2. they're going to favor their sighted side, obviously, but it doesn't always manifest in the way you think. when I walk down a hall I walk much closer to the wall on my sighted side than on my blind side. which is the opposite of how it might seem logical to do that bc it means the world at large is on your bad side, but the reason is I can't fucking See the wall if it's right next to me in the blind side and I end up knocking into it.

3. door frames and poles are my enemy. If your character is smart this will not be a problem but for me it is. I am King of walking into shit I could absolutely see but couldn't tell how far away from me it was. on this note, their blind side hand is getting bashed into every jutting out thing in a 5 mile radius.

4. having 0 depth perception is less of a big deal than you'd think it is. Especially with driving. I've become a Much safer and more wary driver because I can't tell how far the other cars are from me. however I fucking suck at parking now. because I can't tell how far the lines are from me either.

5. you know how people who lose limbs get phantom pains? that happens with eyes too but like. phantom sights. for me it's like. a lot of bugs. like every so often my brain will just put something suddenly skittering beside me there. hate that.

6. it is completely possible to "get stuck" somewhere because your ability to tell how wide a space is is just Gone. shopping isles especially where bumping something or Someone is matter of embarrassment or potentially breaking something. it can be legitimately paralyzing and also irritate everyone around you because they can tell there is Plenty of space for you to get your cart through even if you can't.

While lethal injuries often take center stage, non-lethal injuries can create lasting effects on characters, shaping their journeys in unique ways. If you need a simple way to make your characters feel pain during a scene, here are some ideas: 

Sprained Ankle

A common injury that can severely limit mobility, forcing characters to adapt their plans and experience frustration as they navigate their environment.

Rib Contusion

A painful bruise on the ribs can make breathing difficult and create tension, especially during action scenes, where every breath becomes a reminder of vulnerability.

Concussion

This brain injury can lead to confusion, dizziness, and mood swings, affecting a character’s judgment and creating a sense of unpredictability in their actions.

Fractured Finger

A broken finger can complicate tasks that require fine motor skills, causing frustration and emphasizing a character’s dependence on their hands.

Road Rash

The raw, painful skin resulting from a fall can symbolize struggle and endurance, highlighting a character's resilience in the face of physical hardship.

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.

Deep Laceration

A cut that requires stitches can evoke visceral imagery and tension, especially if the character has to navigate their surroundings while in pain.

Burns

Whether from fire, chemicals, or hot surfaces, burns can cause intense suffering and lingering trauma, serving as a physical reminder of a character’s past mistakes or battles.

Pulled Muscle

This can create ongoing pain and restrict movement, providing an opportunity for characters to experience frustration or the need to lean on others for support.

Tendonitis

Inflammation of a tendon can cause chronic pain and limit a character's ability to perform tasks they usually take for granted, highlighting their struggle to adapt and overcome.

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks? 

I just read a book by one of my favorite authors whose plots are essentially airtight, but the MC was walking on a country road on a cold winter night and she was knocked down and fell into a drainage ditch covered in ice, broke through and got covered in icy mud and water.

Then she had a “miserable” 3 more miles to walk to the inn.

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

Nothing, I mean nothing, activates reader pedantry like a number.

I have seen it a thousand times in writing workshops. People just can't resist nitpicking a number. For example, "This scifi story takes place 200 years in the future and they have faster than light travel because it's plot convenient," will immediately drag every armchair scientist out of the woodwork to say why there's no way that technology would exist in only 200 years.

Dates, ages, math, spans of time, I don't know what it is but the second a specific number shows up, your reader is thinking, and they're thinking critically but it's about whether that information is correct. They are now doing the math and have gone off drawing conclusions and getting distracted from your story or worse, putting it down entirely because umm, that sword could not have existed in that Medieval year, or this character couldn't be this old because it means they were an infant when this other story event happened that they're supposed to know about, or these two events now overlap in the timeline, or... etc etc etc.

"Two centuries later" just triggers a mental note to check if timing is consistent throughout the book, because it may mean more time jumps are ahead. "200 years later", or heaven forbid, "201 years later" will have me draw up a time line. The more specific the number, the more critical people become.

basically gricean maxims are a set of guidelines that we all carry in our heads that we expect other people to follow when having a conversation in good faith - i’m copying and pasting definitions from someone else because my attempts at summing up quality and quantity weren’t going so hot

The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.

The maxim of quality, where one tries to be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.

They thought it was a sci-fi game but they also thought the monsters were going to be zombies.

Over a period of 2 hours they then proceeded to make EVERY Aliens movie cliche "mistake" known to man. Because at the time they all made sense.

The characters in a story don't know they're in a story or what kind of story it is.

Queerplatonic relationships aren't exclusively aro/ace.

Queerplatonic relationships aren't essentially the "third thing" outside of romantic and platonic relationships- in some cases, they are, but in other cases, they aren't! It's fluid! It isn't just the "third option" if a relationship between characters is not romantic or familial.

A queerplatonic relationship is however the people in that relationship want it to be! The point of a qpr is that it's not following the strict, societal standards of how relationships "should" be!

A queerplatonic relationship is not essentially "romance lite" or "best friends but deeper"! The definition for a qpr is dependent on the people in it!

Queerplatonic folk can get married to each other.

A queerplatonic relationship can be exclusively with one person.

Queerplatonic relationships can get physically intimate.

what about "i'd live for you" romances? what about "i never thought i'd be worth the work it would take to piece myself together"?

The term "beta" in this context is short for "beta reader" - a person who reads a fic while it's still in the editing stage and helps the writer get it ready to post. Some betas check grammar. Some check canon compliance. Some are sensitivity readers. There are lots of things that betas can do.

So functionally, saying "no beta" means that the writer didn't get this checked by a second person before they posted it. It's a warning that there might be errors or typos etc. It's mostly used when an author has written something quickly and is posting without doing a lot of (or any) edits first.

As for where it comes from? It all started with a bumper sticker.

This image was an internet meme at one point, and it got meme'd on in the form of "no ___ we ___ like men"

Here on tumblr, one of the versions that got really popular was from now-deleted user @grec1a who created this version:

Tokenism refers to giving the empty appearance of inclusivity or diversity, often to avoid criticism. In writing, tokenism refers to adding minorities to an otherwise homogenous cast (think a cast of white male characters in the West) in name or appearance only, without putting in the effort to develop these characters.

The problem with tokenism is that token characters are forced to be the sole representation of their particular group. The consequence is twofold. First, undeveloped token characters often become platforms for stereotypes. Think the sassy Black friend, the smart Asian friend, etc.

Second, token characters often become creator mouthpieces. Many of us have heard someone excuse their racism by saying they have a POC friend. The token character, the proverbial Friend of Color, can be made to excuse or even promote biases about their race, ethnicity, or culture.

There is no inherent issue with having only one of a particular identity, or having a white protagonist and a POC best friend. The problem comes when you make the character a spokesperson for their identity and/or saddle them with stereotypes and cliches. To avoid tokenism, write the character from a place of empathy, make them three dimensional, do your research on their identity, and avoid stereotypes.

Further Reading:

Why We Need More Directors of Color

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This Q&A is an excerpt from our General FAQ for Newcomers, which can be found in our new Masterpost of rules and FAQs. Take a look to learn more about writing POC representation!

Coding is the practice of adapting key characteristics of a real life demographic group within a fictional setting, such that while the source group is not named explicitly, the adaptation is intentional. This has been heavily used in satire and controlled forms of media to use subtext when explicit labeling was not possible or desired. Coding has also been used in worldbuilding for speculative fiction when the author finds it useful to incorporate references to real life groups in settings where they might not exist.

The difference between effective and ineffective coding comes down to if audiences easily recognize the group being coded. However, effective coding does not necessarily mean good coding. Good coding should resonate with the group that the coding is based on, not just the general audience. There are many historical examples of effective but bad coding. These tend to rely on stereotypes and cultural appropriation to villainize or satirize a group with a bastardized portrayal.

Further Reading:

See our #coding tag.

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This Q&A is an excerpt from our General FAQ for Newcomers, which can be found in our new Masterpost of rules and FAQs. Check it out for more FAQs like this one!

Right now, it’s Sunday November 5, 2023 in the afternoon and SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee are still reviewing what AMPTP have claimed is their “last, best, and final” offer. They gave WGA three different offers with this phrasing (the third one was actually the great deal the union agreed to), so we know it’s not last or final, and we don’t yet know if it’s best.

But as we wait for official word from the negotiating committee, we must be prepared for our response if this is not the deal we need.

At this point, it sure looks like pickets are going to need to happen tomorrow, Monday, November 6, 2023. And if they are, those pickets may be the most important of the entire strike. They’ll send a message to the AMPTP, to the media, to our negotiating committee, and to our membership, industry, and union siblings.

If you are in NYC or LA, we need you to find five minutes (or more) of your day and come out an join us tomorrow. If you are a fan or a consumer who has been eager for a way to help, this is gonna be the day. If you can get to a picket line, please come.

Picketing is hard work, but joining a picket for whatever time you have to give us is easy.

The rest of this post is entirely about demystifying what to expect for our allies that haven’t been on the line yet.

When you show up at a picket location (there’s a link to find picket locations attached to this post), you’ll see a SAG-AFTRA tent. You should go there and check in.

If you’re in the union, they’ll ask for your membership card. If you’re not, they’ll either have a book for you to enter your info in by hand or a QR code for you to scan to fill out a brief online form.

They’ll hand you a sign, offer you shirts/hats/pins/stickers (all free and all dependent on what got sent to that site that day), and point out other free stuff they have that you might need — like water, snacks, and ear plugs (it gets loud).

After that, you’ll join us on the line. You can chant if you want. You can also bring noisemakers if you want. Sometimes we have dance breaks. At my site we also pause for historical facts about labor history, and have a union song singalong with live music most days.

Take a rest when you need to rest. Stay as long or as short as you want. When you leave, just turn in your sign and take off. No explanations needed.

No one is gonna quiz you on your time commitment, your actorly history, or anything else. Sometimes people are chatty, sometimes people are focused on the task. Both are okay.

Full disclosure: Accessibility has been learn-as-we-go and imperfect. That said, we regularly have wheelchair and other mobility aid users and blind and low-vision people at our pickets. We also have ASL interpreters available at least some of the time. You are welcome, and we will make it work.

If you wanna bring your kids, bring your kids. If you wanna bring you dog/cat/bird/lizard — totally chill if appropriately leashed/contained and we will put SAG shirts on your pet if your your pet wants a shirt and we have appropriate sizes.

See, the first time I grew parsnips, I fucked it up good. I hadn't seen parsnips sprouting before, right, and in my eagerness I was keeping a close eye on the row. And every time I saw some intruding grass coming up, I twitched it right out, and went back to anticipating the germination of my parsnips.

But it turns out parsnips take a bit longer than anything else I'd ever grown to distinguish themselves visually. It's just the two little split leaves, almost identical to a newly seeded bit of kentucky bluegrass when they first come up, and they take a good bit to establish themselves and spread out flat before the main stem with its first distinctive scallopy leaf gets going.

I didn't get any parsnips, not that year, because I'd weeded them all out as soon as they showed their faces, with my 'ugh no that's grass' twitchy horticulture finger.

The next year, having in retrospect come to suspect what had happened, I left the row alone and didn't weed anything until all the sprouts coming up had all had a bit to set in and show their colors, and I've grown lots of parsnips since. They're kind of a slow crop, not a huge return, but I like them and watching them grow and digging them up, and their papery little seeds in the second year, if you don't harvest one either on purpose or because you misjudged the frost, so it's worth it.