Day 4 (+ 1) of @dukethomas-week: Growth & Zero Year
I wanted to depict my idea of a merge between Zero Year and NML here. The Narrows is a post-Flashpoint invention, and where it is on the map was actually a part of Robinson Park during post-crisis (which actually makes sense if you think about how it used to be Blossom Row but I digress).
I like to imagine Duke being a minor player during NML, maybe becoming an informant of Oracle's, but definitely befriending Ivy's kids either way (hence them sharing fruit with him). Elaine and Doug wish their son wasn't so adventurous, but they don't have much to keep a curious and too-brave-for-his-own-good kid occupied indoors in a no man's land.
If you're writing anything involving cons, scams, heists, or morally questionable characters who are very good at lying, here are some free resources I've been using for research. Saving you the "why is this in my search history" anxiety.
1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.
2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.
3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.
4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.
5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.
Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.
Reblog to save for later. Your WIP will thank you.
mcyt fans will see an unrelated post and be like “ohmygoodness...this reminds me of how shittyfartbaby69 and penisunavailable were during the minecraft electric chair execution scene🥺”
Japanese is an incredibly fun and rewarding language (if you’ve ever wanted to learn it for ANY reason, most importantly including the “silly” reasons) but the fearmongering and capitalist intervention involved in the language learning process have given it a reputation as an “impossible task” for English speakers, leading to confusion and dkn learners and weird pessimist attitudes about the whole thing. In this thread I will explain how to effectively learn and retain Japanese. This is a tried, tested and true method; probably 99% of all people who try to learn Japanese give up, but everyone I’ve met who has tried and stuck with this has been at or above N3-N4 after 6 months or less including me
You can teach yourself Japanese for free if you have a little free time every day and a computer
1. Drill yourself on hiragana and katakana. These are the phonetic building blocks of Japanese, think of them as equivalent to english letters. This site is a good resource in general. Once you have a solid grasp on this, DO NOT LINGER HERE; move to step 2. You will master kana later.
2. Download Anki. This is a flashcard service. They have a paid app if you’re willing to invest for it, but if not, they have a mobile website (create an account and sync it with your computer).
This is the deck you’re going to download. Import it to Anki and do this every day. I have learned the hard way (twice) that skipping this is bad. If you become overwhelmed, you can change the number of new cards and reviews by clicking the cog next to the name of the deck!
3. Cure Dolly (Youtube, grammar) + transcript. She has kind of a posh accent, you might want to turn subtitles on. Watch a few videos when you feel like it but most importantly set up 4 and 5 as soon as possible
4. Yomitan (must have) is a browser extension that functions as a pop-up dictionary. you need to install dictionaries for it to work. here are some dictionaries you can use with yomitan and explanations of what they do
5. READ. DO NOT LET YOURSELF GET STUCK BEFORE THIS STEP. JUST READ!!!! Most people who fail to learn Japanese do so because they are afraid of not being ready to move on, which is counterproductive. Just read. When you were a child did you spend years on vocab and grammar before reading? No I bet you did not. Pick something to read and learn what you don’t already know by reading in Japanese.
Jiten.moe has a list of novels and visual novels that you can read on your computer sorted by difficulty. So does jpdb. There’s also this document. There’s also this document. Hey look this website is cool too
For visual novels: download LunaHook. It “hooks” to your VN and allows you to use Yomitan on words you don’t know. Turn off the translation feature, it does nothing to help you learn
For literary texts: ttsu e-reader supports epub and htmlz files.
You can also learn Japanese by watching anime, but it’s a little more convoluted and requires a lot more patience.
For manga, utilize Mangatan, but I don’t recommend this right out the gate because when you’re first learning sentence structure you’ll want something with complete sentences.
Set your computer up for mining vocab before you start reading. Once you finish your kaishi deck, you can drill your mining cards (I didn’t do mine until after finishing kaishi because it was too much).
Most importantly: reading is going to be hard at first. It is going to piss you off. You need to muscle through with this because this is where the bulk of your learning will happen. After a while you will just feel like reading because you love reading! Try not to pick something too hard for your first read, but if you’re interested in the story you might be able to muscle through something a little tougher.
Remember to consult yomitan and cure dolly where needed, that’s what it’s there for. As you can see I am quite normal about the Japanese language, so if you have any other questions or need help with anything else feel free to shoot me an ask and I will get back to you promptly. Japanese is not your enemy and it is not impossible. It is your friend
It’s probably not very obvious but I wanted the “Sun” to look like Elaine Thomas, to represent her influence on his life kinda? If that makes sense!
I don’t really know how I feel about this one cuz I redrew it like 10 times and it never looked good enough, BUT it got to the point where I was just messing around with brushes so at least I had fun😭
Tutorial on drawing characters/OCs who have some sort of facial paralysis. It doesn't cover all possible variants because I was using mirror as my main reference lawl
Keep in mind that this is an introductory drawing tutorial and has some generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People 👍
Consider supporting me on ko-fi if you find this to be helpful.
I'm a writer. I was wondering if you can give pointers on realistic and respectful writing of a character who has had a brain injury. Especially things to avoid that may be wrong/hurtful.
I'm sure this person would love extra contributions in replies or reblogs too! But here's some stuff I compiled so far
1.
I think it's important to think about why you want to portray a character with a brain injury
If your reason for wanting to portray it is anything related to using that character's brain injury as a major plot inconvenience (eg. they forget a piece of information and the whole mission is ruined), I really don't recommend it. It's not entertaining writing as it is and just it makes the character seem like a burden to the plot.
If you just want one symptom for plot reasons (like memory difficulties), also ditch the brain injury idea. Either you intend to represent the whole experience or none of it!
I'd say similar things if the character is just going to feel hopeless or awful about it the entire time and it's going to be constantly used to make the readers emotional - we eventually have to live with it, even if accepting it takes time, and learning to accept your disabilities is something that desperately needs representing. Brain injuries are not some kind of eternal punishment for people with them, nor a tear-jerking tragedy for people without them
2.
Do proper research into brain injuries and zone in on what's applicable to your character
What is the cause of their brain injury? What type of brain injury is it?What parts of the brain were affected? How long has it been since they acquired it? How comfortable are they with their reality now? Do they have access to proper medical care and means of recovery? What will their symptoms actually look like?
All of this is important if you want your character to feel fleshed out in this area too
3.
Run your work by people with brain injuries who offer it!!!! You can find people on writing subreddits, discord servers, in-person, all sorts of places, who'd like you to ask questions and help in the writing of your character
Don't just talk about us, include us in the conversation. Acknowledge that you cannot fully understand our experience and so you cannot make the rules on how to portray it respectfully!
4.
Listen to our stories! Spend time with us online and in person if you can! There are so many stories from people with brain injuries on all social media platforms - do not use their words directly without permission, but you can certainly learn from their experiences and think about what your character's experience might look like
I really like this article it goes pretty in-depth into all areas of brain damage & injuries and recovery in writing
5.
Flesh out your character just as much in every other applicable area - if you overly expand upon their disabilities only for the character themself to be pretty lackluster, you're not portraying a real person anymore, you're just portraying the concept of a brain injury
AVOID:
- The 'You're not the same person anymore' trope, where a character experiences an accident or head trauma and is suddenly an entirely different person on every level. It's pretty much just used as an emotional plot device. Severe brain damage can result in significant changes in personality, but they are the same person
- Doom and gloom, where you're essentially just writing pure angst intended to make the audience emotional with no real representation of the disability outside the context of 'this is really sad'
- Comedic relief, where a character's brain injury is used almost exclusively as a humorous tool (eg. haha they keep forgetting things, haha they talk weird, haha they lost their train of thought, haha they behave inappropriately and don't realise it)
- And I'm not saying you can't do something amnesia-related, but if you're looking for a plot device that'll cause a character to do something like forget their entire life before that point for a very prolonged period of time and receive little to no medical intervention, please find a fictional means for it (eg. fantasy/sci-fi elements) instead. It's just so overdone and it's always written as caused by a head injury that you'd expect to result in TBI, but those effects are not realistic for TBI
How to write a character with amnesia article
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I'd love to see what others have to add to this! I know it's not uncommon for some people to say you shouldn't even try to represent other people's disabilities, but I don't think that's a realistic way to approach it, especially when lots of us would love to write fiction about brain injuries but struggle to because of said brain injury
Brownie’s Favorite Baked Mac N Cheese She Stole From a Recipe Book
2 Cups Pasta, elbow or shells (my preference)
1/4 Cup Butter (unsalted there’s enough salt in here already)
1/4 Cup Flour
2 Cups Milk
1 Tsp Salt
1/8-1/2 Tsp Cayenne
1 1/2 Tsp Worcestershire Sauce
1/8-1/4 Tsp Hot Sauce (book says Tabasco but I usually use sriracha or gochujang depending on what I have)
2 Cups Shredded Cheddar
1/4 Grated Parmesan (I usually use the pre-grated)
Chicken, if so desired
Cook up the pasta according to box directions or like me just dump them in boiling water until tender and the drain.
Melt the butter and mix in the flour in a sauce pan on like medium until the mixture bubbles, then pour in the milk and mix. Let that reduce while stirring occasionally until it thickens. Usually I find a good texture is if you drag the spoon a bit quick across the bottom and you can see if for a second.
Add in the salt, cayenne, worcestershire, and hot sauce to heat preference. I guess if you don’t want spice you can leave it out but I feel like it’s a little boring without it.
Take off heat and add in the two cheeses, mix until TOTALLY melted and combined. This is also where you’d add your chicken. If you want it to really kick ass, buy a rotisserie chicken and use the meat from there, and put some of the juices in the sauce. Mix in the pasta too.
Put in a baking pan (8x8 or somewhere around there) and put in the over at 350 for 20-25 minutes. Let cool for a few minutes and the it’s good to go.
I’ve tried other ‘best Mac n cheese’ recipes and for real nothing compares
Of course! It's actually been a while since I've written for it, (college...) but I have so much unpublished that this is just some formatted notes! This is just more starter weres stuff (+ some Oakhurst lore), but if you're curious about some other character, feel free to ask!
Avid got bit by a werewolf as a kid, had his first turning the next full moon. His town's response wasn’t great, and he didn’t want to return after. But Elle would search for him. She'd repeatedly disappear into the forest until she found him and he dragged her back to town again. They built him a little treehouse in the woods, and Elle brought food and blankets and other supplies from the villagers sympathetic to the boy out in the woods, even if they didn’t want him in their streets.
Eventually Avid started trying to make something of himself, traveling to other towns to learn and make a little money doing odd jobs, though he was always back home before the full moon returned, and he always told Elle before he left so she wouldn’t wander the forests looking for him when he wasn’t there (he learned from the first time when he came back to her sleeping in the treehouse, and he realized she’d been searching the woods every day for him and resting here).
This goes on until they're adults & something changes, maybe a hotshot comes into town wanting a wolf pelt, maybe the villagers get tired of Elle tempting fate, or new villagers come to town who are less tolerant and don’t remember the Avid from chldhood as the others do.
Ultimately, one of their meetings gets ambushed and Elle dies. Avid kills the perpetrators, disappears deeper into the woods and finds himself elsewhere.
Drift stumbles into a case relating to werewolves (unbeknownst to her), is warned off, but doesn’t listen. She tracks down the person sending the warnings, and in their house is a creepy dog cage the person’s been keeping a wolf in. Drift gets a bit too close, the wolf breaks out, and she gets bit. The culprit comes back to distract it, and she runs away. Her doctors appointment returned nothing, she considers herself lucky and returns to work. Until the full moon. Next thing she remembers is waking up in the woods.
(Tangent) Oakhurst is kind of weird here. The thing with vampires is their image is the veneer of respectability: the social games, the wealth, the need to be welcomed in. Werewolves’ image is that of wilderness & beastliness. Think of how vamps get to keep their clothes after a bat transformation while weres usually lose their own.
With this in mind a town doesn't make as much sense as an anchor point. Instead, the humans are always on the go, (set up camp every night, don’t even think about leaving when the moon’s up, they do anyway) but never really going anywhere. The moon is high and full every night. If the humans are unlucky, it’ll appear as its full self in the day too.
Avid and Pearl were the only ones to notice the moon was full for the second day in a row the first day in Oakhurst. no one else paid much attention
The only reason people know to call this place Oakhurst is because Pearl called it that. She says she was told stories of a forest where you could find anything you wanted if you searched long enough, and once the books started appearing with hints to the things the townspeople (hm. that doesn’t really work anymore. campers? hunters?) were searching for, the name from the story seemed fitting.
Rather than good vs evil I think the conceit of this place would be Purpose. It pulls in humans who have something to hunt for with the promise of their desires. And it gives aimless werewolves in need of a purpose something to hunt: the humans. The woods only give clues to humans, since it wants the werewolves to succumb to their instincts, not follow human desires.
Avid has no one, his one tie to humanity is gone and he’s lost in what to do next. And Drift’s had her whole life reshaped by this change. Her stumbling into this place before she could get a grasp on anything means she barely has any concept of a way to maintain her life as it was now that she’s this, since she never even got the chance to try. The full moon is always beckoning, promising them that they can give up on finding any purpose as a human, and simply relish in the hunt.
Avid is the closest to succumbing. He doesn’t hate humans, but god he wishes he did. He’s just tired and grieving and thinking that if he stopped thinking like a human, maybe the pain of Elle’s death would leave him.
In canon, Avid starts losing time and is terrified of it, but as a full werewolf, its just routine for him, and after Elle’s death, he welcomes the chance to forget.
Drift is really trying, but she has so little grasp over everything it’s getting harder to see a way out. In the day, she tries to talk to people for advice about the wolf without admitting to being one (Avid knows, but he hardly tried to fit into human society once he turned, and was playing on one-turn-a-month easy mode), but it means all of their advice misses the full picture (except for Pearl’s, which is off the mark for a whole different reason). She’s the first one to turn another human, just from lack of control.
Avid is quite listless his first day in town, not wanting or caring about anything. There’s almost a reversal of Drift being kind of frantic from not even being able to remember how she got here (she might chalk it up to having been kidnapped and tossed in the woods by a subject of one of her cases) and Avid being the one who’s surprisingly unbothered despite how usually anxious he is
Most of his fear in canon stems from a fear of himself and the monster he’s becoming, but he’s been a werewolf for so long, that isn’t something he fears. He may have feared for Elle’s life, constantly running out into the woods where something else could get to her before he did. But now she’s dead, and there’s nothing to care about and nothing to worry about.
Until he and Drift go into the woods together with Owen and Avid realizes too late that the moon isn’t waning. He can control himself, separate from the group, its just inconvenient. But whatever, as long as they don’t attack him, it doesn’t really matter, no need to take action against them. But then, Drift changes as well, and she does not look like she has it under control at all. She immediately lunges at the only human. And Avid knocks her off before she can kill them fully. And now the draw he felt to this strange and anxious acquaintance makes sense. And he has to at least try to stop her from destroying everyone and herself. Hello again, anxiety.
Of course! It's actually been a while since I've written for it, (college...) but I have so much unpublished that this is just some formatted notes! This is just more starter weres stuff (+ some Oakhurst lore), but if you're curious about some other character, feel free to ask!
Avid got bit by a werewolf as a kid, had his first turning the next full moon. His town's response wasn’t great, and he didn’t want to return after. But Elle would search for him. She'd repeatedly disappear into the forest until she found him and he dragged her back to town again. They built him a little treehouse in the woods, and Elle brought food and blankets and other supplies from the villagers sympathetic to the boy out in the woods, even if they didn’t want him in their streets.
Eventually Avid started trying to make something of himself, traveling to other towns to learn and make a little money doing odd jobs, though he was always back home before the full moon returned, and he always told Elle before he left so she wouldn’t wander the forests looking for him when he wasn’t there (he learned from the first time when he came back to her sleeping in the treehouse, and he realized she’d been searching the woods every day for him and resting here).
This goes on until they're adults & something changes, maybe a hotshot comes into town wanting a wolf pelt, maybe the villagers get tired of Elle tempting fate, or new villagers come to town who are less tolerant and don’t remember the Avid from chldhood as the others do.
Ultimately, one of their meetings gets ambushed and Elle dies. Avid kills the perpetrators, disappears deeper into the woods and finds himself elsewhere.
Drift stumbles into a case relating to werewolves (unbeknownst to her), is warned off, but doesn’t listen. She tracks down the person sending the warnings, and in their house is a creepy dog cage the person’s been keeping a wolf in. Drift gets a bit too close, the wolf breaks out, and she gets bit. The culprit comes back to distract it, and she runs away. Her doctors appointment returned nothing, she considers herself lucky and returns to work. Until the full moon. Next thing she remembers is waking up in the woods.
(Tangent) Oakhurst is kind of weird here. The thing with vampires is their image is the veneer of respectability: the social games, the wealth, the need to be welcomed in. Werewolves’ image is that of wilderness & beastliness. Think of how vamps get to keep their clothes after a bat transformation while weres usually lose their own.
With this in mind a town doesn't make as much sense as an anchor point. Instead, the humans are always on the go, (set up camp every night, don’t even think about leaving when the moon’s up, they do anyway) but never really going anywhere. The moon is high and full every night. If the humans are unlucky, it’ll appear as its full self in the day too.
Avid and Pearl were the only ones to notice the moon was full for the second day in a row the first day in Oakhurst. no one else paid much attention
The only reason people know to call this place Oakhurst is because Pearl called it that. She says she was told stories of a forest where you could find anything you wanted if you searched long enough, and once the books started appearing with hints to the things the townspeople (hm. that doesn’t really work anymore. campers? hunters?) were searching for, the name from the story seemed fitting.
Rather than good vs evil I think the conceit of this place would be Purpose. It pulls in humans who have something to hunt for with the promise of their desires. And it gives aimless werewolves in need of a purpose something to hunt: the humans. The woods only give clues to humans, since it wants the werewolves to succumb to their instincts, not follow human desires.
Avid has no one, his one tie to humanity is gone and he’s lost in what to do next. And Drift’s had her whole life reshaped by this change. Her stumbling into this place before she could get a grasp on anything means she barely has any concept of a way to maintain her life as it was now that she’s this, since she never even got the chance to try. The full moon is always beckoning, promising them that they can give up on finding any purpose as a human, and simply relish in the hunt.
Avid is the closest to succumbing. He doesn’t hate humans, but god he wishes he did. He’s just tired and grieving and thinking that if he stopped thinking like a human, maybe the pain of Elle’s death would leave him.
In canon, Avid starts losing time and is terrified of it, but as a full werewolf, its just routine for him, and after Elle’s death, he welcomes the chance to forget.
Drift is really trying, but she has so little grasp over everything it’s getting harder to see a way out. In the day, she tries to talk to people for advice about the wolf without admitting to being one (Avid knows, but he hardly tried to fit into human society once he turned, and was playing on one-turn-a-month easy mode), but it means all of their advice misses the full picture (except for Pearl’s, which is off the mark for a whole different reason). She’s the first one to turn another human, just from lack of control.
Avid is quite listless his first day in town, not wanting or caring about anything. There’s almost a reversal of Drift being kind of frantic from not even being able to remember how she got here (she might chalk it up to having been kidnapped and tossed in the woods by a subject of one of her cases) and Avid being the one who’s surprisingly unbothered despite how usually anxious he is
Most of his fear in canon stems from a fear of himself and the monster he’s becoming, but he’s been a werewolf for so long, that isn’t something he fears. He may have feared for Elle’s life, constantly running out into the woods where something else could get to her before he did. But now she’s dead, and there’s nothing to care about and nothing to worry about.
Until he and Drift go into the woods together with Owen and Avid realizes too late that the moon isn’t waning. He can control himself, separate from the group, its just inconvenient. But whatever, as long as they don’t attack him, it doesn’t really matter, no need to take action against them. But then, Drift changes as well, and she does not look like she has it under control at all. She immediately lunges at the only human. And Avid knocks her off before she can kill them fully. And now the draw he felt to this strange and anxious acquaintance makes sense. And he has to at least try to stop her from destroying everyone and herself. Hello again, anxiety.
more on writing muslim characters from a hijabi muslim girl
- hijabis get really excited over pretty scarves
- they also like to collect pins and brooches
- we get asked a lot of questions and it can be annoying or it can be amusing, just depends on our mood and personality and how the question is phrased
- common questions include:
- “not even water?” (referring to fasting)
- hijabis hear a lot of “do you sleep in that?” (we don’t) and “where is your hair?” (in a bun or a braid, usually)
- “is it mooze-slim or mozzlem?” (the answer is neither, it’s muslim, with a soft s and accent on the first syllable)
- “ee-slam or iz-lamb?” (it’s iss-laam, accent on the first syllable)
- “hee-job?” (heh-jahb, accent on the second syllable)
- “kor-an?” (no. quran. say it like koor-annn, accent on the second syllable)
- people tend to mess up our names really badly and you just get a sigh and a resigned nod or an awkward smile, maybe a nickname instead
- long hair is easy to hide, short hair is harder to wrap up
- hijab isn’t just covering hair, it’s also showing as little skin as possible with the exception of face, hands, and feet, and not wearing tight/sheer clothing
- that applies to men too, people just don’t like to mention it ( i wonder why)
- henna/mehendi isn’t just for special occasions, you’ll see people wearing it for fun
- henna/mehendi isn’t just for muslims, either, it’s not a religious thing
- henna/mehendi is not just for women, men also wear it, especially on their weddings
- there are big mehendi parties in the couple of nights before eid where people (usually just women and kids) gather and do each other’s mehendi, usually just hands and feet
- five daily prayers
- most muslim kids can stutter through a couple verses of quran in the original arabic text by the age of seven or eight, it does not matter where they live or where they’re from or what language they speak natively
- muslim families tend to have multiple copies of the quran
- there are no “versions” of the quran, there has only ever been one. all muslims follow the exact same book
- muslims have no concept of taking God’s name in vain, we call on God at every little inconvenience
- don’t use islamic phrases if you don’t know what they mean or how to use them. we use them often, inside and outside of religious settings. in islam, it is encouraged to mention God often and we say these things very casually, but we take them very seriously
- Allahu Akbar means “God is Greatest” (often said when something shocks or surprises us, or if we’re scared or daunted, or when something amazing happens, whether it be good or bad; it’s like saying “oh my god”)
- Subhan Allah means “Glory be to God” (i say subhan Allah at the sky, at babies, at trees, whatever strikes me as pleasant, especially if it’s in nature)
- Bismillah means “in the name of God” and it’s just something you say before you start something like eating or doing your homework
- In Shaa Allah means “if God wills” (example: you’ll be famous, in shaa Allah) (it’s a reminder that the future is in God’s hands, so be humble and be hopeful)
- Astaghfirullah means “i seek forgiveness from Allah” and it’s like “god forgive me”
- Alhamdulillah means “all thanks and praise belong to God” and it’s just a little bit more serious than saying “thank god” (example: i passed my exams, alhamdulillah; i made it home okay, alhamdulillah)
- when i say we use them casually, i really mean it
- teacher forgot to assign homework? Alhamdulillah
- our version of “amen” is “ameen”
- muslims greet each other with “assalamu alaikum” which just means “peace be on you” and it’s like saying hi
- the proper response is “walaikum assalam” which means “and on you be peace” and it’s like saying “you too”
As a Muslim this post is so very important and it makes me so happy that it gives the small facts and details that one might be unaware of or confused about.
@universal-pocketwatch I ACCIDENTALLY DELETED YOUR ASK IM SO SORRY. But I did draw some romantic Shelvid for your kind contribution to the Cleoapo cause.
But Wait, There's More! @cakeractuallyarts - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
