Okay, this is in incredibly petty nitpick, but: if you’re writing a fantasy setting with same-sex marriage, a same-sex noble or royal couple typically would not have titles of the same rank – e.g., a prince and a prince, or two queens.
It depends on which system of ranking you use, of course (there are several), but in most systems there’s actually a rule covering this scenario: in the event that a consort’s courtesy title being of the same rank as their spouse’s would potentially create confusion over who holds the title by right and who by courtesy, the consort instead receives the next-highest title on the ladder.
So the husband of a prince would be a duke; the wife of a queen, a princess; and so forth.
(You actually see this rule in practice in the United Kingdom, albeit not in the context of a same-sex marriage; the Queen’s husband is styled a prince because if he were a king, folks might get confused about which of them was the reigning monarch.)
The only common situation where you’d expect to see, for example, two queens in the same marriage is if the reigning monarchs of two different realms married each other – and even then, you’d more likely end up with a complicated arrangement where each party is technically a princess of the other’s realm in addition to being queen of her own.
You’ve gotta keep it nice and unambiguous who’s actually in charge!
okay which one of you is the reigning monarch and which is the consort
HEY WRITERS OF ALL KINDS AND AGES AND MAYBE EVEN DNDERS OR TABLETOP GAMERS ARE YOU READY FOR SOMETHING SUPER RAD? I HOPE SO ‘CAUSE
RANDOM
MAP
GENERATOR
WITH
EDITING FEATURES AVAILABLE
IT DOESN’T REALLY DO LAND MASSES OR ANYTHING BUT IT SURE AS HELL WILL MAP THAT CITY/VILLAGE/SHIP/DUNGEON/WHATEVER THAT YOU’VE BEEN MEANING TO MAP OUT FOR YOU
Caveat: I’ve only been a massage therapist for about 7 months. But I’ve noticed that lots of people come in with the same issues, and I wind up giving the same stretches and exercises as “homework.” So I thought, why not tell everyone? Here they are:
You know that spot between your shoulderblades that gets tense all the time? Well, it’s not actually tense: it’s stretched. Those are your rhomboids and the pain they experience is the price we pay for using a computer, studying, driving a car, texting, and any other activity that involves our arms being out in front of us. That position brings our shoulders and our shoulderblades forward into protraction. That stretches out the rhomboids and causes them to tense up in an effort to counteract our slump.
What do? Take your arms out to the sides, Jesus-style. Now bend your elbows and try to bring them behind your back. Your forearms should still be out to the sides. You’ll kind of look like you’re trying to pick a fight with someone. Do 25 of these and you should be able to feel those rhomboids getting stronger, pulling your shoulders back where they should be.
2. “Write the alphabet with your nose” aka neck exercises.
Stiff neck? Tension headaches? You might be tempted to stretch. Don’t. Necks are super-prone to adhesions and trigger points, both of which can actually get worse if you stretch without warming up the muscles first. Next time you wake up with neck pain, try exercising it instead of stretching.
What do? My favorite is the alphabet exercise, in which you pretend the tip of your nose is a pencil and write the alphabet with it. Start off small with A and get bigger until the Z is huge. That takes your neck through a lot of different motions.
3. “Play superman” aka back extension exercises.
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Hand-in-hand with the shoulder slump is the back curve. This usually presents as pain in the mid-back on either or both sides of the spine, in what’s called the erector spinae group (or ESGs in massage lingo). True to their Latin, the ESGs hold us upright—but when we’re slumping forward all the time they, like the rhomboids, get stretched out and weakened. Then when we go to lift something too heavy and bend over instead of using our legs, we get that eeeeeeak feeling in our back that is the ESGs informing us that this shit is not on.
What do? Lie on your front with your arms out to the sides. The picture above is kind of advanced: feel free to not have your arms out so far above your head, I only have my arms at a ninety-degree angle with my shoulders, frankly. Start off with maybe 20 reps of that motion and work your way up to 50 and arms straight out. Don’t overwork the muscles, but get them going.
4. “Cobra pose” aka psoas stretch.
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You ever get that pain in your low back from sitting in a chair for a long time? That’s your psoas being a bitch. This stretch is a natural transition from the superman exercises. Really, it stretches a whole lot of things that need it, but especially the psoas muscles. The psoas attaches to the fronts of the vertebrae in the small of your back and run down through the pelvis to end up on the insides of your legs. It’s a waist flexor, which means that all that time you spend sitting down is teaching it to be short. Then when you go to stand up, it wants to STAY short instead of stretching, and the result is a sharp, powerful tug on your lumbar vertebrae and a helluva lot of low back pain.
What do? Lie on your front and rise up onto your elbows. You should feel a stretch in your abdomen. If you don’t, go up further onto your hands. If you still don’t, do this shit. Then get the fuck away from me. Jesus, what’s wrong with you? Do you not have a spine?
5. “Foam rolling your IT band” aka WHY GOD WHY DOES IT HURT??
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I don’t know who made that picture but it is 100% accurate. See, there’s this swath of connective tissue (think tendons and ligaments) that runs down the sides of your thighs from your hips to your knees, called the Iliotibial Band, or IT band or ITB for short. The ITB, being sticky-wicky connective tissue, loves to get tangled up in everything around it, which is primarily the hamstrings and the quads. The adhesions that form along the whole length of the ITB prevent both these muscles groups from relaxing, and leads to all sorts of painful things, from torn hamstrings to kneecaps getting out of alignment and wearing down cartilage (thus necessitating knee replacements) to hip issues (gluteus maximus aka “the butt” feeds into the ITB). Basically it wants to fuck up your entire lower body.
What do? Well, if you’ve got a high pain threshold like the lady with the rictus grin in the picture, you can buy a foam roller and plop down on it like she is, then roll back and forth to your heart’s screaming, agonized content. If, however, your IT band is as sensitive as most people’s, I recommend getting a hard plastic water bottle (one that won’t crack and has a tight lid!!), filling it up with warm water, and using that instead. You can either assume the same position as above, or simply sit in a chair and rub it up and down your legs from hip to knee. Do it for about five minutes each day and that will relax the IT band as well as loosen the adhesions to the hamstrings and quadricep muscles. Stretch both those muscles afterwards for maximum benefit!
Again: caveat. I am by no means an expert at this. These are just the things that I’ve found to be most helpful for my clients. I take no responsibility if you injure yourselves actually doing these things, and especially no responsibility if you actually decide to foam roll your IT band. Seriously, that shit hurts.
Cannot stress enough the IT band thing. I’ve had problems stemming from it, a lot of people I know have had problems from it, and like it’s pointed out here, it can fuck your shit up everywhere—knees, hips, glutes, low back. My friend Holly and I have a running joke that anything can be fixed by rolling your IT band, and it isn’t that far from the truth.
I’m a hardcore foam roller, but another more gentle option, kind of an upgrade from the water bottle mentioned above, is The Stick. I’ve got one that I use when I travel, and I recently used it a lot when I couldn’t foam roll due to post-op physical limitations.
IT band work can definitely be painful, especially at first, but it gets better over time. The first time I used my foam roller after my surgery, it hurt way more than usual, because The Stick is good, but doesn’t get in there the same way, and I had regressed a little. But the next night it already hurt less, and within a few days it was back to what I consider the usual level of discomfort that means it’s working, which is tolerable.
And don’t be afraid to keep it short. Maybe you can only make one pass, and have to stop. That’s fine! Do that for a while, and then maybe you’ll be able to do two, then three, etc. You don’t need to jump in the deep end.
I’ve just been told to do the last one. Ow.
I hope they told you to take a warm shower first! Soften up the tissue, makes it more pliable, and reduces the possibility of bruising.
Be brave, my friend! (Better you than me.)
Reblog to save a life. I’ve been slowly trying to add these to my routine and the neck alphabet one has been super great.
See, the problem with people who aren’t in wheelchairs writing about and/or drawing people who are in (manual) wheelchairs is that the people who aren’t in wheelchairs tend to think that there’s only like four movements that you do in a wheelchair. You can either push forward, push backwards, turn left, or turn right. And the characters do it all while sitting up straight or bending forward so that their noses touch their knees.
But the amount of motions that I go through on a daily basis are actually amazing. And the body language…you could write an entire book on the body language of someone in a wheelchair.
Like right now, I’m more relaxed, so I’m slouching slightly. I’ve got my right foot on its footrest and the left foot on the ground. Every so often, as I stop to think of something to say, I’ll push with my left foot to rock the chair slightly.
But usually, I sit mostly upright with my upper-half slightly leaned forward. When I’m wheeling across the campus, especially if I have somewhere that I need to be, I’ll lean and shift my weight in whichever direction it is that I’m going. It helps make the wheelchair glide that much more smoothly. How far/dramatically I lean depends on how fast I’m going, the terrain, if there’s a turn, etc.
Plus people who don’t use wheelchairs don’t understand the relationship between grabbing the wheels, pushing, and the chair moving. Like I’ve seen things written or have seen people try to use a chair where the character/that person grabs the wheel every single second and never lets go to save their lives. Which isn’t right. The key is to do long, strong, pushes that allow you to move several feet before repeating. I can usually get about ten feet in before I have to push again. It’s kind of like riding a scooter. You don’t always need to push. You push, then ride, then push, then ride, etc.
And because of this, despite what many people think, people in wheelchairs can actually multitask. I’ve carried Starbucks drinks across the campus without spilling a single drop. Because it’s possible to wheel one-handed (despite what most people think), especially when you shift your weight. And if I need to alternate between pushing both wheels, I’ll just swap hands during the ‘glide’ time.
I’ve also noticed that people who don’t use wheelchairs, for some reason, have no idea how to turn a wheelchair. It’s the funniest thing. Like I see it written or, again, have seen people ‘try’ a wheelchair where they’re reaching across their bodies to try to grab one wheel and push or they try to push both wheels at the same time and don’t understand. (For the record, you pull back a wheel and push a wheel. The direction that you’re going is the side that you pull back.)
Back to body language. Again, no idea why most people think that we always sit upright and nothing else. Maybe when I’m in meetings or other formal settings, but most of the time, I do slightly slouch/lean. As for the hands…A lot of writers put the wheelchair user’s hands on the armrests but the truth is, most armrests sit too far back to actually put your hands on. There are times when I’ll put my elbows on the edges of the armrests and will put my hands between my legs. Note: Not on my lap. That’s another thing that writers do but putting your hands in your lap is actually not a natural thing to do when you’re in a wheelchair, due to the angle that you’re sitting and the armrests. Most of the time, I’ll just sort of let my arms loosely fall on either side of the chair, so that my hands are next to my wheels but not grabbing them. That’s another form of body language. I’ve talked to a few people who have done it and I do it myself. If I’m ever anxious or in a situation where I want to leave for one reason or another, I will usually grip my handrims – one hand near the front , one hand near the back. And if I’m really nervous, you’ll find me leaning further and further into the chair, running my hands along the handrims.
Also, on a related subject – a character’s legs should usually be at 90 degree angles, the cushion should come to about their knees, and the armrests should come to about their elbows. You can always tell that an actor is not a wheelchair user when their wheelchair isn’t designed to their dimensions. (Their knees are usually inches away from the seats and are up at an angle, the armrests are too high, etc.) Plus they don’t know how to drive the chair.
Let’s see, what else? Only certain bags can go on the back of the chair without scraping against the wheels, so, no, your teenagers in wheelchairs can’t put their big, stylish, purses on the back. We don’t always use gloves since most gloves actually aren’t that helpful (as stated above, wheeling is a very fluid motion and gloves tend to constrict movements). Height differences are always a thing to remember. If you’re going for the “oh no, my wheelchair is broken” trope, nobody really has ‘flat’ tires anymore thanks to the new material for the wheels but it is possible to have things break off. We use the environment a lot. I always push off of walls or grab onto corners or kick off of the floor etc. Wheelchair parkour should really become a thing.
This is all of the physical things to think about. I could write a thesis on the emotional treatment of your characters with disabilities. But for now, I think that I’ll stop here. For my followers in wheelchairs, is there anything that I left out?
Also why isn’t wheelchair parkour a thing? Somebody make wheelchair parkour a thing.
This is all REALLY GOOD and I wish something like this would be in more art guidebooks and classes.
One thing I’d add is that some of the posture stuff here is specific to wheelchair users who have the right chair; a lot of people (hi, past me) have to use chairs that aren’t at all the correct size, and that’s going to change posture, ease of use, etc. That’s such a broad variable that it’s probably useless to try and cover here, but it’s something to be aware of and research if it seems relevant to a character.
A few peeps were wondering how I drew attacks in my nuzlocke comic, so I made a quick/kinda sloppy tutorial about it! Tbh it’s just me spamming luminosity and overlay layers haha ;yyy Hope this somewhat helps!
OKAY GUYS LISTEN UP
so there’s this website called slader.com and it has EVERY FUCKING ANSWER TO EVERY TEXTBOOK EVER. It has answers AND shows you ALL the work so you can understand it (or be a slacker). This website has literately saved my calculus grade. It even has free tutors if you need the extra help.
Guys, it’s free to register and it will save your life
“an image of a blue sunrise over a crater on mars…that’s weird“ It appears that the foreshadowing has taken NEW AND UNPRECEDENTED LEVELS DID ANYONE ELSE NOTICE THIS
WHAT
“Princes and heroes carrying swords like sharpened lines of light”
aRE YOU KIDDING M E RIGHT NOW
Hello???
“I dreamt that you were gone! That magic stayed, but you were gone!”
How are we so clueless?!?!?
I freaking hate Diane Duane. I’m never writing anything ever again, I give up.
so first off, I’m pretty sure the sunrise bit was added in the NMEs, meaning it’s not quite as mind-blowing as we might think.
but that doesn’t mean the rest of it isn’t. i love rereading the bit where Nita first reads the manual after taking the oath. almost everything that’s described turns up at least once later on: the mason’s word, transcendent pig, fireworms, alternate universes (applies to both the dark manhattan as well as TWD and AWAl), the tree’s battle, even timeheart. the only things I don’t remember coming up later are the Horseman’s word and “bridling the Nightmare”. clearly, those are being saved for later books xD
And even bridling the Nightmare, well… Nita does a little bit of that every time she dreams, doesn’t she?
A little how-to guide for foreshadowing:
(a) Write a lot. The more you write, the better and more active your “writer’s subconscious” becomes. The better trained it becomes, the less frequently it will introduce something to the page that won’t be useful later.
(b) Read a lot. (But you were doing this anyway, yeah?) This gives your writer’s subconscious raw material to work with and develops your (and its) critical faculties. (It’s also fun, and good for you in the general sense, but that’s neither here nor there.) Read all kinds of things, both those you’d normally enjoy and those you think you won’t. You will find useful background or source material, exactly what you didn’t know you needed, being put into your hands from the unlikeliest sources.
(d) Learn to trust the writer’s subconscious. It is routinely a significant source of genuine foreshadowing (i.e., the kind that catches even you by surprise) and the resonances that are at the core of effective fiction. Often it will act as the pipeline for material you don’t yet consciously know you’re going to need, or aren’t yet factually or thematically equipped to process (or process fully). Take occasional notes on what you catch it doing, as your conscious mind is possessed of a kind of stubborn pride about its own modes and means of function and will occasionally try to jettison less-consciously produced material as somehow less valuable. Don’t let it pull this shit with you. Work to own your whole creative process, not just the parts that make sense in the so-called “waking world” or can be justified logically.*
(e) Store your notes carefully. You are a custodian of potentially valuable raw material that won’t be secure until it appears in finished work. Using paper? Have at least one copy of your notes stored off site, with a friend, a relative, at work, whatever, and refresh this copy at least every couple/few months. Working electronically? Store in the cloud and on paper. Paper doesn’t crash and won’t care if the WiFi’s down. (At the electronic end, increasingly I use Evernote, as with millions of users it’s now safe enough to trust not to vanish suddenly There’s nothing so frustrating as a note platform that suddenly goes belly-up.)
(f) Seriously, review those notes periodically. Especially, be guided by them when outlining / assembling raw material for future drafts. The scheduled, habitual review is really important. I promise you, you will forget stuff. And there are few things as crazy-making as discovering halfway through a novel, while wrestling futilely with some piece of character business, that not only did you predict/anticipate this particular problem two years ago, but its solution. You’’ll just want to kick something. Be kind to yourself and do your homework.
…That’s it. Now I’m going to go off and look at my notes, because it’s been a few weeks…
*Equally, though, don’t allow carefully-built narrative structures to be run over roughshod by ill-controlled subconscious-sourced themes or character business. If you’ve got a “runaway Muse”, ninety-nine times out of a hundred what it needs is to be taken out back and shot, as all too often deferring to your “Muse” is just a way of declining to take full responsibility for your less-conscious production. Here as in a lot of other places in life, mastery lies in balance between two mechanisms (or among more). It’s your writer’s brain: run it. If you let it run itself it’s unlikely to get anything done.
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