Nicole Field's Blog, page 15
June 28, 2016
June 27, 2016
grace-and-ace:
kinkyasexuals:
srfelicidad:
Asexuality by Tiny...
Asexuality by Tiny Dinosaur :)!
I know we all know this but I just love Tiny Dinosaur, okay.
Classic
June 26, 2016
Writing Characters with Enhanced Senses
Characters with extraordinary senses come up a lot. Maybe your character is of supernatural or alien origin, or maybe they were just born with a genetic quirk. Maybe they have a sensory disorder that only makes their hearing seem extraordinary. There are lots of reasons why a character might have extraordinary senses and a lot of different ways those senses might be put to use, but here are some of the drawbacks you might consider when writing a character who has a super sniffer, excellent eyesight, or high-quality hearing!
Sight:
If your character has super sight, chances are that they can see farther and more clearly than anybody else, which is pretty cool except that the human eye can still only really focus on one thing at a time…so your character might want to be careful not to get distracted when they’re, say, crossing the street. If they’re watching a burglary occur a thousand yards away, they might not notice the car that just whipped around the corner behind them. Other super-drawbacks might include heightened sensitivity to light, color, or movement - and you have to remember that nobody can see three-hundred-sixty degrees at all times, so your character is probably going to have a blind spot (unless they’re an owl). Also, they may frequently look like they’re staring off into space when they’re really just watching something very intently.Hearing:
Have you ever been standing in a crowd of people who are all talking at the same time? Now imagine if you had super hearing! It can be hard to pick out individual pieces of information or even follow a single conversation when you can hear everyone in a six-block radius…and it’s not just conversations. You can also hear every car, every pet moving around, every jingle of a key, the air moving through the vents, and so on and so forth. This is another one of those abilities that may make it look like your character is just really easily distracted - it’s not that they don’t want to pay attention to their friends, it’s just that they’re playing “name that tune” with a radio four blocks to the southeast!Smell:
Think about your shower routine, whatever it might be. How many scented products do you layer on your skin? Soap, shampoo, conditioner, lotion, deoderant, maybe perfume or cologne, shaving cream or aftershave - the list goes on and on. If you had a super nose, you might be able to smell every single layer a person was wearing, and that kind of assault on the nose could be eye-wateringly overwhelming. Consider your reaction to someone wearing strong perfume! There are a lot of other types of smells in the world too, from cut grass and shoe polish to rotting garbage…and a lot of bodily functions have smells too: passing gas, excrement, or urine, menstruation, or sweating, for example. Your character might even be able to smell disease. This type of character might have to wear a mask or a scarf over their face to dull their super-sense, which might give them an odd appearance, but just imagine how much weirder it would look to be standing on a street corner sniffing at the air when all anyone else can smell is car fumes.Taste:
What’s the strongest flavor you’ve ever tasted? Maybe it was something fishy, or spicy, or sour. Everyone’s answer is bound to be different, but imagine if every single thing you ever ate or drank tasted that strong. Eventually you might get kind of tired of it and start preparing food that is more bland, right? Alternately, imagine if nothing ever just tasted like itself to you: you’re eating a french fry, but instead of tasting “french fry” you’re tasting potato, salt, oil, the metal of the fryer, the latex in the gloves used to scoop them into the paper tray, the paper tray itself…that would be pretty overwhelming! The major drawback to super taste is that your character might have trouble eating out or eating in front of other people. When you taste a lemon, your face puckers up…just think of how much more sour it would taste with a super tongue!Touch:
Did you know that every day you suffer a million tiny hurts and your brain just ignores them so that you can keep on functioning normally? If you had an enhanced nervous system, that might not be the case. Think about the number of tiny things we ignore every day: actions like walking, scratching, accidentally biting your tongue, or blinking could hurt pretty bad if you were super sensitive to touch! People with super touch might have a hard time getting comfortable all the time, and they might have to deal with not liking the feeling of clothes, being annoyed with air moving over their skin, or being extra-sensitive to physical contact. If a hug felt to me like someone was trying to break my ribs, I’d avoid them too!So what are some things to keep in mind when writing about characters with extraordinary senses, other than drawbacks? Here are some things to consider:
Set limits. Your character shouldn’t be able to see past the curve of the earth - that’s just silly! Likewise, if they can hear something happening through the entire planet, you may want to rethink. Consider things like range and clarity when you’re setting limits on super senses: how far away can they see things and how clearly can they see them, for example. When it comes to touch, this is a little more tricky, and you might want to think more about the direct effects of pressure on the character: how much pressure does it take before it hurts?
Enhanced senses require enhanced brainpower. I don’t mean that they raise your character’s IQ level, but consider how much effort it takes to sort through and process sensory information. If your character’s brain can’t handle it, they might be in a constant state of sensory overload.
Speaking of sensory overload, that might happen to your character sometimes anyway! Everyone faces extreme situations in their lives where their brains just can’t keep up with the workload, and the threshold for that point is probably lower for people with super senses. If you’ve got a character with super hearing and four people are trying to talk to them at once, they might experience sensory overload and have to go recover for a while, so do your research into sensory overload and what to do to help them.
Finally, their super sense is going to impact how they experience and relate to other people. Maybe your character doesn’t remember a person’s name or face but they’ll never forget her voice. Maybe they just can’t even be in the house with Great-Aunt Helen because she always wears the same musty old perfume and it gives your character a headache. Maybe your character appears to be constantly zoning out when really they’re just looking closely at peoples’ jewelry. How your character perceives others, and how others view your character, is going to be impacted by their ability - count on it.If you’re writing about a character with super senses, I hope that this has been helpful and maybe even inspiring to you, and I’d love to hear your thoughts too! Thanks for reading, and good luck!
-Kyo
June 25, 2016
katy-l-wood:
natashasromanoff:
Matt: Magnus has been working...
June 23, 2016
June 21, 2016
“I felt, you know, manly, I have to be a man, I don’t know how...
“I felt, you know, manly, I have to be a man, I don’t know how to act like a man, whatever, blah blah. You know, I need to open my legs when I sit down, be more dominating, hold the door, you know, shit like that. Which was ridiculous.
“And then I realised i don’t need to be manly. Let me just cue in to my female side over here because it doesn’t really matter.
“I realised, Why am I being someone that I’m not?”
Oh god this video has blown my mind. I only just found Chase’s channel on YouTube today. Thank you so much Queer Internet. ILU.
June 20, 2016
Multigender Identity Part 3
“In a way, I feel like having this label, being aware of it, will almost make me feel like I don’t need to be as forceful in SHOWING myself to be male as well as female every. single. time. it comes up. I don’t think I need to say it, but it’s not about having “masculine tendencies”, but simply my BEING male at times, no matter how I’m dressed, the register of my voice or the reproductive and sexual anatomy I possess.” – Me, from January 2016.
I did not take into account when I wrote this overly idealistic post.
It’s been 5 months almost to the day since the time I first wrote these posts on being multigender.
I didn’t consider, couldn’t know to consider, the way that it would make me feel to be having an actually announced masculine day, while wearing a skirt. Before I made this ‘announcement’, my masculine days were noted only between me and myself, and perhaps an occasional comment about not being a girl to someone else. Within myself, I knew I’d seen enough male gendered, male identifying individuals wearing skirts that this didn’t faze me.
But have other people seen male gendered, male identifying individuals wearing skirts, and understand the lack of gendered significance in me wearing this skirt the way I see it?
Of course not. And the starting point of this incredibly rational understanding is what’s causing me completely irrational problems.
It’s not just me and myself anymore now that I’ve announced being multigender. It’s worse than when people assumed I was a cis girl all the time. People know better now, but the clothes that I wear may end up being a signifier as to which gender I’m currently inhabiting. As my experience of being multigender means that I’m often switching between genders multiple times in a day, this is problematic.
I never used to put so much significance on what I was wearing, or how cute and small I make myself as I curl into someone else because it’s cold, but I’m thinking about it now because I’m so sure that someone else will be thinking it and making judgements or impressions based on that. I almost want to take back announcing being multigender, or go back to when this was just a truth I knew about me, rather than something I was constantly thinking and making sure I was correctly presenting as. It’s exhausting.
Yet I’m just intelligent enough to know that nobody else is really looking at me and thinking these things the way that I am. But they could be.
It’s insane to think back to how much this word was pressing to get out of me, to be announced, to be defined, and now I’m having so many days when I want nothing so much as to go back to being private about it again.
It’s confusing and contradictory. And I know these things shouldn’t matter to me, but they do and are starting to more and more.
June 19, 2016
jncos:
Dracula’s a public domain character so you’re being negligent as an author is you don’t at...
Dracula’s a public domain character so you’re being negligent as an author is you don’t at least consider using him in every story
June 18, 2016
"There is no first draft worse than a blank page."
-
Neil Gaiman (via lakanen)
This is a true thing.
(via neil-gaiman)
June 17, 2016
robothugscomic:
robothugscomic:
New comic. (link)
I hope...
I hope you’re all ok.
This attack on the Pulse nightclub was motivated by hate towards queer folk, and it feels very close to home and scary. We’re grieving the loss, and even in a city of relative safety, we feel less safe.
It’s…strange being in Canada and watching the US endure massacre after massacre. It’s right next door, but it feels impossibly far away. We just don’t have to exist in that environment of constant, unending mass shootings. I just…I can’t imagine. I can’t imagine having to face that reality over and over again. I’m sorry. I hope you’re ok.
While a few US politicians are not being shy about using this tragedy to condemn all Muslim folks, it is hardly not a US-only phenomenon. People all over are eager to use this incident to justify hate and discrimination. Not only does this needlessly compromise the safety of Muslim people, it also affects ‘associated’ demographics such as Sikhs (the ignorant don’t see a difference), and erases the existence of queer and trans Muslim folks.
Don’t let straight people use our deaths to justify their ugliness and hate. Anyone who uses tragedy to codify hate is not an ally; they’ll be looking for their next target soon enough.
I hope you’re all ok. I hope you’re as safe as you can be.
i messed up the last image in this. should be much clearer now.
