'art Idea That's Above Your Skill Set' And 'writing Idea That's Above Your Skill Set' Are Tortures I

10 Non-Lethal Injuries to Add Pain to Your Writing

New Part: 10 Lethal Injury Ideas

If you need a simple way to make your characters feel pain, here are some ideas: 

1. Sprained Ankle

A common injury that can severely limit mobility. This is useful because your characters will have to experience a mild struggle and adapt their plans to their new lack of mobiliy. Perfect to add tension to a chase scene.

2. Rib Contusion

A painful bruise on the ribs can make breathing difficult, helping you sneak in those ragged wheezes during a fight scene. Could also be used for something sport-related! It's impactful enough to leave a lingering pain but not enough to hinder their overall movement.

3. Concussions

This common brain injury can lead to confusion, dizziness, and mood swings, affecting a character’s judgment heavily. It can also cause mild amnesia.

I enjoy using concussions when you need another character to subtly take over the fight/scene, it's an easy way to switch POVs. You could also use it if you need a 'cute' recovery moment with A and B.

4. Fractured Finger

A broken finger can complicate tasks that require fine motor skills. This would be perfect for characters like artists, writers, etc. Or, a fighter who brushes it off as nothing till they try to throw a punch and are hit with pain.

5. Road Rash

Road rash is an abrasion caused by friction. Aka scraping skin. The raw, painful sting resulting from a fall can be a quick but effective way to add pain to your writing. Tip: it's great if you need a mild injury for a child.

6. Shoulder Dislocation

This injury can be excruciating and often leads to an inability to use one arm, forcing characters to confront their limitations while adding urgency to their situation. Good for torture scenes.

7. Deep Laceration

A deep laceration is a cut that requires stitches. As someone who got stitches as a kid, they really aren't that bad! A 2-3 inch wound (in length) provides just enough pain and blood to add that dramatic flair to your writing while not severely deterring your character.

This is also a great wound to look back on since it often scars. Note: the deeper and wider the cut the worse your character's condition. Don't give them a 5 inch deep gash and call that mild.

8. Burns

Whether from fire, chemicals, or hot surfaces, burns can cause intense suffering and lingering trauma. Like the previous injury, the lasting physical and emotional trauma of a burn is a great wound for characters to look back on.

If you want to explore writing burns, read here.

9. Pulled Muscle

This can create ongoing pain and restrict movement, offering a window to force your character to lean on another. Note: I personally use muscle related injuries when I want to focus more on the pain and sprains to focus on a lack of mobility.

10. Tendonitis

Inflammation of a tendon can cause chronic pain and limit a character's ability to perform tasks they usually take for granted. When exploring tendonitis make sure you research well as this can easily turn into a more severe injury.

This is a quick, brief list of ideas to provide writers inspiration. Since it is a shorter blog, I have not covered the injuries in detail. This is inspiration, not a thorough guide. Happy writing! :)

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks? 

Check out the rest of Quillology with Haya; a blog dedicated to writing and publishing tips for authors!

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Kurama The Retired Monster: A Look at Kurama's Canon Characterization and Impact

Kurama is one of the most popular characters in the decades old Yu Yu Hakusho fandom. Published in 1992 and dubbed into English in 2002, Yu Yu Hakusho is one of the most influential battle shounen anime. References are everywhere for this wonderful story about a delinquent that surprised the heavens and saved a little boy at the cost of his own life.

The series is my favorite of the old Toonami anime with its rebuke to the strict norms of Japanese society and its message about the grey tones of life.

It's in every character in one way or another, but Kurama tackles a trope I'm personally fascinated by: the retired criminal that is dragged back into his old life by circumstance.

This doesn't seem to be a common read of the character, though all the tropes are there. Youko Kurama was a vicious criminal who, after he was taken out of commission, essentially retired due to the love of a woman. While it was not planned, Shiori showing him love and a life outside of what he knew is what canonically happened and shaped his life. He chose, after she cut up her arms to save him from broken glass, to be the son she deserved rather than leaving as he planned.

When Shiori gets sick, Kurama is contacted by Hiei to join him on a heist in Spirit World for the Three Treasures. Given Kurama's nature as the exposition fairy, he is clearly aware of what those treasures are: The Orb of Bast, the Forlorn Hope, and the Shadow Sword. So, Kurama uses his experience as a thief and gains the Forlorn Hope for himself. As we know, the Forlorn Hope has a rule: It will grant your deepest wish in exchange for your life. Kurama considers this cost fair, since he clearly still feels guilty about stealing the son Minamino Shiori was supposed to have. In the dub, he comments about how some parents are devoured by their young, hinting at blaming himself for the condition Shiori is in. It is only because Yusuke intervened that Kurama is still alive, pulled out of his suicidal guilt spiral by Yusuke offering part of his own life to the mirror after seeing his own mother mourn him.

Kurama chooses to help Yusuke defeat Hiei, cementing him as one of the good guys and beginning his friendship with and repayment of Yusuke.

The Four Saint Beasts arc can be explained as part of Hiei and Kurama's parole. I won't linger on it, but I truly believe this is part of Kurama trying to be good, serving his sentence for what is likely the least of his crimes. In his fight with Genbu, Hiei talks about how he brought Kurama on because he'd rather have him as his ally than his enemy. This is one of the first instances of what Kurama's prior life looked like to others. He is a ruthless and intelligent fighter, and he is known for it. Before Two Shots, this implies Kurama had a reputation prior to his human life, one that lasted long enough that Hiei would have heard about it. (Based on later information, Hiei is less than a hundred years old and Kurama may have left Makai a thousand years ago, making Kurama's reputation incredibly significant.)

This reputation continues to assert itself in the Dark Tournament. The audience of the tournament continue to jeer at Kurama and Hiei for being demons fighting alongside humans, implying that they are well-known enough for this to be an issue. (In the manga, we get a page that shows that demons are total gossips and I love it.) We also have Kurama's fight with Ura Urashima, where Urashima comments that he believes this Kurama, our Kurama, might have taken on the name of the scary bastard that they still tell stories about. He is mistaken.

However, it is also in the Dark Tournament where we get his fight with Touya, where he asks Touya to be better than he was. This is where we see, wholeheartedly, that Kurama regrets who he once was. He regrets being the monster that Hiei and Yomi idolize. The nature of the series is that he needs to tap into that ruthlessness to survive, which is why he connects with Suzuki before the fight with Team Toguro. It is his desire to survive Karasu that returns him to that self.

Another scene that is incredibly important is the battle with Amanuma, the Gamemaster. As we know, for Amanuma to be defeated, he must be killed, as per the rules of his territory and the video game he uses. Amanuma is also eleven years old, manipulated into joining Sensui's crusade to destroy the human world for its evils and hypocrisies. Amanuma is a child, unaware of what Sensui's plans truly mean and as much as Kurama tries to say Amanuma chose this with the full understanding of an adult, it is clear he does not really believe it. Kurama is clearly upset by his choice, but he still makes it. There is no way out, no magic solution at the time. After Amanuma dies, Hiei implies that Kurama has killed children before, in his past life, but Kurama's grief is obvious. He reacts ruthlessly to Elder Toguro. His hands are bleeding from how much he hates the fact he made that choice and how much that decision is linked to the past he's clearly trying to leave behind.

The Three Kings arc is when this really begins to show up, though due to its truncated nature, it seems to go unnoticed. Yomi is essentially the end result of what happens when someone adopts Kurama's old views. Yomi is introduced to us as untrustworthy and brutal. Kurama's patience and ruthlessness became a guide to him as he became a king in the notoriously vicious Makai, after a botched assassination attempt left him blind. To be called to serve Yomi, Kurama has to face what he once was and how it impacted someone. Yomi didn't just look up to him, but he was also Kurama's victim: Kurama is the one who paid the assassin to kill him. Kurama also has to balance facing that with his desire to keep his mother and the Human World safe. Kurama's choice to betray Yomi and go along with Yusuke's cockamamie scheme can be read as a rejection of that past self as well as reinforcing that Kurama does not want to live that old life ever again. He chooses the human world, the world where he's not a vicious bandit and has loved ones.

The anime expands this by setting Kurama up against Shigure, the demon surgeon who gave Hiei his Jagan. This fight originally felt incredibly random: Shigure and Kurama don't have anything to do with each other. However, the fight with Shigure clicked once I realized that Shigure offers to restore Kurama back into who he once was. The entire fight is Kurama choosing to fight as who he is now, not rely on that past self he hates so much. At the end, Kurama even tells Yomi he doesn't throw anything away, but what he says in his little monologue is that he'll never be that version of himself again.

Kurama spends the whole series having to depend on the reputation and ruthlessness he cultivated as a bandit. He does it in life-or-death situations, not just randomly or for shits and giggles. He doesn't seem to enjoy his reputation, especially after living as Shiori's son. He looks more contemptuous of it, his face blank when he has to tap into it. He hates that he has to be that guy, that he was that guy. With the series over, it seems like he'll choose to stay human, to stay in the Human World for as long as he can.

Kurama's canon characterization draws him more in-line with the story's theme of growing up and healing due to the power of human connection. He is mostly retired from being a brutal monster and shows regret and guilt over the past, but by the end has mostly accepted who he once was, warts and all.

[TW: Ableism] [TW: Rant]

Begging y'all to not say 'It's a miracle' when someone stands up from a wheelchair or spends 30 minutes without their mobility aid—  I'm so fucking tired of being accused of faking pain, I've already been refused disability accomodations and can't bring my cane out during my work shifts because "you can walk around just fine without it" or "I saw you doing ___ yesterday!"

There's a spectrum of people who need mobility aids.  

Brought this up before in a non-ranty way, but just damn sometimes it gets a lot.  Just so damn much.    It's frustrating knowing that I end up worsening my own physical condition because others don't think I "really need the support."

An update from the present day (family web) yokai rumour mill;

The tense air between Big Mama, Baron Draxum and Rat Jitsu is all due to a love triangle or poly relationship gone wrong.

Whatever the case they were all seen attending an art exhibit for promising new young artists. Sources say Michelangelo, one of the artists featured, refered too all three of them as his family.

Lol! I have the distinct feeling Draxum and Splinter would be absolutely horrified by that rumor. (mama would find it hilarious b/c 1, she is well aquanted with the rumor mill and knew this could be an assumption, and 2, he absolutely loves Splinter and Draxum's reactions to it. I could see her feeding the rumor mill even more, simply by "Lamenting" in public about how her adorable Lou had run away with a sheep man 13 years ago and she hadn't heard from him again until recently. much to Draxum's and Splinter's horror.)

Thank you! and i absolutely love Mikey getting his own art exhibit! That's so cute! : )

animation being treated like a genre instead of a medium is something that actually makes me go insane. beauty and the beast is a romance. the emperor's new groove is a buddy comedy. big hero 6 is a superhero movie. moana is an adventure film. the lion king is a drama. treasure planet is sci-fi. if i was talking to someone who hadn't seen these movies before, and they weren't specifically interested in animation as a medium, then i wouldn't necessarily assume they'd enjoy all of these. and that's just disney movies! try telling an anime fan that fruits basket and fullmetal alchemist are the same genre and see how they react!

Some teetle practice

Can you tell me why Frodo is so important in lotr? Why can't someone else, anyone else, carry the ring to mordor?

but someone else could.

that’s the whole point of frodo—there is nothing special about him, he’s a hobbit, he’s short and likes stories, smokes pipeweed and makes mischief, he’s a young man like other young men, except for the singularly important fact that he is the one who volunteers. there is this terrible thing that must be done, the magnitude of which no one fully understands and can never understand before it is done, but frodo says me and frodo says I will.

(when boromir is thinking of how he can use the ring to defend gondor, when aragorn is thinking of how it brought down proud isildur, when elrond is holding council and gandalf is thinking of how twisted he would become, if he ever dared—)

but then there’s frodo, who desires nothing except what he has already left behind him, and says, I will take the Ring.

it is an offer made out of absolute innocence, utter sincerity. It is made without knowing what it will make of him—and frodo loses everything to the ring, he loses peace and himself and the shire, he loses the ability to be in the world. It’s cruel, the ring is cruel, it searches out every weakness you have and feeds on it, drinks you dry and fills you with its poison instead, the ring is so cruel.

and frodo picks it up willingly. for no other reason except that it has to be done.

(the ring warps boromir into a hopeless grasping dead thing, the power of the palantir turns denethor into an old man, jealous and suspicious, it bends even saruman, once the proudest of the istari, into a mechanised warlord, sitting in his fortress and bent over his perverse creations—all the best of intentions, laid waste)

but there’s a reason gollum exists in the narrative, which is to show—well, to show what frodo might have been. because even as frodo grows mistrustful and wearied, as the burden of this ring grows heavier and heavier, he is never gollum. he is gentle to gollum. he is afraid—god frodo is so afraid for 2/3 of these books he is so tired and afraid, but he keeps moving, he walks though it would pull him into the ground, because he asked for this, he said he would.

someone else could have carried the ring to mordor, I suppose. the idea of a martyr is not dependent on the particular flesh and blood person dying for some greater purpose. but such a thing has to be chosen, lifted onto your shoulders for the right reason, the truest reasons, and followed into the dark, though it would see you burnt through and bled out.

I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.