How To Finish

If You’re Gonna Make Something Wheelchair Accessible, Don’t Make it a Thing

Here’s some examples awkward accessibility being a thing:

Your at a hotel that has a lift to get you from one sub-floor to another, but the lift can only be unlocked and operated by one specific person that the hotel now has to go find. Sure, they’ve made the entrance to the sub-floor is accessible, but now it’s a thing.

The buses are wheelchair accessible but the driver has to stop the bus, take 30 seconds to lower the goddamn ramp, move passengers out of their seats, hook up the straps and then secure you in the bus. Sure, they’ve made the busses accessible but now it’s a thing.

The restaurant has an accessible entrance, but it’s past the trash room and through the kitchen. Sure, the restaurant is accessible, but now it’s an insulting thing.

Here’s some great examples of accessibility not being a thing:

The train to the airport pulls up flush with the platform. I board with everyone else and sit wherever the fuck I want. Riding the train is accessible and not a thing.

In Portland, I press a button the side of the streetcar and a ramp automatically extends at the same time the door opens. I board in the same amount of time as everyone else. This is not a thing.

I get that it is difficult to design for wheelchair accessibility, but folks need to start considering the overall quality of the experience versus just thinking about meeting the minimum requirements.

"11,078 and counting have died in Palestine. Never stop talking.

Also this is just the surface, do further research to fully understand the situation.

Also this is just the surface, do further research to fully understand the situation."

Art credit: @flyingkikii

Reposted from @frxchix

How Much World Building is Too Much?

Anonymous asked: This question is on behalf of my cousin who came to me for advice. When he has an idea, he writes the most detailed worldbuilding EVER, designs the characters and has a general idea of how the story will go, but then when he starts writing he does maybe 2 chapters and it dies. I, on the other hand, do ZERO worldbuilding ahead of time (I don't need much) and end up finishing 80% of what I start out to write. How do you know how much worldbuilding is enough? How do you keep from spending so much time planning that by the time you get to writing, you don't know where you're going with the actual story? I want to help him but our styles are so different, I don't know where to start.💔

(Ask edited for length...)

I identify with your cousin a lot, because this is often how my stories go. I'm first inspired by a place, or the idea of a place, and everything sort of grows out from there. In my early days, I would also pour everything into world building and character creation, only to find myself falling flat with the story. And a big part of that, I learned, was that I didn't really understand how stories worked. It was easy to build a world and set up characters, but since I didn't understand story structure, I didn't understand how to flesh out the nugget of a story idea I had to go with that setting.

So, one thing you might do is try to get a feel for where your cousin is in that respect. You can start by asking pointed questions about the potential plot, and if he doesn't have answers already, it will help guide him in that direction. Some questions I would ask:

1 - Who is your protagonist? What is their "normal world" life like before things are turned upside down with the inciting incident?

2 - Who and what is important to your protagonist? (Stakes)

3 - What past experiences have led to them being who they are now?

4 - What needs to change about your protagonist's life, beliefs, or values?

5 - What happens to turn your protagonist's world upside down? (Inciting incident) Who (or what) causes this to happen? (Antagonistic force)

6 - How does this affect your protagonist specifically, and what goal do they decide to pursue in order to resolve the problem?

7 - What steps does your protagonist plan to take in order to reach their goal? What knowledge, skills, resources, or help must they acquire in order to achieve their goal?

8 - What obstacles does the antagonistic force create that the protagonist must overcome on their way to the goal?

9 - How do the events of the story help to change your protagonist's life circumstances, beliefs, or values for better or worse? How will they change by the end of the story?

10 - How does your protagonist face off against the antagonistic force, attempting to defeat them once and for all in order to reach their goal? Are they successful? What is the aftermath and how is the character's world/life changed--for better or worse--as a result of these events?

If your cousin can answer these questions, they'll have a reasonably well fleshed out plot that should help carry them through the story. How little or much planning of the plot ahead of time they need is something they'll need to discover over time, but if the above isn't enough to help them get through the story, they might want to go back and flesh out the specific plot points. You can point them in the direction of my post Creating a Detailed Story Outline, which suggest several different story structure templates they can look at to help them coax out the specific plot points of their story. And, bear in mind that story structure templates do not have to be followed exactly. They're just a guide to help you flesh out the story. Many writers like to combine different elements of different plot structures as a loose guide as they write their stories.

I hope this helps!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

LEARN MORE about WQA

SEE MY ask policies

VISIT MY Master List of Top Posts

COFFEE & COMMISSIONS ko-fi.com/wqa

My name is mahmoud mohammed jaafar jaafar i studied computer engineering and graduated from university in 2023 i worked as a software engineer in a local company here in gaza unit the war started, then the company got destroyed and became unemployed and our house is destroyed partially and became inhabitant to live in but nevertheless we stayed in it because we do not else to go i currently live in north gaza where is a scarcity of food and i have 3 brothers and 4 sister one of them died while he was trying to find food for the family so i am the eldest in my family now i have to provide a living for them

Any amount you give me will help me a lot in supporting my family in Gaza in light of the fear and lack of food, medicine and drink

Chuffed

Help Mahmoud Support His Family

My name is Mahmoud Mohammed Jaafar Jaafar. I studied computer engineering and graduated from university in 2023 i worked as a software engin

Any amount you give me will help me a lot, even if it is $10.

it's interesting to me that torture just works to us, as a literary device. It's everywhere in movies and stories and whatnot, from big-budget dramas to little grindhouse short stories. It fits neatly into the requirements of plot: character doesn't want to offer information, Gets Tortured, has to offer information.

the issue with this is that it isn't how it works.

torture is a display of power. It fouls interrogation, this is known; a person being tortured will tell you whatever you want to hear to make it stop, which is more often than not a lie, made up on the spot, or if the truth an incomplete and useless version of it. It isn't generally done for information's sake anyway, but as a form of what the ancient Greeks called hybris, the violent exhibition of your power over another person.

This is, every once in a great while, done right in fiction, but it's a challenge to write vs. the idea that it's a shortcut to one character revealing plot-critical information to another. Pretty much every form of torture works this way, even the ones that are legally permissible. Psychological torment or physical discomfort also produce an animalistic desire to escape harm and foul interrogation. The forms of torture the cops can do? The cops do it not to gain information (or if they think it will, they're lying to themselves) but because it makes them feel powerful.

There's probably a master's thesis in it for somebody studying the rise of torture as a plot device since the beginning of the war on terror and the contemporaneous development of the Broken Windows theory of policing. I'm not really aware of any similar level of disconnect between what Works in fiction and what happens in real life!

When writing a blind character, what are some things to avoid?

Ah! So this is definitely a bit of a broad question, but I can give a few basics:

Blind people don’t actually give a shit about touching faces, so please, please stear clear of that. The only exceptions may be the same way sighted lovers may caress each other’s faces and parents may hold a child’s face in an emotional moment, but it’s just like a sighted lover or parent would, nothing more.

Please avoid giving your character a cure. One of the most crushing things as a disabled reader is to finally have a disabled character, but for them to end up with a fantastic magic cure half-way through. It rarely makes for a good story, and often a much better story is that person’s journey in understanding themselves as equal and learning that they aren’t broken and useless and can do whatever they want, overcoming internalized ableism rather than “overcoming the disability.”

Few blind people actually wear sunglasses or eye coverings, so your character probably won’t either if the likelyhood says anything. Chances are they will not be part of that minority, so probably better not to do that.

Something similar can be said for characters with white or cloudy eyes. The vast majority of blind people will not have very abnormal-looking eyes, so chances are your character will not be part of that minority.

Another very similar thing should be noted about the level of vision they will have. Somewhere between 80 and 90% of blind people have some level of remaining vision, weather it be little more than light perception or enough that they were forced to use their eyes a lot growing up and weren’t taught braille or to use a cane because they could get by well enough not to die most of the time.

So these are just the first several things I can think of at the moment, but definitely feel free to ask about more things!

hiii you know what really irks me? like a lot? the way people talk about wheatley, a very very neurodivergent coded character.

something i see way too often is people using this to justify certain things he does that cant be justified or using it to make him into an “uwu soft boi” and then patting themselves on the back for. good neurodivergent representation or something when theyre literally doing the opposite? just because hes neurodivergent coded doesnt mean he gets a pass for everything he does wrong. and its also super fuckin ableist to infantilize him and call him a soft boy or whatever. this goes double if you do that shit and STILL call him stupid.

on the flip side, something else i see a lot is people demonizing him for neurodivergent traits. and personally this one makes me angrier. im not saying he has to be your favorite character or even that you have to like him just because hes neurodivergent coded (i can understand a ton of reasons why people dont like him) but when people call him. annoying or self centered or, again, stupid its. very obvious a lot of the time that youre talking about neurodivergent traits. of course in the game he is literally the intelligence dampening sphere and theres definitely something Big to be said about valve writing an antagonist thats meant to be Stupid as Very Neurodivergent Coded but thats a rant for later because i feel like if people actually cared about neurodivergent people theyd be able to tell when the writers were being ableist and when a character is not how the game tries to portray them. and im speaking as an autistic person here but when you call wheatley annoying for talking a lot or you call him self centered for talking about himself a lot (again im autistic and its hard for me to talk about topics my brain isnt wanting to focus on and most of the topics i do want to talk about are related to me so?) it just really. comes off as ableist.

and even moreso, what wheatley does and tries to do when hes in control of aperture is very bad and thats obvious but… its ALSO obvious that a lot of what he does happens because hes an abuse victim lashing out. which doesnt make what he does right but still. again im talking as an autistic abuse victim here but what really goes through is something i relate to a LOT. hes constantly deemed as stupid for neurodivergent traits so much so that he was LITERALLY MADE TO BE “STUPID” but hes not.. even stupid hes just neurodivergent and acts impulsively. hes constantly reminded hes “stupid” or “incompetent” and you know what it reminds me of? it reminds me of my experience in school as an autistic person. the american public school system is VERY good at abusing and traumatizing neurodivergent kids and its exactly what wheatley’s situation reminds me of. again, how he acts is not right but from where i stand, hes an abuse victim whos never felt like hes had control in his life and when he finally gets control its way too much way too fast and because of his impulsivity it just goes to his head and he makes a LOT of bad decisions.

what im trying to say is that the way the fandom treats wheatley personally gets me very upset at times because of how much i relate to him as an austic abuse victim and how much he gets treated like ive been treated. you dont have to like wheatley but i feel like people in this fandom could do a lot better job of not constantly being ableist about him. thats all

Read your post about the black-and-white nature of the show and I see your point, however, I personally would really like to see how they handled the idea of redemption for characters like Adam and Val. Or at the very least, how Charlie engaged with them in a way that encouraged better behaviors. I think the biggest hurdle to any redemption is that not everyone wants it, you have to convince them or let them get there on their own... but (and I think this is personal based on your own morals/culture) I strongly believe anyone is capable of it. Luckily this is taking place in the afterlife, so people have truly unlimited time to self reflect and get to a point of wanting change.

That being said, I think characters with much graver crimes (Adam and Val) make for a far more interesting story within this topic. Due to the nature of what they've done, they require you to really dive into who they are as people, what their past is (what is informing their decision-making), and, importantly, what "improvement" means for them. I think you can still do this with the current cast too (Angel and Sir Pentious) but we never see it, which is frustrating.

How am I supposed to buy into Sir Pentious' redemption when we have no idea what he did in life to end up in Hell? Angel was a mobster... and yet all he has to do to "redeem" himself is stop taking drugs? What about his victims?

I think redemption should be complex, have many ups and downs, and needs to focus on not just the individual (how they got there) but their victims too (especially their victims, actually). And if the goal isn't redemption, it can still be "improvement" with a focus on getting a person to truly reconcile with the impact of their actions and how they can make better choices in the future.

All that said, it is clear to me (sadly) this show does not want to focus on these topics and dissect them in an interesting way. It teases them, which gets a person like me excited (I love the thought exercise because I do absolutely believe there is good in everyone, that is just my own deeply held belief), but then we get such a lukewarm portrayal of it that barely scratches the surface. Would have really enjoyed seeing the show double down on "yes, everyone can be a target for redemption" and then actually explore the impact of that and how Charlie's little summer camp exercises aren't going to cut it.

It's pretty sad how shallow Hazbin's themes feel when there is so much interesting potential to explore from it. But the show never bothers exploring that potential and chooses the most shallow, surface-level execution of it. Charlie trying to redeem Val and Adam could actually be interesting....but Viv doesn't want to give them any more personality or depth beyond them just being one-dimensional assholes so, ya.

Hazbin's themes feel hollow for many reasons I previously talked about but this is the biggest one; the show barely actually explores them, it only touches the surface and nothing else. In a show all about redemption, it's super funny that most of it isn't even dedicated to redeeming sinners at all.

It's just a shame because Hazbin's message is interesting and sweet, but it never bothers deconstructing that message or exploring what redemption truly means. It only explores the surface-level stuff which makes it feel incredibly hollow.

— the official hawkmates (hawkman/hawkgirl/hawkwoman) relationship chart

Just repeating this.

PLEASE BE CAREFUL WHO YOU SIGNAL BOOST

There are a lot of fraudulent Palestinian fundraisers going around Tumblr and Go Fund Me right now. (Just had one in my recommended posts)

And unfortunately Tumblr doesn't have a clear way to report fraud or fraudulent posts.

It sucks but there are a lot of disgusting people willing to use the horrors in Gaza to steal money from actual charities.

How to help tell if a fundraiser is likely fraudulent:

- It's a brand new account

- They only reblog posts about Palestine / Israel

-Its only original post is the fake fundraiser.

-Reverse image searching usually reveals the pictures to be stolen from somewhere. Or for the lazy ones they're AI generated.

- It spam tags a load of unrelated subjects (usually trending or popular ones)

- It links to a random PayPal

If you want to donate please give through official channels or through reputable charities. Unfortunately you cannot trust Go Fund Me to vet their fundraisers.