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Link for Half Life AO3 filtered search: https://tinyurl.com/ycdztklv
Updated Independent Variables with two new chapters because everything in my context is discombobulated right now and writing about dysfunctional humans is relieving stress.
Also, link to filtered search is in the reblog.
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Updated Independent Variables with two new chapters because everything in my context is discombobulated right now and writing about dysfunctional humans is relieving stress.
Also, link to filtered search is in the reblog.
#half life#half life game#HL1#HL2#Gordon Freeman#Alyx Vance#Emotional Support D0G#half life fic#half life fanfic
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Ah I've been blocking anything HL:Alyx related until I get the time to watch a playthrough. I filtered the name because it didn't correlate to HL content from pre-Alyx games.
Me trying to find new Half Life fanfics on AO3
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Who the heck is Russell
Me trying to find new Half Life fanfics on AO3
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how many different combinations of letters and hyphens can yall come up with here
also as for why this is necessary, here’s my filtered content count for game-only fics (minus explicit of which there are like three and gman slash because Nope)
In unfiltered Half Life tag?
Yes, I am complaining. Not about you guys, HLVRAI people, (though if you all could stop coming up with increasingly creative ways to spell HLVRAI that’d save me updating my filter link every few days) but about AO3′s nonexistent response to fandom-within-fandom drift. I don’t think HLVRAI is the first time a derivative media has overtaken its (decades old) source material in fan-generated content!
Me trying to find new Half Life fanfics on AO3
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Me trying to find new Half Life fanfics on AO3
#please ao3 get your act together#half life#half life fanfic#half life ao3#gordon freeman#half life game#the struggle is real
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https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&exclude_work_search%5Brating_ids%5D%5B%5D=13&exclude_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=18089367&exclude_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=41140498&exclude_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=41428792&exclude_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=41471047&exclude_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=42894664&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=HLVRAI+-+Fandom%2Chalf-life+VR+but+the+AI+is+self-aware+-+Fandom%2CPortal+%28Video+Game%29%2CBenrey+%28Half-Life%29%2CHalf-Life+VR+But+the+AI+is+Self-Aware%2Chalf+life+VR+but+the+ai+is+self-aware%2CRussell+%28Half-Life%29%2Creader+fic%2CBubby+%28Half-Life%29%2CTommy+Coolatta%2Chalf+life+but+the+ai+is+self+aware&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=F&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&tag_id=Half-Life
Half Life - Game Only - AO3 Filter Link
I updated my Half Life fic bookmark on AO3. It’s in the reblog. Not hating on the HLVRAI fandom but man, they are both a very productive crowd and also have no standard tagging system. And about three times as much content as game content on AO3.
My bookmark also excludes reader fic, G-Man slash and a few other personal preferences but should be easy to customize if you want to use it to make your own filter.
(and also holy crap people like my fic. did not expect that. thanks for reading a 50k+ block of narrative text about an antisocial physicist having a really rough day. I’ll finish it soon I promise.)
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Half Life - Game Only - AO3 Filter Link
I updated my Half Life fic bookmark on AO3. It’s in the reblog. Not hating on the HLVRAI fandom but man, they are both a very productive crowd and also have no standard tagging system. And about three times as much content as game content on AO3.
My bookmark also excludes reader fic, G-Man slash and a few other personal preferences but should be easy to customize if you want to use it to make your own filter.
(and also holy crap people like my fic. did not expect that. thanks for reading a 50k+ block of narrative text about an antisocial physicist having a really rough day. I’ll finish it soon I promise.)
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https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&exclude_work_search%5Brating_ids%5D%5B%5D=13&exclude_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=18089367&exclude_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=41140498&exclude_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=41428792&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=Benrey+%28Half-life%29%2CHalf+Life+VR+But+The+AI+Is+Self+Aware%2Cportal+%28video+game%29%2CTommy+Coolatta&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=F&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&tag_id=Half-Life
yeah it’s a dumb giant link but hey it works. All... 180+ fics? This is still a tiny fandom once you get past the podcast content.
Half-Life AO3 Custom Search
I made a custom search for Half-Life only content, not crossover/AI-self-aware content. Link in the reblog. Because it’s my own link for what I want to read, it also excludes explicit content and G-Man slash.
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Half-Life AO3 Custom Search
I made a custom search for Half-Life only content, not crossover/AI-self-aware content. Link in the reblog. Because it’s my own link for what I want to read, it also excludes explicit content and G-Man slash.
#half life#half-life#halflife#half life fic#half life ao3#half life game#gordon freeman#who the heck is 'benry' and why is he in this tag
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Q&A: Just Make It Their Phys Ed Class
Kids in my story are taught flashy stage staff fighting to build endurance, confidence and coordination. They complain about it and are told if they can successfully master a complex method of not hurting each other, then the simple methods of real staff fighting should be fairly easy later on. Would this be realistic? Not talking child soldiers, just kids who think they’re getting dumbed-down lessons.
No, it’s not realistic and, in this context, the kids would be right. They are being lied to by their teachers.
That’s the short answer. The long answer is a much more complicated discussion about stage fighting versus real fighting, how you get children to learn, and the very real question of how you intend to sell flashy stage fighting that looks really cool as something that’s boring. I can already tell from the way you’ve structured your question that you’re looking for a “safe” way to get what you want i.e “cool” staff fighting without having to answer questions about how one responsibly trains kids to use weapons. Kids training on staves is realistic because it does happen in modern American suburbia without the drugs, the abuse, or the mental scarring, or the shitty Hollywood Orientalism.
Now, let’s start with stage fighting. There’s two kinds of stage fighting. One is actual stage fighting and the other is martial arts choreography which is in the category of stunt work. They’re in the same field but you don’t get to both from the same place. You can learn the first kind of stage fighting without learning anything about martial arts, this usually gets rolled into a side note course in theater classes. The second kind works best if you have a solid base in martial arts to start off with because it draws off real techniques. In both cases, stage fighting relies on making big eye-catching motions that are visibly distinct and easy to see which is the exact opposite of what you want from practical combat.
The first kind of stage fighting is what we’ll call, “The Art of Whiffing While Looking Good”. The looking good part relies on you only looking at the motions from a specific line of sight otherwise you’ll be able to see them miss by a mile. It’s all about big, eye-catching motions that work as slight of hand to convince the audience that something is happening which isn’t. It is a real art form, one which takes a lot of skill and control to be good at in the upper echelons of professional stunt actors, but it’s not real. Lots of people mistake this for being “safe” fighting. It is the same as a magician’s stage trick. There are plenty of theater kids who do think that learning stage sword fighting means they can fence. (We’ve gotten questions from a young fencer before about their theater friend who always wanted to fight them with a sword, and how they didn’t want to. The reasons should be obvious.)
If you teach stage fighting to kids first then it will actually be much harder for them to learn the real thing later. You’d have to completely retrain them from the ground up, retrain their foundation, their reflexes, their stances, their ability to apply power. On top of that, you’d have to give them real endurance training too, which is the actual boring part of martial arts training all the kids complain about.
Now, if you’re thinking about the fight sequences choreographed and performed by actual martial artists, then that’s just martial arts. The kids won’t be good at this “stage fighting” unless they master the techniques underlying it… which is again martial arts. This would undercut them if your end goal is for them to actually be able to effectively use a staff in combat because skill in the substance is what makes you good at the flash.
The basic rule is you can’t train people to whiff and then expect them to be able to hit things. You have to train them to hit things first, then you can teach them how to whiff. (You already taught them to whiff while you were training them to hit things, because they spent a lot of time practicing not hitting things or hitting things gently at different stages while learning to hit things full force. This is where the real control comes from.)
Kids can’t initially tell the difference between flash and substance. You can use that flash as the carrot to get them excited about learning and to push them into applying themselves through the boring, repetitive parts. You can hold out the cool technique as the reward for wind sprints until they reach a point where what’s hard becomes enjoyable. You’ve got to be careful with this method though, because what kids can do is smell bullshit. As an authority figure you need to maintain their trust.
You can’t continue to sell stage fighting as a pathway to real martial arts if your students get exposed to the real thing. As a writer, you shouldn’t be so terrified of the child soldier specter that you think learning violence has to be all or nothing. Also, that’s not what a child soldier is. Child soldiers are kids who’ve been stolen from their families, given very little training, hopped up on drugs, and sent out to die. Conflating a child soldier with an Olympian judoka or just a regular six year old practicing martial arts for forty-five minutes three days a week disrespects everyone. Martial arts training is not by its nature abusive or dangerous for children.
This scenario reads like you’re looking for a roundabout way to get what you want while avoiding both the idea of kids learning about violence and the necessary repetitive, boring parts which make up the bulk of martial arts training.
Violence is very boring, and learning to do violence is even more so. You learn your new technique in pieces. You practice the pieces separately. You put the pieces together into a single bodily motion. You practice this for a while, then with a partner where you never touch each other but get used to the idea of spacing. Then, then, then you get to use slowly, carefully, and with great patience on the other person. Depending on the associated danger, the other person might be wearing a lot of padding. You get your cool technique moments interspersed between hours, and hours, and hours, and even more hours of repetition. You will practice the same techniques over and over and over again until you can do them in your sleep. When you’re not doing that, you’re doing your conditioning which is your pushups, your sit ups, your wind sprints, your mile-runs, etc. When you’re not doing either of those things, you’re stretching.
The average, recreational martial arts school is like PE class, except more fun. In fact, martial arts does get offered as Physical Education in some schools. I took Shotokan in college.
The mistake a lot of people who never practice martial arts make is the assumption that learning about violence inevitably makes people more violent. This is actually not true. Kids who learn martial arts are much less likely to mess around and use those skills outside of class than, say, the theater kids who learned stage fighting. Stage fighting is safe, so this leads to them more likely getting overconfident with it and practicing outside adult supervision. Kids who practice martial arts learn very quickly that martial arts can result in them or someone else getting hurt if they make a mistake, and the result is they become more responsible about using the skills that they acquire.
Real violence needs to be respected for the harm it can cause. Teaching someone “safe” violence sends the wrong message, and this scenario you’ve concocted is actually more likely to result in these kids hurting each other outside of where the adults can see. They were taught they couldn’t be hurt by the techniques they learned, so why not use them?
The irony here is that the real thing is actually safer for them and better for achieving all the things they’re supposed to be learning from it than the fake thing. It’s also more honest.
They also still won’t be able to whip around and take on a Navy SEAL because all martial arts training is not the same.
You’d be better suited to having these kids learn recreational martial arts which is martial arts training dedicated to health and exercise than stage fighting if what you want them to develop is endurance, confidence, and coordination. At the end of the day, martial arts is just sports and it fits as easily into your average PE class as baseball, soccer, dodgeball, and football. Most martial arts classes don’t run longer than a conventional PE period anyway. Wealthier schools often offer various extra class types for the kids who don’t want to do general Physical Education. It wouldn’t be a difficult sell that these kids’ school has that option, where you could sign up for fencing, karate, or taekwondo rather than taking the general. You also don’t run into the problem of asking, “do their parents know about this?” because their parents already signed the waiver.
I took Shotokan in college. I grew up next door to Stanford University, where they offered a whole slew of special programs and afternoon activities in the summer for kids that included fencing. These kinds of activities are a lot more common than you might imagine in the places where they can afford it.
If you’re serious about writing this story, I suggest hitting up your local YMCA or youth center and seeing what they offer as programs for kids during the summer. You might be surprised what you find.
-Michi
This blog is supported through Patreon. If you enjoy our content, please consider becoming a Patron. Every contribution helps keep us online, and writing. If you already are a Patron, thank you.
Q&A: Just Make It Their Phys Ed Class was originally published on How to Fight Write.
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And then you have cult groups with subgroups- check out the Rajneeshpuram in Oregon. The main cult body, 4000+ folks in and out, was pretty oblivious and just in it for the lifestyle. The subgroup of 20-30+ (Depending on who you talk to) were in it for the power and money and tried pretty hard to kill off a few of their own folks and people they considered their enemies. Big surveillance networks, informants, power dynamics, murder plots, human rights violations, drugging... but it was a miniature non-religious conspiracy nested within a larger cult organization.
Q&A: Cults and Killing
nate2247 said to howtofightwrite:
So is there really such thing as a stereotypical lovecraftian cult (ie hooded figures in dark dungeons who preform human sacrifices)? And how would you respectfully portray these, while still retaining creativity?
No.
Though it might be more accurate to say, “sorta, kinda, not really.”
Cults exist. These are usually small, radical offshoots of mainstream religions. In the US, most cults you’d encounter would use Christianity as their baseline, and then deviate significantly. Often times, these are the product of an individual or small cadre of individuals, who have hijacked a religion and re-purposed it for their own goals. (To be fair, agnostic cults do exist, these aren’t strictly a religious exercise.)
Because cults deviate from the normal, “baseline,” of their surroundings, most will attempt to conceal their behavior and beliefs from the outside world. Usually, this is by withdrawing and refusing to interact with outsiders. Lovecraft plays off the idea of cults that have a large enough stake in their local community that they attempt to pass themselves off as normal, keeping their true nature under wraps. Again, this is somewhat true to life, with real world examples.
Additionally, cults can be dangerous, both to their own members and to outsiders, depending on how the cult is structured, and how far it is willing to go in order to protect its interests. Crimes tracing back to cults are somewhat unusual, but it’s not unheard of. I’d almost be inclined to say it’s, “expected,” even they appear to have stayed inside the law.
Most of the time, when there are crimes being committed, they’re more in the range of abuse. Years of emotional and psychological abuse can take a serious toll on former members who attempt to break away.
Beyond that, I can think of a few cults that ended with NFA violations (illegal weapons), and even a few that ran afoul of the IRS over tax evasion.
Human sacrifices, not so much. Ritualistic murders do occur, rarely. However, these are the result of individuals, not entire cults. They’re also not the crowd of hooded figures chanting, that you’d get from Lovecraft.
So, the two pieces do exist independently. They just don’t intersect. Extensive research starting in the 1980s has showed no pattern of ritual killings associated with cults or other secret societies in the United States.
The cult killings I am aware of tend to be more in the range of accidents. (I mean, actual accidents here, as in, “we needed to beat the evil out of him, and accidentally went too far,” not, “oh, he was going to expose us, so we murdered him and made it look like an accident.”) There are also mass suicides of cult members, like Heaven’s Gate in 1997, and of course Jonestown in 1978.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are (rare) groups like Aum Shinrikyo. The Japanese doomsday cult responsible for a terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995. Using Sarin gas, they killed 12, and injured over 4,000.
Now, having said all of this, it is important to remember that Lovecraft was racist as fuck. Lovecraft’s work plays upon early 20th century American xenophobia. His cults are centered on foreign, “primitive,” religions from distant parts of the world, transplanted to rural New England. The beings they worship are just punctuation on something that’s already, legitimately, pretty offensive. This stuff can be pretty easy to accidentally transplant when you’re picking through Lovecraft’s material looking for ideas.
There’s an irony here: Cosmic horror is probably one of the most philosophically interesting strands of the genre, but its iconography and structure is often saturated in hurtful, xenophobic stereotypes, or ghosts of the same.
Simply flipping the script isn’t really an option because of actual history. I mentioned extensive research into cults beginning in the 1980s. That was spurred by sensationalist reports of satanic cults engaging in ritualized child abuse, and blood sacrifices. Those reports led to extensive investigations, and in the end, the result was basically nothing to show for it. No mass network of ritualized killings. No massive, covert, organization. Even the initial reports were eventually debunked, but the result was, effectively, a modern witchhunt.
If you’re wanting to work within the genre, and using a modern setting, I would recommend reading up on real world cults, and working from that model. There’s no real way to be respectful, given the subject matter, but it will give you a much more concrete idea of what these kinds of groups are like.
-Starke
This blog is supported through Patreon. If you enjoy our content, please consider becoming a Patron. Every contribution helps keep us online, and writing. If you already are a Patron, thank you.
was originally published on How to Fight Write.
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As someone who has been on the ‘other side’ of this, here’s a thought- consider where your demon-crying parent is coming from, and what their agenda is. It may help you build a set of logical symptoms, if you can nail down what the parents do and do not know, or have experienced, in their own pasts.
When my 19-year-old roommate came home with alcohol poisoning and got stuck in a flashback to an abusive boyfriend, yes I thought she was under spiritual attack (and yes I made a fool of myself). But there were others in the situation who actively encouraged that viewpoint because they thought it would keep her from getting in trouble for underage drinking/breaking her school contract/etc. They’d all been at the same party and foisted her off onto me without a word of apology or explanation, then swore they didn’t know anything and yeah praying would probably fix the problem by morning. I did what I thought would heal (in this case, a lot of prayer and a high tolerance for incoherent raving at 3 AM, and when it became clear a huge quantity of alcohol was involved, called EMTs, then police when her symptoms indicated she might have been physically attacked at the party.)
It was messy, but for me, the ‘spiritual attack??’ thought came up due to a) didn’t know there was alcohol involved b) didn’t know she was coming out of an emotionally traumatic situation and prone to coping with alcohol c) was repeatedly lied to about what had happened by others in the situation. So when she was screaming, crying, begging someone else in the room to please stop hurting her, please don’t hurt her again, please let her go, yeah it fit the bill for many, many spiritual encounters I’d read about and been told about. It doesn’t look like wall climbing, deep latin chanting or eyes rolled back, it looks like misunderstanding, confusion, pain, a deep desire to help but not knowing how, and, in this case, deliberate deception by all her ‘friends.’
Maybe your character’s mental illness isn’t causing the symptoms your parent-characters are calling demon-possession. Maybe it’s what she’s doing to cope with depression or anxiety, like drinking or mixing her meds. Maybe her parents grew up with ‘Uncle Ed’ in the attic, because the family didn’t want him shipped off to a early 1900′s era mental institution and calling the symptoms ‘spiritual’ shielded the family from shame. Maybe they watched a grandparent die of dementia and was always told it was spiritual by a parent who didn’t want to acknowledge that they would someday face the same fate. When their child starts showing similar symptoms of confusion, raving, incoherent crying, conversations with imaginary people, etc. they put two and two together and land at a wrong, but logical, conclusion.
Part of my character's arc is being shamed by overly religious parents for being possessed by a demon, when in actuality she's got a mental illness. My problem is that I actually don't know which one she would have? Her symptoms are that she has violent fits of manic energy, her personality changes drastically, she speaks in a different voice and sometimes begins to speak in Latin instead of English. I hope this isn't insensitive of me, but is there anything that fits this description?
This premise needs some work. If you want your character to have been mentally ill all along, you can’t work backwards from the demonic-like symptoms.
You’re going to need to come up with the disorder first, then figure out how the symptoms of said disorder could be misinterpreted as demonic possession. You’re also going to have to include symptoms that don’t fit with the stereotypical depiction you’ve described.
As a starting point, you might take a look at the following disorders:
Dissociative identity disorder
Bipolar I (likely with psychotic features)
Schizoaffective disorder
However, as it is right now, your character does not meet the criteria for any of those disorders. You can’t slap one of those labels on your character and call it done.
You’ve got your work cut out for you, Anon, but I promise you, this will make for better representation and a better story.
Good luck!
Disclaimer // Support Scriptshrink onpatreon!
#the 'you must have a demon! shame! shame! trope gets under my skin#I probably shouldn't have posted this but oh well#that was a weird night
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Could you list all of the tropes that you consider "feel good violence"?
Okay, “Feel Good Violence” is very simple as a concept. It’s violence that feels good, when you’re reading it, when you’re watching it on screen, because for the perpetrator violence can feel really damn good. However, that is violence when taken outside of context. It is violence without consequences. It is violence for the sake of violence. Violence that serves no purpose but to prove the character or person is tough.
Protagonist Sanctioned Bullying - Bullying in general is a fairly popular method to achieve “Feel Good Violence” because bullying does feel good. The audience sympathizes with the protagonist, so when the protagonist acts they cheer for it. Its not presented as bullying by the narrative, but it is still bullying.Usually it’s a rival or a character set up to “deserve it”, but sometimes not.
Making people afraid makes you feel tough. Many authors will fall prey to the sweet lure of bullying and not even know it because bullying is violence without fear of consequence. Most often, they’ve been the recipients rather than the perpetrators, and acting as the bully is a very different ballgame. It is an emotional and psychological high. You feel big, strong, safe, and untouchable. Powerful. In their worst incarnations, most superheroes become bullies.
Bullying is all about control, protected status, and freedom from consequences. An entirely fictional world creates the opportunity for all these things, with the narrative itself siding with the bully. Bullying is Feel Good Violence writ large in real life. It’ll follow you into the fictional world just as easily. Power is a high you never forget.
This is very common trope for characters who also act as a means of self-insertion by the author. For them, it isn’t bullying. It’s an example of how awesome their character is and how tough they are.
Everything But Dead- When the only morals applied are if someone died, the rest is sanctioned without comment. There are no narrative consequences for the character’s behavior, and everyone cheers them on. Anyone who calls them out is an acceptable target, usually evil, or the protagonist wins them over in the end because their actions are “justified”.
By Any Means Stupid - This is the “by any means necessary“ trope, where the violence really isn’t necessary and the author just wanted an excuse to paint the room red.
Unprovoked Violence Is Always the Solution - This is the one where the protagonist skips all the other steps and goes straight to preemptive violence against a total stranger, for no reason other than it makes them appear tough. Usually not framed by the narrative as bad, but it is. Oh, yes, it is. Worse there usually aren’t any consequences for the hero physically assaulting someone in a room full of witnesses because everyone knows they’re the hero, right?
Random Violence Before Strangers is A-Okay - The protagonist disembowels a bully in front of their victim in order to protect them and receives effusive thank yous. Nothing comes from this. The bad guy is dead. We all feel good. All is right in the world. Except… violence freaks people out.
Acceptable Targets - These are people designated by the writer as non-entities and targets for violence regardless of narrative context. A very slippery slope that is ever descending. But, you know, it feels good? Sure, so long as you’re not on the receiving end. This kind of dehumanization happens in real life too, just in case you were wondering.
Beating Up My Source - You have a character who collects information from an old standby, they threaten and beat up that standby regularly to show they’re tough. At what point does this seem like a terrible idea? Never! Hey, they’re a bad person so you feel good, right?
Waving My Gun Around - Trigger discipline is just the beginning of this problem.A gun is not a toy. but you’ll find a vast array of narratives who use it that way in order to look tough.
Killing Your Way to the Top - You can’t really destroy organizations like this. Killing the people at the top will just lead to someone else taking their place. Whenever you create a power vacuum someone will fill it. You can’t destroy an organization by killing. It doesn’t work. But, it feels good!
Must Obviously Be Boy - Because female fighters are unicorns and the mooks have never laid eyes on a woman before. Usually part of a larger narrative issue with violence, but acts as a “get out of jail free” card.
Clear the Building - That time the character decided to knock everyone out to prove that they are tough. Weirder when it happens on stealth missions.
I Am Not Gaining Levels - When you’re reading a book and the character is fighting like it’s a video game. They fight everyone like they’re in an RPG chasing XP. Why? We don’t know, but it makes them feel good.
Let Me Shoot Him Twenty Times - We could call this spray and pray, but let’s pretend for a moment the magazine could run dry.
Magic Bullets - The bullets that go where you want, stop when you want, and don’t cause accidental casualties. You know, like the protagonist blind firing through a wall and hitting a four year old playing in the yard across the street.
Body Armor Always Prevents A Blow-through - Nope!
New to Training, Perfect Sparring - That time the main character took on their evil rival (school’s top/better trained student) in a sparring match and won, especially when it was their first day.
Sparring Just In General - The vast majority of Western media doesn’t understand the concept or purpose of sparring. Many authors seem to think its a UFC match where you just beat each other up and the first thing you do during training to “assess your capabilities”.
Queuing for Combat - This is an old Hollywood trick where the burden of a group fight is lifted as the stuntmen wait their turn to fight the protagonist. Particularly egregious in written action sequences where the author doesn’t grasp the concept of teamwork. It also warps the understanding of how many people its possible for a human to fight at once.
Terrible At Torture - Torture is a terrible way to gain information in general because it doesn’t lead to a confession so much as confirmation bias. The subject will tell you whatever you want to hear because they want the pain to stop. It’s even worse when done poorly, which it is 90% of the time. Usually, media uses it for shock value or to prove how tough a protagonist is. Torture is not putting a blowtorch to someone’s foot and hoping for the best. It’s far, far more complicated than that. Neither torturer nor subject come out of the experience whole. Besides, the unimaginative protagonists say, “screw you!” The clever ones lie.
What Is: Dress for Success - How we dress our characters is often necessary for crafting a sense of narrative realism. This comes in often as a reason for why its so difficult to take female action heroes seriously, but it happens to the guys too. Not a bad trope on its own, but often symptomatic of a larger narrative approach to violence that ends with “feel” and “good”.
Beautiful and Badass - This one is a very specific female fantasy, which is that you can meet all the cultural standards and definitions for beauty while being in direct defiance of them. These are the female characters who are never touched by the combat they engage in. They are always graceful, always elegant, always beautiful in motion and the narrative will pause to tell us this often. “She fights like she’s dancing.” For these characters, their supermodel-esque beauty is a natural extension of their being. They don’t work at it. Combat is incidental. It’s a set piece to tell you how awesome the character is. It generally amounts to nothing, serves no real narrative purpose, but by god the author is going to walk us through it in excruciating detail. Combat and character are separate, and consequences are for other people.
My Instincts Performed A Wheel Kick - Your instincts just don’t work that way.
There’s probably more, but that hits most of the major sins.
Keep in mind that many of these tropes are not issues by themselves. They often work when context and consequences are taken into account by their narrative/setting. Generally, this results in characters with no accountability for their behavior and exhibit no responsibility for their actions. The issue, of course, is that responsibility and accountability are what make well-written violence work. Violence often drives the narrative. It’s part and parcel to who the character is, and their decision making. It’s the difference between a character who presents themselves as tough or skilled and one who actually is.
-Michi
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I have decided my story’s dragons are now going to have earwig wings.
Aaah I didn't see that it was a repeat. Do you know any earwig fun facts?
Yes!
First, earwigs have magnificent angel wings they only rarely show:
These wings fold up in over 100 places to fit underneath the earwig’s very small and short elytra, the same “wing cases” (modified forewings) a beetle has…but they’re not related to beetles at all! They’re in their own group, the Dermaptera.
The wings are also sort of “spring loaded,” completely popping out on their own as soon as the earwig opens the cases. To fold them back inside, the earwig will actually use its own tail forceps to push each wing back up into the case.
Also, earwigs are very dutiful mothers, in a minority of insects that practice extended care of their babies:
She will guard over them like this and leave only to bring them food. If she senses too much trouble, she will pick each one up in her mouth and move them to a new nesting place, like a cat!
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Writing With Color – Featured Description Posts
Some of our most useful posts on describing People of Color, all in one place.
Words to Describe Hair
Words to Describe Skin Tone
Describing Asian Eyes
Describing Wide Noses
Describing Undead & Sick Dark Skin
Describing POC and Avoiding Caricatures
Describing Unnatural Skin Tones: Green
Describing Unnatural Skin Tones: Jaundice
Indicating Race of Characters (FAQ Questions #3-4)
Not Indicating Race at All – Note: You Probably Should
Praising Beauty Without Fetishizing
Olive Skin, Race and Ethnicity
Specific Description Posts
Describing Skin as Swarthy (Spoiler alert: it’s sketchy)
Describing East Asian Skin as Porcelain (Spoiler alert: it’s also sketchy)
Describing Skin as Russet (Spoiler alert: it’s alright)
Describing PoC as Exotic (SA: it’s othering)
Describing Skin as Ebony (SA: it’s cliche)
Describing Natural Hair as Cloud-Like (SA: it’s cool)
Describing Black Hair as Unkempt (SA: it’s offensive)
Describing Black Hair as Kinky (SA: it depends)
Describing Skin as “Dark as Night” (SA: it also depends)
Describing Skin as Like Dirt or Soil (SA: See above)
Describing Skin as just “Dark.” (SA: it’s vague)
Describing Black Hair as “Nappy” (SA: it ain’t recommended)
Describing Skin With Food (SA: it’s a no-no)
–WWC
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To the stockholm anon: you should definitely write that plot because that is GOOD
Passing this along to the Mutual Stockholm anon!
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