type!

[lemon-embalmer]

fantasy characters: “Geez”

me: who the fuck spread Christianity there

[lemon-embalmer]

this two-years-old shitpost just gained a hundred notes who the snickerdoodles dug it up

[she-who-fights-and-writes]

W H A T

[slumpyspaceprincess]

@rogha

[newlandswestcoast]

[whatagrump]

Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

“There’s no dialogue tag after this sentence, so end it with a period rather than a comma.” She frowned, suddenly concerned that the entire post was as unasked for as it was sanctimonious.

[thewritinggrindstone]

And!

“If you’re breaking dialogue up with an action tag”—she waves her hands back and forth—”the dashes go outside the quotation marks.”

[winged]

Here’s one that a lot of people miss, but that can be helpful for the reader: 

“Of course you already know to use a paragraph break between speakers,” they said.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Depending on style, you can either indent or line break, as long as you keep it consistent.” “Exactly! But did you know that if your single speaker goes on and on and gets a little rambly, and you find yourself needing to put in a paragraph break but not switch speakers, you should do the exact same thing?   “Only, in this case, don’t close off the quotation marks until that speaker is completely done talking. See how after the question mark above there isn’t anything? Indent or line break for your next paragraph – however you’re indicating – and use a beginning quotation to mark the dialogue, but leave the initial paragraph open, so that the reader can tell it’s not a different person now speaking,” they finished. 

Obviously, people can often get it from context even if you don’t do this, and grammar and punctuation is a thing that evolves and changes over time, but I do like this rule because it actually benefits the reader. 

[steelblaidd]

I need to review often.

[zennistrad]

fucking losing it over this thumbnail