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math music reading PM
Biography
Joined Jan '09

Hi there, if you're interested in my work I suggest you go to my AO3 and Tumblr accounts. My AO3 has works past 2009 for MCU and APH as well as for SNK. Other fandoms and miscellaneous creations can be found on my Tumblr, and some of my works on Tumblr and AO3 have been "orphaned" such that you can still find them. You can always contact me for anything, whether that be my fic or help with English writing or whatever!

AO3: /users/mathmusicreading

Tumblr:

YouTube: youtube.com/user/mathmusicreading/videos

dA: /gallery

Protip: If you want to give readers a link to something, put it in the summary of the fic, not in the body. In order to protect writers from plagiarism, FFN doesn't let users copy the text of a fic; readers have to fiddle with the html in order to do that. Readers can copy text from a fic summary though, so even though you want readers to check out a link after reading your fic, put the link in the summary instead of at the end of the fic and just instruct readers to not follow the link yet.

My idiosyncrasies: I think "all right" and "alright" should have different meanings the way "all ready" and "already" do, and I like to use "ok" instead of "OK" or "okay". As you'll see in this next sentence, I prefer a British English punctuation rule over an American one; I think it makes more sense. I'll assume you just made a typo if you confuse "your" and "you're" or "their" and "there", but I'm not including "they're" in the latter because contractions should be understandable. (Know "it's" vs. "its" and "who's" vs. "whose"!)

I love saidisms and I totally think ones like "breathed" and "growled" are perfectly valid; you have to understand communication and evolution of language, not just traditional rules. "Breathed" should technically be "said breathily" or "said breathlessly", but it evokes entirely different meanings, usually something like "said in amazement". "Growled" brings to mind a way of speaking, tone and emotion and intent, that people definitely do even though they can't literally growl and speak words at the same time. If people really want to be sticklers, just go ahead and change the comma at the end of the speech to a period, and then make the dialogue tag "growled subject"/"subject growled" be the sentence "Subject growled." And seeing that, I've just explained to you what writers actually mean and what's most "literally" happening when "growled" is used as a saidism.

Quick tips: Google things you aren't sure of! (I recognize that this is harder when English is not your first language so knowing what questions to ask and pitfalls to look out for is difficult, and I'm sorry that as a reader I have difficulty keeping in mind that many writers aren't writing in their first language and I shouldn't immediately get annoyed by things.) I'm also willing to help anyone who'd be interesting in my editor services! You can easily figure out whether to use "X and I" or "X and me" if you take out "X and" and only use "I" or "me". This will also help you with "we" and "us" respectively. "Who" is a subject performing an action; "whom" is an object upon which an action is performed. If you're speaking to someone it's "whom"; if someone is doing anything it's "who".

Epithets: Stop switching them up all the time; it's jarring and often goes into purple prose as well as being unnecessary. Just use people's names and personal pronouns. Even though "they" is plural, use it for third person singular as well as third person plural; do not turn a person into an "it". For physical attributes, know that French-derived words for hair color are gendered, so blond/brunet and blonde/brunette are masculine and feminine respectively. "Ravenette" is not a word and please don't describe both eye color and hair color unless it's relevant to the narrative.

Don't use "male" and "female" to refer to people unless you actually mean to be clinical or scientific. If you're doing this because you want a teenager to seem more mature and so you avoid "teenager", "adolescent", and "boy"/"girl", realize using "male"/"female" to remove connotations of age is actually more jarring. You're allowed to use "young (wo)man" if you want, and people will accept "man" even though they won't accept "woman". (And don't forget "young lady" and "lady" exist.) Instead of performing reverse infantilization, remember people are allowed to be different ages; different stages of life are not bad and no stage of life is preferred. Describe someone with the age appropriate descriptor; it's who they are, should be, and have the right to be. If you want someone to be more mature, write them acting more maturely or don't make them perform actions beyond their maturity.

English unfortunately is lacking when it comes to demonyms, nouns for peoples of distinct nationalities. "Spaniard" is actually a noun, the adjective "German" is also the noun, "Chinese" in common practice is only an adjective and doesn't serve as a noun. You can use the less common demonyms when you really must, such as when you are making a list and it would be too tedious to keep saying "nationality man" instead of just "nationality", but please normally just say "nationality man". English unfortunately also does not let you say "the other" like "el otro" in Spanish. "The other" is an adjectival phrase that needs a noun to modify (e.g., the other "man"), and there needs to be an antecedent (i.e., according to the previous parenthetical, "the other man" needs to have been named before and clearly be the reference for "the other man").

Sorry for my ranting: I fully admit these are just technicalities and only make me like a computer, not like a good writer. I recognize that I really am not a great writer; seriously, I cringe when I reread some of my stuff. Just, I hope this was helpful and because I care too much I did want to say it all. Also, given that these are "simple" rules instead of the more skilled techniques of good writing, I do think people should be able to follow them. (Again, this is more for writers whose first language isn't English, but for native English speakers I expect you to have a better understanding and use resources like Google if you're past elementary school.) My apologies again for being pretentious and my offer of technical editorial services still stands for anyone who wasn't put off by all of this.

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