darkforge33

[darkforge33]

Do you think Bruce Wayne would flirt with Benoit Blanc?

I think if Bruce ever found himself in a situation to meet Benoit Blanc, to his great chagrin, it’d be as Brucie Wayne. He’d be on some rich fuck’s island under cover when a murder happens and it’d be killing him that he can’t break cover to get a closer look at the body. And then along comes Benoit Blanc and Bruce decides, well he’s Brucie right now, it’d be weird if he didn’t flirt a little.

And hey, who knows, if Blanc likes him maybe he’ll let Bruce tag along and get into places Brucie wouldn’t normally be if he wasn’t trying to seduce this weirdly accented, tall glass of deductive skills. (And maybe he’s enjoying it a little more than he should, but technically he’s on vacation so…)

Blanc, of course, catches on and thinks Bruce has something to hide and is keeping him close because he thinks he’s either the killer or in on it.

Except that’s not what the evidence or instincts are actually telling him. Not really.

But he also can’t ignore the fact that Bruce managed to trip and fall directly into the filing cabinet in the office, causing the drawer to fly open and reveal the evidence Blanc’s looking for. Or that the billionaire has a slightly delayed reaction to seeing blood. Not much, but enough for Blanc to notice.

There’s also the way he keeps making suggestions that on the surface seem benign, but are nevertheless intended to lead Blanc toward where his own instincts are telling him to look. So either Brucie is one of those killers who likes to be involved in the investigation because they want to make sure you’re noticing their ‘genius’ or because they think they can control the narrative by being helpful, or…

“Y’know something, Mister Wayne…”

“Benoit, please,” Bruce says with a slow, seductive smile that unfurls like silk over rich velvet. “How many times do I have to ask? Call me Bruce.”

“… Bruce. You’ve been so remarkably helpful.”

“Oh, you know me. I always aim to please.”

Bruce’s smile takes on an electric edge that makes Benoit’s thumb slide to the gold wedding band on his ring finger. He’s a married man, he’s a married man…

“I can’t help but wonder, though,” Benoit says, matching Bruce’s smile for a knowing one of his own. “Don’t you get tired?”

His tone is off, he knows it is because Bruce’s expression doesn’t flicker, not even a jot. It’s just unnatural enough to be telling.

“Tired of what?” the younger man asks, just the right amount of cheerful confusion in his voice and an adorable title of his head like a puppy to make you miss the sharpness behind his eyes. The way his body is coiling tight. Ready for a fight.

“Of pretending,” Benoit says, lifting a cigar to his mouth, making a show of patting down his pockets for the lighter. “I know I surely do. It grates on a man, always being underestimated. Everyone thinking you’re not as sharp as you are. Not as clever, not as quick. It must be a relief, I think, to finally be seen…”

The hand that had been rummaging in his pocket shoots out, aiming for Bruce’s perfect face. Bruce deflects it, twisting Benoit’s hand in a viper-like move Benoit hasn’t seen since…

“Ra’s doesn’t train just anyone,” he says, acutely aware of how much Bruce’s expression has changed without so much of a flicker of muscle. How sharp and hard the angles of his face have become. How deadly. “I confess, I didn’t see it at first. You’re very good, Bruce. I never would have put two and two together if you hadn’t twisted Haggart’s elbow the way you did when he tried to grab Maxine.” He smiles self-deprecatingly. “Take that as a compliment from one detective to another… Batman.”

[darkforge33]

I've been trying to decide what to do with my life lately and have absolutely been tempted by scammy work from home data entry jobs! I'm now very interested in bookkeeping, are there any resources you could point me toward?

the first thing you should know is that you can, technically, be a work-from-home freelance bookkeeper. but you probably shouldn't be because being your own boss sucks no matter what ladies selling essential oils try to tell you. however. there is nothing in this world stopping you from telling people that you are a self-employed freelance bookkeeper. if you have more than three friends with self-employment of their own then you probably know three people who can be a reference for you when applying for jobs. oh, him? yeah, i did the bookkeeping for his etsy business. that is definitely a real thing i did and you can't prove i didn't. spackle the gaps in your resume with time spent doing freelance work. and if you actually want to give freelance work a try there's nothing stopping you from bailing if it turns out it sucks.

anyway. you don't actually need an accounting degree to be a bookkeeper. if you want to go to community college and get an associate's degree, that's probably helpful but not actually necessary. taking an intro to accounting class will definitely be a help.

making a quickbooks online accountant account is free and gets you access to proadvisor, which will literally teach you how to use it as well as covering things like basic bookkeeping principles. lots of people will tell you that no one who knows what they're doing cares about dumbass little certification badges. we don't care about people who know what they're doing. we care about impressing people who are impressed by dumbass little badges and are bad enough with money to give us some.

for extra skills, hop on youtube and learn some excel basics. maybe some excel advanced. idk i like structure so i actually did this udemy course for funsies while i was still in college. it looks like they actually added a bunch of stuff to it since i bought it??? anyway it was a good investment for me and has saved me a stupid amount of hours. the only thing it didn't really cover was powerquery, so i guess look into that separately if you love data manipulation and impressing people.

you can be a fully remote bookkeeper, but my limited experience is that a fully remote bookkeeper is seen as pretty replaceable. what's invaluable is a bookkeeper in an office older than you are where everyone there is scared of computers. i got mine by sticking my resume into indeed and letting it notify me when there were nearby jobs fitting the criteria. then i clicked a button to autosubmit my resume. this is not best practices but if you want a low-effort job you have to find somewhere that will accept a low-effort application.

keep your linkedin updated with your latest certs and skills and sometimes you might get a job from it, you wouldn't think that would work but apparently it does

mostly probably check out the quickbooks thing

[darkforge33]

Hey! If you're like me and struggle with Time Blindness, listen up!! I made a Free Time Decision board!

I got a cute poster board thats bright along with stickies that pop so that I can visually see what I can do with my free time (also generally good for object permanence and executive dysfunction).

Time blindness has seriously affected the way I spend my days. It's hard enough for school work and regular work, but it's also hard for choosing what to do in my free time. Sometimes if I have 30 minutes of free time, I'll start drawing, only to hypercocus on that and not listen during class. However, if I have 4 hours of free time, I won't know what to do with my time so I mostly end up endlessly scrolling on social media and feel like I'm wasting my time, leading to self deprecation.

So, I decided to make this Board:

The board is split into 4 sections, based on how much time an activity takes. Each section has stickies that are color-coded.

Pink stickies are things that I would like to prioritize. Green stickies are self care things and hobbies I would like to do more often.

Yellow stickies are things I commonly do that I would like to prioritize the least, but still enjoy doing.

When I finish a task during my free time, I draw a heart on a sticky. Although, if you want to make it more fun, use stickers to check off a task.

Finally, the check marks or stickers are meant for you to visually see what tasks you haven't done that often so it makes it easier to decide on what to do and to generally see how you spend your free time.

So yeah! Quick and easy to make, and cheap for supplies. So the next time you're not sure about how you want to spend your free time and don't want to regret about how you spend it, use this board!

[darkforge33]

Hi guys!

[darkforge33]

a quick and sloppy tutorial on drawing profiles for the anon who requested it. hope this helps some people! 

[darkforge33]

I think the perfect illustration of how absurd the psychology of executive dysfunction is that, when I’m having a bad function day, I often find it helpful to groan like an annoyed zombie before undertaking some physical task. Like, it doesn’t just make me feel better - it legitimately helps. I have performatively registered my protest against the very concept of Doing Things with whatever powers might be listening, and can therefore proceed to Do The Thing.

[darkforge33]

Recently accidentally discovered the best executive dysfunction hack I’ve ever found

Ok so we’ve all heard of tips involving lists, make a list of everything you need to do, cross it out when you’re done, etc.

Well recently next to each item on my list, I wrote down how to start that task. This can be as simple as “get out my notebook and the assignment” or a little more detailed like “open chemistry textbook to page 235 and review the section on gibbs free energy”

Basically, you do all the executive functioning all at once before you start your tasks! Now when you get to the task, your brain doesn’t need to access that executive functioning to figure out how to start, you’ve already done it. Even stupid stuff like “take the assignment out of your backpack” helps a weird amount when it’s written down. Like it helps more than you think it should. I was rolling my eyes up until the point where it worked

[darkforge33]

I’m a very messy person who tries VERY HARD to keep a clean home. It’s probably ADHD. Anyway, the best advice I ever saw about it was:

“Instead of changing your habits to keep clean, look at where the clutter is. Now put a bin under it.”

I tend to remove my socks at the computer and then there’s a mountain of socks on the floor? I put a small bin and now it looks tidy. There are piles of junk mail on the table near my front door because I can never bring them to the recycling bin? I put a smaller recycling bin there. Etc etc.

Another trick that helps me immensely are BOXES.

The bathroom sink is covered in small bottles and all sorts of products? I got small plastic crates and I put them over the toilet lid, one for my stuff, the other for my roomate’s. The linen closet is just piles of things that fall when you open the door? Baby I just got a bunch of baskets and I will separate them by function.

I have baskets and small boyxes for: my cleaning products; my bird’s toys and stuff; my workout accessories; my meds and daily skincare products; my tools; and pretty much all my art stuff. 

It still takes some effort to keep everything in its place, but having everything in a box still looks tons better than having everything on the counter, and it’s so better for the mental health. 

[darkforge33]

my two categories of anime rec are “it’s okay if you don’t really like anime, you’ll probably like this” and “this will not make any goddamn sense to you if you have not wasted years of your life on trash”

[darkforge33]

the essentials of writing FIGHT SCENES!

I realized that there weren’t a lot of fight scene tutorials on here that addressed a lot of the common mistakes of fight scenes. I have a non-zero amount of experience with Krav Maga and have been told I’m very good with fight scenes so I thought I might as well write out a little advice 

Keep in mind that this is best suited to “nasty hand to hand street fighting” and even then there are probably better people to ask about it. But here goes. 

What’s the One Important Thing I’d have you remember? 

Best piece of fight scene advice I’ve ever heard: Violence is fast. Whenever people are involved in some kind of accident or tragedy, what they say is “It happened so fast!” So no matter what, think fast. The main mistake I see with fight scenes is unrealistic description, and it comes from a lack of understanding of a fight being a very altered state of consciousness, where your character is at the limits of their ability to process shit. So: 

How to Describe a Fight Scene! 

The Language: Go for the strongest verbs you can find and use them. Think slam, crash, smash, pound, grind, shove, ram, claw, rip, gouge, bash…You want very verb driven writing. This is the time to pull out that thesaurus and that list of 500 verbs to use in writing or whatever. Don’t let adjectives and adverbs carry the weight. “She punched him hard in the gut” needs to be “She slammed a fist into his gut.” Or better, let the fist be the subject: “Her fist slammed in his gut.”  If there’s any time to adhere hardcore to active voice, it’s now. Also notice that I shortened “into” to “in”- it’s best to go with language that’s as short and well, punchy, grammar be damned. This is also why I go with “gut” rather than “stomach.” Sentence fragments and em-dashes and such are your friends. Cut out articles and conjunctions wherever you can. And try to keep the subject and verb of every action close together–it’s much more direct and better able to connote that intense aggression that you want. 

So, you might have something like this: “As she tried to throw a punch at his face, he dodged aside, moving in, his body twisting, to kick her in the ribs.” 

You might notice the following issues: The verbs are fairly weak- tried, moving. “Dodged” is good but the others fall flat. There are a lot of extraneous words. And the clause at the beginning makes the sentence feel too indirect. 

So these are the changes I would make: “Her fist darted for his face. He dodged aside. Slipped closer, twisted–his heel crashed into ribcage.” 

That’s the technical stuff out of the way. Now for some more general advice on fights:

In a fight, you really don’t think. There are two things your brain can do: percieve and respond. In such an adrenaline-fueled survival situation, you’re a bundle of instinctive reaction and OHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCK. A skilled fighter doesn’t mentally remember techniques, the techniques are just the first response that springs out at an attack because they’re second nature. And the thing is, you CAN’T remember techniques in the fight. Adrenaline makes you big stupid. Brain is a faraway land, but body is here, in danger, and trying to stay alive. This is what I mean by your character being at the limits of their processing—they have very little room to think because they’re in survival mode.

That’s why you practice techniques One Fuckthousand Times in martial arts. It’s actually wild how little conscious thought there is to it. I’m always going to remember the time when I, a smol orange belt, was sparring with a larger guy and his fist was flying at my face and I just…wove underneath it. Without even thinking. Pure instinct. I had two guys like, beaming at me and pounding me on the back at the breakthrough but I was confused at the time because it felt like a complete accident. So what you should get out of this is—yeah, no internal monologue! Write what your character perceives and write what they respond.

Description of any kind, but especially visual description, will be highly fragmented. If your character is in a fight with another character, they’re not going to be extensively perceiving their surroundings and noticing the thick curtains of ivy on the walls or whatever. Their focus will be. On the fight. Part of the reason for this is that adrenaline makes you focus hard on threats and kind of cancels out irrelevant data. I want to point out visual description specifically as an area of concern though because for one thing, your field of view is going to be limited as you try to protect your head and face, you’re going to need to pay attention to your aggressor and anticipate their next move, and finally, if you get punched in the face or have anything come close to hitting you there you’re going to be blinded temporarily because you’ll instinctively shut your eyes. NO SCENERY! If your character’s getting pummeled in the face they’re probably not noticing the vicious gleam in their adversary’s eyes outside of a quick glimpse. Imagine the whole thing is being filmed through a panicking amateur’s shaky camera.

Hone in hard on your character’s body in your descriptions. They’re inhabiting their body in a super intense way and most of your description will probably lean toward the tactile. This not only includes the awareness of pain or of being hit, but also the movement and coordination of their muscles and how they are working together, their breathing, potentially exhaustion or fatigue. Martial arts allows you to experience how your body produces force—to percieve the flow of power through your entire torso that culminates in a punch. This feeling can add a lot to a description of a fight. A punch or a kick’s power doesn’t come from muscular strength of your limbs, but originates throughout your body and the ability to coordinate that and draw it together into a single hard point of power involves a lot of consciousness of your body, which also becomes second nature.

Almost the entirety of your character’s focus will be firmly in their body. They are perceiving their adversary’s movements, but that is sharply edged with their own reactions to them.

I feel like people often don’t realize how intense taking a hit in a fight can be. A punch to the face or head is blinding and dizzying; taking a hit to the temple will snap your head aside and put you completely out of it for a second. Descriptions of these things need to be very grounded and intense to feel right. Getting hit in the chest hard enough can knock the wind out of you. Getting hit in the gut WILL make you retch or throw up. A hard kick to the gut is like instant vomit. (There’s another post with really excellent descriptions about what certain blows feel like so I’ll leave this at that.)

Your character will perceive pain, both the force of the blow they take and a sense of the scale or breadth of the pain, but adrenaline will keep them going through it to a degree that isn’t possible when not pumped full of adrenaline. Your character will probably know that they’ve been injured (oh fuck, that was a nasty hit to the side) but AFTER the fight, expect the real pain to suddenly hit (oh fuck, there’s a giant bruise over my side and it’s aching so deep I can barely move).

Adrenaline makes you straight up loopy sometimes. Y’all know how much I hate anecdotal evidence, but one of my former instructors told a story about how he was mugged, got slammed against the sidewalk and briefly blacked out, fought back, and then just…decided to go to work. He thought he was fine. A few hours later, paramedics were asking him questions and he was completely incoherent. He had a severe concussion but the adrenaline rush had caused a delay in the damage really hitting, to the point that he was just like “heh, I can go straight to work, I’m fine!”

Some general facts:

A fight is probably going to be over pretty quickly: Movies are deceptive about this but it’s not super realistic to have two characters tangling with each other for like…ten minutes straight. You get tired. You get sloppy. And there’s only so much damage you can take.

Fancy kicks not recommended: They look nice on screen, sure. But having your leg above your waist for any length of time is one hell of a risk when your opponent can grab it and slam you to the floor like a sack of concrete mix. HOWEVER, kicks can be fight enders. A heel kick will break ribs easily.

Dirty fighting: This is the Kravist in me, but knees to the groin are valid and will completely immobilize a testicle-having attacker. Elbows are also highly destructive, but you tend not to see them in movie fights much. Biting is valid and bites can be very nasty. Gouging eyes is very effective. It’s also easier than you would think to rip the skin off someone’s face with your nails if you’re already going feral. A good punch to the throat might end a fight.

Blocking or dodging blows: Your character can deflect a punch or a knife attack to the upper body with forearms, and your arms will cushion a blow to the head as well. You can also duck your head around an attempted blow to the face. It’s important, though, to think of your two characters’ actions as interlocking rather than alternating—a character going in for a hit will at least briefly have one of their limbs extended instead of protecting the body, and the other character will be taking that opening. Have them dodge the blow and slide into their own opportunity in a single movement.

Shit Happens: A fight is not an equation where you plug in the size and weight of both adversaries and get the result. Again, this is the Kravist in me, but the only law is Murphy’s law. An attempt to land a blow can go sour and break somebody’s wrist. An attacker can trip and fall. Puddles and improvised weapons and getting blood or sweat in your eyes can all be wild cards. An experienced fighter can get fucked up by someone smaller and less experienced than they because of luck. That said, though, experience is what helps you adapt to the Murphy’s-law-ness of everything.

Yeah that’s what I’ve got, enjoy ur violence

[darkforge33]

[darkforge33]

I was just reading an ADHD post about breaking tasks up into smaller chunks, and I wanted to share something that helped me.

Once upon a time, I was sitting at my desk at 3am, having procrastinated all day, and finally got to the stage where I was so desperate to meet my 9am deadline I made an itemised list of every single thing I had to do, to the level of "1) Open this document. 2) Open this web page. 3) Arrange the windows so you can see both at once... Etc." It took me hours, and I was beating myself up the whole time because I knew I was spending three times as long making the list as I would doing the task, good god, what's wrong with me, this is so stupid...

I finished the list. I went through it step by step. And then I was done.

It was a revelation. It was so incredibly easy, once the list was there.

Since then I've thought: so what if making the list takes three times as long as doing the task? That's what it takes. That's PART OF THE TASK. It's the most important part, because it's the bit that means you can start at all.

Now if I'm struggling I give myself permission to use the most time consuming strategies, to hold my own hand like I'm a two year old, to guide myself through the tiniest of baby steps, because that's a skill I've fought for and it works.

Maybe this is obvious to everyone else. But if there's anyone out there like me, perhaps not yet diagnosed, beating themself up for not being able to just get things done like a normal person, I want to say this: make that list even as the clock ticks down to your deadline. Its not a waste of time. It's part of the task.

[darkforge33]

me: *writes fic*

me: great! time to post to ao3-

ao3 summary box: *exists*

me: 

ao3 summary box:

me:

ao3 summary box: 

me:

[darkforge33]

[darkforge33]

“The Pyramid Guy from the opening credits literally has no significance to the show and never will. He’s just a generic image made to look mythological or spooky like most things in the intro.”

[darkforge33]

I love seeing list memes where someone makes a "le cool people vs le cringe" and they obviously skew it so they barely scrape by into the cool kids club

[darkforge33]

Worlds oldest haunted house has passed away at the age of 207