257 Even.

Ed’s reaction at the end can actually be taken more than one way, depending on how you read it. I won’t explain it, because it’s demeaning to you, sexy, sexy, readers. Even after I wrote it I wasn’t sure what exactly he meant. It just seemed like he should say it.

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Please don’t take this the wrong way at all, but I just thought that (as an artist and possibly a writer) that you would like to know this for future reference to not make the same mistake. The line:

“We don’t tolerate dawdling, in the queen’s navy.”

It doesn’t require a comma. It’s a prepositional phrase, not a subordinate dependent clause, thus the only time you have to separate it from the sentence with a comma is if it is an EXCEPTIONALLY long prep. phrase… or if it is a series of several prep. phrases. Again, this isn’t anything but encouragement from an aspiring writing major to another writer.

Of course, if it had a comma in the original, the quote should keep the comma.

Also, it’s dialogue… so all grammatical rules go out the window… if she paused, then for us as readers to know that, it needs a comma.

She’s so sweet and innocent like a puppy and a kitten trying to slid into the same bunny slipper, touching really…

Gawd, what Brooksie is saying here feels so familiar… But I don’t even watch movies, so it just must be something stylistic…

My expectation is that what Ed meant was, he did not know what the correct emotional response was.

Maybe I´m more comfortable than normal with not knowing the correct response to things because I have a flattened affect. However, Brooksie has a sufficiently outlying personality that most people would not know how to react to her. It´s a perfectly normal response.

Add to that, as I understand it, this is still Ed´s first day. While most people have much more resistance to reaction fatigue than I do, I´m sure he´s well past the point where he´s running out of immediate reactions to things.

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