Ooh Helpful Reference

Cool!

some dnd backstory ideas that give your character a reason to leave home that isn’t “everyone in my family died.” (just to say: i have nothing against those backstories (i use them a lot), but its fun to mix it up!)

family/friends/personal

someone close to you is sick. you need to adventure to find a cure

someone stole something important from you and you need to find it

you’ve received a message from a long lost relative and are trying to find them

someone that you love has been kidnapped (maybe you have to earn money to pay a ransom or complete some deed…)

adventuring runs in the family! everyone is expected to complete one quest in their lives

your family/culture sends people out to complete certain tasks when they reach a certain age as a rite of passage

another player’s character saved you in the past so you feel indebted to them and travel with them, protecting/aiding them

there’s a magical drought in your hometown and you have to fix it

your hometown doesn’t have a lot of jobs so you have to travel and send money back home

some childhood friends and you made a “scavenger hunt” where you try and complete a checklist of certain tasks (ie. defeat a barbarian in hand to hand combat, steal x amount of gold, slay a dragon, etc) in an allotted amount of time

quests/jobs

a god/patron has sent you on a quest to do something for them

you’ve been hired by someone to complete a task (and you get sucked into the big adventure along the way)

you’re on a quest for knowledge. maybe it’s to learn the best ways of fighting, maybe it’s something more academic related

your priest received a vision from your god and they sent you on a quest

you’re writing a book about the world and different cultures and you need first hand experience

you’ve found every map you’ve come across is shitty, so you decide to become a cartographer and make your own

you’re a detective who helps solve crimes and need to travel to solve a particular case

you’re a collector of a certain object and travel across the land to find it

you’re apart of an adventuring academy and have to complete a quest to graduate

you’re an artisan and you travel with your wares, trying to sell them. alternatively, you’re trying to spread word of your business and gain new business partners

you worked at a tavern your whole life where an old bard would sing songs of their adventuring party and that inspired you to go and do some adventuring of your own

feel free to add some of your own!

This so amazing & impressive. I just had reblog it so I can remember it.

We really need a Carnival Phantasm-esque spinoff with the entire Persona cast, Atlus what are you doing?

Source

I would recommend this YouTube channel. It’s great. Conversations and gameplay commentary both very good.

In this weeks episode of the Velvetcast, Mitch recovers from his surgery and plays a ton of games!!! Sora and Josh continue the good fight adulting and we discuss Stranger Things as well as Future Boy Zoltron!!!

Ooh, I like this interpretation :)

We might have misunderstood Hogwarts Houses for years

I have a theory that the valued quality of each of the four Houses isn’t really about the personality of its students.

The valued quality of each of the four Houses has to do with how they perceive magic.

Stick with me a second: Hogwarts is a school to study magic. Magic as Hogwarts teaches it can be seen as many things: a natural talent, a gift, a weapon, etc.

So how you believe magic should be used will both reflect your personality and change how you handle that power.

“Their daring, nerve, and chivalry set Gryffindors apart,” Gryffindors perceive magic as a weapon. Gryffindors tend to excel in aggressive forms of magic, like offensive and defensive spells, and they are good at dueling. But a true Gryffindor knows that the power is a responsibility, and so they must always use their powers to stand up for what’s right. They are the sword of the righteous, which makes them as good at Defense Against the Dark Arts as they are at combat magic.

Hufflepuffs believe that magic is a gift and that the best gifts are to be given away. Hufflepuffs, “loyal and just,” would naturally abhor the idea of jealously guarding magic or using it to hurt someone else. So Hufflepuffs share their magic to benefit of Muggles, like the Fat Friar, to protect the overlooked, like Newt Scamander with his creatures, or to oppose those who would use magic to torment and bully, like the Hufflepuffs who stood with the DA and the battle of Hogwarts.

Slytherins are the opposite: they believe their magic is a treasure that they have been entrusted to protect. The Slytherin fascination with purity, with advantage, with cunning and secrecy–all of which were perverted by the Death Eaters–comes from the idea that people with magic in their veins have been given something special that it is their duty to protect at all costs. And perhaps they aren’t entirely wrong: power in the wrong hands can be dangerous. And power interfering at will with Muggle affairs is a gross presumption that could turn the course of history. Though the series shows some of the worst that Slytherin can be, “evil,” is not a natural Slytherin tendency. “Cautious,” is.

Ravenclaws believe that magic is an art form, one that is beautiful and should be appreciated and studied for its own sake. If “wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure,” then asking what magic is for is useless. It’s more important to immerse oneself in magic for its own sake. Ravenclaws push the boundaries of magic to see if they can, hence Hermione’s spell experiment on the DA coins being dubbed a Ravenclaw quality, but like Luna Lovegood in the pursuit of extraordinary creatures: they can also be content to plumb the depths of what already exists.

So while you can see where personalities will overlap over Houses, perhaps in Sorting we should be asking ourselves less what we think we are and more what we think we believe. 

Stunning hairstyles reblogging to remember this. Wow 🤩

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This is super useful reference.

Drugs in Thedas

Magical

Lyrium - Used as a liquid or a dust and makes the user feel strong and warm, and causes everything to sound lyrical. Added to liquor to make Aqua Magus. Used by Templars. Addictive. 

Dragon’s Blood - Imprints memories. Implied to feel warm. Used to create Reavers

Felicidus Aria - Used for perfume or potions believed to impart wisdom but also cause rapid aging. 

Stimulants

Smoke (Unnamed) - Implied tobacco referenced in Scout Harding’s Codex.

Elfroot - Magical Marijuana

Opiates

Smoke (Unnamed) - Implied opiate in Varric’s Codex in DAII

Hallucinogens

Purple Berries (Unnamed) - Hallucinogen referenced by Blackwall. 

Blood Lotus - Hallucinogen

Wyvern Venom - Hallucinogen. Added to liquor to make Aquae Lucidius. 

Deathroot - Hallucinogen (Violent - Implied to cause blood lust.) 

Aphrodisiacs

Orichalcum - Aphrodisiac (Ironically smells bad)

Unknown

Witherstalk - Unspecified effect on the mind when used in combination with other plants. Implied side effect of warmth. 

Smoke (Kohl) - A black powder considered particularly illicit within the Circle of Magi. 

Drug (Unnamed) - Colorless, faintly sweet-smelling liquid. Available in Orzammar. Appears to cause disorientation. 

Alcohol

Named Liquors - Alley King’s Flagon, Chasind Sack Mead, Garbolg’s Backcountry Reserve, Golden Sythe 4:90 Black, Legacy White Shear, Sun Blonde Vint-1, Wilhelm’s Special Brew, Aqua Magus, Dragon’s Piss, Hirol’s Lava Burst, Mackay’s Epic Single Malt, West Hill Brandy, Antivan Sip-Sip, Finale By Masaad, Absence, Abyssal Peach, Butterbile 7:84, Alvarado’s Bathtub Boot Screech, Flames of Our Lady, Carnal 8:69 Blessed, Silent Plains Piquette, Vint-9 Rowan’s Rose

Medicinal

Elfroot -  Can be used orally or topically. Soothes coughs, relieves indigestion and flatulence. Speeds healing and numbs pain.  

Spindleweed - Soothes fevers. Popular folk remedy. 

Embrium - Clears the lungs

Rashvine - Hardens the skin if prepared properly and applied topically. Toxic if ingested. 

Crystal Grace - Unspecified medicinal purpose.

Prophet’s Laurel - Can be applied orally, topically, or smoked. Unspecified medicinal properties. 

Amrita Vein - Soothes aches and ailments. 

Silverite - Can be used to cure poisons.

Reblogging for future reference. Very informative.

Injury angst for writing dummies.

Hospitals and injury are always such a staple of angst fics, but 9 times out of 10 the author has clearly never been in an emergency situation and the scenes always come off as over-dramatized and completely unbelievable. So here’s a crash course on hospital life and emergencies for people who want authenticity. By someone who spends 85% of her time in a hospital. 

Emergency Departments/Ambulances.

Lights and sirens are usually reserved for the actively dying. Unless the person is receiving CPR, having a prolonged seizure or has an obstructed airway, the ambulance is not going to have lights and sirens blaring. I have, however, seen an ambulance throw their lights on just so they can get back to the station faster once. Fuckers made me late for work.

Defibrillators don’t do that. You know, that. People don’t go flying off the bed when they get shocked. But we do scream “CLEAR!!” before we shock the patient. Makes it fun.

A broken limb, surprisingly, is not a high priority for emergency personnel. Not unless said break is open and displaced enough that blood isn’t reaching a limb. And usually when it’s that bad, the person will have other injuries to go with it.

Visitors are not generally allowed to visit a patient who is unstable. Not even family. It’s far more likely that the family will be stuck outside settling in for a good long wait until they get the bad news or the marginally better news. Unless it’s a child. But if you’re writing dying children in your fics for the angst factor, I question you sir. 

Unstable means ‘not quite actively dying, but getting there’. A broken limb, again, is not unstable. Someone who came off their motorbike at 40mph and threw themselves across the bitumen is. 

CPR is rarely successful if someone needs it outside of hospital. And it is hard fucking work. Unless someone nearby is certified in advanced life support, someone who needs CPR is probably halfway down the golden tunnel moving towards the light. 

Emergency personnel ask questions. A lot of questions. So many fucking questions. They don’t just take their next victim and rush off behind the big white doors into the unknown with just a vague ‘WHAT HAPPENED? SHE HIT HER HEAD?? DON’T WORRY SIR!!!’ They’re going to get the sir and ask him so many questions about what happened that he’s going to go cross eyed. And then he’s going to have to repeat it to the doctor. And then the ICU consultant. And the police probably. 

In a trauma situation (aka multiple injuries (aka car accident, motorbike accident, falling off a cliff, falling off a horse, having a piano land on their head idfk you get the idea)) there are a lot of people involved. A lot. I can’t be fucked to go through them all, but there’s at least four doctors, the paramedics, five or six nurses, radiographers, surgeons, ICU consultants, students, and any other specialities that might be needed (midwives, neonatal transport, critical retrieval teams etc etc etc). There ain’t gonna be room to breathe almost when it comes to keeping someone alive.

Emergency departments are a life of their own so you should probably do a bit of research into what might happen to your character if they present there with some kind of illness or injury before you go ahead and scribble it down.

Wards

Nurses run them. No seriously. The patient will see the doctor for five minutes in their day. The nurse will do the rest. Unless the patient codes.

There is never a defibrillator just sitting nearby if a patient codes. 

And we don’t defibrillate every single code. 

If the code does need a defibrillator, they need CPR.

And ICU. 

They shouldn’t be on a ward. 

There are other people who work there too. Physiotherapists will always see patients who need rehab after breaking a limb. Usually legs, because they need to be shown how to use crutches properly.

Wards are separated depending on what the patient’s needs are. Hospitals aren’t separated into ICU, ER and Ward. It’s usually orthopaedic, cardiac, neuro, paediatric, maternity, neonatal ICU, gen surg, short stay surg, geriatric, palliative…figure out where your patient is gonna be. The care they get is different depending on where they are.

ICU.

A patient is only in ICU if they’re at risk of active dying. I swear to god if I see one more broken limb going into ICU in a fic to rank up the angst factor I’m gonna shit. It doesn’t happen. Stop being lazy. 

Tubed patients can be awake. True story. They can communicate too. Usually by writing, since having a dirty great tube down the windpipe tends to impede ones ability to talk. 

The nursing care is 1:1 on an intubated patient. Awake or not, the nurse is not gonna leave that room. No, not even to give your stricken lover a chance to say goodbye in private. There is no privacy. Honestly, that nurse has probably seen it all before anyway. 

ICU isn’t just reserved for intubated patients either. Major surgeries sometimes go here post-op to get intensive care before they’re stepped down. And by major I mean like, grandpa joe is getting his bladder removed because it’s full of cancer. 

Palliative patients and patients who are terminal will not go to ICU. Not unless they became terminally ill after hitting ICU. Usually those ones are unexpected deaths. Someone suffering from a long, slow, gradually life draining illness will probably go to a general ward for end of life care. They don’t need the kind of intensive care an ICU provides because…well..they’re not going to get it??

Operations.

No one gets rushed to theatre for a broken limb. Please stop. They can wait for several days before they get surgery on it. 

Honestly? No one gets ‘rushed’ to theatre at all. Not unless they are, again, actively dying, and surgery is needed to stop them from actively dying. 

Except emergency caesarians. Them babies will always get priority over old mate with the broken hip. A kid stuck in a birth canal and at risk of death by pelvis is a tad more urgent than a gall stone. And the midwives will run. I’ve never seen anyone run as fast as a midwife with a labouring woman on the bed heading to theatres for an emergency caesar.

Surgery doesn’t take as long as you think it does. Repairing a broken limb? Two hours, maybe three tops. Including time spent in recovery. Burst appendix? Half an hour on the table max, maybe an hour in recovery. Caesarian? Forty minutes or so. Major surgeries (organs like kidneys, liver and heart transplants, and major bowel surgeries) take longer. 

You’re never going to see the theatre nurses. Ever. They’re like their own little community of fabled myth who get to come to work in their sweatpants and only deal with unconscious people. It’s the ward nurse who does the pick up and drop offs. 

Anyway there’s probably way, way more that I’m forgetting to add but this is getting too long to keep writing shit. The moral of the story is do some research so you don’t look like an idiot when you’re writing your characters getting injured or having to be in hospital. It’s not Greys Anatomy in the real world and the angst isn’t going to be any more intense just because you’re writing shit like it is. 

Peace up.

This makes so much sense

I think we need to rework the whole “needing routine as an autistic person” thing because for the majority of allistic people, “routine” looks something like:

-wake up at 6am

-shower at 6:15am

-eat breakfast at 6:30am

-do important outings at 7am

-come home at 3pm

and so on..

And that is nothing like what I and many other autistic people experience (though it is what some experience).

Routine can be more accurately described as needing to do things in order to feel comfortable.

For example, I have no set time I wake up, I have no set time I do anything. But when I do wake up, I need to do my morning tasks in a specific order or I’ll struggle to function.

I get out of bed, turn on my lamp, switch my computer on, go to the bathroom, make my bed, get dressed, and sit down at my desk. That’s what a routine looks like to me.

If I’m cooking, I need to do things in a certain order or the food will be “wrong” (this could possibly be down to ARFID, but that is also comorbid with autism.)

There are other things like this. I guess you could call them mini routines. They aren’t a typical routine you’d see in a neurotypical or even someone who’s allistic.

For the longest time, I thought this was a symptom of autism I did not have at all but I do.

Just because a symptom doesn’t present in a neurotypical way, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Wow

For all your future scenario needs of “trapped in a murder house with freaking Bloody Mary”.

The Oracula is a new wraith that will be in the Book of Beautiful Horrors: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByEZ_EOCyILZTzhxdk5BQWpsWmc

Maya amano. You agree. Reblog