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Helpful things for action writers to remember
Sticking a landing will royally fuck up your joints and possibly shatter your ankles, depending on how high you’re jumping/falling from. There’s a very good reason free-runners dive and roll.
Hand-to-hand fights usually only last a matter of seconds, sometimes a few minutes. It’s exhausting work and unless you have a lot of training and history with hand-to-hand combat, you’re going to tire out really fast.
Arrows are very effective and you can’t just yank them out without doing a lot of damage. Most of the time the head of the arrow will break off inside the body if you try pulling it out, and arrows are built to pierce deep. An arrow wound demands medical attention.
Throwing your opponent across the room is really not all that smart. You’re giving them the chance to get up and run away. Unless you’re trying to put distance between you so you can shoot them or something, don’t throw them.
Everyone has something called a “flinch response” when they fight. This is pretty much the brain’s way of telling you “get the fuck out of here or we’re gonna die.” Experienced fighters have trained to suppress this. Think about how long your character has been fighting. A character in a fist fight for the first time is going to take a few hits before their survival instinct kicks in and they start hitting back. A character in a fist fight for the eighth time that week is going to respond a little differently.
ADRENALINE WORKS AGAINST YOU WHEN YOU FIGHT. THIS IS IMPORTANT. A lot of times people think that adrenaline will kick in and give you some badass fighting skills, but it’s actually the opposite. Adrenaline is what tires you out in a battle and it also affects the fighter’s efficacy - meaning it makes them shaky and inaccurate, and overall they lose about 60% of their fighting skill because their brain is focusing on not dying. Adrenaline keeps you alive, it doesn’t give you the skill to pull off a perfect roundhouse kick to the opponent’s face.
Swords WILL bend or break if you hit something hard enough. They also dull easily and take a lot of maintenance. In reality, someone who fights with a sword would have to have to repair or replace it constantly.
Fights get messy. There’s blood and sweat everywhere, and that will make it hard to hold your weapon or get a good grip on someone.
A serious battle also smells horrible. There’s lots of sweat, but also the smell of urine and feces. After someone dies, their bowels and bladder empty. There might also be some questionable things on the ground which can be very psychologically traumatizing. Remember to think about all of the character’s senses when they’re in a fight. Everything WILL affect them in some way.
If your sword is sharpened down to a fine edge, the rest of the blade can’t go through the cut you make. You’ll just end up putting a tiny, shallow scratch in the surface of whatever you strike, and you could probably break your sword.
ARCHERS ARE STRONG TOO. Have you ever drawn a bow? It takes a lot of strength, especially when you’re shooting a bow with a higher draw weight. Draw weight basically means “the amount of force you have to use to pull this sucker back enough to fire it.” To give you an idea of how that works, here’s a helpful link to tell you about finding bow sizes and draw weights for your characters. (CLICK ME)
If an archer has to use a bow they’re not used to, it will probably throw them off a little until they’ve done a few practice shots with it and figured out its draw weight and stability.
People bleed. If they get punched in the face, they’ll probably get a bloody nose. If they get stabbed or cut somehow, they’ll bleed accordingly. And if they’ve been fighting for a while, they’ve got a LOT of blood rushing around to provide them with oxygen. They’re going to bleed a lot.
Here’s a link to a chart to show you how much blood a person can lose without dying. (CLICK ME)
If you want a more in-depth medical chart, try this one. (CLICK ME)
Hopefully this helps someone out there. If you reblog, feel free to add more tips for writers or correct anything I’ve gotten wrong here.
Sharpest View of the Andromeda Galaxy, Ever.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the sharpest and biggest image ever taken of the Andromeda galaxy — a whopping 69,536 x 22,230 pixels. The enormous image is the biggest Hubble image ever released and shows over 100 million stars and thousands of star clusters embedded in a section of the galaxy’s pancake-shaped disc stretching across over 40,000 light-years.
Use the ZOOM TOOL to view in full detail.
(WARNING: May cause existential crisis)
baby dragons that sleep in your fireplace and roll about in the soot and the ash trying to get comfortable on burning logs, screeching loudly whenever people walk by or when more logs need to be added to its roost and not stopping until content again
baby dragons with wings that are disproportionate to their bodies until older but nonetheless stubbornly trying to pick themselves up off the ground by running and aggressively flapping and managing to only get a few feet off the ground for a few seconds before crash landing
baby dragons that haven’t been exposed to priceless things such as gems and gold pieces and instead infatuate themselves with other unusual shiny things — like silverware, brass clocks, instruments, and pots and pans
baby dragons who get cold in the winter and crawl up into their caretaker’s clothing (almost always while said clothing is being worn) and curl up as tight as possible and begin to make sounds similar to content purring as they sleep
it’s impossible to objectively describe what soup is
DO NOT DO THIS.
This makes me so angry.
If you work in a movie theater and you do this I have no respect for you.
My younger brother is Type 1 Diabetic.
When we go to a movie theater, we always get him diet soda. If he were to get regular when we asked for diet, we would not give him the insulin he would need for it. If that happens, his blood sugar level could go so high he could go into a coma, go blind, or even die.
If somebody gave him regular soda instead of diet without telling us, that person could be responsible for a nine-year-old being killed or blinded.
Just thinking about that makes me so angry. I get scared every time we take him to a movie in case the people working there saw this picture and decide to do the same thing.
Please signal boost this so people know.
Good luck figuring out that emotion you’re feeling as you watch this dinosaur dog chores robot
You think that’s cute? Looking forward to your chores dino bot? Watch how it handles slipping on a banana peel.
Gifs: Boston Dynamics
Solar System by Jian Guo on inprnt
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“Victorian Velociraptor with Violets.” Acrylic and liquid gold leaf on Rives BFK. Made by Adam Mazur.
“I say, respectfully, why are you enslaving me?”
Hnnnng…
Hnnnnnnnngg….
HNNNNNGGGGGG…..
The Body Shapes of the World’s Best Athletes Compared Side By Side
A Helpful Demonstration Showing How to Put on a Sweater Without Disturbing a Cat on Your Shoulders
https://twitter.com/northumbriana/status/846454474654781442
My class 10/10 lost the plot today. I don’t even know where to start or how to explain to their parents that I think they’ve all turned into tiny little rebels.
9:10 - we are studying a report about Chernobyl in guided reading. Several are looking at me gone out when I explain that nuclear power can be dangerous. “So why use it?” one asks. Why indeed. 9:12 - we are now discussing renewable energy. Several more express outrage and ask why the country doesn’t have to use renewable energy. Several more state that we should avoid pollution because it kills polar bears and stuff right, Miss? 9:13 - I mention that it’s a complicated issue because of different viewpoints, and that certain people, say Drumpf, don’t believe in climate change. 9:14 - chaos. 9:15 - small child suggests someone murder Drumpf. I say that murder is both bad and illegal. 9:16 - the class have learned the word impeach and are shouting IMPEACH TRUMP IMPEACH TRUMP IMPEACH TRUMP while banging on the tables. 9:17 - headteacher comes in to see what is going on. Small child tells him quite angrily that SOME PEOPLE JUST DECIDE TO NOT BELIEVE IN SCIENCE WHICH YOU CAN’T DO BECAUSE IT’S SCIENCE. He backs out of the room quite quickly. 9:25 -I have abandoned plans for grammar and the children are now writing persuasive pieces about Why We Should Use Renewable Energy.
The saga continued after lunch when we continued our WW2 topic work, learning about the holocaust.
1:35 - we are discussing Kristalnacht. The class are collectively outraged and appalled. One is in tears. 1:40 - “Miss, I fucking hate Hitler.” that’s okay, but please express your hatred of fascism without the F word or I’ll have to ring your Mum again. 2:00 - small child who suggested murder earlier says “isn’t this exactly what Drumpf tried to do to the Muslims?” There’s a heady mix of realisation and outrage in the room. 2:13 - “Racism makes no sense” says a child, looking quite confused. 2:33 - “Hitler would have killed me because I’ve got cerebral palsy, right?” says a boy. He is tackle-hugged by a girl from across the table. I have to pretend I’m not crying. 2:34 - The rest of his table have made a pact to never let anyone hurt him. I am still pretending to be super chill. I am obviously failing as another child offers me a hug. 2:37 - I ask the children to look at nine examples of things the nazis did against Jewish people, and then arrange them in a diamond with what they consider the worst at the top. 2:38 - Mutiny. They all collectively decide to arrange all nine cards in a line and say that they’re all awful things so they all go at the top. 2:39 - I tell them if they kind find a way to fit a line of all nine in their books then fair enough. Smart child suggests a circle. Everyone cheers. We have a break, and they go outside raging about Hitler, Drumpf, racism, prejudice and injustice in general. I am handed a very strong tea by my TA who congratulates me on my gang of angry eleven year olds. Faith in humanity both challenged and restored. Bring on tomorrow.
You are a famous WWI nurse, thanks to your actions thousands of men are still alive. But, in reality, you are a horrible nurse. You just happen to be an amazing necromancer.
I have had this on my mind for days, someone please help:
Why are dogs dogs?
I mean, how do we see a pug and then a husky and understand that both are dogs? I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a picture of a breed of dog I hadn’t seen before and wondered what animal it was.
young adult things: washing your colors with your whites because you don’t care you JUST don’t fucking care
This guy in my town owns a rug store, and he’s always changing his sign out front but he’s also the biggest Dad in the world so his jokes are awful but brilliant
A Guide to Making Up Diseases (as Explained by a Biologist)
So listen up y’all, nothing drives me crazier as both a writer and a scientist than seeing alien diseases that make no fuckin’ sense in a human body.
If you’re talking about alien diseases in a non-human character, you can ignore all this.
But as far as alien diseases in humans go, please remember:
DISEASE SYMPTOMS ARE AN IMMUNE RESPONSE.
Fever? A response to help your immune cells function faster and more efficiently to destroy invaders.
Sore/scratchy throat? An immune response. Diseases that latch onto the epithelium of the throat (the common cold, the flu) replicate there, and your body is like “uh no fuckin’ thanks” and starts to slough off those cells in order to stop the replication of new virus in its tracks. So when it feels like your throat is dying? guess what it literally is. And the white spots you see with more severe bacterial infections are pus accumulation, which is basically dead white blood cells, and the pus is a nice and disgusting way of getting that shit outta here.
(No one really knows why soreness and malaise happens, but some scientists guess that it’s a byproduct of immune response, and others suspect that it’s your body’s way of telling you to take it easy)
headache? usually sinus pressure (or dehydration, which isn’t an immune response but causes headaches by reducing blood volume and causing a general ruckus in your body, can be an unfortunate side effect of a fever) caused by mucous which is an immune response to flush that nasty viral shit outta your face.
Rashes? an inflammatory response. Your lymphocytes see a thing they don’t like and they’re like “hEY NOW” and release a bunch of chemicals that tell the cells that are supposed to kill it to come do that. Those chemicals cause inflammation, which causes redness, heat, and swelling. They itch because histamine is a bitch.
fatigue? your body is doing a lot–give it a break!
here is a fact:
during the Spanish 1918 Plague, a very strange age group succumbed to the illness. The very young and very old were fine, but people who were seemingly healthy and in the prime of life (young adults) did not survive. This is because that virus triggered an immune response called a cytokine storm, which basically killed everything in sight and caused horrific symptoms like tissue death, vasodilation and bleeding–basically a MASSIVE inflammatory response that lead to organ damage and death. Those with the strongest immune systems took the worst beating by their own immune responses, while those with weaker immune systems were fine.
So when you’re thinking of an alien disease, think through the immune response.
Where does this virus attack? Look up viruses that also attack there and understand what the immune system would do about it.
Understand symptoms that usually travel together–joint pain and fever,
So please, please: no purple and green spotted diseases. No diseases that cause glamorous fainting spells and nothing else. No mystical eye-color/hair-color changing diseases. If you want these things to happen, use magic or some shit or alien physiology, but when it’s humans, it doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense.
This has been a rant and I apologize for that.