Twaeggy - The World Is At My Feet And I Am Standing On The Ceiling

Lol 😂

Hey, I'm writing a fight scene at a fancy restaurant. If my character had a choice of weapon between grabbing a fork or a butter knife (rounded point), which should they choose?

The fork.

It has pointy ends and it’s better for stabbing.

However, in a fight scene at a restaurant, it’s worth remembering all the other available pieces that will allow a character to smoothly transition between weapons. Most of the time, thought stops at the cutlery but a restaurant is full of makeshift weapons that will aid the characters in their fight if they’re clever enough to see them.

Plates.

Heavy duty, ceramic plates are good for bashing, throwing if necessary. It’s usually a stage gag, but it works really well.

Wine. Water. Coffee.

Hot soup also works. Grab it off the table, throw it in their eyes to blind them to create opportunity for an attack.

Wine Bottles

If left at the table, the solid glass of the wine bottle can be useful for hitting. It’s not as heavy duty as a Jack Daniel’s bottle, but it’ll get the job done. This is even more true if the wine bottle has not yet been uncorked and is still full. Then, it functions as a makeshift club holding up against a great deal more abuse than an empty wine bottle which will break apart in your hands.

Chairs.

When dealing with multiple opponents, but if they’re light enough to be picked up and wielded then the chair’s legs can be used to deflect attackers and maintain distance while backing toward an exit.

If they are sitting at the table, a good basic combination would be:

-grab wine glass, throw wine into attackers face

-grab hold of their wrist, take fork, stab hand

-pick up plate, smash plate into face

-if it survives then possibly edge into throat or sharpened edge of now broken ceramic.

-exit hastily if enemy is no longer capable of fighting to avoid confrontation with local law enforcement.

Restaurants really are full of weapons, plenty of weapons, including many objects that the average person won’t regard as a weapon. You just have to sit down, adjust your perspective, think about it, and start getting creative.

This is all just in the main dining area, long before we move to even better areas like the food preparation and the kitchen. Remember, a lit cigarette can be a weapon. It’s all about how you think and how rough you’re willing to get.

The Ambush vs. The Preparation

Another thing to consider is whether or not this scene is planned out in advance by the characters rather than it being spur of the moment (such as them being ambushed or suddenly decide to attack). A character who is preparing to make their move can set themselves up with better options than a character who has to hit the “go!” button.

They can:

If there is a bar, they might order hot alcohol like a hot tottie which is a hot mixture of water, lemon juice, whiskey, and honey. The alcohol will burn when thrown into the face, the honey (or any kind of sugar) will ensure it sticks thus prolonging the burning. This is surprising thick for a beverage. Excellent for creating openings or tying up one attacker while moving in on their friend. (This is not an approach for kindly characters.)

Order any kind of red meat or food type that will ensure they have a steak knife. They may have come without weapons or been forced to leave their weapons at the door, but they can have some of them back with clever dinner pick.

-Michi

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What's the difference between asking for advice (Bird) and asking for help (Badger)? I see them as kind of the same, especially since a lot of my problems (medical stuff, writing, etc) aren't ones people can really directly help with. I usually ask for help/advice and then handle the actual task myself. If someone does offer to directly help, it's an unexpected bonus, like my friend offering to help get something from IKEA. I was just asking if she thought it would fit in my car.

There's some overlap, but it sounds like you're more on the Bird end of that Venn diagram.

"Do you think this would fit in my car?" -> asking for advice

"Will you come with me in your pickup?" -> asking for help

It's possible that you don't usually think of ways people can help you directly, because that's not how you usually do things! I can think of ways people might directly help with the writing process, for example (beta readers being the most common example of your friends/peers giving hands-on help), but there's actually a book I wanna dig up and quote for this so bear with me.

From Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

I’m friends with Brené Brown, the author of Daring Greatly and other works on human vulnerability. Brené writes wonderful books, but they don’t come easily for her. She sweats and struggles and suffers throughout the writing process, and always has. But recently, I introduced Brené to this idea that creativity is for tricksters, not for martyrs. It was an idea she’d never heard before. (As Brené explains: “Hey, I come from a background in academia, which is deeply entrenched in martyrdom. As in: ‘You must labor and suffer for years in solitude to produce work that only four people will ever read.’”)

But when Brené latched on to this idea of tricksterdom, she took a closer look at her own work habits and realized she’d been creating from far too dark and heavy a place within herself. She had already written several successful books, but all of them had been like a medieval road of trials for her—nothing but fear and anguish throughout the entire writing process. She’d never questioned any of this anguish, because she’d assumed it was all perfectly normal. After all, serious artists can only prove their merit through serious pain. Like so many creators before her, she had come to trust in that pain above all.

But when she tuned in to the possibility of writing from a place of trickster energy, she had a breakthrough. She realized that the act of writing itself was indeed genuinely difficult for her . . . but that storytelling was not. Brené is a captivating storyteller, and she loves public speaking. She’s a fourth-generation Texan who can string a tale like nobody’s business. She knew that when she spoke her ideas aloud, they flowed like a river. But when she tried to write those ideas down, they cramped up on her.

Then she figured out how to trick the process.

For her last book, Brené tried something new—a super-cunning trickster move of the highest order. She enlisted two trusted colleagues to join her at a beach house in Galveston to help her finish her book, which was under serious deadline.

She asked them to sit there on the couch and take detailed notes while she told them stories about the subject of her book. After each story, she would grab their notes, run into the other room, shut the door, and write down exactly what she had just told them, while they waited patiently in the living room. Thus, Brené was able to capture the natural tone of her own speaking voice on the page—much the way the poet Ruth Stone figured out how to capture poems as they moved through her. Then Brené would dash back into the living room and read aloud what she had just written. Her colleagues would help her to tease out the narrative even further, by asking her to explain herself with new anecdotes and stories, as again they took notes. And again Brené would grab those notes and go transcribe the stories.

Isn't that the most Badger secondary workflow you've ever heard? 😂

List of Books to Read Before You Die

1. Any book you want

2. Don’t read books you don’t want to read

3. That’s it

4. Congratulations you did it

holy coke :3

Badger digs up medieval tombs in Germany A badger has outfoxed archeologists, digging up two “significant” 12th-century tombs of two Slavic lords in Germany, reports Spiegel Online.

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Hufflepuffs are particularly good finders

Neil Gaiman explains Freyja's chariot

Krys Boyd: Where do you think the Norsemen came up with cats pulling a chariot?

Neil Gaiman: I think that it's a gloriously godlike attribute, isn't it? I mean, anybody who's tried to get two or three cats to do anything at the same time will know that getting cats to pull a chariot...you'd have to be a god to make it work.

Comics by Rose Anne Prevec.