Morgan Biscup

She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.

She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.

81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.

The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.

Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.

Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.

The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.

She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.

Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.

When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.

The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.

When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.

The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.

You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.

Re-posting this so folks actually see the damn thing.

Please forgive the length… the plot bunny got away from me… very far away from me…

There was blood on the floor.

Avrex blinked and stared at the red droplets on the floor. More red caught xer eye. There was more just under the edge of the seat. As if someone had tried to wipe it up but hadn’t thought to get under the very edge. Only one species on board had red blood.

This had to belong to one of the humans.

But why would blood be here in waste room of all places? Granted, humans were an odd breed, and used the waste rooms for more than the elimination of waste. Some even installed mirrors and extra lights and spent an hour or more in there! But blood? Why here? And why on the waste reclaimer lid? Surely if one of the humans was injured they would go to the infirmary….

…wouldn’t they?

Avrex shook xer scaled head and stalked out of the waste room. Xey would get to the bottom of this.

The humans had been hired three months prior. Two at first. Then another two a month later. And a fifth one a month after that. They were extremely useful, and didn’t really take up much space.

Hunting down any of said humans was a challenge.

Three of the humans were mechanics, and could be found shimmying their slender bodies between various components of the ship to reach the part they desired to work on. Even with an extra set of large eyes, Avrex would often walk right by the little beings, missing their little oil and grease smeared bodies in amongst the equally oil and grease smeared engine components. At a hulking ten feet tall, Avrex often missed the little monsters because they were under something or other.

The massive first officer dismissed the mechanics as a viable first target for questions. Searching through the entrails of the ship for crew members that xey may or may not find was not an effective use of xer energy or time. Xey could always catch the mechanics at the designated meal time if the other two humans couldn’t answer xer questions satisfactorily.

The fourth human was no easier to find. He was a security guard, and could be anywhere on the ship at any given time. Despite the fact that he wasn’t a mechanic, he seemed to share their proclivity for climbing on things, and for crawling into spaces that were inaccessible to most of the rest of the crew.

That left Carl.

Avrex made xer ponderous way down to the metallurgy lab. The human designated as Carl was not like the others. He was much older. The kind, gentle being had been the first human the ship had taken on, and had paved the way for the four other humans that followed. The others respected him greatly, turning to him for wisdom and advice. Surely Carl would have some insight into why there was human blood in the waste room.

Carl was right where he was supposed to be.

Avrex pressed the alert button and patiently waited to be granted entry just outside the lab doors. The request was swiftly answered, the doors sliding open with a soft hiss to admit the ship’s first officer.

Carl had put his work station into a safe position, and turned in his seat to give the hulking alien from Jarrok his full and undivided attention. Avrex had always liked that about Carl. While the human ability to multi-task often came in useful, it was sometimes disconcerting to hold a conversation with a being that never once even glanced in xer general direction while they spoke.

Carl smiled as he stripped of his protective gear. “Avrex. What brings you down here?”

The first officer assumed a parade rest position. “I have a query about human behavior, and had hoped that you could explain.”

The human chuckled and ran a hand through his graying hair. “Well, I’ll do my best. Go on and fire away.”

Avrex paused, then decided to ignore the odd turn of phrase. Experience had shown that large amounts of time were wasted when human parlance was questioned. “I discovered a small amount of blood in one of the communal waste rooms. I am aware that humans use waste rooms for more than their intended purpose, but I am at a loss as to what form of task could take place in a waste room, and possessed the potential to cause injury. The blood was red, thus it can be safely assumed that such belonged to one of the humans on board. But none of the humans have sought out medical aid. If one of my crew is injured in any capacity, as first officer I am entitled to know, so that I may account for such injuries when drawing up the duty roster for the coming cycles.”

The elderly male frowned thoughtfully. “There are a couple things it might be. But I’m not going to stir up panic by picking the wrong one. Which waste room was it you found the blood?”

Feeling dread curdle in xer gut, Avrex gave him the correct room number.

Carl nodded. “Melanie was supposed to be working up near that sector. More’n likely it’s her blood you found. Come on, I’ll walk up with you and help straighten this mess out.” Avrex started to protest. Surely xey could manage without taking Carl away from his work if given the pertinent information. The elderly human shook his head in seeming amusement. “Trust me Avrex, it’s better if I go along. If this is what I think it is, you’d just end up with a very angry or hurt mechanic on your hands.”

The first officer shut xer maw, frilled ears pinned back against the sides of xer head. What could possibly be going on that would result in a human being injured or angry?

Xey walked back down to the correct deck with Carl, deciding to wait and see. If what Xey had heard from other ships was true, an angry human was something to be avoided if at all possible.

Despite the consistent trouble the rest of the crew had in locating the mechanics while about their work in the engines, Carl seemed to have no problem tracking down the correct human.

At his call, she crawled out of a space so tight Avrex wasn’t sure xey could’ve gotten a paw in.

The second human the ship had taken on, Melanie had been hired barely a week after Carl. She was by far the smallest of the humans, and the quietest. Her peers took shameless advantage of her small size, leaving work in the tightest spaces to her. She didn’t seem to mind, preferring to work alone rather than with her group as most humans were purported to do. In fact, with the exception of Carl she seemed to avoid all of her kind for the most part.

The raven haired female flashed her teeth in the odd threat gesture that humans insisted denoted welcome, amusement, or joy.

Melanie wiped her hand on a rag and stuck it out to Carl for a traditional human greeting. “Hey Carl. Did one of your do-dads break down again?”

“Not this time dear.” Carl assured. “The first officer swung by with a question, and it seemed you’d be most likely to have the answer. Seems Avrex swung by the restroom and found human blood on the floor. Any chance you’d know something about that?”

Melanie paled.

The elder human nodded and patted her shoulder, seeming to have derived his answer from her silence. “It’s alright dear, no need to worry. I was married for thirty-five years before cancer took my sweet Belle, and she and I raised six beautiful daughters. There isn’t a thing under the sun I haven’t seen, and I’ve made more trips to the store for feminine things than I could probably count! Do you need any help, or do you have everything in order?”

The young female slowly relaxed at his kindly manner. She shook her head, asserting that she had ‘it’ covered. Avrex shifted xer weight, subtly drawing the humans’ attention back to xer question.

“You’re the only woman on board, Mel. Would you like to explain? Or would you rather I did?”

Melanie’s cheeks started to change color underneath the grease. “I can do it.”

Carl seemed pleased by the answer. “Go get ‘em then. And if you need anything, you go ahead and ask me or Cal. That’s the lad over in security, in case you didn’t know. Lord knows he’s young, but he won’t give you any grief if you need something and can’t get it yourself.”

Calling a farewell, Carl patted Avrex on the shoulder and headed back to his lab, leaving the massive reptilian being towering over the tiny female.

Avrex slowly squatted down as low as xey could manage in an attempt to put her at ease. Xer experience with humans was still somewhat limited, but observation had shown that humans tended to be slightly intimidated by a difference in height.

Her cheeks were changing color again. Looking down, the human female mumbled something at the floor.

Avrex cocked xer head. “Could you repeat that more clearly please?”

Melanie seemed to gather her courage and finally looked the massive officer in the larger pair of xer four amber colored eyes.

“I’m on my period.” The admission made, she seemed to lose some of her discomfort. “It started a few hours ago while I was up in the machinery. I had to climb down and run to the rest roo-damnit, waste room to clean myself up. I’m sorry about the blood, I’ll be more careful in future.”

Avrex cocked xer head. “I do not understand. I was under the impression that ‘period’ is a form of punctuation denoting the end of a sentence. How then, can you be ‘on’ it?”

She stared at xem for a long moment, eyes widening as she slowly seemed to realize that xey genuinely had no idea what she was talking about. “Ok. Um… the word ‘period’ also means a length of time. Human females use the word as slang to talk about a specific time. It’s… God, I can’t believe I’m giving an alien the talk. Ok, so basically…”

Avrex listened in growing astonishment as the little female described a process by which one of her internal organs partially deconstructed itself once a month unless she put it to use in forming a baby. If she was to be believed, it happened once a month from approximately age eleven to age forty to fifty. Admittedly, compared to the amount of blood in the human body the amount lost during one of the episodes she described was relatively small. But, she explained that other fluids were expelled as well, along with pieces of the organ that was shredding and rebuilding itself. The entire process took place approximately every three to four weeks.

Avrex shook xer head. “Shouldn’t such a process be painful?”

Melanie shrugged. “Well yeah. I know some women who stay in bed the entire time they’re on because it hurts so bad.”

The first officer reared back in alarm. “Are you in pain?!”

Another shrug. “My uterus is shredding it’s inner lining because I’m not knocked up with a baby. Yes, I hurt.”

Avrex had to work hard not to snap xer teeth in xer anger on Melanie’s behalf. “If human females require bed-rest while experiencing one of these ‘periods’, why are you not in bed? Surely if you explained the situation to the medical officer he would have given you medical leave. We do not require a crew member to return to active duty immediately after surgery, surely an internal organ coming apart cannot be so different!”

Melanie laughed. Laughed!

The little human caught xer hand and gave it a squeeze. “I said some humans Avrex. Some. Most don’t experience severe pain. If it gets bad, it means that more than likely something else is wrong. Most of us wear special liners in our clothes or inserted into our bodies to catch the blood so we don’t get it all over the place. And we just go on with our daily routine. Grin and bear it. We’ll be alright.”

The first officer wasn’t convinced. “At least tell me that you have spoken to the medical officer about something to relieve the pain.”

She shook her head, holding up a hand to forestall xer protests. “Some women do. I don’t like using pain medication for something I can tough out. Humans have this thing, where we can slowly build up an immunity to certain drugs through prolonged use. I avoid pain medication so I don’t build up an immunity. That way, when I do need it I know it works really well. As soon as I realize my period is starting, I start drinking more water. The human body is about sixty percent water, and making sure that I’m properly hydrated speeds up the process and makes it hurt less. Instead of dealing with it for six to seven days, it only lasts three to four. Seriously Avrex, I’m fine, and I’ve got a handle on the rest of the symptoms. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Avrex felt as if xer head was spinning. “Other symptoms?”

The human bared her teeth in another smile. “Most of us get moody because our hormone level fluctuate a bit. It hits every woman a bit differently. Some women turn into a weepy mess. Me? I turn into a grouchy, irritable, cow who avoids everyone like the plague. Other women will get angry at the drop of a hat and bite the head off the nearest individual that annoys her.” She must’ve seen the look of shock and horror on xer face because she immediately backtracked. “Shit, not literally! I mean they just get overly aggressive, usually verbally.”

She waited for a second, to make sure xey understood, then went on.

“Aside from the moodiness it’s a grab bag of ways your period will affect you. Some people get cravings, some people get back pain, or their breasts”, she put her hands illustratively on the soft mounds on her chest to be sure that there wasn’t any miscommunication between them about what ‘breasts’ were, “get sore. Most of us get cramps in our lower abdomens right about here.” Again the illustrative touch, this time to a spot just below her belt. “Some of us have an increased sex drive, while others just want to roll themselves up in a blanket like a burrito, and a lot of us are fatigued. Every woman’s different.”

Avrex slowly shook xer head, completely dumbfounded by the sudden influx of information. “Is…is there anything you currently require? I know that Carl already asked, and you informed him that you were sufficiently prepared, but…”

Her face softened. “I’m fine Avrex. Really. I just…”

“Hey! Melanie! You gonna keep up with the men today, or are you gonna have a tea party with the dinosaur all day?”

Avrex almost responded.

Almost.

Instead, xey remained stationary, watching as a strange change came over the female before xem. Where before she had been timid and shy, at the sudden derogatory call from the newest of the five humans, a male named Dave, her face suddenly became calm and smooth as granite.

She slowly turned and cast a threatening, and yes Avrex was sure that this smile was definitely a threat, at Dave and the other male mechanic Josh. Josh had been the fourth human taken on, hired within days of Cal the security guard.

As Dave was the one who’d spoken, Melanie seemed to focus most of her attention on him. “Care to run that by me again smart mouth?”

Josh, older and more mature than Dave, seemed to understand the unspoken warning. “Dave…”

The younger human ignored him. “Ooh, someone woke up on the bitchy side of the bed this morning. What’s a matter sweet cheeks?” He made an expression that Avrex would later learn was called a leer. The male grabbed her by the arm. “Maybe you just need a little action to settle you down, yeah? How ‘bout it babe? I bet I can get that stick out of your ass. Hm? Maybe put something better…”

A large wrench whistled through the air and stopped within a micron’s breadth of the young human’s nose. It was easily the length of the male’s forearm, and had previously been occupying a loop on Melanie’s belt. He stared at it, cross eyed and pale, then looked at the diminutive little female who could’ve easily broken his nose if she’d had less control.

“What’s a matter?” She parroted the question back, voice tight and dark. “What’s a matter is that I started my day in a fountain of my own blood, and that’s how you’re going to end yours if you ever call me ‘sweet cheeks’, ‘babe’, or any other cutesy nickname again. And as for keeping up with you ‘men’, I’m already three days ahead of schedule. You’ve barely been on this ship a month and you’re already two weeks behind. So I’d say it’s you who aught to be keeping up with me, because it seems anything you can do I can do better and faster while bleeding.” Her dark eyes narrowed. “And lastly? If you ever lay hands on me again? I promise you, they will never find your body.”

She slid the wrench back into her belt, cast a respectful nod to Avrex, and calmly crawled back up into the machinery.

Dave stared after her for a long moment, then pointed. “Josh! Did you see what that bitch just…”

The older male cuffed him over the back of the head. “You’re an idiot. Never piss off something that bleeds for seven days a month and doesn’t die. I haven’t got to know her all that well yet, but Mel is worth ten of you. That woman works her ass off. If you ever go after her again, and she doesn’t kill you, you can bet that I will happily beat you black and blue!”

Avrex bared xer teeth, allowing a tiny warning growl to rumble deep inside xer barrel chest. The reptilian first officer slowly stood to xer full ten foot height, looming over the miscreant. “Consider yourself warned.”

An additional talk with Carl yielded a few ‘pearls of wisdom’ concerning ‘feminine’ needs.

With the thunderstruck captain’s blessing, Avrex ordered small metal receptacles installed in each of the public waste rooms on board at their next stop. Carl had suggested small boxes, but given the frequency of meteor showers and pirate attacks, evasive maneuvers were engaged fairly often. Avrex thought it better to have the receptacles affixed to the wall and a basic bolt lock placed on the lid so that the ‘feminine’ supplies wouldn’t be thrown around the waste rooms when the ship had to duck or roll suddenly.

Upon having the situation explained, the other alien members of the crew who hadn’t been released for shore leave were more than happy to help. They liked Melanie, and the discovery that she spent a week in pain each month and gave no outward sign was disconcerting to say the least.

Other changes included stain proof bedding, a heating pad, a new fluffy blanket, and a few earth sweets being slipped into her room.

Dave, the human who had harassed her, was not invited back to the ship.

Instead he was replaced with a male creylight from the Andromeda system. While not as small as the humans, he was still flexible enough to reach most of the components without taking a piece of the engine apart, and he was much stronger. The humans wouldn’t have to drag the lifting equipment out as often.

He was also made aware of how his predecessor had been fired for his disrespectful, inappropriate, and frankly downright threatening behavior towards Melanie.

The crew was not going to tolerate such treatment towards their favorite human.

Melanie nearly burst xer ear drums with her grateful calls upon returning from shore leave and discovering what xey had done.

She had been dreading coming back to work and having to deal with Dave. And then to find out he’d been fired, and to see what ‘sweethearts’ the rest of the crew had been…

As xey crouched down to receive the strongest ‘hug’ the little human could muster, Avrex couldn’t help but marvel at the change in her attitude. While she still treated Josh a little coolly, Melanie seemed much less guarded than she had before. She made friends with Cal, and Carl, and slowly started to get to know Josh. She was more outgoing while socializing with the rest of the crew. The timidity faded, an air of preparedness that the crew hadn’t even realized was there fell away. Leaving her relaxed and free. For the first time since she’d boarded the ship, she seemed truly happy.

She felt safe.

And Avrex couldn’t help but feel both saddened and enraged at how surprised she seemed that they would go out of their way to make her feel safe and comfortable. That she was so used to relying on no one but herself. So used to being stepped on and living in fear of the male half of her species taking advantage of her.

No more.

“You can always assume one thing about your clients; and that is that they are doing their best. Always assume everyone is doing their best. And if they’re having a day where their best just isn’t that great, or their best doesn’t look like your best, you have to be okay with that.”

ask and ye shall receive: When I write in Japanese I usually also throw it in google translate to double check that I'm not using the wrong kanji by mistake, and two years ago it gave me very dry and literal translations.

I was doing it today and noticed it had a pretty strong voice added to the output

For reference, to give a dry translation I would put: Lately I'm into in Hanafuda. Nobody seems to know anything about it here, so they probably wouldn't understand my brilliant jokes. I guess you guys will never be able to understand "Mister November and the Scary Cave".

I have a fluent friend who is able to check my work for me and give me tips on hitting the correct tone (I was going for a comically casual feeling), so I'm confident that I'm expressing the feeling I'm intending. While Google is also hitting the same emotion, I really don't like knowing that it's assigning tone in the first place.

To check if it was editorializing based on informal grammatical choices, I formal'd up the writing to be more polite and remove any non-standard vocabulary.

What do you mean I'm just using the browser versi-

***Because they don’t know HOW to read

***Because they’re not ALLOWED to read

***Because they weren’t TAUGHT to read

***Because the generation BEFORE THEM were never taught HOW TO READ or how to TEACH READING

***Because we DON’T VALUE INTELLECTUAL PURSUITS

***Because our society prioritizes PRODUCTIVITY over QUALITY OF LIFE

Sick of the “yall are stupid because you’re lazy” narrative. Obviously people with no time no family no money no books no education no perspective no respect no options no support no mentors aren’t perpetually disseminating themes of Othello on the fly.

People aren’t stupid, reading isn’t the peak proof of intelligence, and society isn’t on a decline because poor people are poor.

You’re confusing a symptom for a cause

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.

so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.

the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.

also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is:

On a Watsonian level, sure.

On a Doylistic level, Mordor looks like that because plate tectonics was a fringe, ludicrous, laughable theory that nobody outside serious geology nerds had ever heard of until scientists proved seafloor spreading in the early 1960s. The first edition of the LotR trilogy was published in 54-55. We literally did not know that plate tectonics was real until almost a decade after the book was published, so obviously, it was not something Tolkien could have been considering as he made his maps.

LotR has recurring themes of the reckless imposition of one's will on the natural world creating ugliness, an order you thought was inherently an improvement that in fact is inferior to what you have displaced. (Typified by reckless tree-felling; a reflection of the despoiling of the English countryside and the world by Progress.)

Western Washington:

Eastern Washington:

I know this is rich coming from someone who spends a lot of time writing characters who don't even have names. But...

It feels like a lot of people smush in popular tropes likes 'Who hurt you" and "only one bed" and "don't touch them" regardless of it actually fits the characters or not. All the bad boys are bad in exactly the same way. All the girls are designed to have just enough personality that you can project on them.

Would they actually react in that way? Would they actually say it like that? Do they actually care about sharing a bed based on their backstory? This isn't a criticism of these tropes, I love them too, but when every romance at the moment has these exact same beats they kind of lose power. (For me, anyway). Because it stops being their love story.

Maybe it's because I'm ace/probably aro, but I just find it so frustrating compared to the more complex specific romances we could have. The ones where it feels like the author has actually thought about their specific characters, and why they might fall in love with each other, and what that means for their desires. They're not in love because it's a romance and that means they must be in love by the end of the book.

My absolute favourite love stories could never have the serial numbers filed off, you know? It could only be them. That's what makes it compelling. That's what makes me obsessed with them.

I don't know.

E.g. enemies for more institutional/structural reasons like 'we are each on opposing forces in someone else's war', we are in two rival families, our species have historically be enemies' whatever. It's not personal, so it's an amazing way to focus a story on overcoming one's own biases or examining the structures that paint other people as monsters or why. This nation is made of savages blah blah, I've seen you cut people open on a battlefield. But you're so gentle when you kiss me? The contrast! The juxtaposition!

E.g. personal emnity. We are mutually obsessed with taking each other down and you are the centre of my world is very different to I hurt you once but I am a different person now, trying to be better, can you love who I have become and what does that mean for the hurt before? Is very different to 'we are the same, and I hate that we are the same, does embracing the love also mean loving or accepting parts of myself?'

E.g. I view you as an enemy, but you don't view me as one. You are the devastatingly seductive vampire lord who needs a bride or whatever, and I am the tool. What does it say about personhood when you fall in love with something you were just supposed to use? Can you still do what you need to do to survive?

How does literally consuming you change our relationship? Were we in love when you were still human? What does that look like now that you are something else?

E.g. everyone has always raised me to think of you as a monster, but I quickly realise you are not, so it's not fully an enemies to lovers story but people will often market you as that, and still great. What does it mean to find the place you belong in something that people have labelled as monstrous? Pretty sure a lot of people who have been othered by dominant society can relate.

I'm a registered nurse and I'm currently in graduate school to receive my doctorate in nursing. One of my favorite things, I've found, is to help people find information and resources on medical information for writing, and I was wondering if anyone would be interested in my work.

I'm working on my own writer's resource for people who want to be more medically accurate with their writing and I'm doing my best to keep the language plain and understandable. This will remain free and open source, I will not charge to provide this document EVER.

It is VERY much a work in progress, as I've only touched the surface of the skin, muscles, and some bones. It's very informal and unedited. I plan to briefly do an overview of as many body systems as possible then flesh out each section with detail.

That being said, I am an open book and I ADORE when people ask me for help. Do you need a way to incapacitate a character in a non-permanent manner? Information on drugs? Diseases? Do you want ideas for injuries with long lasting impact? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE feel free to dm or ask me for help, this is my passion, my bread and butter. I love being an open resource and helping people.

Here is a link to the google doc I'm writing the resource on, and I may plan on making other documents for various other things such as drugs and other substances, but keep in mind it is very much unfinished. Feel free to reach out should you need anything specific or just need ideas.

Thanks!

He came from a extremely poor and abusive background but worked his way into fine society, where he fell in love with fellow artist Karin Bergöö, and his works shifted to painting his home life.

Painting titled "My Loved Ones"

I could tell so many stories about this family, but to sum it up they lived the definition of what we would call a cottagecore life where both Carl and Karin worked as artists in their dream house that they designed and built together. It really was an artist’s home built with pure love, and also a big contrast to what a typical Swedish home looked like at the time. The late 1800s trend was to have a dark home with gothic vibes and brown and dark red colours. The Larsson’s home though is bright and colourful with big windows and homemade textiles sewn by Karin.

I also wanted to tell a bit about Brita, the cute little girl on her father’s shoulders in the painting in the original post. She was the fifth child of seven and felt sometimes like she didn’t get enough attention from her dad as a middle child in a big family. To get more time with her dad she would ask him to paint only her as often as possible since then she could talk to him without any of her siblings annoying them. This is how she became the most painted of all the children with hundreds of portraits made with her as the model. She was 89 years old when she died in 1982 and loved to talk about her childhood and those many, many painting sessions with dad.

He came from a extremely poor and abusive background but worked his way into fine society, where he fell in love with fellow artist Karin Bergöö, and his works shifted to painting his home life.

Painting titled "My Loved Ones"

I could tell so many stories about this family, but to sum it up they lived the definition of what we would call a cottagecore life where both Carl and Karin worked as artists in their dream house that they designed and built together. It really was an artist’s home built with pure love, and also a big contrast to what a typical Swedish home looked like at the time. The late 1800s trend was to have a dark home with gothic vibes and brown and dark red colours. The Larsson’s home though is bright and colourful with big windows and homemade textiles sewn by Karin.

I also wanted to tell a bit about Brita, the cute little girl on her father’s shoulders in the painting in the original post. She was the fifth child of seven and felt sometimes like she didn’t get enough attention from her dad as a middle child in a big family. To get more time with her dad she would ask him to paint only her as often as possible since then she could talk to him without any of her siblings annoying them. This is how she became the most painted of all the children with hundreds of portraits made with her as the model. She was 89 years old when she died in 1982 and loved to talk about her childhood and those many, many painting sessions with dad.

Something I made while dealing with my own stuff and hoping drawing this would pick me up somehow. Maybe it worked.

TiL (click to go to the thread, which probably has more interesting tidbits I missed).

Bonus:

In addition to the print terminology stuff: the visual shorthand icons and ad graphics for something about writing are still often pen-nibs, fountain pens and typewriters…

…while graphics of a monitor, keyboard and mouse remain visual shorthand for computing…

…even though most writers now use monitor /  keyboard / mouse or even laptop / touchpad.

In addition, headers for “this blog / website is about writing” are often in one of the many imitation typewriter fonts complete with smudges, or just Courier.

The start and end call icons on most / all smartphones is still the handset of a classic desk telephone, and sometimes the open-app icon is a complete phone.

The term “hang up” for “end the call” refers to something even older - one of these…

And of course the Save icon is indeed a 3½ inch floppy disc.

Why it wasn’t a 5¼ floppy is a mystery. The icon version is just as distinctive.

Also, why various OP updates never changed “Save” to the graphic of a CD / DVD or flash drive is another mystery, and nowadays a Save icon should probably be a cartoon cloud.

And old people use ellipses simply to indicate a pause, or for some other incomprehensible reason I’m not aware of. But young people use ellipses to indicate passive-aggression.

So an old person could type something like:

how are things going with your “boyfriend”….

and what they mean is

How are things going with your boyfriend? [Im so excited for you, sweetie, and I wanna hear about it]

But a young person would interpret that sentence as

It's extremely possible.

Your face is, mostly, a lot of soft tissue positioned directly over bone. This means that blows to the face, even relatively minor ones, are likely to produce disproportionately nasty looking injuries, without inflicting any meaningful impairment.

The first two are bleeding. Either from splitting the skin open, or via bruising. When there is bruising, there's also going to be some swelling (because there's relatively few places for the blood to go), so the victim has extremely visible injuries, which will be painful, but are otherwise mostly cosmetic.

Of course, bleeding from the face will look incredibly bad, whether that's from the nose, a split lip, or from simply from the skin tearing during the punch, but, again, that's going to be mostly cosmetic.

Cuts in the mouth can be a bit worse, but again, this can result in symptoms that look much worse than they are. Normally, if you're coughing up blood, that's an extremely bad situation, however, if someone has punched you in the nose and started a bleed running back down your throat, or if you've bitten your tongue or cheek, you may be literally spitting up blood, without being in serious peril.

Cuts to the cheeks and lips can also be caused by your foe driving the soft tissue into your teeth. This can also result in injuries that have difficulty clotting. The actual blood loss isn't serious, but it can be annoying if you've gotten a gashed lip that refuses to stop leaking blood for hours. (I'm speaking from personal experience here.)

A broken nose is a bit more serious. Not because they're particularly dangerous, but because it's likely to permanently alter the angle of your nose. This will also result in a lot of blood making the injury look worse than it actually is. Again, you're not going to lose a meaningful amount of blood, but it'll look exceptionally bad.

While it's less likely to occur with a punch, cuts to the forehead, even relatively solid gashes, are another cases where it will look far worse than the injury is. Your forehead is one of the most heavily armored portions of your body, and cuts there are likely to cause a lot of visible bleeding, without resulting in a meaningful loss of blood. If your body works the way it's supposed to, bleeding from the forehead should get into your eyebrows and flow around your eye, without obscuring your vision. In practice, you absolutely can get blood in your eyes, depending on your facial structure. I can't really speak to that experience, though I'd be inclined to say it's probably not especially pleasant.

Now, a lot of facial injuries hurt. Your face has a lot of nerve endings, and those are quite happy to report to your brain, when something's just caused it harm. This is especially true of your lips and tongue, as you use those organs extensively to evaluate the safety of the food you consume (even if you don't think about it.) (Chewing off a portion of my own lip to get the bleeding to stop still ranks as one of the most unpleasant bits of field care I've every experienced, and I strongly recommend not seeking out that experience.) So, this isn't without any impairment whatsoever, but in general, these aren't going to be life altering injuries, or even wounds that require weeks to fully recover from. Facial injuries are singularly unpleasant, but they are rarely serious. (Unless we're talking about damage to the eyes, or broken bones. Both of which are unlikely outcomes from punches.)

In a somewhat perverse way, blows to the face is ideal for inflicting injuries that look far worse than they actually are.

-Starke

That’s part of why I wrote Long Live Evil: I kept reading cancer books/seeing cancer movies that didn’t know what they were doing, where the creators had definitely never had cancer and didn’t want anyone to have any fun. I wanted to write the real stuff, with the hard things and the genuinely hilarious moments (losing all the hair up your nose and having it always running is a detail I never saw anywhere!). And one of the real things is the desperate desire to escape into art, and humour, and adventure. I read so many books over that time!

The part that meant the most to me, though, was the swearing. It's a silly thing to remember now, but swearing wasn't allowed in my house, at all. Not from us, and not in our movies or books, either.

But it was in Redwall, and that was allowed because it wasn't "real" swearing because it was things like "baggy bottom beetle" or "snot nose". The heroes didn't swear, but the villains did, all the time, and it added depth and life to the world and also made young me feel so grown up that I was finally reading a book where the people causing trouble were allowed to swear.