Alumina-ted

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

In a country where politicians spend billions to make their children study in the best schools abroad, students work day and night to sit an exam that gets cancelled because of the government's incompetency, then the exam is rescheduled only for the results to be wrong.

Exam papers were wrongly printed, answer sheets had no space for certain questions, correct answers were marked as incorrect. All because of the education government's inability to correctly print 22 million sets of paper. Students used to getting an A+ got a D on the NEET because their answers were graded incorrectly.

And this isn't just about NEET. Many other government exams faced similar issues in 2025-2026.

Many students killed themselves due to all of this.

"Oh they could just request a re-check or resit it" -- that costs 100,000+ INR. A lot of students who sit such exams are from middle or lower class families, some even from families under the poverty line. They cannot afford such solutions, and even if they can, it often takes months or years to get a proper solution.

And when we tried to just peacefully protest all of this? The Delhi police spent days beating students from ages 6 to 26 with batons, sticks (with nails in them), bats, electric batons, pellet guns, tear gas, and more. Students have been detained, arrested, beaten up till their head is covered with blood. All for standing together peacefully with books in their hands and justice on their tongue. All for hosting a peaceful protest that is one of our constitutional rights.

India has had enough. Gen Z Indians have had enough. We are fighting for our rights not just in Jantar Mantar (Delhi) but almost every other major city in India. Yet the media hides this. Bollywood largely remains silent on this matter as well.

If global stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Aliyah Bhatt and Deepika Padukone even made one instagram post on the matter they could propel this movement to new heights. But they don't care. BJP doesn't care. Our education minister who refuses to resign certainly doesn't care either.

The government calls us anti-national. The police call students terrorists for walking the streets. During such times we need all the support we can get.

For the writers stuck describing every single scene transition as someone "walking" somewhere. Some words are repeated across categories since they fit more than one, but those are counted once, so it adds up to 50 new words.

1. Neutral Tags

Walked, Strolled, Paced, Wandered, Roamed, Moved, Ambled.

2. Slow / Leisurely Tags

Sauntered, Meandered, Dawdled, Loitered, Moseyed, Ambled, Wandered.

3. Fast / Urgent Tags

Hurried, Rushed, Hastened, Scurried, Dashed, Bolted, Scampered.

4. Confident / Purposeful Tags

Strode, Marched, Swaggered, Stalked, Strutted, Paced.

5. Quiet / Sneaky Tags

Crept, Tiptoed, Slunk, Slipped, Padded, Prowled, Sidled.

6. Tired / Struggling Tags

Shuffled, Staggered, Stumbled, Hobbled, Limped, Trudged, Plodded, Dragged, Wobbled.

7. Angry / Aggressive Tags

Stormed, Stomped, Barged, Charged, Thundered, Stamped, Marched.

8. Nervous / Hesitant Tags

Inched, Edged, Sidled, Tottered, Faltered, Crept.

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks?

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Nobility isn't just a vibe. Every title on this list used to mean something specific, land owned, duties owed, and exactly how much power a person had over the people beneath them. Here's the hierarchy, top to bottom, plus the special cases that trip people up.

The Sovereigns

Emperor/Empress — Sits above a king. Rules over multiple kingdoms or territories rather than just one, historically. Think the Holy Roman Emperor, or Queen Victoria's later title of Empress of India.

King/Queen Regnant — The sovereign ruler of a single kingdom in their own right. "Regnant" specifically means she rules, as opposed to a queen who's just married to one.

Tsar/Tsarina — The Russian equivalent, literally derived from "Caesar."

Kaiser — The German equivalent, same Caesar root, different flavor.

Archduke/Archduchess — An Austrian Habsburg-specific title, ranking above a regular duke but below an emperor. Useful if you want a tier between king and duke without inventing one.

Immediate Royal Family

Prince/Princess — A child or close relative of the monarch. In British tradition, it also extends to spouses of princes, which trips up a lot of writers who assume it's blood-only.

Crown Prince/Princess — Specifically the heir apparent, not just any prince.

Grand Duke/Duchess — Used for smaller sovereign states entirely (Luxembourg still has one) or for junior royals in places like Russia. Ranks below a king but above a regular duke.

Prince Consort — The husband of a reigning queen. Prince Albert is the textbook example, married to Victoria but never a king himself.

Queen Consort — The wife of a reigning king. Not a ruler in her own right, just married to one.

Country-Specific Heir Titles

Worth knowing if you want your world to feel less generically medieval-European and more specific:

Dauphin — the French heir apparent

Tsarevich — the Russian heir apparent

Infante/Infanta — Spanish and Portuguese term for a royal child who isn't the heir apparent

Regency & Special Circumstances

This is the section most lists skip, and it's exactly the kind of detail that makes a fictional court feel lived-in.

Regent — Anyone (a person, sometimes a council) who rules temporarily on behalf of a monarch who can't, usually because they're a minor, incapacitated, or absent.

Prince Regent — Specifically a prince acting as regent. The most famous real example is George, who ruled as Prince Regent for years while his father, George III, was unfit to rule, before becoming George IV himself.

Queen Mother — The mother of the current reigning monarch, once she's no longer queen consort or queen regnant herself. It's an honorary title, not a governing one.

Dowager [Title] — Applies to widows generally, not just queens. A Dowager Duchess or Dowager Countess is the widow of the previous title-holder, still using the title while her heir holds the actual position.

Heir Apparent vs. Heir Presumptive — An heir apparent can't be displaced by anyone born later. An heir presumptive can be, if someone with a stronger claim shows up (say, a son born after a daughter was next in line). This distinction alone can drive an entire succession plot.

The Peerage (hereditary, non-royal nobility)

Duke/Duchess — The highest rank below royalty. Historically ruled an actual duchy, meaning real territory and real armies, not just a fancy name.

Marquess/Marchioness — Ruled border territories, the "marches," that needed extra defense. That's genuinely where the name comes from.

Earl — The specifically British term for this tier. Comes from the Old English/Norse "jarl," and it's the oldest of the English titles, older than duke or marquess.

Count/Countess — The Continental European equivalent of an earl. Oddly, there's no male "earless" counterpart term, an earl's wife is still called a countess.

Viscount/Viscountess — Literally "vice-count," acting as a deputy to a count. A step down, still meaningful.

Baron/Baroness — The lowest formal rank of the peerage, but still a direct vassal to the crown rather than to another noble.

Titled but Not Peerage

Baronet — Hereditary, but not technically part of the peerage. A British-specific quirk that trips people up constantly.

Knight/Dame — Granted for life, not inherited. Earned through service rather than blood, which makes it a useful title for a character who rose up rather than was born into power.

Prince-Bishop — A real historical oddity, a bishop who also held temporal, political power over territory, common in the Holy Roman Empire. Genuinely useful if your world blends religious and political authority.

Lord/Lady — A general courtesy title that gets applied loosely across several of the ranks above. Not a rank on its own so much as a way of addressing one.

Untitled but Still Someone

Esquire/Gentry — Landowning, educated, socially significant, but no actual title. Your side character who's clearly well-off but not nobility probably belongs here.

Chatelaine — Not a rank, but a real functional role, the woman (often but not always the lady of the house) who ran an entire castle's household. Worth knowing if you want a character with real day-to-day power that has nothing to do with her title.

Quick note on forms of address, since getting this wrong is its own kind of tell: monarchs are "Your Majesty," dukes and duchesses are "Your Grace," most other peers are "My Lord/My Lady," and knights are addressed by first name with "Sir" or "Dame" in front of it, never the surname alone.

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks?

Check out the rest of Quillology with Haya; a blog dedicated to writing and publishing tips for authors!

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Remember how one of the first things Flat calls Waver is “No. 1 on the ranking of Clock Tower men female students want to bed”? That wasn’t a random Flat delusion. There’s a whole unofficial Clock Tower event for it, with sort of an urban legend status, even. Like, everyone knows the ranking is managed by the Ouroboros Foundation, but no one knows who is in this organization and what they do other than the ranking. Every year, the girl students of all departments receive the “what Clock Tower man you want to sleep with the most?” poll sheet from out of nowhere and that gets automatically forwarded the moment it’s filled. No one is obliged to answer, and naming both students and lecturers is equally fair game. Most people view it as a high effort shitpost done by silly mages, but since there’s obviously a magecraft aspect to system, some people get curious and try investigate it. Shishigou did it in his student days and that’s how met Jean Mario (who still brags about ranking higher than him to this day). The ranks we know of are: - Waver: 3rd in 2004, apparently 1st in 2009, if Flat is to be believed. - Bram: Lower than Waver in 2004. - Melvin: 8th in 2001, with his rank fluctuating highly every year. He suspects his ranks go up and down according to the state of the US stock market. - Wills: 2nd in 2003, removed from the list in 2004 because he’s gone to the fairy realm. Anyways, the plot of the drama CD is that the 2004 results get announced soon after Rail Zeppelin and Waver gets annoyed because the students can’t shut up about it. Later Bram makes salty remarks about Waver ranking higher than him, causing Waver to find out that the ranking actually existed outside of Flat’s head this whole time. He tries to learn more about it and discovers Flat, Svin, Yvette, and Caules gained a lot of money, diamonds, and oil fields by running an online betting poll for the results. Waver gets mad at the kids for doing it online, where the tax office and the MI6 could find out, and orders them to investigate Ouroboros Foundation and find out that this stupid ranking deal is about. The survey is actually the Policies Department’s method of investigating who has clout in each department and Hishiri has been its general supervisor for the past 10 years. The Clock Tower departments hate each other, so it’s difficult to hold a fair survey covering all of them, especially if they knew Policies was involved, so they work around that by deliberately making the poll look really stupid and taking the elements of bias into account when analyzing the results. There’s a giant underground space under an abandoned house in London where information from all branches is gathered and the votes are tallied up. Hishiri inherited this place from the previous supervisor when she became in charge of the project. In the end, Waver deduces that this whole Ouroboros Foundation clout analysis is another layer of cover for a greater form of cursed content being made for Great Mother (no idea what this one is) and gets Hishiri to free his students by agreeing to not pursue this case any further and to not letting his findings go public.

The Clock Tower in fandom: eat babies

Trump is just bad at speaking XD