We need to fricking stop with this CinemaSins TVTropes style crap in fandom. Actually, we need to stop that attitude in all creative fields, but I'm talking about fic right now.
I have seen many posts ragging on over-used phrases in fanfic, and yes, I find 'cerulean orbs' deeply strange, but if I ever said anything hateful on the topic I wish I hadn't.
You know why we say 'smirk' a lot in fic? cause its faster than 'gave a tiny smile to one side with their lips closed, a little cocky and provocative' Smirk is an easy way of saying it. It's the correct word. We say it in fic a lot because people smirk a lot in real life. Go people watch, its all over. Also. Bring me a true synonym for smirk, and I'll use that instead, but these ain't it.
If you have a better way of saying 'took off his shoes without untying them, just levered the heel with the toe of the other' that isn't saying 'he toed off his shoes' I'd love to hear it. Cause that phrase is perfect for it.
'Huffed a laugh'? Yeah, they did. Cause I'm not going to spend extra words describing how they 'exhaled through their nose once, amused, but not enough to fully laugh aloud' Its a specific action. You think people don't do that all day? five bucks says its exactly what you do when you see a meme most of the time. You didn't lol. You huffed a laugh.
The idea that something that's been used before is inherently less valuable is ridiculous. Same with the inverse.
If the phrase you want to use is common or widely used, but is the best way to communicate it? Use it. Don't fall for this trap that is currently consuming hollywood. You don't have to have a clever twist just because 'they survived and were happy' is a trope. You don't have to use some insane alternate phrase just because someone thinks fandom uses 'smirk' too much.
And, as always, if someone gives you hell and you don't want to fight them? let me know, cause I volunteer.
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i need to get this out of my head before i continue clone^2 but danny being the first batkid. Like, standard procedure stuff: his parents and sister die, danny ends up with Vlad Masters. He drags him along to stereotypical galas and stuff; Danny is not having a good time.
He ends up going to one of the Wayne Galas being hosted ever since elusive Bruce Wayne has returned to Gotham. Vlad is crowing about having this opportunity as he's been wanting to sink his claws into the company for a long while now. Danny is too busy grieving to care what he wants.
And like most Galas, once Vlad is done showing him off to the other socialites and the like, he disappears. Off to a dark corner, or to one of the many balconies; doesn't matter. There he runs into said star of the show, Bruce who is still young, has been Batman for at least a year at this point, but still getting used to all these damn people and socializing. He's stepped off to hide for a few minutes before stepping back into the shark tank.
And he runs into a kid with circles under his eyes and a dull gleam in them. Familiar, like looking into a mirror.
Danny tries to excuse himself, he hasn't stopped crying since his parents died and it's been months. He rubs his eyes and stands up, and stumbles over a half-hearted apology to Mister Wayne. Some of Vlad's etiquette lessons kicking in.
Bruce is awkward, but he softens. "That's alright, lad," he says, pulling up some of that Brucie Wayne confidence, "I was just coming out here to get some fresh air."
There's a little pressing; Bruce asks who he's here with, Danny says, voice quiet and grief-stricken, that he's with his godfather Vlad Masters. Bruce asks him if he knows where he is, and Danny tells him he does. Bruce offers to leave, Danny tells him to do whatever he wants.
It ends with Bruce staying, standing off to the side with Danny in silence. Neither of them say a word, and Danny eventually leaves first in that same silence.
Bruce looks into Vlad Masters after everything is over, his interest piqued. He finds news about him taking in Danny Fenton: he looks into Danny Fenton. He finds news articles about his parents' deaths, their occupations, everything he can get his hands on.
At the next gala, he sees Danny again. And he looks the same as ever: quiet like a ghost, just as pale, and full of grief. Bruce sits in silence with him again for nearly ten minutes before he strikes a conversation.
"Do you like to do anything?"
Nothing. Just silence.
Bruce isn't quite sure what to do: comfort is not his forte, and Danny doesn't know him. He's smart enough to know that. So he starts talking about other things; anything he can think of that Brucie Wayne might say, that also wasn't inappropriate for a kid to hear.
Danny says nothing the entire time, and is again the first to leave.
Bruce watches from a distance as he intercts with Vlad Masters; how Vlad Masters interacts with him. He doesn't like what he sees: Vlad Masters keeps a hand on Danny's shoulder like one would hold onto the collar of a dog. He parades him around like a trophy he won.
And there are moments, when someone gets too close or when someone tries to shake Danny's hand, of deep possessiveness that flints over Vlad Masters' eyes. Like a dragon guarding a horde.
He plays the act of doting godfather well: but Bruce knows a liar when he sees one. Like recognizes like.
Danny is dull-eyed and blank faced the entire time; he looks miserable.
So Bruce tries to host more parties; if only so that he can talk to Danny alone. Vlad seems all too happy to attend, toting Danny along like a ribbon, and on the dot every hour, Danny slips away to somewhere to hide. Bruce appears twenty minutes later.
"I was looking into your godfather's company," he says one night, trying to think of more things to say. Some nights all they do is sit in silence. "Some of my shareholders were thinking of partnering up--"
"Don't."
He stops. Danny hardly says a word to him, he doesn't even look at him -- he's sitting on the ground, his head in his knees. Like he's trying to hide from the world. But he's looking, blue eyes piercing up at Bruce.
Bruce tilts his head, practiced puppy-like. "Pardon?"
"Don't." Danny says, strongly. "Don't make any deals with Vlad."
It's the most words Danny's spoken to him, and there's a look in his eyes like a candle finding its spark. Something hard. Bruce presses further, "And why is that?"
The spark flutters, and flushes out. Danny blinks like he's coming out of a trance, and slumps back into himself. "Just don't."
Bruce stares at him, thoughtful, before looking away. "Alright. I won't."
And they fall back into silence.
Danny, when he leaves, turns to look at Bruce, "I mean it." He says; soft like he's telling a secret, "Don't make any deals with him. Don't be alone with him. Don't work with him."
He's scampered away before Bruce can question him further.
(He never planned on working with Vlad Masters and his company; he's done his research. He's seen the misfortune. But nothing ever leads back to him. There's no evidence of anything. But Danny knows something.)
At their next meeting, Danny starts the conversation. It's new, and it's welcomed. He says, cutting through their five minute quiet, that he likes stars. And he doesn't like that he can't see them in Gotham.
Bruce hums in interest, and Danny continues talking. It's as if floodgates had been opened, and as Bruce takes a sip of his wine, it tastes like victory.
("Tucker told me once--")
("Tucker?")
("Oh-- uh, one of my best friends. He's a tech geek. We haven't talked in a while.")
(Danny shut down in his grief -- his friends are worried, but can't reach him. When he goes back to the manor with Vlad, he fishes out his phone and sends them a message.)
(They are ecstatic to hear from him.)
It all culminates until one day, when Danny is leaving to go back inside, that Bruce speaks up. "You know," He says, leaning against the railing. "The manor has many rooms; plenty of space for a guest."
The implication there, hidden between the lines. And Danny is smart, he looks at Bruce with a sharp glean in his eyes, and he nods. "Good to know."
The next time they see each other, Danny has something in his hands. "Can you hold onto something for me?" He asks.
When Bruce agrees, Danny places a pearl into his palm. or, at least, it's something that looks like a pearl. Because it's cold to the touch; sinking into Bruce's white silk gloves with ease and shimmering like an opal. It moves a little as it settles into his hand, and the moves like its full of liquid.
Bruce has never seen anything like it before, but he does know this; it's not human. "What is it?" He asks, and Danny looks uncomfortable.
"I can't tell you that." He says, shifting on his foot like he's scared of someone seeing it. "But please be careful with it. Treat it like it's extremely fragile."
When Bruce gets home, he puts it in an empty ring box and hides the box in the cave. He tries researching into what it is. he can't find anything concrete.
Everything comes to a head one day when Danny appears at the manor's doorstep one evening, soaking wet in the rain, and bleeding from the side.
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are amphibians like newts and frogs considered aquatic? i know crustaceans & mollusks would be
Yes they are! Generally, the more time it spends on land, the closer it will be to 5 calories than 4. The estimate was actually based on frogs and tadpoles, I had to make an educated guess.
My best source was a feeding chart from a reptile food website which sells whole small prey for consumption by snakes. It perfectly lists out the values of dozens of small animals, but no fish. So I took a note of the 4 calorie estimate, observed that an adult frog increases in calories compared to tadpoles (bucking the trend with the others on the list where younger animals are worth more caloric value) and went on to do more research
I couldn't find a source that broke down WHOLE prey caloric value like the chart, so I ended up comparing caloric value between rabbit fillets, chicken fillets, and fish fillets on human-centric nutrition websites. My hypothesis was mostly consistent, even with more species added. Fish (perch, flounder, pike) < Wild Mammal (rabbit, squirrel) < Poultry (chicken, turkey, quail). There was overlap between "classes", certain fish getting over the 100 hump, but generally there was a trend I boiled down into 4/5/6
This is consistent with how a lot of fish meat is actually water. In fact, cats quench a lot of their thirst from the food they eat. I also learned some very interesting stuff about the fat distribution in fish which is going to blow a bit of a hole in some of my Clan culture stuff lmaoooo, but I'll furiously swim across that obliterated bridge when I get there
But funfact! Fish oil is rendered fish fats and it is the form that unsaturated fat takes, whereas lard is what saturated fats become. I need to do more research into this topic to understand what kind of difference it would make in a wild cat's diet.
There was one big bucked trend though: salmonid meat was WAAAAY higher in fat and calories. Like, absurdly high. Like 150 cal trout fillet vs 110 cal of rabbit fillet vs 88 cal of perch fillet.
I do not know why that is. My guess is that maybe it's because they were taking the number from farmed salmonids? Maybe it's because they're particularly fatty fish? Perhaps this is just the raw power of salmon slammin'.
Anyway, at one point I was trying to estimate exact caloric value per popular prey species, but decided I didn't have the "backing" to get so exact with the numbers since I was doing estimates with the fish. I'll do the work if it comes down to it, but for now, 4/5/6 is a quick, easy guideline you can use for just about any WC project.
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To explain The Goblin Problem and not go on a tag rant on someone else's reblog, I will explain it in the nutshell.
The Goblin Problem is when a story establishes a group of creatures to serve as recurrent antagonists (not necessarily all one species; in a lot of rpg games this can broadly apply to "monsters") THAT:
Are never negotiable, or the negotiable parties among them are Token Heroic Orcs- that is to say, they are seen as objectors or 'good' versions who have absolutely no connections to, and hold no objections toward you attacking, the rest of their brethren, who they have forsaken as the price to be paid for being good.
Have obvious unique technology; they may attack you with weapons found nowhere else in the game, demonstrate the ability to speak, have their own obvious language, tame a creature that nobody else tames so that it's thus impossible that they are stealing already-tamed specimens from someone else
Are characterized primarily or exclusively as raiders who attack others, with the justification this means they are inferior creatures parasitically dependent on Good, Civilized Settings, e.g. they cannot possibly be sustainably hunting, gathering, or practicing either nomadic or settled agriculture.
Are often defined as having no choice to be evil or are created by a greater evil to serve as thralls, and yet, will not under any circumstances be regarded as indoctrinated victims, or if that is mentioned, there will nonetheless be an overarching lack of narrative concern as to where or how the survivors should live after the greater evil is taken care of, or if effort should be made to challenge the indoctrination and give them the ability to choose their lives.
What this ultimately creates is that they are unambiguously people, who obviously check all the marks of sapience, who are quite possibly wearing clothes, but the goblin or orc exists as a stopgap. You want your fantasy hero to get into a swordfight but you don't want him to kill another human being. So you invent something that wields a sword but is in some way "not a person", which is senseless. Unless you want the nature of this swordfight to be that a chimpanzee picked up a knife, at which point they are not going to use reliable sword techniques.
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I'm watching a period drama in the background while I work. Not a half modernized trying to be trendy one. We've got 93 layers of undergarments and proper behavior and people thinking someone gesticulating too much is inappropriate and eating ham in the afternoon is a bit shocking and no one ever yells, and at one point they talk about how ladies don't attend funerals because its inappropriate.
And there's this moment near the end where a character is desperately sick and isn't getting better. And the audience knows we need the New Doctor, but he can't come because of a whole scandal heartbreak scenario. But her sisters hear her so sick she's probably dying, and they just break. They reach the line, and they show us how agonizing it is, and it's gut wrenching, and its because these two girls run. That sounds ridiculous, I know.
The point is that showing them running --I'm talking skirts hitched up, bonnets blown back, no delicacy, no fucks given for propriety, people staring and shocked as they go by, move like there are demons on your heels -- fully sprinting. It does something to me.
That's where the emotions are. in a modern setting 'girls runs down street' isn't likely to wrench at your heart. But in this, it breaks the rules and shows that we're beyond the bounds better than any line could do. I've talked before about the boundaries of what is allowed in the world of a story, what is allowed in a character, and when and how you break that. And idk. This was just a really good reminder that scale matters. It doesn't have to be a big thing to show how bad things are, it just needs to be exactly the right thing, and you can break the audience's hearts.
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i love a/b/o steddie where they get started like so young that if it was someone i knew irl i'd have a panic attack. like,, mated right out of high school, baby pops out a year later, they've got like five kids by the time they're 25
thinking about an au where they were already together pre- start of s4 and steve goes through the whole thing like three months pregnant. like he's stressed about the baby and eddie and eddie's SUPER stressed about the baby and steve, like eddie's trying to get steve to sit this one out for the baby and steve has to yell at him to stop bc yeah, he's worried about losing their first child, but if he sat at home while everyone else dealt with the upside down and someone didn't come back??? he'd never be able to live with himself
and when the bats get eddie and steve tries to use the mating bond to share some of eddie's pain, help him hold on until they get to the hospital, eddie weakly tries to tell him not to, to think of the baby. and steve's just. not having it. and once eddie wakes up from his medically induced coma he's like :(( why'd you do that and steve is just. so mad. he says yeah, if i had lost the baby (he doesn't, she's fine) that would have been the most terrible pain i'd ever felt. but it would have been worse if i lost you. and eddie's like. oh. bc maybe part of him has always been thinking that steve's only stuck with him bc he's the father of their kid. but no, steve loves him.
so eddie's crying, and steve's crying, and then steve shows eddie the ultrasound they did during eddie's coma to check the baby hadn't been hurt by the week of stress and danger and pain-sharing, and it's the first time they've been able to actually see the shape of a baby in all the weird white noise of an ultrasound, and now they're both crying even harder
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