Learning a Lot

buy a pack of chapsticks and put one in the pocket of all of your coats and jackets because you always forget to bring one and chapped lips is sensory hell

leave important things where you can see them. if they go in a box or a drawer you will forget they exist

put any appointments or deadlines in your phone calendar As Soon As you get them. set a reminder for a week before, a day before, an hour before, as many as you need as often as you need them.

when that little voice in your head says "i dont need to write that down, ill remember it" that is the devil talking!!! write it down anyway!!

plan for down time. have a few hours at the end of every day to just do fun stuff like engage in your hyperfixations. even if you didnt get all of your work done that day, have the rest anyway. you probably spent the whole day beating yourself up for not doing what you Should be doing, so you still need the break.

if you never eat vegetables because its too much effort to chop and cook them, get the frozen or canned shit. it doesnt go off for ages and you just have to microwave it. theres no point buying fresh vegetables if they just keep going off and being left to rot in the bottom of your fridge

if you struggle to decide what to have for dinner every day, take the decision out of it. choose a set of meals and eat those on rotation until you get sick of them, then choose some new ones and do it again.

But also for any other neurodivergencies!

I especially felt the canned/frozen veggies. I enjoy cooking but don’t always have the motivation to do it. Because of this I started to buy jars of pre-minced garlic (which also helps my sensitivity to strong smells that are especially on my hands/fingers).

When I could I’d make larger batches of meals to eat another day.

Hello!

I'm not a burn survivor myself, so I'll mostly talk about facial differences/visible disability in general and link some stuff made by burn survivors.

First thing, I think it's important to remember that being a burn survivor changes a lot of things - not only appearance. Very important part is the psychological one, but I'm not a burn survivor so I will just let the resources linked below speak.

From the physical aspect, burns can also come with: chronic pain, limited range of motion due to scarring, tightened skin, problems with regulating temperature, itching, skin irritation, and even different nutritional needs during the initial healing process.

There is also specific everyday care associated with burns - something you basically never see in fiction. That could be things like occupational therapy, physical therapy, skincare (like heavy moisturizing and scar massaging), wearing sunblock, wearing splints, or stretching to prevent contractures or tightness.

There are also different types of burns and they (unsurprisingly) differ from each other - for example, electrical burns have a much higher rate of amputation than any other type. Chemical burns can cause eye issues. A burn caused by a fire in a closed space might result in a brain injury due to the lack of oxygen. A much larger portion of people than you (probably) assume have survived burn injuries as small children, and if they were young enough they might not even remember the event at all, unlike older people who might be very affected by the trauma.

Experiences of a person with 80% body surface burns, a person with quadruple amputations from an electrical burn, a person with a facial burn, and a person burnt very recently will be different from someone who has a 5% body surface 2nd degree burn in a spot that’s usually hidden, who has lived with their burn for a decade - despite them all being burn survivors.

When it comes to more thorough research, I recommend going through Phoenix Society’s and Face Equality International’s websites to learn more about both real burn survivor’s perspectives, and face equality as a social justice topic. I think the 3rd link (see below) puts it very well when talking about burn survivors being represented in fiction:

“Most likely, these characters were not created by someone with lived experience. The result is an increasingly garbled game of telephone [...] To avoid contributing to this false narrative, embrace research as part of the process. Explore interviews, first-person accounts, and articles from reliable sources.”

I personally think that the links below should be mandatory reading for writing not only burn survivors, not only people with facial differences, but visibly disabled people in general - because the treatment we get is often so similar the advice still holds up just fine. And if you don't plan on writing any of these, you should still read them to see how prevalent of a problem ableism in media is.

Lise Deguire's Hey Hollywood - scars don't make you evil.

Face Equality International's International Media Standard on Disfigurement.

Niki Averton's Tips for Writing about Burn Survivors.

The main sentiment that you will read from basically any first-hand source is that if you're writing the burn survivor to be either:

evil (just throw the whole character away)

a guy with the "World's Saddest Most Tragic Backstory Ever and It's So Sad and Tragic" (because he revealed he has a scar)

a helpless victim who is there to be The Helpless Victim

...then you're already doing it wrong and need to make some major changes.

From our blog's reblogs and posts, you might want to look at tips for writing a visibly different/disabled character and tips on drawing people with facial differences. Neither are specific to burn survivors but cover the topic of visible disability and facial differences.

Now for tips on drawing burn survivors (that weren't included in the last link);

Reference real people. 99.9% drawings of burn survivors seem to go through the same "increasingly garbled game of telephone" that Niki Averton mentions with how burn survivors are written, in that the newer the drawing, the less in common it has with how real people with burns look like because people reference from each other and none of them ever think to actually check if their depiction is accurate. If you just google "burn survivor" you will very quickly notice that burn survivors don't have that damn red overlay layer put on top of their skin. It just doesn't look like that, and basic research (aka Google Images search) will tell you that - and still, people color a hand with bright red and think that's how it looks like (it doesn't).

In the same vein, maybe don't just draw an able-bodied person and then put some scarring on top (or maybe do exactly that. No burn scar and no burn survivor is the same, and there are people that fit what I just described... but hear me out for a second). Think about how scars interact with their features - do they have both of their ears? Do they still have all of their hair? Do they only have parts of their eyebrow? Do they have all of their fingers? Can they move the same as before their burn, or are their scars limiting their joints? How did their body react to the post-burn hypermetabolism? Lots to think about. Take into account what type and thickness of burns your character has.

Ditch the mask trope. Just ditch it. There's no need to cover your character's scar from the world unless you as the author think it requires to be hidden, is too scary to show, or other ableist trope that seems to always come up with drawings of visibly disabled people, especially burn survivors. The one exception I will mention is a transparent face orthosis/mask (TFO) that facial burn survivors might wear while awaiting a skin graft early after their injury. But as the name suggests, it's transparent and doesn't work for the "scary facial difference, better cover it up and only reveal it in some hyper dramatic scene!" trope because you can see right through it. (I will also mention that TFOs are a very modern thing. Your medieval burn survivor wouldn't be wearing one).

No "body horror", no "gore" tags or trigger warnings or whatever. That's a human being. If you feel the need to warn your followers before they see a disabled person existing, you're better off not drawing them.

Some last notes;

Throughout this ask I used the term "burn survivor" rather than "burn victim" because that is, to my knowledge, the general community preferred phrase. Individual opinions will differ (because no group is a monolith) but "burn survivor" is generally the safest term to use and probably the best if talking about a fictional character.

Similarly, I used "facial difference" rather than "disfigurement". Just as the above, opinions will differ on what is the best to use but I personally, as someone with facial asymmetry and a cranial nerve disorder, heavily prefer the term "facial difference" over "disfigurement". (I am in this case The Individual Opinion Differing because you can notice that in the links above, facial difference and disfigurement are used interchangeably. The general community uses both, some people have specific preferences. I'm some people). When talking about a fictional character, "facial difference", "visible difference" and "disfigurement" are all probably fine. Just stay away from calling a person "deformed".

It's finally HERE!!

Darkling is out in the world in ebook, paperback, and hardcover formats!

With that in mind, the form to grab all the preorder goodies is only going to remain open for the next 24 hours. I'll be closing it Midnight on June 22nd, so now is pretty much your last change to grab them!

If you want to receive some goodies in the post, or just grab the digital bonus pack including a bonus scene from Booker's point of view...

Head on over to my website to grab those!

HEAR YE HEAR YE BOOKSHOP.ORG IS DOING FREE SHIPPING AGAIN

I got an early notification about this because I'm signed up with them as an affiliate. I've got some lists of indie books curated on my storefront if you want to check those out, and if you buy through my link I'll get a small cut of your sales, but no pressure.

go forth, support small bookstores, and get your free shipping!

And the kids are like "but they get into our bug traps" and "we didn't catch him he followed us home"

And their parents are like. Please i do not believe that 6 fucking pixies smuggled themselves into our garage on the underside of your bicycle saddle and then set up shop in the old dolls house. These are living beings they're not toys it's not kind to treat them like this

And the kids are like we are NOT treating them like anything you said we're not allowed to trap them and they always get into our traps so we always run away when they see us and then they follow us and get inside our backpacks and stuff

And the parents are like

Stop lying!!!

And then they set up wildlife cams and not only can pixies apparently do all of that and are very desperate to hang out with these human kids (who have fun life-sized toys and are covered in wonderful things like glitter and are a free source of fresh bugs and pop tart crumbs)

But they can also like. Fully just pick locks and shit.

I have kind of been wondering how SecUnits get assigned to their contracts. (Speaking book universe here, live action made it very clear that the company considered it secondhand trash.) (Also, I don't really keep up with interviews/the author, so no clue if that has ever been mentioned anywhere)

Because, yeah, easiest way to assign would be to just put new and returning units in a warehouse and deploy the units in the order that they got put in. But. With all of the data the company collects + processes and Murderbot specifically referencing its past performance stats repeatedly, surely they do something with that data?

Did Murderbots 'antisocial' tendencies make some number go up that indicated it would be suited for a deployment with a small client team, where it would not have to interface with additional SecUnits?

Did some hard to specify set of parameters of Preservation and MB make them a particularly good match according to some company matching algorithm?

Did some of the stats indicate MB has a high level of adaptability and thus it gets deployed into less predictable situations a lot actually? (Messing with its stats when compared to units on more standard deployments)

Mensah was a pretty high-profile client that the company would have a high interest in keeping alive + safe, if only for the public image, so they'd probably want to deploy a "good/particularly reliable" unit, no? Is Murderbot actually gaslighting us once again and it's performance stats are actually amazing for a unit of it's type&age or even really good overall for the kind of deployments it gets? (Remember it consistently takes out other SecUnits in any one-on-one fight)

1. You sound like a bot

2. You don't give anything to respond to

Remember Inigo Montoya

Polite Greeting: You will be assimilated.

Relevant personal link: Your biological and technological characteristics will be added to our own.

1. Polite Greeting:

2. Name: I’m Luke Skywalker

3. Personal Relevant Link:

4. Manage Expectations: I’m here to rescue you.

Polite Greeting: "Greetings, Exalted One."

Name + Relevant Personal Link: "I am Luke Skywalker, Jedi knight and friend to captain Solo."

Hello, I'm June!

They/Them

Currently 26 years old

I'm NB, Ace/Aro-Spec, and Autistic, and yes all of that comes up a lot in my writing

I almost exclusively write spec fic, mostly fantasy, horror, and fantasy-horror.

I write a lot of middle grade, but I also work in adult fiction as well.

I enjoy writing weird stories with humor and heart, strange characters, and lots of subverting/playing with various tropes.

Most of my works include body horror and/or emotional abuse as a theme, so be aware of that.

I'm down for following/supporting any fellow middle grade writers! I'm also interested in following fellow horror, fantasy, or weird fiction writers, and I'm especially drawn to stories written in a unique and/or unconventional format.

That being said, romance/erotica is not my scene. I support y'all from a distance, though.

Socials

Blog: moonrabbitwriter.wordpress.com

Youtube: @moonrabbitwriter

(Mostly Inactive) Bluesky: moonrabbitwriter.bsky.social

Main Tumblr (if you want to see my curation of Sonic and Twisted Wonderland fanart): @juneymoonybunny

Current WIPs below the cut:

Because publishing houses will not continue printing paper books if libraries are their only customers.