still one of my favorite bits i ever got to commit was pretending not to know who jesus is when a street preacher was evangelizing to me. he was like "do you know who jesus is?" and i had so much time before my next bus and i wanted to know what would happen so i said no. and you know what. he had clearly never been told no to that question before because if i hadn't actually known who jesus was, his baffled and fumbling attempt sure wouldn't have told me. literally reversed the roles. now you get to stand here feeling very uncomfortable and wishing you could be somewhere else because guess what buddy, this is my bus stop, im early (and can catch like five other buses from this exact stop), and im now thoroughly invested in hearing about this mysterious jesus figure. you're locked in here with me. im eating the key as we speak. i will kill us both before i let you out of here.
very highly recommend this bit if you can pull it off and if you have time to kill
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I don't know how strictly accurate this is, but one of the things I find shocking about watching historical dramas is how many people there are around all the time---according to Madame de... (1953) a well-off French household in the Belle Epoque maintains a workforce of at least 3, and the glittering opera has staff just to open doors. According to Shogun (2024) you can expect a deep bench just to mind your household, and again, people who exist to open doors.
Could people....not open doors in the past? Were doors tricky, before the standardization of hinges? Because otherwise, the wealthy used to pay a whole bunch of people to do it for them in multiple contexts, and I find myself baffled.
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how do you write a liar?
How to Write Liars Believably
Language
The motive of every goal is the make the lie seem plausible while taking blame off the speaker, so liars will often project what they say to a third party: "Katie said that..."
Referring to third parties as "they" rather than he or she
In the case of a deliberate lie prepped beforehand, there will be an overuse of specific names (rather than pronouns) as the speaker tries to get the details right.
Overuse of non-committal words like "something may have happened"
Masking or obscuring facts like "to the best of my knowledge" and “it is extremely unlikely," etc.
Avoiding answers to specific, pressing questions
Voice
There's isn't a set tone/speed/style of speaking, but your character's speech patten will differ from his normal one.
People tend to speak faster when they're nervous and are not used to lying.
Body Language
Covering their mouth
Constantly touching their nose
fidgeting, squirming or breaking eye contact
turning away, blinking faster, or clutching a comfort object like a cushion as they speak
nostril flaring, rapid shallow breathing or slow deep breaths, lip biting, contracting, sitting on your hands, or drumming your fingers.
Highly-trained liars have mastered the art of compensation by freezing their bodies and looking at you straight in the eye.
Trained liars can also be experts in the art of looking relaxed. They sit back, put their feet up on the table and hands behind their head.
For deliberate lies, the character may even carefully control his body language, as though his is actually putting on a show
The Four Types of Liars
Deceitful: those who lie to others about facts
2. Delusional: those who lie to themselves about facts
3. Duplicitious: those who lie to others about their values
Lying about values can be even more corrosive to relationships than lying about facts.
4. Demoralized: those who lie to themselves about their values
Additional Notes
Genuine smiles or laughs are hard to fake
Exaggerations of words (that would normally not be emphasized) or exaggerated body language
Many savvy detectives ask suspects to tell the story in reverse or non-linear fashion to expose a lie. They often ask unexpected, or seemingly irrelevant questions to throw suspects off track.
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Crack prompt: Danny has declared war on the curses in Gotham. He is armed with a water balloon gun, but the balloons are full of medical-grade ectoplasm. He targets any location, ghost, or liminal being tainted by curses and/or corrupted ecto - absolutely drenching them before yeeting off again.
This includes the Bats. Danny is smart about it, though. He lived in Gotham for several months before acting, so he could get the lay of the land. He also waits for patrol to be finished before hitting the Bats - he doesn't want to interrupt their Quest to Better Gotham (or be labeled an invader to their haunt).
One night, Danny happens upon Batman patrolling alone and waits for him to finish cleaning up a crime scene before hitting they guy with a half-clip of balloons. Batman gives chase, like he always does, and Danny runs, like he always does. He knows by now that, for whatever reason, Crime Alley is off limits to Batman. The whole alley just gives off "no (other) bats allowed" vibes.
Red hood is just more territorial. Whatever.
At any rate, Danny is enjoying the chase, using just enough ghost powers to stay ahead of batman, almost-but-not-quite taunting him. Crime Alley isn't too far, so instead of turning invisible around a corner like he usually does, he makes his way to the Alley to see if the no-trasspassing rule is enough to stop Batman mid-chase. He leaps across rooftops and weaves through fire escapes, ecto-balloon-gun bouncing by its strap against his back, until finally he's at the border, slightly tapping into flight to make the jump across a slightly wider road into the alley proper.
He turns around immediately, spotting Batman skulking on the rooftop on the other side of the road, stopping the chase and suit half-covered in healing ectoplasm.
"Sanctuary!" Danny yells, pumping his fists in the air from getting caught up in the exciting rush of adrenaline, "I claim sanctuary!"
"Who the fuck is claiming sanctuary in my territory?" Red Hood booms from almost directly behind Danny. He would have yeeted out of his own skin from surprise if he hadn't spent years honing his ghost-fighting instincts. As it was, Danny instead whirled around and emptied the clip of balloons into Hood, purely out of reflex.
Hood stood there, drenched in ecto like his fellow Bat one rooftop over, glaring murder at Danny with glowing eyes. But his haunt betrayed Hood's true emotions.
Surprise, concern, impressed, you-little-brat.
Danny booked it to the fire escape and turned invisible the second he was out of sight.
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my favorite thing about Steve is that he’s actually a very confident guy, overconfident I would say sometimes, so in my head he has the shortest gay crisis ever like he realizes on a random Tuesday morning while slowly rotting on his costumer service job that his weird fixation with Eddie and how close he is with that punk dude from the Hideout is jealousy actually, so that means he has a crush on Eddie. Huh, that’s weird, has he had crushes on guys before? Maybe, his friendship with Tommy was intense and weirdly possessive actually, and their fight did feel like a breakup kind off and Tommy did behave like a bitter ex afterwards… also now that he thinks about it his obsession with the captain of the baseball team who was a senior when he was a junior was totally a crush in retrospective. And as he comes to this conclusion he also thinks damn what a waste, I could 100% have pulled him. So that same day he’s driving to Eddie’s place like “hi i’m taking you out” and Eddie doesn’t know if he’s about to be wine and dinned or murdered in the middle of the woods but he’s also a weak weak man for pretty boys so he just follows where Steve tells him to go. They have a lovely date at the dinner and then drive up to the quarry to see the sunset and then a very intense makeout sesh in the back of Steve’s car when Eddie remembers to ask him if he’s even into guys. Steve who already has his hands in Eddie’s pants looks him dead in the eye and says “yeah since this morning I think, but also since forever.” And Eddie who had to spend years slowly crawling his way out of Narnia to even admit to himself he was gay even less admitting it to others just blinks and accepts the fact that yeah, Steve Harrington has always had that vibe actually, and resumes kissing him.
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Jazz is wandering Gotham with Danny after their parents visited the city for a convention but left them behind in the excitement of one of their ghost traps going off on the other side of the country.
The hotel they were staying at kicked them out not caring if they had a place to stay or not, only caring that the source of money had left.
Jazz couldn't show how scared she actually was, not when Danny was looking at her with complete faith that she could somehow fix this.
How he managed to keep that faith after a day of jumping at shadows like they held enemies and vending machine food for lunch was a mystery.
She's tired, she's stressed, and she needs an adult.
Like an actual adult and not her much loved but very scatterbrained parents, Vlad did not count either.
Nightwing: *falls from great heights into nearby dumpster* ...ow.
Jazz: ...You'll do.
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