Yes

I know everyone says it’s best to just stick to “said” as a dialogue tag bc it disappears and that’s true and I mostly do but I want to take a moment for my all-time favorite dialogue tag, “lied.” Absolutely nothing hits like “‘I’m here to help,’ he lied.” NOTHING.

born to write the beginning and ending, forced to write the middle part.

Whatever you decide to do, make sure it makes you happy.

Unknown

I need people to stop blaming the death of movies on “quips”. A quip is just a funny line of dialogue. That’s all. Like I just saw a post talking about quips and the death of movies and brought up Pirates of the Caribbean as an example of a better movie and yes it is but also that movie is FULL OF QUIPS. I just rewatched The Princess Bride. It’s all quips. Every single line. And it’s a masterpiece.

Movies suck when people don’t care about the art they’re making. That includes them not caring about their quips. Which is why a lot of comic relief dialogue ALSO sucks now. But the problem isn’t that funny dialogue exists.

“Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.”

— Carl Sagan

Saint John’s water or Faery Water is made with specific herbs such as: hypericum (Saint John’s Wort), yarrow, rue, verbena, fern, wild fennel, marigold, elder, laurel, lavender, mugworth, mauve, mint, rosemary, sage, chamomile, rose, poppy, cornflower, and wildflowers. According to the tradition, these herbs must be gathered at sunset by fasting women and infused in spring water for an entire night. During the night it’s believed that gods and spirits of nature are going to put their blessing to the water giving it magical properties. This magical water is used to bring love, prosperity, luck and health.

being a writer leads to a genuinely helpful but also very stupid kind of mindfulness where you'll be having a sobbing breakdown or the worst anxiety attack of your life and think "okay, I really need to pay attention to how this feels. so I can incorporate it into my fanfiction."

Timepiece with the fewest moving parts:

Sundial.

Timepiece with the most moving parts:

Hourglass.

One thing White Collar gets absolutely right and very few other shows do, is that people React to guns.

The reaction varies, depending on their level of training/comfort with firearms, but there's no cool guy bravado* when someone pulls a gun, especially not from Neal. When he sees a gun he always always always reacts like things just got very serious, this is no longer fun and games.

And you know what? Yes please. It also ups the stakes for us when a character reacts to someone pulling a gun on them, and it's also highly realistic. I just really appreciate it that guns aren't a prop to signify "antagonist" but a weapon that should and does elicit fear.

* except for when Kate pulled a gun on Peter, and even then his reaction was warranted.

New Banner Feature:  Iberian Tribes: pre-Roman Iberia was awash  with tribes of varying heritages, many of which gained Celtic layers, as the focus here on individual tribes often reveals.