Dragon of fruit

Most recently, a friend came over my house and saw my computer background and went, "Wow, um, I didn't know you were into that." To which I look at the picture of the well drawn muscular female minotaur in historically accurate Greek clothing and I start geeking out about how I love the detail the artist did with the clothing and I point out the period appropriate folds and pins, how the artist even inserted the native plant that was used to dye the clothing this particular shade in the background, and even how the belt has technology AND historically accurate weaving patterns on it.

Then I start explaining how I love the muscular choices of the minotaur, that I was so impressed with the artist's anatomically correct depiction of the muscles converging into the neck. That many people get an upright cow's neck wrong because cow's don't have collarbones, so it can be very difficult to merge the upper arms and a chest of a human with a cow's body. I draw her attention to the beautiful way they've merged the pectoralis major so smoothly while also staying true to how muscular they've depicted the rest of the body.

I finish up with my thoughts on the artist's bold choice to depict the minotaur as a female, and despite the underlying themes of a minotaur being violence, child murder, strength, and muscles. I segue into how unlike bulls, cow are perceived as mothers. That they are the major source of milk in human culture, and that idyllic depictions of them in a field usually depict calves frolicking nearby, yet the minotaur kills and eats children.

I finish and there is a long pause.

So I just wanted to expand upon the fact that I don't believe the art is bad, craftmanshipwise or morally, but that I am so faceblind to it for some reason, that even my tiny hundred year old Catholic grandmother is like, "Urban, why have you displayed this oil painting of the pornography in your kitchen?" And I have to explain to her that, "Grandma, I really thought it was just someone being incredibly enthusiastic about eating cake in a wedding dress, and you know how I love wedding dresses from the 20th centaury."

Yes, everything about me is fucked up, but what if that was secretly awesome?

I think the fandom has always generally agreed that between the skeleton brothers it's Sans that is more inclined towards violence. Papyrus is a staunch pacifist - in fact, he is the only monster that will never kill you, no matter the route. Sans on the other hand can and does kill you. A lot. Violently. But only in the genocide route. It doesn't matter if you only killed a single froggit, if you killed his brother or if you killed everyone but spared one person - he doesn't fight you unless he absolutely has to but when he does he fights like hell. He's no stranger to making violent threats too, telling us that the only thing that kept him from killing us was the promise he made to Toriel.

This has caused the fandom to generally regard them as opposites. Papyrus naively believes in the inherent goodness of people. He does fight but he never kills. Sans is more of a cynic. He only fights you with the intent to kill. And so far practically everyone assumed the reason he only fought you in the genocide route was because he was too depressed and apathetic to do so in any other route. That being aware of resets, knowing that no matter what he does it'll all end up erased, made him too indifferent to bother.

But this interaction reveals that we've actually got him all wrong.

It reveals that Sans might be an even bigger pacifist than Papyrus. Papyrus refuses to kill but Sans refuses to even hit you - not because he's too lazy but because he dislikes violence. He's actually willing to put quite a bit of effort into his "battle" (it's for charity after all) but makes it absolutely clear that battling him is not something that will happen ever again in a way that indicates it's not because it's too much effort. It's because it's against his philosophy. It's a conscious choice he's making. Because he believes it's wrong.

He only resorts to violence when he's at the end of his rope. When he has to prevent you from destroying the world. He agrees to do something he considers wrong because the alternative is much, much worse.

BORING. make him a morally fucked and aware of it. ask him does he define his nature or does his nature define him. give him motifs of fighting against his own very nature as a creature of malice and also make him slowly forget what it is that he’s fighting for. (his humanity)

make him non-corporeal and inhuman. make him pretend to be one anyways. 

But ALSO! The best thing about writing injuries is that there is so much variation.

I spent a few years as an EMT, and I saw people walk away from vehicle rollovers with nary a scratch... and also, I saw people break their knees because they sat down. I've seen a guy get lifelong impairments out of falling off something twelve feet high, but I know someone who survived being stabbed over a dozen times with no lasting (physical) injuries. There's range.

In nearly any given situation*, a realistic level of injury is anywhere from "Dies within five minutes" to "Dies 73 years later surrounded by grandchildren and great-grandchildren, having zero long-lasting repercussions from that incident."

*Not every situation, mind you; papercuts are generally exempt

If you don't mind a ramble (because I haven't done a fun character injury ramble in a while so I shall use this as an excuse)...

The key to writing realistic injuries is to start with what you want to happen. It's your character and your scenario, so start with what you want to happen for Plot Reasons.

Example:

You know your character gets in a car crash with a wall, and you want them laid up for a week, but able to move around with minimal pain soon after. Cool. Now that you have your desired outcome, you can run through the scenario. You won't want your character ejected or to have a major head impact with the windshield, so they were wearing their seatbelt. You want them to still be able to walk, so the dashboard probably didn't crumple in on them. That means they were either in a car with good safety ratings, or they weren't going super fast, or a combination thereof. But you do want them a little bit injured, enough so they don't want to go on that hiking trip for another week, so make sure they were going fast enough to get some good ol' whiplash.

Another example:

You want your character to make a dramatic exit out the window, and you want them to be limping a little for dramatic effect as they head off into the forest surrounding the castle. Nice, we love a good dramatic window exit. But you want to make sure the character won't be out of commission for the battle in a fortnight's time. This could totally be a first-floor window, or even a second-floor one. But what if it really needs to be the fourth floor, for pre-existing scenario reasons? Well, maybe there's a balcony halfway down. Or maybe there's a nice slanted roof underneath that broke their fall. Or maybe the castle is built into a cliff so the windows on that side of the castle are only ten feet up. Or maybe they clung onto ivy outside, which ripped out of the wall a bit but was enough to slow them down. There's all sorts of ways you can play this off!

Rather than trying to make a scenario and then fitting the injury into it, come up with the injury (or at least, level of injury) and plan out the details of your scenario around it.

The only caution is to make sure to build scenarios realistically—like, I could totally see a character being able to keep going after being stabbed because it was a shallow wound. But if they get a shallow stab wound... and they only get ✨grazed✨ by a bullet... and they happen to survive a terrible car accident because they were in the best possible seat... AND they were pushed out of an airplane but their BFF managed to skydive right out after them and caught them... that's getting to be a little much. XD Any of those is realistic except maybe the last; IDK, I know injuries, not skydiving, but too many near-misses in a single story starts to feel like plot armor.