[FFML] [A:tLA][Post-Finale]Rematch

[Glazius Falconar]

H. Torrance Griffin wrote:
> Here is a better version.  Thank Abdiel for a lot of grammar help (I confess, my prose has grown rusty).
>
> HTG
>
> _______________________________________
> Regnal Year 15 Zuko (Avatar Year 128 Aang)
> Two days before the Summer Solstice, half an hour past sunrise.
>   
Hokay, some tips:

1) That was some smooth dialogue. Like buttah. Great work with 
vocabulary, verbosity, and tone. Uno problemo. Aang is a contraction 
sort of dude. Growing up will not change this; at most it will encourage 
his ability to act like a formal Avatar in a formal situation, but he's 
not speaking in a formal situation. If he _is_ using differential 
emphasis on part of a contractible expression you leave it intact but 
otherwise, close the sucker up.

2) Parenthetical asides. Don't use 'em (not even if it's funny). If 
you're clarifying with a parenthetical aside -- the one after "Persona 
non grata", say -- stick the sucker inside some em dashes or, 
preferably, garden-variety commas. If you're making a humorous quip 
which relies on timing within the context of the sentence, like that one 
about Fire Nation Winter being a bad joke to the Kyoshi trade 
delegation, shed a tear and prune it, since there's no way to make it 
work in a block of plain text.

If you're posting a story online in a context that'll take HTML, though, 
you can tag up an unassuming asterisk like so <ABBR title="Hilarious 
parenthetical aside!">*</ABBR> to get the full effect of an aside 
without breaking up the main story <ACRONYM title="This works 
identically.">*</ACRONYM>.

3) Pluperfect subjunctive, and other tenses I swear I am not making up.

When you're talking about something you might have done in the past, the 
tense you use is the pluperfect subjunctive, which is formed with "had" 
and the past participle of the relevant verb.

When you then go on to talk about consequences that would have followed 
the thing you might have done in the past, the tense you use is the 
conditional perfect, which is formed with "would have" and the past 
participle of the relevant verb.

If you then talk about things that would have been happening after the 
events that would have followed as consequences of the things you might 
have done in the past, and continue on to the present day, then you use 
the conditional perfect continuous, which is formed with "would have 
been" and the present participle of the relevant verb.

If there are multiple actions that you might have performed or things 
you might have said, then you use the relevant tenses for all of them. 
The same goes with the consequences that would have followed or steps 
that would have been taken -- though that last one is actually a 
conditional perfect INFINITIVE since there's no obvious actor for it to 
glom onto.

The ultimate upshot of all of this: first, BEHOLD MY MIGHTY GRAMMAR, 
though I know there's a mistake in it somewhere because THERE ALWAYS IS. 
Second, when speculating about the past, try to keep it brief or to use 
small numbers of verbs, ideally both.