10 Non-Lethal Injuries To Add Pain To Your Writing
10 Non-Lethal Injuries to Add Pain to Your Writing
If you need a simple way to make your characters feel pain, here are some ideas:
1. Sprained Ankle
A common injury that can severely limit mobility. This is useful because your characters will have to experience a mild struggle and adapt their plans to their new lack of mobiliy. Perfect to add tension to a chase scene.
2. Rib Contusion
A painful bruise on the ribs can make breathing difficult, helping you sneak in those ragged wheezes during a fight scene. Could also be used for something sport-related! It's impactful enough to leave a lingering pain but not enough to hinder their overall movement.
3. Concussions
This common brain injury can lead to confusion, dizziness, and mood swings, affecting a character’s judgment heavily. It can also cause mild amnesia.
I enjoy using concussions when you need another character to subtly take over the fight/scene, it's an easy way to switch POVs. You could also use it if you need a 'cute' recovery moment with A and B.
4. Fractured Finger
A broken finger can complicate tasks that require fine motor skills. This would be perfect for characters like artists, writers, etc. Or, a fighter who brushes it off as nothing till they try to throw a punch and are hit with pain.
5. Road Rash
Road rash is an abrasion caused by friction. Aka scraping skin. The raw, painful sting resulting from a fall can be a quick but effective way to add pain to your writing. Tip: it's great if you need a mild injury for a child.
6. Shoulder Dislocation
This injury can be excruciating and often leads to an inability to use one arm, forcing characters to confront their limitations while adding urgency to their situation. Good for torture scenes.
7. Deep Laceration
A deep laceration is a cut that requires stitches. As someone who got stitches as a kid, they really aren't that bad! A 2-3 inch wound (in length) provides just enough pain and blood to add that dramatic flair to your writing while not severely deterring your character.
This is also a great wound to look back on since it often scars. Note: the deeper and wider the cut the worse your character's condition. Don't give them a 5 inch deep gash and call that mild.
8. Burns
Whether from fire, chemicals, or hot surfaces, burns can cause intense suffering and lingering trauma. Like the previous injury, the lasting physical and emotional trauma of a burn is a great wound for characters to look back on.
If you want to explore writing burns, read here.
9. Pulled Muscle
This can create ongoing pain and restrict movement, offering a window to force your character to lean on another. Note: I personally use muscle related injuries when I want to focus more on the pain and sprains to focus on a lack of mobility.
10. Tendonitis
Inflammation of a tendon can cause chronic pain and limit a character's ability to perform tasks they usually take for granted. When exploring tendonitis make sure you research well as this can easily turn into a more severe injury.
This is a quick, brief list of ideas to provide writers inspiration. Since it is a shorter blog, I have not covered the injuries in detail. This is inspiration, not a thorough guide. Happy writing! :)
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Bear Selfies Captured By Camera Traps
Hey, let's talk about anons like this, because I know some people haven't been in a position to see the patterns these play out in on broader scale and may indeed not spot the trap.
And it is a trap.
An ask like this has several purposes.
First, it uses social justice language in passive aggressive and manipulative ways to try to coerce a behavior. In this case, the desired behavior is usually for the recipent to participate in community shunning and/or harrassment. The language above is intended to put the recipient on the defensive where, in the haste to disassociate themself from the Bad Thing, they quickly disassociate themself from the bad person, often with no particular fact checking or evidence.
The message is also intended to create a sense of being surveilled and judged by an unknown amount of people with unknown amount of social power and an unknown amount of relevance to your life.
Notice that these asks are usually framed as if they are coming from a follower or potential follower, someone who is addressing you personally and who cares about your opinion and who your blog has an effect on. However this is usually.... very much not the case. If you've ever had the misfortune to watch a gossip campaign from like this from the outside, you will very quickly notice that messages like this get sent in mass batches to dozens and dozens of strangers. (You can often turn these up with a tumblr search, if you look.)
The sender does not know you and probably does not follow you. They have a person they don't like (possibly for their stated reason and possibly not), and they are going through the reblogs of a post from that blog and mass messaging *everyone* with a form letter. They will not see your response and they will probably never even see your blog again.
Which brings us to the second goal of whisper campaigns like this:
Notice that I blacked out the names above? That's because when the recipient answers anonymous asks like this, they provide a platform for the opinion on their blog. An anonymous message like this that gets posted doesn't just spread gossip and apply pressure to the recipient, it is spread to the recipient's entire community.
The *goal* is to get access to your community. The *goal* is to use you as a soapbox.
Is the information accurate? Did anyone check? Does the anon have an ulterior social motive? BIG SHRUG
If you go into the comments on one of these whisper campaigns you will see that *most people never bother to check.*
They assume good faith from a follower, they're off balance defending themselves, and they jump straight to conciliation.
It's a really, really effective form of social manipulation, and really really commonly misused.
if I've learned anything from grad school it's to check your sources, and this has proven invaluable in the dozens of instances when I've had an MBA-type try to tell me something about finances or leadership. Case in point:
Firefox serves me clickbaity articles through Pocket, which is fine because I like Firefox. But sometimes an article makes me curious. I'm pretty anal about my finances, and I wondered if this article was, as I suspected, total horseshit, or could potentially benefit me and help me get my spending under control. So let's check the article in question.
It mostly seems like common sense. "...track expenses and income for at least a month before setting a budget...How much money do I have or earn? How much do I want to save?" Basic shit like that. But then I get to this section:
This sounds fucking made up to me. And thankfully, they've provided a source to their claim that "research has repeatedly shown" that writing things down changes behavior. First mistake. What research is this?
Forbes, naturally, my #1 source for absolute dogshit fart-sniffing financial schlock. Forbes is the type of website that guy from high school who constantly posts on linkedin trawls daily for little articles like this that make him feel better about refusing to pay for a decent package for his employees' healthcare (I'm from the United States, a barbaric, conflict-ridden country in the throes of civil unrest, so obsessed with violence that its warlords prioritize weapons over universal medical coverage. I digress). Forbes constantly posts shit like this, and I constantly spend my time at leadership seminars debunking poor consultants who get paid to read these claims credulously. Look at this highlighted text. Does it make sense to you that simply writing your financial goals down would result in a 10x increase in your income? Because if it does, let me make you an offer on this sick ass bridge.
Thankfully, Forbes also makes the mistake of citing their sources. Let's check to see where this hyperlink goes:
SidSavara. I've never heard of this site, but the About section tells me that Sid is "a technology leader who empowers teams to grow into their best selves. He is a life-long learner enjoys developing software, leading teams in delivering mission critical projects, playing guitar and watching football and basketball."
That doesn't mean anything. What are his LinkedIn credentials? With the caveat that anyone can lie on Linkedin, Mr. Savara appears to be a Software Engineer. Which is fine! I'm glad software engineers exist! But Sid's got nothing in his professional history which suggests he knows shit about finance. So I'm already pretty skeptical of his website, which is increasingly looking like a personal fart-huffing blog.
The article itself repeats the credulous claim made in the Forbes story earlier, but this time, provides no link for the 3% story. Mr. Savara is smarter than his colleages at Forbes, it's much wiser to just make shit up.
HOWEVER. I am not the first person to have followed this rabbit hole. Because at the very top of this article, there is a disclaimer.
Uh oh!
Sid's been called out before, and in the follow up to this article, he reveals the truth.
You can guess where this is going.
![From The Horse's Mouth: Yale Says There Is No 1953 Goal Setting Study
I finally came across a page at the Yale Law Library that asks "Where can I find the Yale study from 1953
about goal-setting?“. The answer, in it's entirety:
It has been determined that no "goals study" of the Class of 1953 actually occurred. In recent years, we have
received a number of requests for information on a reported study based on a survey administered to the
Class of 1953 in their senior year and a follow-up study conducted ten years later. This study has been
described as how one's goals at graduation related to success and annual incomes achieved during the period.
The secretary of the Class of 1953, who had served in that capacity for many years, did not know of [the
study], nor did any of the fellow class members he questioned. In addition, a number of Yale administrators
were consulted and the records of various offices were examined in an effort to document the reported study.
There was no relevant record, nor did anyone recall the purported study of the Class of 1953, or any other
class.
(Source : Where can I find the Yale study from 1953 about goal-setting?)
So it appeared that my urging people to write down their goals was based on a study that never happened.](https://64.media.tumblr.com/f030e809f96e54b0b4bb18c5dfbf6fc7/949033e70c2424f3-fc/s500x750/a6ae9836bc1b8005020c285732b1ff6cca98dc73.png)
So to go back to the VERY beginning of this post, both Pocket/Good Housekeeping and Forbes failed to do even the most basic of research, taking the wild claim that writing down your budget may increase your income by 10x on good faith and the word of a(n admittedly honest about his shortcomings) software engineer.
Why did I spend 30 minutes to make a tumblr post about this? Mostly to show off how smart I am, but also to remind folks of just how flimsy any claim on the internet can be. Click those links, follow those sources, and when the sources stop linking, ask why.
The X Files art masterpost
I've decided to put all of it in one place. will possibly get updated, but here's what I've got so far
studies
timelapses
environment studies: 1 2 3
posters:
Bad Blood, Ascension, Ice, The Unnatural
The Post-Modern Prometheus, Memento Mori, Demons, All Things
Fight the Future
Cancer arc posters
Wetwired
Pilot, Darkness Falls, Triangle, Fight the Future
How the Ghosts Stole Christmas
just some general posters for the show: 1 2
Dana Scully iconic moments: 1 2 3 4 5
msr playlist part 1 msr playlist part 2
miscellaneous: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
some attempts to recreate the ✨retro✨ vibe: 1 2 3 4 5
queer msr posts: 1 2 3 4
prints
fic illustrations: 1 2
bonus: text posts
and in case any of the above makes someone start watching the show, just remember:
In the wake of the TikTok ban and revival as a mouthpiece for fascist propaganda, as well as the downfall of Twitter and Facebook/Facebook-owned platforms to the same evils, I think now is a better time than ever to say LEARN HTML!!! FREE YOURSELVES FROM THE SHACKLES OF MAJOR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS AND EMBRACE THE INDIE WEB!!!
You can host a website on Neocities for free as long as it's under 1GB (which is a LOT more than it sounds like let me tell you) but if that's not enough you can get 50GB of space (and a variety of other perks) for only $5 a month.
And if you can't/don't want to pay for the extra space, sites like File Garden and Catbox let you host files for free that you can easily link into NeoCities pages (I do this to host videos on mine!) (It also lets you share files NeoCities wouldn't let you upload for free anyways, this is how I upload the .zip files for my 3DS themes on my site.)
Don't know how to write HTML/CSS? No problem. W3schools is an invaluable resource with free lessons on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and a whole slew of other programming languages, both for web development and otherwise.
Want a more traditional social media experience? SpaceHey is a platform that mimics the experience of 2000s MySpace
Struggling to find independent web pages that cater to your interests via major search engines? I've got you covered. Marginalia and Wiby are search engines that specifically prioritize non-commercial content. Marginalia also has filters that let you search for more specific categories of website, like wikis, blogs, academia, forums, and vintage sites.
Maybe you wanna log off the modern internet landscape altogether and step back into the pre-social media web altogether, well, Protoweb lets you do just that. It's a proxy service for older browsers (or really just any browser that supports HTTP, but that's mostly old browsers now anyways) that lets you visit restored snapshots of vintage websites.
Protoweb has a lot of Geocities content archived, but if you're interested in that you can find even more old Geocities sites over on the Geocities Gallery
And really this is just general tip-of-the-iceberg stuff. If you dig a little deeper you can find loads more interesting stuff out there. The internet doesn't have to be a miserable place full of nothing but doomposting and targeted ads. The first step to making it less miserable is for YOU, yes YOU, to quit spending all your time on it looking at the handful of miserable websites big tech wants you to spend all your time on.
Dragon Age Writing References
Been meaning to pull this together for a while. If you know anything good that I’ve missed, stick ‘em on the end! I’ll reblog in a while with additions.
Dragon Age Wiki–first-stop resource for basic character and plot information, class and area info, and a lot of codices from all three games.
An Illustrated Timeline of Thedosian History–What it says on the tin, put together by @penbrydd.
Travel Times:
Ferelden travel: distances and times–DA: O specific areas, also includes interesting discussion of forced-march speeds
More travel time ideas including Inquisition areas
Thedosian Titles–Ranks and titles in Thedas, as taken from the tabletop rpg guides.
Thedosian slurs–a compilation of derogatory terms used by various Thedosian peoples.
Thedosian calendar–Thedosian dates and holidays with a speculative matchup of the Gregorian equivalents.
Human names–information on naming in Thedosian human cultures.
Qunari, dwarven, and elven names–some information and examples for each group.
How old everyone is in Inquisition–answers or best estimates using in-game or WoT information.
War Table spreadsheet–all the War Table missions, options, and outcomes.
Dragon Age Meta Nexus–a collection of meta posts drawn from Tumblr with standardized tags to facilitate search. Fairly new.
🤍 My Dragon Age Inquisition Modlist 🤍
Just in time for a last minute playthrough of DAI before Veilguard comes out! 😆
I would say this is a light modlist (less then 30 mods), vanilla friendly, and doesn't completely trivialize progression & combat (in regard to qual of life mods). The list is mostly CC improvements, armor additions or edits, and essential quality of life mods. And all of these mods are compatible with the DLCs (yes even Trespasser haha!)
I have only played as a female Dalish Elf so a couple mods are tailored to that :) Also, I added a link to the bottom of the list to the Free Cam tool I use for Inquisition!
I use the Frosty Mod Manager
The Modlist:
Favorite Hair Mods
Misc Hairstyles for Frosty Anto Hairstyles Hairstyle Day CaffeinePainter's NPC Hairstyles for Inquisitor
Other CC Improvements
SOS Brows on Fleek HD Eye Textures -> I also like: Eye Candy Textures Scalp Edit for Frosty (use if your hairstyle has prominent sideburns)
Armor & Clothing
Surcoat of the Tirashan - EF Outfit Elf Pajama Replacers Invisible Starting Armor (Frosty Compatible File) Flowery Outerwear Unique Wedding Dress for HF & EF The Core of Her Heart - A Morrigan Mod (Clothing Edit) Cullen of Ferelden (Armor retexture) Lady Ambassador - Josephine Outfit Inquisition Branded Finery -> I also like: Halamshiral Finery Remake 4k
Quality of Life Improvements
Party Banter Tweaks (I use the 2-5 min version) Faster Movement Speed (I use +50% for combat only) Shorter War Table Missions (I use -50%) Don't Break My Stride
Miscellaneous
Party at the Winter Palace DAI Frosty Texture Glitch Fixes Modded Hairs in DLCs Solas Halamshiral Hat & Neck Clipping Fix Dalish Glass New Painted Portraits by CaffeinePainter Stone-Stalker Blade Appearance Fix
DAI Free Cam: Otis Camera Tools
I place my CC mods at the top of my load order and my fixes and qual of life mods at the bottom so nothing overrides those essentials. I've ran this list with no crashes or infinite load screens :)
Remember to read mod descriptions & to download all mod requirements!! 🤍
Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?
Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.
Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.
Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?
If you enjoy reading, are there any books on your reading list that you would like to read but haven’t gotten to just yet? Any recommendations from ones you’ve read?
I'm actually reading books on writing right now! FIGHT WRITE: How to Write Believable Fight Scenes by Carla Hoch
I really want to learn how to write action scenes, since there are some future chapters and one-offs I would like to have realistic fighting in it.
I used to do a lot of action writing in my early days -- when I was participating in a BLEACH RPG on forums and LJ, but it's been a long ass time. I'd love to create tension through motion-- and be able to actually help @thedissonantverses for the story we're cooking up. Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan Just to help me write more descriptively. I don't wanna be someone who uses purple prose for everything, but I could think a little harder about what the world reminds me of. Even the simplest actions have a rich story behind it. I'd like to know how to bring that out.
How To Write Erotica by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Because...reasons 👀 I don't want that cottage to be quiet forever.
--
As far as books on the list, the main one is 'How We Heal' by Prentiss Hemphill!
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