“Are You The Witch Who Turned Eleven Princes Into Swans?”

Helpful things for action writers to remember

Sticking a landing will royally fuck up your joints and possibly shatter your ankles, depending on how high you’re jumping/falling from. There’s a very good reason free-runners dive and roll. 

Hand-to-hand fights usually only last a matter of seconds, sometimes a few minutes. It’s exhausting work and unless you have a lot of training and history with hand-to-hand combat, you’re going to tire out really fast. 

Arrows are very effective and you can’t just yank them out without doing a lot of damage. Most of the time the head of the arrow will break off inside the body if you try pulling it out, and arrows are built to pierce deep. An arrow wound demands medical attention. 

Throwing your opponent across the room is really not all that smart. You’re giving them the chance to get up and run away. Unless you’re trying to put distance between you so you can shoot them or something, don’t throw them. 

Everyone has something called a “flinch response” when they fight. This is pretty much the brain’s way of telling you “get the fuck out of here or we’re gonna die.” Experienced fighters have trained to suppress this. Think about how long your character has been fighting. A character in a fist fight for the first time is going to take a few hits before their survival instinct kicks in and they start hitting back. A character in a fist fight for the eighth time that week is going to respond a little differently. 

ADRENALINE WORKS AGAINST YOU WHEN YOU FIGHT. THIS IS IMPORTANT. A lot of times people think that adrenaline will kick in and give you some badass fighting skills, but it’s actually the opposite. Adrenaline is what tires you out in a battle and it also affects the fighter’s efficacy - meaning it makes them shaky and inaccurate, and overall they lose about 60% of their fighting skill because their brain is focusing on not dying. Adrenaline keeps you alive, it doesn’t give you the skill to pull off a perfect roundhouse kick to the opponent’s face. 

Swords WILL bend or break if you hit something hard enough. They also dull easily and take a lot of maintenance. In reality, someone who fights with a sword would have to have to repair or replace it constantly.

Fights get messy. There’s blood and sweat everywhere, and that will make it hard to hold your weapon or get a good grip on someone. 

A serious battle also smells horrible. There’s lots of sweat, but also the smell of urine and feces. After someone dies, their bowels and bladder empty. There might also be some questionable things on the ground which can be very psychologically traumatizing. Remember to think about all of the character’s senses when they’re in a fight. Everything WILL affect them in some way. 

If your sword is sharpened down to a fine edge, the rest of the blade can’t go through the cut you make. You’ll just end up putting a tiny, shallow scratch in the surface of whatever you strike, and you could probably break your sword. 

ARCHERS ARE STRONG TOO. Have you ever drawn a bow? It takes a lot of strength, especially when you’re shooting a bow with a higher draw weight. Draw weight basically means “the amount of force you have to use to pull this sucker back enough to fire it.” To give you an idea of how that works, here’s a helpful link to tell you about finding bow sizes and draw weights for your characters.  (CLICK ME)

If an archer has to use a bow they’re not used to, it will probably throw them off a little until they’ve done a few practice shots with it and figured out its draw weight and stability. 

People bleed. If they get punched in the face, they’ll probably get a bloody nose. If they get stabbed or cut somehow, they’ll bleed accordingly. And if they’ve been fighting for a while, they’ve got a LOT of blood rushing around to provide them with oxygen. They’re going to bleed a lot. 

Here’s a link to a chart to show you how much blood a person can lose without dying. (CLICK ME) 

If you want a more in-depth medical chart, try this one. (CLICK ME)

Hopefully this helps someone out there. If you reblog, feel free to add more tips for writers or correct anything I’ve gotten wrong here. 

Ref Recs for Whump Writers

Violence: A Writer’s Guide:  This is not about writing technique. It is an introduction to the world of violence. To the parts that people don’t understand. The parts that books and movies get wrong. Not just the mechanics, but how people who live in a violent world think and feel about what they do and what they see done.

Hurting Your Characters: HURTING YOUR CHARACTERS discusses the immediate effect of trauma on the body, its physiologic response, including the types of nerve fibers and the sensations they convey, and how injuries feel to the character. This book also presents a simplified overview of the expected recovery times for the injuries discussed in young, otherwise healthy individuals.

Body Trauma: A writer’s guide to wounds and injuries. Body Trauma explains what happens to body organs and bones maimed by accident or intent and the small window of opportunity for emergency treatment. Research what happens in a hospital operating room and the personnel who initiate treatment. Use these facts to bring added realism to your stories and novels.

10 B.S. Medical Tropes that Need to Die TODAY…and What to Do Instead: Written by a paramedic and writer with a decade of experience, 10 BS Medical Tropes covers exactly that: clichéd and inaccurate tropes that not only ruin books, they have the potential to hurt real people in the real world. 

Maim Your Characters: How Injuries Work in Fiction: Increase Realism. Raise the Stakes. Tell Better Stories. Maim Your Characters is the definitive guide to using wounds and injuries to their greatest effect in your story. Learn not only the six critical parts of an injury plot, but more importantly, how to make sure that the injury you’re inflicting matters. 

Blood on the Page: This handy resource is a must-have guide for writers whose characters live on the edge of danger. If you like easy-to-follow tools, expert opinions from someone with firsthand knowledge, and you don’t mind a bit of fictional bodily harm, then you’ll love Samantha Keel’s invaluable handbook

Congratulations on your milestone! Very exciting!❤️

For requests, maybe write about a Link with verbal issues?

Like, maybe one is selectively mute/apraxia of speech, one stutters, or one has like echolalia?

Thanks on the congrats!

I hope you like it!

This one fought me start to end, but it was cool to research and fun to write!! Thanks for the request!

Wind, Sky, Wars, and Four are the main focus, though everyone is there and participating!

1335 words, no warnings!

~~~~

The weakest link in a chain of command is always communication. 

Wars complains about it every time they get mail- reports and letters from his Zelda and Impa will get him so riled up he has to take a walk to calm down. 

Then comes back to complain to whoever will listen about how no one can communicate and listen to orders for an hour. 

“I mean, I know I’m not there to give direct orders but for the love of the goddess I wasn’t for half of the war, either!” The captain signs furiously. “It’s like just because I’m away ‘on holiday’ it’s like they don’t have to do what I say!” 

“Your Z- Zelda t- t- told them you’re on holid- day?” Four says, looking somewhat amused. 

“Y E S!” The captain signs letter by letter for emphasis. “That was her first mistake!” 

“Some holiday this is.” Legend mutters, getting a snort from the sailor. 

“Holiday.” Wind repeats. 

“Why a holiday?” Wild asks curiously. 

“I don’t know!” Wars sighs, gesturing with his hands after the sentence. 

“Easier than explaining to them that you got sucked through an evil-looking purple portal that sent you through time and space?” The traveler asks with a frown. 

“Well, maybe, if it hadn’t already happened before!” The captain signs grumpily, poking at his letter. 

Sky chokes. “Hmm?” The Skyloftian hums, coughing over his water. 

Legend pats the knight on the back. 

“He said it happened before.” Wind clarifies, clarifying absolutely nothing to most of the crew. 

Sky makes a confused face. 

“During the war, Cia created a hole in time and space. I visited Skyloft myself and fought there. Zelda, though disguised at the time…” 

The captain’s hands slowly stop in response to Sky frantically gesturing for him to stop, finding his journal and scribbling in it frantically. 

Shoves it frantically at Four, who translates. 

“What d- d- did it look lik- ke? I didn’t- t know th- that. W- was it in my fut- fut- fut- after my t- time?”

Four sighs over the word he’d failed to pronounce, mouthing it slowly until Wind nudges him. 

Wars is halfway through his reply, Sky hanging on desperately to every word. 

“- don’t know anything about times, there wasn’t time to talk to anyone and after the battle, it was hurry rush go.” Wars signs, emphasizing the rush.

Wild glances up from the cooking pot, where he’s making individual pizzas for everyone. 

“Wind?” Wild gets the sailor’s attention. “Mushrooms on your pizza?” 

“Mushrooms.” Wind agrees, eyes still on Wars with a small, mostly amused smile. 

“Mushrooms s- s- suck.” Four mumbles, and the champion grins at him. 

“Peppers in yours, Smithy?” 

“No!” Four yelps, grey eyes narrowing when Wild laughs. 

Wars is still complaining about his letter, setting a new record with two and a half hours of complaining. 

Hyrule gestures their new record to them over the captain’s head, so only they can see. 

Though the captain falters at Legend’s snort, glancing up at the traveler. 

Rulie smiles innocently, really turning up his large hazel eyes. 

Like a puppy. 

Wars tries to look serious, but alas, no one is immune to the traveler’s eyes. 

“I don’t believe it is as big of a deal as you believe it to be, Captain.” Time says ever so formally. 

Wars sighs, slumping dramatically over the log he’d been leaning on. 

“It isn’t,” the captain agrees with a sigh. “But I still have to deal with it when I get back.” 

“Mm. Maybe we’ll all die and none of us get to go back.” Legend says way too casually. Then- “Joking. I was joking.” When every eye in the group finds him. 

“Bad one.” Sky mutters, the rare sound of his voice making them all jolt and burst into laughter. 

Legend’s cheeks flush, but he’s failing to hide his own laughter. 

Sky is almost completely nonverbal- the sound of his voice is incredibly rare. The knight must be having a good day. 

Four, on the other hand, is not. The smithy is the type of person who’s always on the move and hates being held back. His stutter- which they’re slowly realizing is a recent development for him- frustrates him at times. 

It’s a bad clash when Sky writes and Four… is their sole translator. 

Sky’s written language is too different for any of them to be able to read, and sometimes even Four struggles a bit. After centuries, writing just doesn’t stay the same. 

On top of that, they’ve… mostly figured out how to effectively communicate with each other. 

Battles were definitely still a challenge, communication being an outright struggle with them before they found a way to make it… effective. 

Fighting in predesignated pairs, if possible, people who can communicate at a moment's notice with… someone who isn’t able to. 

That one helped a lot after Sky got hurt and couldn’t tell anyone. 

They’d found him later, passed out against a tree. But no one had known what had happened, if he’d been abducted or worse. 

So they do regular check-ins with each other- Wars, Wind, and Wild. Time, Twi, and Sky. And Four, Hyrule, and Legend. 

“Four, beating yourself up over your stutter won’t help it.” Time says quietly, the smith sighing over at their oldest member. 

Nods slightly, fidgeting slightly before picking up a book. 

Wind grins and zips next to him, always enjoying looking at the pictures in Four’s smithing texts, or maps in the history ones. 

On his good days, the smithy will read or explain the context to the sailor. 

Time helps Four a lot with his stutter- apparently, the old man had a stutter when he was younger. 

They often take walks together and work on speaking. Four is really self-conscious about his speech. 

Wars, too, struggles with his disability, though it seems to be more frustration than self-consciousness. In a position of leadership, it’s understandable. 

They all silently wonder how the captain was… well, able to command soldiers on the battlefield. 

But then again, none of them are war veterans. They’re not exactly sure how it works, and they’re sure Wars’ leadership was able to make accommodations. 

Sky is the most comfortable with his speech, though he gets frustrated with his lack of ability to communicate with them. With centuries between him and his closest descendant, Hylian Sign has just changed too much for them to understand it, and Sky has a hard time understanding Wars. 

The best they’ve currently figured out, with Four knowing Sky’s written language because of what Legend dubbed ‘nerdiness,’ is Sky writing on spare parchment and Four translating. 

Wind… they’re not quite sure what Wind thinks. The sailor seems so unbothered by everything. Absolutely no embarrassment at his self-proclaimed ‘outbursts.’ 

Which is just him repeating a phrase or a few words of what someone’s said. Wind has said that yes, it’s technically a speech disorder though it’s rare. 

There’s not even a name in his Hyrule for what he has, though Wild’s called it Echolalia. The champion mentioned, very offhandedly, that he’d been diagnosed with it. 

Wild… was an odd one. Some days he was mostly nonverbal, though others he was entirely verbal. It depends on how he’s doing day by day, though a trigger could easily turn a verbal day into a nonverbal day. 

Usually, they can tell if a switch is coming, unless it’s in battle or another chaotic situation that they can’t seem to avoid. 

They all prefer the softer, more peaceful moments of sitting around a fire, or in a room of an inn. 

Some talking softly, others communicating in their own way, playing cards, reading, carving, anything they want. 

Communicating however they want, in the way that works for them, with people who accept their differences without judgment. 

With all their shared experiences, they're able to understand each other more than other people who haven't been through the same thing are able to.

And they work constantly with each other to continue that understanding.

~~~~

Have you ever wondered "Hey, which person is this Hermitcraft fanart actually depicting?" and didn't want to just scroll down to read the tags?

Behold. My magnum opus. The Hermitcraft fanart flowchart! Please click for legibillity.

For you and your internet friends! 💙

Feel free to send these to them but please do not repost

(breath of the) wild geese by mary oliver

Top-Tier Villain Motivations

They will be safe. It doesn't matter who else or what else burns as long as They will be safe.

I will be safe. The hunger and the cold will never touch me again.

Fuck any bitch who's prettier(/cooler/better-liked/better at making dumplings) than me.

Yes, Master

Love me. Love me. Love me. Love me. LOVE ME!

I know the terrible things these so-called "heroes" will do if I don't stop them (<- is absolutely wrong)

I don't want a better future, I want a better past!

No other way to get performance art funded these days

The small collection of huevember art i've done bc I can't commit to a whole month.

Featuring: Etho doing Redstone, desert duo (my beloveds), sun god bdubs, ranchers (also my beloveds), welsknight, pearl, and the king of Mezalea.

the woman who holds the moon

prints available here. my cover for this month's issue of baffling magazine.