Things that Writers Often Get Wrong

Is there something in fiction and fanfiction that you feel authors are often confidently incorrect about? Something you have knowledge or experience in, that they clearly don't? Maybe your job or illness is misrepresented in stories, or you can tell that they haven't done their own historical research. Here are some answers from Reddit, and feel free to discuss your answers in the comments!
Link to the original thread on r/FanFiction: / something_you_frequent...
(some comments in my video have been trimmed down by me for length purposes)
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Twitter: / joey_tonka

[@elizalil]

"your majesty" is for the king and queen, "your highness" is for a prince or princess. i regret learning that they were not interchangeable because now it frustrates me to no end lmao

[@nevergonnagiveyouup1180]

FUCK! Now I know, so I’m gonna be annoyed when I see it. Thanks a lot /j

[@elizalil]

@@nevergonnagiveyouup1180 sorry you have to share my pain now😔😔

[@mannydavis7708]

There's also a difference between "Your Highness" and "Your Royal Highness." And "Your Majesty" is never "Your Royal Majesty" because Majesty's are all royal by definition.

[@laisphinto6372]

That actually depends ON country,Region and language

[@Barakon]

That shit is specific? What a bunch a bullshit.

[@unaestheticfrog11]

Reminder from a fencer: you can see someone's face even if they're wearing a fencing mask

[@sunandshadow6593]

I can't if I'm also wearing a fencing mask. Then again, my glasses have been scratched for a long time so it could be that.

[@fashioncakes]

@@sunandshadow6593yeah, i personally can’t, but my glasses prescription meeds to be updated so 😭

[@tticusFinch]

Lol right?? I still remember the look on one opponent's face when I got a touch on him. Beautiful.

[@idontneedaname318]

Honestly it depends I feel like

[@elvenfellow8596]

When I fence, I really struggle to see the other person's face... Idk, the general thing is you can't see their face, so you have to focus on the blade.

[@charleston1789]

Crescendo: it means ‘building up’, not ‘climax’. It’s a very common mistake and drives me bananas!

[@breadcat82]

where did you see that though 💀

[@Yttrium393b]

Definition of crescendo: (Figurative) A gradual increase of anything, especially to a dramatic climax So no, they are also correct, it can be used for the increase and the climax

[@twinklystar5283]

@@Yttrium393bthey’re not, it means build up *to* the climax

[@Wolfie54545]

Smooth Criminal got this wrong then

[@BigBlueTurtle-cu9sv]

YES, that is honestly so annoying as a person who plays several instruments.

[@kenyastarflight]

Blood remaining red LONG after it's stained or splashed onto a surface. Blood oxidizes and turns brown after a certain amount of time, so having bright red stains on clothes, the floor, a wall, a blade, etc. years after the fact is kinda laughable.

[@KiixPronouncedKicks]

I’ve gotten blood on my bedsheets on multiple occasions (damn you uterus) and it always took an hour or less to turn brown

[@mehizcringe]

@@KiixPronouncedKicks the rebooting of the ovarian system is a pain sometimes 😭

[@Joey7Z7Horror]

I get this as well but I can personally appreciate the image of a sharply, brightly red blood spatter in an abandoned aftermath (just not too long after though to where it loses all that logic)

[@aki-senkinn]

Yeah but having brown stuff splattered everywhere would also be laughed at by more people for different reasons... Blood being red is more of a symbol than a realistic depiction and for this once, i think i prefer staying not realistic

[@benejack666]

And it can oxidize fast, depending on how much blood is there.

[@mrh8142]

Not anything big but once someone put in a fanfic that it took 4 hours to drive from NYC to California and it made me laugh so hard

[@UltimateDespairado]

What are they… Batman?

[@inkylynx2777]

They must've been from a smaller country then; I've noticed it amongst my European and Filipino friends that they don't quite have a grasp for how LONG it takes to get from point A to point B in the States (and Canada for that matter).

[@pikacrafter2903]

I don't even live in a big state and you can easily drive 4 hours without leaving it.

[@BRUH-ne2zf]

Even the fastest plane the SR71 Blackbird took longer to travel that distance.

[@1leon000]

I'm from Europe, and I know that America and Canada are probably as big as our whole continent. No, driving from coast to coast would be 2 days, that's why you fly. I feel like most people from my part of the world can't comprehend domestic flights. They think you fly to go to a foreign place you'd have to pass through at least like 10 countries to get to, let alone fly on a plane and still be in the country both on departure and on arrival.

[@oddlyspecificvibesforwrite3919]

Adding onto the children one, children from the ages of 4-11 are always written with the same intelligence as a 4yo and it grinds my gears. An 8 year old is going to NOTICE what’s happening to the older characters and change their behaviour accordingly, they’re not stupid and oblivious

[@shiNIN42]

Not always. Too many Harry Potter fanfiction have super mature kid (quite several years beyond their age). Sometimes a 5 years old totally alone goes to places and I really envy their very high level of eloquence! I only use English since 2 decades (not my first language and I never lived in an English talking country but I use it more than my own since several years and read way too much), I am NOTHING compared to that (I am not good I know but I mean it, I am nothing, not just way worse). I don't expect a fanfic writer to write kids super well (I wouldn't notice it anyway unless it's extreme) but I don't often see adults talking like that! :D It was just way too fancy, showing off some impressive vocabulary... Even if it suited the official letter. So it happens in both direction. Sometimes they are epically off.

[@princessroyal80]

Honestly just people in general tend to assume kids do nothing but say ‘goo goo ga ga’ and suck their thumb until they become teenagers. Third graders are able to read chapter books. If they can read they can do much more.

[@satellitestargazer2770]

@@princessroyal80 For real, they write 10 year olds like 4 year olds. A 10 year old is not going to have "twuble pwonounshing" big words unless they have some type of speech impediment.

[@genericname2747]

I hate when media has a kid drawing, and it looks super childish. Like, someone 10 years old isn't going to do stick figures if they draw a lot.

[@Roryzcreationstation]

I am so sick of 11 year olds being written like toddlers 😭 I was reading very violent, long animal books (iykyk) at that age and YOUNGER.

[@SkiggsMoDiggs]

Water. This isn't Minecraft. Falling into water does not suddenly cushion your fall. Because of the surface tension, it would actually be very much like landing squarely onto concrete, and if that didn't kill you then your broken bones preventing you from swimming out of the water will as you slowly drown. Or if you land legs-first like a spear, your fall will take a very long time to slow down and if you didn't land in a very deep body of water then you could break your legs hitting the bottom, and once again be stuck drowning You're much better off falling into some trees than a body of water. It'll hurt, but hitting the trees and branches will take away *some* momentum of your fall without stopping you completely and killing you, so by the time you *do* hit the ground you'll be severely battered, bruised, and probably have broken bones, but you're more likely to still be alive. And you won't be drowning!

[@The_Twisted_Accursed]

Facts, dawg. I hate it when media doesn't take that into consideration

[@blipboigilgamesh7865]

Do you have any sort of source to any of that? Not that I think it's BS but it's a kind of "he said she said" game of conjecture. Like how can you be sure it's that way?

[@SkiggsMoDiggs]

@@blipboigilgamesh7865 I did research this, but it was a long time ago so I don't have my sources readily available. But have you ever gone swimming before and tried doing a belly flop? There is a reason it hurts, its the surface tension. If that badly hurts just from simply jumping in from ground level, imagine what it'd be like landing in water from hundreds of feet in the sky.

[@brookenash8729]

Myth busters did an episode on it. Hitting the water is slightly less lethal on contact than concrete, but that doesn't get rid of the drowning risk.

[@tsifirakiehl4250]

@blipboigilgamesh7865 I have a source: someone once threw a water balloon from a moving car, and it hit me in the head. It was like being hit with a brick, and the ensuing concussion was bad enough that I had to take a leave of absence from college and will not be graduating on time. Water at high velocity will absolutely wreck a person.

[@encryptidarchivist]

lava, being melted rock, is a loooot more dense than a human body, meaning you will not sink if you fall into it. you'll stay on the surface and burn to a crisp. a lot of people (not just in fanfic) treat lava as if it's hot glowing water. very different substance! also, neurodivergence. i once read a description of a character that was "she has adhd but it doesn't really affect her other than her energy" and a part of my soul died edit: not to be that person but the fact that this comment got 1k likes in a day is insane?? uh. thanks guys, glad you like the lava fact

[@RiveRiveRiveRio]

I think it's Minecraft that really bended people's look on reality tbh (PLEASE DONT TAKE THIS AS VIDEO GAME BAD I LOVE MINECRAFT IT WOULD BE LIKE INSULTING MY KINDERGARTEN)

[@Tiggeralt]

@@RiveRiveRiveRio Oh, it was a cliché long before Minecraft.

[@Redfrootloop]

Re: LotR Gollum sinking into the lava with the ring ​@@Tiggeralt

[@AbsolutelyAri1]

I also hate when they think it kills you 😭😭 Yes it will burn you badly but unless you are in a lot and can't get out you'll live

[@IceRiver1020]

People also don’t seem to realize that just being near lava is enough to burn you, it doesn't have to touch your skin, and falling in lava is a slower, more painful death than people realize.

[@IceRiver1020]

Horses. Just, horses. I cannot list all of the ways I have seen people do horses wrong, because it is EVERYTHING. I guess I'll go over some of the most common though. 1. Horses are actually pretty intelligent, they're easily comparable to dogs. There are some things dogs do better than horses, but the reverse is also true. Horses have excellent memory (dressage horses memorize some very complex routines), a great sense of direction, and are brilliant at reading human expressions and body language, which is a part of why service ponies are a thing (yes, like dogs, horses can be service animals, and I mean REAL service animals). Horses also have personalities, and preferences. 2. If you have never ridden a horse before, you will have a very hard time riding at any gait above a walk, you will get very sore, and even if you have someone telling you what to do, you will struggle to guide the horse. And I do mean guide, not control, you do not CONTROL a 1000+ lbs animal, they choose to cooperate with you (or to not do that, if they do not trust or respect you, and respect is a very different thing from fear). Riding is not even a little bit as easy as most people think it looks, it's actually a LOT harder and more physically demanding than driving your car, and you need muscle to do it, particularly in your core. 3. Ethically, a horse can only carry so much weight, including tack (saddles are NOT light). The weight on a horse's back should never exceed 20% of its weight, it does not matter what breed they are. Weight distribution is also very important, because only the strongest part of the horse's back should bear any real amount of weight. All of this to say, two people on one horse is not okay, unless perhaps one of them is a small child! And mounting should be done gently, stop having characters vault onto their backs, that hurts! Believe it or not, horses aren't actually made to carry you on their backs, so if you do it wrong, you can easily cause them a lot of pain and injury! Also, bareback riding should always be done with a bareback pad, it's better for the horse's back. 4. If you are going to write about horses to any degree, at least do the barest amount of research to understand basic terminology, like: Mare, stallion, gelding, filly, colt, foal, pony, tack, saddle, bridle, girth, stirrups, halter, lead rope... 5. When riding horses, you cannot simply get on and go from 0 to 100, they need to warm up just like you do before exercise, and need to be cooled down / walked out afterwards. While horses naturally travel great distances in the wild, it's a lot harder on them to carry riders for long distances, especially if they have not been trained and conditioned for it. Riding horses are like athletes, and need to be cared for as such.

[@catbatrat1760]

breadcrumb comment

[@R.P-e2z]

Yeah, a lot of city slickers seem to think that horses are just living bicycles. They are not.

[@mackenziebowman9811]

THIS

[@mackenziebowman9811]

The therapy animal thing is true, the only animals that can actually be therapy animals are dogs and horses. Any other can only be an emotional support animal.

[@Night_Light9123]

I'm a former equestrian, and i completely agree on all accounts. A few months ago I went on a trail ride with my father and it was his first time on a horse, the sores he complained about afterwards were almost laughable, and he did struggle to guide him (the horse) during moments when we'd have to go off trail to do something, because other than that, the horse is doing all the work because they know that trail after years of working it, you're just a living bundle of meat with the illusion of control

[@Ravenbloom57868]

I read a warrior cat fanfic where where a was pregnant with three kits for nine months. Last time I checked cats are pregnant for two months not nine months or nine weeks. Also, just because someone is blushing, does not mean they like you or flattered by you I really don’t like how people just accept that as fact

[@Lilyrose-Violet]

I mean it’s warrior cats. I think it’s canonical that the give birth at like 5 months because biology don’t exist in that world 😭

[@aino-kaisav5504]

​@@Lilyrose-VioletAnd the kits can open their eyes the day they are born. Like that Bluestar prequel had a freaky start with a couple-of-days old kitten having a sentient mind of what I would say is equivalent to a five-year-old child.

[@Lilyrose-Violet]

@@aino-kaisav5504 When I read that I was so confused but just went with it because is that really the most unrealistic thing? 😭 These aren’t cats, they gotta be another species

[@daizy7441]

the blushing one is so real. its awful because people "blush" when they're embarrassed (not the in the cute way) and generally upset, but people act like that means they're reciprocating flirting when it very well could mean the exact opposite

[@justwonderinqrache5847]

@@daizy7441 My face turns red when I get angry. In middle school there's this girl who would constantly bother me about which guy I like, always "suggesting" people, and whenever I get angry at her she would say "oooooh you're blushingggg you like hiiimmm!" So annoying.

[@bluemoon4779]

When writing about blind characters/blind fics, people forget blindness is a spectrum, and thst most people who are blind have some kind of residual vision.

[@JuanLeon-oe6xe]

Not so much from the writer but the fans, but Daiya Higashikata reading with a magnifying glass sent Jojo fans in a frenzy. Sight-impairment doesn't necessarily mean full blindness, Hell, Daiya even rides a bike! _Le sigh_ That is "Araki forgot" for you. Edit: "Jojo fan forgot how youtube comment formatting works"

[@Eliasthescumbag]

im pattially blind its in weird splotches so my brain fills in the gaps and thus: i get extremely blurry vision, the type glasses cant help.

[@marcosgonzalez4207]

​@@JuanLeon-oe6xe i absolutely forgot that Daiya read a book Man, i need to re-read Jojolion and Steel Ball Run, i can even name every stand from part 3 and almost everyone from parts 4, 5 and 6

[@RedFloyd469]

This is less a misunderstanding of how blindness works and just a lack of communication as to how we define "blind", with a general increase in needing to be "specifically blind", made exclusively for people who want their cake of feeling like they need special care because of blindness and eating it too, meaning to also NOT be blind. For the absolute vast majority of people. "Blind" is not a spectrum. It's a state of being that means total inability to see. What you're talking about is gradual sightloss or impaired vision, not blindness. You don't know how absolutely frustrating it is for someone to tell me they're "deaf" only to mean they're deaf IN ONE EAR, or just have TROUBLE HEARING. The same applies to sight. No. That's NOT what "deaf" means, and that's NOT what "blind" means.

[@bluemoon4779]

@@RedFloyd469 Only 10-15% of blind people are totally blind. I'm “legally“ blind. I go to a school full of blind people. I think I know what I'm talking about, thank you very much.

[@lunarskys2645]

Women back then *never* would have tied a corset tighter than they could handle. Because not only is that super bad for most everyone's bones but *being skinny wasn't hot back then* . Being proportional was though. Your hips needed to be this much bigger than your waist. If they weren't, it's much easier to add padding onto your hips than to tie your corset thinner around your waist. The only people who ever would've tied their corset tighter were people with more fat on their bodies. Because clinching down harder on fat isn't a problem because you're just moving fat around a bit. Skinny people would never do that because you'd have no fat to push, and you'd be trying to crunch down your bones. Which hurts and is stupid so no one did it. They're just old timey bras you guys, I frankly prefer them to bras because they feel so nice and it keeps my back from spasming, keeps be from having panic attacks and I can hide my phone in it. So I have way more pockets than if I don't have it.

[@lunarskys2645]

PS: being fat was actually considered attractive, because you could only overeat if you had money. And money will always be sexy to people. If you're reading an old book, and you see "plump as a partridge" that's a compliment. 😊

[@bogwife7942]

eh. you can get _some_ compression as a skinny person. human are made of meat and therefore squishy, not to mention your ribs can move pretty easily (if you don't believe me, try pressing on your lower ribs and you'll see what I mean). but you're right, people with more fat would get _better_ results. I just don't think it's correct to say that no one tightlaced ever. there are enough extant books and magazines seriously discussing it that i think it would be pretty reasonable to have your character tightlace for whatever reason, if that's what would suit your story. it would just be important to emphasize that this was an unusual choice even for the time

[@lunarskys2645]

@@bogwife7942 fair enough, but even if you can squish your ribs a bit, it's not healthy by any means. And I guess a better way to phrase it is no one who's _logical_ would try to tie it as tight as Hollywood wants you to think was normal.

[@bogwife7942]

@@lunarskys2645 "no one who's _logical_" that sounds pretty sexist. and why would it be unhealthy to wear something that moves your ribs slightly? the body is very adaptable. remember, victorian women of all classes (even upper class women who tightlaced) lived well into their 70-80s just like the men around them. claiming that anyone who tightlaces is a ditzy illogical idiot just harkens right back to the sexist male doctors of the 1800s who started all these myths about corsets in the first place agreed, though, that hollywood seems to think extreme tightlaced corsets were the standard. (and the lack of chemises... pls those poor actresses 😭)

[@bogwife7942]

@@lunarskys2645 "no one who's logical would lace their corset that tight." is a pretty s‌e‌xis‌t thing to say. the whole reason people today think co‌rsets are bad for your he‌alth is because of ignorant male do‌ctors who thought they knew better than women about their own bodies--why would you perpetuate that? yes, agreed that hollywood thinks tightlacing was far more standard than it was, but women did tightlace. you have to remember that victorian women regularly lived into their 70s and 80s just like men. the body is flexible and adaptable--why would your ribs flexing a few millimetres be unhea‌lthy? especially if it's not all the time, as some sources suggest young women would only lace down for special events. why do you assume anyone tightlacing is illogical and doesn't know what's best for their own body? agreed, though, that hollywood doesn't know sh‌it. the corsets done up over bare skin... those poor actresses 😭

[@tineboes2726]

When someone's writing an autistic character or one with ADHD, and it's clear they looked up the DSM-5, made a list of all the possible symptoms, and checked each of them off in the writing process. While I'm sure it could happen, the vast majority of neurodivergent people don't have EVERY symptom, and certainly not to an extreme degree.

[@legendswarble2845]

Definitely this. I don't think I have all the possible symptoms for any of the conditions I've been diagnosed with. It's more like 60-80% on the intense ones and around 40-50% on the milder end.

[@bluemoon4779]

I do actually meet every ASD criteria, funnily enough. But I'm a bit more “severe“ than the quirky lil chars they like to write about, or for more severe chars, I do still have a personality.

[@liriodendronlasianthus]

Funny enough, I actually checked off everything in the DSM-V for ADHD but struggled to get diagnosed!

[@sadies8100]

And a lot of the more prominent symptoms aren't in the DSM-5 bc they're not quantifiable and they can't be used as diagnosable symptoms. The DSM-5 is written to diagnose from an outside perspective(and often only notes symptoms that irritate/inconvenience others), and won't actually give much information on the lived experience of ADHD/autistic people.

[@MeemahSN]

Or when they make symptoms personality traits.

[@motokuchoma]

When an intelligent character does not do anything intelligent like reason, research a hypothesis or improvise when something goes not as planned but instead are just essentially wizards who can see the future.

[@seguaye]

steven moffat callout

[@jamesmccray9347]

I immediately thought of hbomberguy’s video

[@Kyumifun]

Some YT guy had a video where he used an example of a Sherlock Holmes TV series (it was on Netflix i think?) And yeah, bro's a wizard

[@johnnye87]

While we're talking about Sherlock Holmes, he rarely uses "deduction" as he claims, and his trademark party trick is almost pure INductive reasoning (he observes things about his client and makes what he thinks are the most likely hypotheses to explain them all.) "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth" IS actually a decent definition of deductive logic! But he rarely uses this in practice (at least, he doesn't demonstrate it to Watson. I've seen at least one parody where Holmes read Watson's accounts and was horrified at how badly he misunderstood Holmes' reasoning process, simply recounting the correct conclusion and inserting some speculative nonsense to lead up to it...)

[@CollarboneThief]

Does that mean that if im not smart my characters cant be smart 🙁

[@YourWaywardDestiny]

A lot of people are unaware of exactly how many times they eat and drink in a day. They have no concept of every little snack they just casually chomp now and then. They have no notion at all of how much weight that much food and water would amount to. And they're out here going "Babydoll packed enough food for a week" then have Babydoll sprint at full speed for prolonged periods. Babydoll is having a hard time standing up with a week's worth of food, never mind sprinting out of the way of a troll or whatever.

[@RePorpoised]

I mean, depends on the setting. The human body IS impressively adaptive and if your body is used to physical activity, you can have more or less a similarly sized diet as most people despite a fairly crazy amount of energy expenditure. However, it is incredibly unrealistic if they are suddenly going from sedentary to incredibly active, the necessary diet to support that balloons and indeed, they'd be utterly unable to run with all that food.

[@Respectable_Username]

Rations are often smaller and lighter than normal food, specifically designed for those who need to carry it all. But yes, if they're not purposefully carrying all dehydrated food (to be rehydrated at camp), that's a _lot_ of extra weight!

[@Amy_the_Lizard]

​@@Respectable_Username Historically high fat things like lard were also popular for rations since they were denser in calories than a lot of similarly heavy food sources. Still heavier than dehydrated stuff, but not all settings would have the tech skill to feasibly dehydrate all their rations

[@aykarain]

i was like "ok i guess they think people only eat 1 tiny meal per day or something" and then uhhhhhhhhh well thats not exactly what i expected

[@ricebeansrockroll882]

_especially_ when they need to bring water. Or are described cooking full course meals regurlarly. Oh, porridge, eggs and bacon for breakfast? A hearty stew with wine to pair with it for dinner? ...no

[@NaBa.O3O]

"Working in a bookshop is not fun and you can't spend your whole day talking to customers. In fact, most customers won't even speak with you other than saying "Hello" and "Bye"." Eh, skill (or opinion) issue. Working in a bookshop is fun *because* you can spend your whole day *without talking to customers* . Just sitting down, relaxing and reading the hours away, in a place without any annoying noises and where people are not only strictly forbidden from yelling but also it's considered polite to not disturb others. Edit: Grammar.

[@BeingWolfie]

Was looking for this comment: I work in a bookshop and it is honestly the highlight of my day.

[@tova1412]

honestly! some of the comments in this video are so subjective and depends-on-the-person type thing, and this was one of the ones that annoyed me the most... and it's not like every book shop is the same anyway so like?

[@sonnyajvoll5865]

Oh my god. I worked in the WRONG FUCKING BOOKSHOP because this is the exact opposite of my experience 😅

[@Agustin_Leal]

I like to talk to the cute girl that works at the bookshop. Don't tell me she'd want me to leave, cuz I really like her.😭

[@apotheose]

Depends on the season though! Not sure how common this is in other countries (I'm German), but while you have the option to borrow your textbooks from your school here, your parents still need to buy your workbooks, so the start of every semester/school year book shops are positively drowning in orders for school materials. Definitely not much time to sit around or make small talk, I had lines of 5-6 waiting customers at times 💀

[@Contraltissimo]

I think I just realized why I find it so hard to write -- I spend too much time and effort researching. It feels like driving a car down a mountain road but stopping and getting out to check the rocks and the grass and the tires and the view and the bird species every 200 feet. The first time I ate sushi was _because_ I needed to know what it was like to eat raw fish. When I went skydiving with my sister in law for her birthday, you bet your head I journaled _every aspect_ of it for the sake of those characters of mine who can fly. But the weirdest thing I ever did for research? I needed to know what happens to keratin when it catches on fire. So? Yeah. I did. I saved finger- and toenail clippings for many many weeks, piled up an ample supply and lit it on fire. Took very careful notes. Not a pleasant smell. Did you know it actually turns black and _boils?_ Judge me. I don't care. But I'll be hecked if the things I write aren't accurate to the _absolute best_ of my puny mortal ability.

[@aliciam6145]

I salute you o7

[@Aaa-vp6ug]

I’m gonna do that.

[@tova1412]

same! it takes me ages to actually finish something because I'm so detail oriented, especially when it comes to research. it makes me much prouder of the works I make though, so I wouldn't necessarily change it

[@Speed_Zamaa]

Everyone gangsta till you have to research how much a human can survive bleeding out before dying

[@ZelphTheWebmancer]

What I been trying (and failing) to do is to make the first draft as I imagine it, and leave the research for the editing process.

[@llmccann]

Albino characters are almost never accurate. I have albinism, and I've only read one fic that got it right. They got it right because I explained my experiences to the author before the stuff was written. Albinism is a disability, that causes light sensitivity, sun sensitivity, and poor vision.

[@gordshorde]

(i'm so sorry if this is wrong) doesn't it also come with a lowered immune system?

[@punchbuggy13]

Hey, I have a character who I've written to have oculocutaneous albinism. If you're okay with it, would you mind info-dumping about albinism? I'd really love to learn more.

[@realdragon]

Sun sensitivity is redundant in your sentence EDIT: ye ye I get what's the difference now, no need to explain it to me

[@EdgeLie]

So a vampire without the super powers, RIP

[@Endless-fire]

Hats, sunscreen and glasses!

[@4NG3LGUTZ]

my problem is, I KNOW I’ve clicked out of a fic because of an inaccuracy. but I cannot think of one for the life of me.

[@Krumpins]

It's always so annoying when you know you've seen an example that you can add to the topic of discussion but can't for the life of you remember where you saw it or what it was exactly

[@twincesseszeigler4366]

​@@Krumpins Same.

[@R.P-e2z]

Not a fanfic, but an original story had an extended sequence where a character is given a life sentence for a crime she committed unintentionally because her attorney ignored her emails and essentially refused to defend her at trial. Having worked for courts and judges, I cannot even begin to number the inaccuracies; but I think the most interesting one is that, in real life, the prosecution would probably just dismiss the case shortly after her arraignment because the crime she was charged with (indecent assault) did not remotely fit the definition of what she did.

[@2Scarhand]

I had a example at the start of the video, watched it, and now can't remember what I was thinking of.

[@aino-kaisav5504]

I can't right away name an instance, but I've certainly rolled my eyes or chuckled at least a few times for some comical historical inaccuracy.

[@herowither12354]

This one is My Little Pony specific: Salt doesn't make horses drunk or high. That's a myth. And if you write it in to your MLP fic, and make salt a controlled substance, that just means that food in Equestria must suck.

[@oceansolstice608]

Did they really watch that one episode where the guy gets kicked out of the salt saloon and take it as fact 😭

[@shadowfoxgirl]

@herowither12354 I would have been so confused if I read anything with a horse getting drunk on salt. Everyone needs salt in their diet to live, if you tried to make it a controlled substance that would not only make all food taste bad but ponies would be getting terribly sick from a lack of required salt.

[@LavenderSystem69]

Mmh... I mean, fair enough, but I'm pretty sure that IRL horses don't consume a tenth of the sugar that MLP!ponies do, or have magical powers either... there genuinely comes a point where "fictional world with fictional properties" has to trump realism enough to allow you to suspend disbelief once more

[@RedFloyd469]

@@LavenderSystem69 Suspending disbelief is one thing, ignorance is another. Suspending disbelief comes from a good intent in which the storyteller implicitly agrees with the audience that what is happening is fantasy. Made-up. Something not how it works in real life. But if a show like my little pony, for instance, spreads the idea that horses can NOT eat salt, ever, that's not suspending disbelief. That's spreading misinformation. There is no contract between the creator and the audience that implicitly states they have to know the details, ins and outs of how horses work. They are perhaps expected to know that unicorns don't exist, horses don't shit rainbows, don't talk human languages and aren't all either pink or yellow or blue. But they aren't supposed to be horse-experts. That is to say, there is a spectrum here. And while certainly not always clear-cut to pin down, in this case we are clearly talking about a misunderstanding or a form of misinformation, not suspense of disbelief.

[@LavenderSystem69]

​@@RedFloyd469horses can't fly, teleport, levitate shit, move the sun and moon, or most of the other shit that MLP characters do, either... expecting realism of any sort from a world that's already flagrantly violating every other rule of our universe is such ridiculous folly that it's virtually indistinguishable from madness

[@NattiKay]

As a martial artist, I can confirm the choking one. Thanks to fiction (not just fanfiction) I think a lot of people are under the impression that a choke is meant to close your trachea and stop you from breathing--but actually a properly-executed choke targets the carotid arteries to stop blood flow to the brain. Much more efficient and not (usually) actually painful; you just get dizzy then black out. On another note, a trope that annoys me is when writing a character with a supernaturally strong sense of smell, the natural scent of other characters is described in terms of flowers or food or other non-people things. No, no one's natural scent is "cinnamon" or "pine" or "honey" or whatever else. Those smells may lay on top of their natural scent if they're wearing some sort of perfume or have recently spent a lot of time around those things--and it can be a fine character detail to point that out--but underneath that people still smell like people, not fancy candles. I once read a fic where such a character _immediately_ knew that his wife was pregnant _the morning after_ because he could "smell the baby" which smelled like "pumpkin pie" or something like that. Yeah no. Species with super strong senses of smell _can_ detect pregnancy by scent, but it's not really the baby they're smelling, but rather the change in the mother's hormonal balance, which wouldn't become noticeable that quickly. Plus, a one-day-old zygote is so tiny that its scent simply would not be detectable while engulfed by the _much_ stronger scent of the mother...and even if it WAS hypothetically detectable, _it certainly would not smell like pumpkin pie_

[@mash9415]

SMELLED THE PUMPKIN PIE SCENTED ZYGOTE😭😭😭😭

[@1confusedkitty745]

I guess no one wants to talk about how people smell gross? Great point though

[@V1_Ultrakrill]

what do y'all think you smelt of as a zygote I think oil personally

[@seguaye]

in the context of omegaverse my understanding is those people just have built-in personalized cologne as part of their biology

[@masterblaster2678]

​@@1confusedkitty745 Depends on who you're smelling I think, and I'm not counting sweat as a person smell since that is an everyone thing. I can sometimes smell the "me" within my clothes and bed and it makes me feel very cozy. I can sometimes smell other people too (usually when hugging or standing close to them for some reason, and when they're not wearing perfume or too sweaty to pick out their smell) but it's not something that can be compared to flowers or spices. All I can say is that the people I like smell "sweet" but not like candy, the people I'm neutral towards smell kinda meh or bad even if I don't dislike them, and I've never smelled a person I disliked because I obviously never stood close to them lol. Your genetic compatibility might have a little bit of a hand in whose scent you find pleasant as well, there is still a tiny bit of pheromone production in humans even if it is an outdated feature of ours.

[@alexkunce2006]

0:44 It would be unsafe if you could taste the metal, especially if it's a tongue piercing, because taste is just detecting small particles (in this case) metal, so your piercing would be decaying in your mouth and putting metal into your system. I assume piercings are protected from that.

[@properantagonist]

Yup, good quality jewellery is made of titanium - the same metal that is used for medical implants. Of course there is worse jewellery that could be unsafe, but for obvious reasons you should get titanium or surgical steel.

[@RandomPepsiGai]

But I thought we need iron...😔

[@gohunt001-5]

​@@RandomPepsiGai Well yeah, but only trace amounts of it which you can get from eating food normally

[@IgorBazelan]

A record label exec seeing a shy teenage girl in a small bar perform an emotional cursive-singing cover of a pop song, walking up to her and going "Wow, you have an amazing voice, I'm going to invest literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in your career!" is something that only happens in self-insert fiction.

[@vitoc8454]

That would be realistic... in a story about human trafficking

[@DiamondKingStudios]

@@vitoc8454Unusually topical at this time.

[@Sato-Juno]

​@@vitoc8454 GOD I KNOW WHAT MY FIRST FIC IS GOING TO BE THANK YOU (I might not make the fic, but God I really really want to now)

[@thearcanamodernau8130]

I somehow knew what you meant by "cursive-singing" 😂 there's always that one girl who thinks she can sing but she only makes that annoying lazy airy voice with zero technique that sounds like she would rather go to sleep than be there singing

[@Jacob-kx8go]

VENOM AND POISON ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS!!!!!!!!!!

[@Dogwolf12]

If it bites you and you die, it's venomous. If you bite it and you die, it's poisonous. If you bite each other and neither of you dies, then the fanfic's probably explicit.

[@rainfallatnightfall]

If one of you bites and the other dies it's vodo. If one of you bites and neither die it's stupidity. I remember seeing a meme version of this a while back that's why I remember this. But yeah the venom vs poison thing is very common and not just in fanfiction.

[@IceRiver1020]

​@@Dogwolf12 While this is a good rule of thumb, its doesn't cover everything, like stings (venom), and poisons that absorb onto your skin. I wish that people would just use the word toxic when they aren't sure if it's poisonous or venomous.

[@Mecharnie_Dobbs]

This only matters if the person saying it is supposed to have a certified qualification in a relevant subject like zoology.

[@Jacob-kx8go]

@Mecharnie_Dobbs It's still annoying though.

[@zhenia2511]

Broken borns hurt years after you've broken them every time it rains. The arm I've broken when I was 12 still mildly aches because of weather. I don't know why people think that bones don't hurt while they're healing.

[@Snow_Sailor]

Mine doesn't ache due to weather but it does ache due to pressure faster than the other side. Either way, yeah, it's weird if a character breaks a bone and it just never hurts ever again.

[@NylonGenesis]

hear here, fractured my collarbone as a kid and if I move the wrong way it can and will decide to act up again.

[@LordHeadcheez]

Same here. I broke my big toe all the way back in 2011 and I still occasionally get a pinch of pain out of it when it's humid out. It's not bad, but it's definitely there.

[@haku98i]

Can relate, just that it was only a big cut on my chin that removed all my skin from it. It still hurts when i scrub lightly, even though it was like 7 years ago!!

[@kitkatboard]

I got a suspicious mole removed when I was 13 and 12 years laters, the scar still hurts when the air is damp...

[@kyradreamer4769]

The PTSD one is honestly more broad than just veterans. Most people get PTSD wrong or boil it down to the same handfuls of symptoms and it's not representative of the actual experience. There's a lot more seemingly unrelated stressors/triggers than someone would expect.

[@R.P-e2z]

I think a lot of writers who don't have panic attacks don't understand just how varied and terrible they are. They aren't always a neat and tidy one-and-done thing, caused by an obvious trigger that makes the person scream and cry for five minutes before going away. They can make a person go into fight-or-flight mode for half an hour or more, and the shakiness from those can last the rest of the day. The screaming-and-crying kind usually leave you feeling drained for hours. And their onset can be delayed by hours or even a day, meaning you can face a trigger and not feel the effect until the next morning when you're sipping your coffee, reveling in your own fortitude.

[@lukasprazak7362]

People often get mental disorders wrong. Like conflating schizophrenia with dissociative identity disorder or reducing OCD to sorting and reordering things.

[@aromanticdisgr-ace4083]

@@lukasprazak7362 Yeah... Even relatively common things like anxiety are misunderstood so often. It's not just "I'm a little shy," it's a full blown disorder. Every case is different no matter the disorder or illness but I find it's rare that people get the complexity of what it's like to have a lot of the stuff they write about. Which is understandable, it's hard to really get something you haven't experienced or have had experience with, but it's still very jarring to read something about a character having a disorder you know and it for example either not really affecting them at all beyond cuteness factor or being so over the top melodramatic that it just becomes comedic. Or it being simplified so much that it's not really representative of the disorder anymore (i.e. OCD only being tidiness).

[@IceFireofVoid]

@@aromanticdisgr-ace4083 I think it comes from a lot of fanfic authors being really young and kind of lacking in terms of experience and perspectives. They're not fully developed psychologically/emotionally and it can be hard for teenagers to grasp perspectives that exist outside of their own viewpoint. They relate everything to their own experience and their own perspective. So they will see a list of symptoms of a disorder and not really manage to grasp the severity that makes it a disorder in the first place. They just relate it to their own experiences, which is typical non-disordered levels of all those traits. Because really disordered behavior is normal human behavior but cranked up or misplaced to the point it interferes with your life. And I think a lot of young people don't really get that. On the flip side, with the super over-the-top exaggerated portrayals, it probably comes from bad representation in media or misinformation on social media where they make these caricatures of mental health issues and disorders that are super flashy and exaggerated for the sake of entertainment or in an attempt to gain sympathy. The kids writing fanfics probably aren't close with many people with these disorders irl, so their frame of reference will come from these wacky influencers.

[@benjaminthibieroz4155]

I know a fair share about depression from personnal experience, and I do take PTSD seriously and try hard portraying it well in my writing. But that's quite complicated.

[@wind64a39]

The hair loss thing is just way weirder than people expect. Lost my eyebrows and eyelashes but my body hair is mostly intact. Can still grow a beard but it's see through. Thankfully I had my last session, so now I just have to pray I fall in the 90% who are cured after. Another thing common in fiction is the infinite alcohol budget. You'll see a bunch of wine moms drinking together at restaurants while their houses are being foreclosed. It would be one thing if they were portrayed as alcoholics ruining their lives, but it usually isn't treated as a factor.

[@user74027nh]

Honestly the way i see media portray alcohol in general... Like what do you mean this character who just drank multiple martinis is completely fine?

[@wrightcember]

the first half of the comment is telling me you likely are in cancer recovery, and i am praying for your recovery!!! the second half is just…accurate

[@olasdorosdiliusimilius2174]

​@@user74027nhJames Bond is functional alcoholic

[@evanmatthews2159]

@@user74027nh In fairness, people did drink absurd amounts and still function.

[@DoloresLehmann]

My husband has so much hair that when he took chemotherapy, it was a long while before anyone noticed his hair loss. A friend of his just said: "But you're not losing any hair yet, are you?" while grabbing onto his head, only to be left with a thick strand of hair in his hand, shocked and babbling: "Oh my God, I'm so sorry, I didn't know..." My husband just found it hilarious. And yes, as soon as the hair loss was very visible, he just shaved everything off, because it looked awful. Otherwise, he probably wouldn't have lost all his hair by the end of therapy. I wish you the best for your recovery.

[@Septic-Hearts]

I think the only time I've seen a character doing a medical procedure wrong and that having actual reasonable consequence in fiction was in the first Hunger Games book. Not only did Katniss openly admit she had no idea wtf she was doing, Peeta nearly died from the infection and had to get his leg amputated. When my relatives in the medical field pointed out that the medicine she'd have had to use is some of the most science fiction-y thing about the film I explained that and they said "Oh so they just didn't have the budget to give him a prosthetic fake leg, then".

[@salti3155]

Haven't gotten around to reading the books yet, but I remember in Catching fire there was the scene where peeta died, and was resuscitated. That man got up a minute later, and then proceeded to just MOVE ON. Like, my fellow human, the saying "If bones aren't breaking, the dead ain't waking" isn't for nothing. Other than that I agree, I was shocked at how well even the movies handled every other injury

[@Yidhra-o5n]

The sponsor medicine worked against Peeta's infected wound recieved from Cato, the problem was the second one from the mutts he recieved at the cornucopia at the final night. Katniss had to make the tourniquet so tight (it restricted blood flow to his leg), otherwise he would've bled out before morning. She kinda knew and had no choice here, but the outcome understandably still shocked her of course. It was a lack of options, not knowledge.

[@hana_anah9036]

​@@salti3155was that when Finnick was giving him cpr and knocked a supposedly pregnant Katniss away when she didn't know what Finnick was doing?

[@lorettabes4553]

​@hana_anah9036 Yeah, Katniss was never pregnant though. I wil say that Peeta doesn't manage to book it far, and has to ge carried the rest of the way. Like he gets far on adrenaline, but he certainly isn't pulling his weight after being resuscitated (and had to be helped by finnick or Katniss)

[@hana_anah9036]

@lorettabes4553 I know that she wasn't pregnant, I was just asking if that was the scene. Thanks for clarifying, I haven't read the book in a while

[@VigelanteVictim]

I don't see it a lot in fanfics, but in books and TV/movies, that really irks me - CPR. It's important to know that you DON'T STOP CPR if it didn't work after like 10 seconds. And you don't just relax and celebrate when the heartbeat comes back, because it's a good chance the heart can stop again. A person doesn't suddenly inhale, jump up and ready to go. It's a very traumatic and exhausting experience for the body. Being tied up, hung by your wrists or upside down, thrown over a horse's back for hours is very painful and traumatizing.

[@Sly-Moose]

Not to mention the ribs HAVE to break for the CPR to be successful (ty, Doctor Mike), which would also leave bruising

[@ruthsteen6943]

@@Sly-Moose Chesr compressions, chest compressions, chest compressions!

[@trinefanmel]

Also the number of times people are shown bending their elbows during CPR. Whenever you do CPR, you should NEVER bend your elbows; you get down on your knees, lean over the casualty, keep your arms straight, and bend at the hips to give yourself enough force to actually compress the casualty's chest!

[@benjaminthibieroz4155]

They also don't tell you that in the vast majority of cases the victim will die anyway...

[@Trashgriffin]

That reminds me of the movie "Drag me to Hell" where someone does CPR for only a few seconds, MASSAGING THE VICTIM'S SHOULDER

[@AgrestisAnima]

Omg okay. There is a published romance novel (from a pretty well known Publisher btw) that's set in Iceland. The main character describes how she's with her romantic partner outside and watches the puffins. It's December and so romantic. Later they drive down the Autobahn (still in Iceland) and she starts to guess the license plates of cars and she's bad at it because she doesn't know Icelandic Cities. OKAY. Puffins migrate during winter. They arent even THERE! All of them are GONE during december! And Iceland doesn't have an Autobahn either! Because there aren't many cars and this is the reason THEIR LICENSE PLATES have RANDOM NUMBERS AND LETTERS ON THEM! They can basicly put whatever on there, they aren't an indicator for the cities because there are only like 10 on Iceland! Bruh BASIC RESEARCH! I can't deal with this! This is so EMBARASSING! 😫

[@claiternaiter446]

I’m guessing the numbers and letters having a meaning is a European thing? I’m from the US, and our plates list our state, but the actual numbers and letter don’t mean anything unless you pay extra to make it custom.

[@AgrestisAnima]

@@claiternaiter446 well the letters tell us (in germany and the author is from germany too) the citys. In your case it wouldn't make sense because your country is massive, but in germany it's easier to link them to cities.

[@DatAlien]

​@@AgrestisAnimaSome small towns also have their own letter combination.

[@aromanticdisgr-ace4083]

@@claiternaiter446 Not a universal European thing, but might be more common than I realise. In my country, the licence plates are also just completely random letters and numbers and don't mean anything. I think back in the day there might've been an area specific system like for phone numbers, but if there was, it's been gone for decades. Some plates (I think a majority by now) have an area on the plate before the letters and numbers which is EU blue with the EU ring of stars on it and the two-letter abbreviation of the country (like DE, SE, HR, etc.) but, as you can guess, this only tells you the country so not worth much. You can tell the country from the font on the plate alone so... But! Some plates have the dealership they were bought from listed at the bottom! But in terms of guessing, that's kind of cheating if the entire name of the city it was bought in and the dealership is listed on the plate...

[@Aaa-vp6ug]

Where the hell would you put an Autobahn anyway?!

[@NicoleFlores-hq5nh]

For me, it was how wattpad describe pregnancy, some people (and me, when I was just starting to read the site) truly believe that the moment that the girl character the next day she does sexual relations, she immediately gets all the symptoms and quickly finding out that she's having a baby, years later, I find out that makes NO sense.

[@persialionheart]

Yup and not everyone gets the same symptoms. My sister never got morning sickness which is what most fics use to show someone is pregnant. And I hate that as soon as they throw up or are nauseous, they're pregnant.

[@IceFireofVoid]

Character does the dirty, morning sickness the next day 💀💀

[@kaylaa2204]

I imagine that’s a result of young people seeing it in movies, assuming that time skips are much shorter than they actually are. Especially in movies and animation where there’s no narration telling you how much time has passed, as you’d be more likely to see in books. Either that or they do know how much time passes, but for some reason aren’t conveying the time skip well, or at all.

[@Jollymongoose]

Yeah it takes at least 3 weeks before you notice it I would know because my mom has a lot of kids 😭

[@NinjaFlibble]

That sounds like how I thought it was...when I was like seven... (Not to be rude....)

[@nickridgewood3955]

I once read a fic where someone died of ADHD edit: holy sh*t this got more popular than I thought. to elaborate: from I remember, it was a be more chill fic on ao3. Christine had died of a "ADHD related outburst" it didn't show her dying, just Thad Micheal mention it at the beginning. I think it was the whole premise of the fic. I might of gotten details wrong because I read only the beginning of the fic years ago. if I find it, I will put the link. if anyone finds it, let me know. edit #2: according to @ice_wolfie the fic has been deleted

[@ponytailproductions2503]

Elaborate???

[@Melosketch426]

This is actually hilarious I need to know more 😭

[@ThrasherMan]

Did they mean COPD, or did they think ADHD is some deadly infection?

[@hellsjay.4810]

I'm sorry what-

[@hunterlawrence3573]

I’m assuming that has to have been a typo, but I can’t think of anything they could’ve possibly meant

[@ordinaryextraordinary9484]

13:10 The reason behind this myth is because it actually stems from a real medical practice that people still do today When you hit your head really hard, one of the things doctors are most concerned about is that it caused a brain bleed and is now slowly killing you. And since they obviously can’t just open you up to check every time you bonk your skull on something a little too hard, they instead tell you to do your best to remain conscious so they can continue to monitor your cognitive abilities (impaired cognitive function is a sign of internal brain bleeding). However, they cannot keep track of this if you are unconscious, and they may not catch the injury in time, often leading to coma or even death. In summary, patients interpreted “Don’t go to sleep we need to keep an eye on you so you don’t die” as “If you go to sleep, you’ll die” which is how we got that old wives' tale

[@aliciam6145]

Yeah I was gonna say, I hit my head when I was a year old and my parents told me they were told not to let me sleep, but idk how different I would have acted if I was brain damaged lol

[@bookwyrm247]

But medically it is better to sleep, because that’s how your body heals itself. So it’s somewhat of a catch-22.

[@bionodroid547]

No, it’s not a myth and this isn’t really related. Concussions cannot be detected via any imaging technology, but there are several symptoms that may happen individually or simultaneously. As such, the best way to determine if someone has a concussion is to determine if they have symptoms. Maybe not so hard for an adult but for children, to whom this advice is usually extended, they might be more likely to continue trying to engage in play before immediately resting.

[@MorganChaos]

To be fair I think the old wives' tale probably was actually told to people that way -- "don't go to sleep, you'll die" because it came from an era where all people could really observe was person hits head > person falls asleep > person never wakes up, because they were actually not falling asleep but slipping into a coma. Any injured body part needs rest, so sleeping with a concussion is good, but would a brain bleed not be visible on imaging? I don't think they'd need to open you up lol.

[@1leon000]

6:35 If you see all the bullets, it's a clip. If you only see one bullet, and that's before you put it in the gun, then it's a magazine.

[@ASlickNamedPimpback]

What if it's a magazine made of transparent plastic?

[@WahMii]

@@ASlickNamedPimpback Clips are often used to make loading magazines easier. They're called "clips" because they're clipped together by a small device. Magazines, however, typically conceal most of the bullets except for one on the top, which then gets pushed into the cylinder to be fired. For a visual example (however goofy it may seem), TF2 Heavy wears a "sleeve" of clips on his body.

[@ASlickNamedPimpback]

@@WahMii idk why you’re telling me this and not the other guy…

[@WahMii]

@@ASlickNamedPimpback ?? “What if it’s a magazine made of transparent plastic?” I understand you were makin a joke, I replied to your comment because what I’m saying is directly referencing your post. Also OP already explained the difference. They’re gonna get the notif anyway because this is their thread.

[@daanstrik4293]

@@WahMiiYou’re still using the “1 bullet or more bullets visible” approach. Which doesn’t work with a see-through magazine. Makes it seem like you’re just repeating the original comment

[@Thepeopleinmybrainloveyou]

The corset one bothers me SO MUCH I LOVE wearing corsets! They're so much fun and they look so cute! Hut the way they're treated in media as these horrible things that are soooo restrictive and horrible to wear is just FNJSVAVFJDJSGA

[@IceFireofVoid]

I hate it so much! The crazy thing is that the anti-corset sentiment actually started as misogynistic propaganda where "doctors" would blame the corsets for causing "female hysteria" and all sorts of ailments. Really they were just shaming women for wearing something that made them feel attractive.

[@BJGvideos]

I've never even worn one but it makes me furious when Murdoch Mysteries acts like that. Julia will go on long rants about how restrictive and harmful corsets are and I just...why.

[@Thepeopleinmybrainloveyou]

@@BJGvideos As if they weren’t created to be a flexible, supportive, and all-around comfortable undergarment! Like HELLOOOO???? Tf you mean ReStRiCtIvE???

[@BJGvideos]

@@Thepeopleinmybrainloveyou It's a really weird show

[@Thepeopleinmybrainloveyou]

@@BJGvideos Sounds like it tbh

[@claracallejo2824]

The bilingual character has made me click off many fanfics, as a bilingual person (Spanish/English), some dialogue is too unreasonable. If you want some more accurate bilingual characteristics, here are some examples: - Have the character swear in their mother tongue - If it's a Spanish/English speaker, spanglish when they can't remember the actual word - Forgetting the word in their native language but knowing it in the other - Preferring to watch/consume media in the other language, not their native one - Instead of randomly switching languages, have them do the "you know...that.... what's the wordddd...." - Do let the character put nicknames in their native language and have an accent

[@IceFireofVoid]

I HATE IT when I read and there is a character who speaks French and they just interject random bits of French into sentences that make no sense and the GRAMMAR ISN'T EVEN CORRECT. Instant skip for me. Most of the time when people write this for characters, it's not even canon for the character to switch between languages like that at all... Sometimes not even canon that the character IS bilingual. So like...why put that in your fanfic if you have no idea what you're doing? Just stick to the languages you are familiar with and avoid the issue entirely.

[@claracallejo2824]

@@IceFireofVoid fr or watch actual bilingual people talk 😭😭

[@Nockgun]

when i don't know what is a distiller. i call it the spinning chemical cleaner

[@Nockgun]

@@claracallejo2824 thats me for real as a bilingual person of thai and englush

[@dTaoro]

Funnily enough when I swear lo hago en inglés pero con acentaco xD Aunque supongo que también depende de la situación, a veces amerita un "FUCK" y otras veces dan ganas de soltar un "me cago en todos mis muertos joder coño ya" JAJAJA

[@nabra97]

Well, unless it's specifically mentioned that snake-people are closely related to snakes, they don't owe anything to anyone. It still may be a cool detail if they never blink, especially if it works with a character, but "snake people blinking is biologically inaccurate"... Well, as much as them existing in the first place, I suppose?

[@zakosist]

Kinda agree on that one. Snake people having a body shape closer to a human than a snake is already a going a lot further than simply having the abilety to blink. If its a fictional creature you kinda just choose which traits apply

[@nmheath03]

By "snake person" do we mean 'humanoid entity with a snake lower body' or 'a snake that can talk'? One has way more leeway imo

[@nabra97]

@@nmheath03 I mean, perhaps they did talk about talking snakes, in which case I can agree with them, but I think humanoid snakes are more common 🤔

[@NekoChanSenpai]

They said snake character, not snake person. I assumed a literal snake

[@seguaye]

they said snake character, not snake people. i was picturing kaa from the jungle book, not a yuan-ti. honestly at this point whenever i read about a snake character blinking i assume it’s actually a legless lizard pulling off a long con

[@Gh0st_of_Jupter]

Characters with ADHD or autism like yes there are types of high where it makes life hard but ADHD isn't always you can't focus for longer then like a couple of seconds and autism dosent always mean you have a special interest/talent Edit: I also have another one, divorced parents or why parents divorce not all but some people think parents parents always divorce because of some big reason like abuse which can happen but my parents divorced because they did agreed on how to parent me and my brother

[@animeotaku307]

FR. Sometimes my ADHD makes my brain circle back to something I don’t want to dwell on no matter how much I try to distract myself.

[@Gh0st_of_Jupter]

@@animeotaku307 ya like I have ADHD and sometimes I don't pay attention, sometimes I hyper focus, sometimes I think about something that happened years ago that I should've done different

[@RiveRiveRiveRio]

They think all autistic people are the same and you're either a socially awkward nerd or a non-verbal "freak" that likes dinosaurs... Come on...

[@mintmochi_cat5091]

I have adhd and it isn’t always like my brain is like “ohhhh shiny” or any kind of getting distracted by the area around me it is more like I will do something I get fixated on and then I will be in school or something and I can only think about that one thing also adhd isn’t always just “oh I get distracted easily” sometimes I can get overwhelmed from my adhd not just distracted

[@usagitsukinooo]

Or you have a very long list of special interests and it sometimes fluctuates which one is the most prominent at the time. Unfortunately I do kinda fall into the ADHD stereotype of "ooo shiny" though, I will just stop and stare at pretty glittery pink stuff when walking in public and forget where I was supposed to be going until my boyfriend needs to physically pull me away

[@a.morphous66]

Walking. I've read so many stories where characters who have never hiked long distances in their life will embark on long and perilous journeys and not _once_ is it acknowledged that you need to be notably in shape and carry a lot of water to comfortably walk many miles a day, especially on rough terrain or through elevation or in the heat, _especially_ if you're carrying lots of supplies. Hiking is exhausting; I remember on my trip through Philmont just collapsing into my tent on a couple of nights without bothering to even take off my pants. But that's something that never gets brought up because I guess it's boring or something.

[@Lapatt-dq9ou]

I absolutely believe a farmer could do this. Or any job that has a lot of walking. Bob from accounting not so much. Also if they are in a preindustrial setting where the jobs are more physically active I can believe it. Some of my favorite fluffy bits include how sore the city boy is after hiking or horseback riding. It's also one of those things where I tend to assume that they take the first few days slow cuz they are not used to the exercise. I spend 8 hours on my feet and as long as I am moving I do fine but I am fairly certain if I tried to climb a mountain it would take forever if I could do it at all.

[@Fallen_StarX]

Anyone can do it. Some will just find it harder than others. 😂

[@vixxcelacea2778]

I think people want to think they could just pick up the ability by just doing it. Many many things that seem like do x to get y are about conditioning. Another commenter mentioned how horse back riding is not a skill you just pick up. It takes specific muscles to not get tried real fast, ones that most people don't have unless they actually use those in that way. I'd imagine it's the same for any athletic endeavour, regardless of how "minor" it seems, like a long journey.

[@n.m.dimmick194]

The bigger thing that gets me is characters casually strolling through straight up wilderness. Hiking rough terrain and/or long distances is hard enough on trails or roads, but the backcountry is a wildly different beast. I do a lot of backcountry survey work, and it really can't be understated how much harder walking in straight up wilderness is. Even when there's no vegetation, you're generally dealing with uneven, and more importantly, unstable ground, and thick vegetation is just a nightmare to deal with. Navigating off trail is also really, really hard. The topographic illusion will have you walking in circles, you usually can't tell if a route is passable until you're halfway in it, thick brush can have you travelling completely blind, and more often than not, there isn't a good path, there's just different flavors of treacherous.

[@ZenoDovahkiin]

Yeah, people focus on the exciting parts in fiction. That's why I only know of a single example of RPGs in which rather than orcs or goblins the first thing that'll wipe your party is sickness because you didn't know to pack warm boots and blankets.

[@lilmr.scareall]

i want to die every time people write braces like an accessory it is metal, pulling on your teeth, you need to go get them tightened monthly/bi-monthly and experience 2 weeks of struggling to eat anything but soup and bread, plus you lose your ability to eat food you like (popcorn, caramel, taffy, etc.) because they'll harm your braces i once had to spend 5 minutes out of class trying to get gauze off of my brackets because a bracket started making my cheek bleed and i didn't have any wax on me!

[@tornadomash00]

omg i was so incredibly picky abt my braces when i had them 😭 one time i took up a friend's offer for gum and popped one of lines out, my dad had to pick me up from school and take me to my orthodontist that day bc it was literally sticking out of my mouth

[@wanderer_808]

2 weeks is a little much... it depends on what pain tolerance you have and most importantly, what braces you have and what they do exactly. i had very normal ones for most of my time wearing braces (so entire row of jaw almost, on both jaws) and towards the end had to also wear these bands that connected my jaws. when i got them tightened, i couldn't eat normally for maybe 2 or 3 days, and as i was in a grade where like half the class also had braces ranging in types, i knew that my length of pain was normal. the worst was from someone who couldn't eat normal stuff for at least 5 days after tightening. if you truly do suffer for 2 weeks straight, damn, im sorry

[@arcadeii]

i had braces like 2 months ago, and i had them for 2 1/2 years. they were an accessory to me after like a month lmao

[@diewott1337]

@@wanderer_808 By the end of my treatment, I didn't even feel any pain after tightening. I only gave up at 99% (one of my teeth is slightly off, but the rest is in place) because I couldn't bother with those bands. That shit didn't hurt, but barely made any progress and you had to constantly take them on and off because it was impossible to properly eat with them.

[@flappyappple]

Not to mention, eating is STILL super awkward in public, especially if it’s bread, lettuce, broccoli, or literally anything else that’s stringy, soft, or gets stuck between your teeth normally. As someone with braces + sensory issues, I can’t stand having stuff stuck in them, and it was actually a pretty big blow to my confidence to have to deal with that at school. Also, I’ve broken them more on hard and crunchy foods than soft and sticky ones. Instead of gunking up around the wires, those things will wedge themselves in there and severely mess up thin, pliable wire. (almonds and carrots are the real villains here, is what i’m trying to say especially almonds. fuck those little suckers). Another thing, OP is right about them not being accessories. Braces basically become part of your teeth! I’ve had mine over a year and I still can’t tell the difference when biting/chewing! It’s really incredible how that kind of thing starts registering as part of your body after a while.

[@FunkyLittlePoptart]

Heroin is NOT a stimulant. It's an opiate, ffs.

[@chromiumbook-marx4417]

"stimulants (heroin, crack)" cracked me up, the irony

[@MRSELFDESTRUCT69]

i physically flinched hearing that in the background while drawing. its so funny how they stated that so confidently like theyre right.

[@alverrann3097]

I'm so glad someone said something - I was worried I was going crazy, hahaha

[@RedFloyd469]

Maybe they meant to write "meth"? I'd say meth, speed, heroin and crack are the big 4 whenever hard drugs are mentioned. Could have been a mistake.

[@MorganChaos]

@@RedFloyd469 Cocaine should probably be on that list, even though crack is just lower-quality cocaine.

[@flappyappple]

Oh, I actually have one of these! Writers, if one of your characters is in the area of an erupting volcano, lava and flying rock is one of their least concerns. Volcanoes come in many different shapes and sizes, and most don’t explode violently. Stratovolcanoes are typically the ones that do, but even if you’re dealing with one of those, that lava and debris is still less of a threat than the pyroclastic flow. Pyroclastic flows are basically avalanches of burning hot ash, gas, and whatever other junk is spilling out of that thing, and it is DEADLY. Pyroclastic flows are hot, (around 390-1300 degrees fahrenheit), super fast (generally 60 mph, but can get up to 700 mph - either way, too fast to outrun), and will kill you in like, fifteen different ways before you even see lava. If you’re caught in one, you will NOT be standing dramatically covered in ash and soot or what-have-you, because, aside from the heat and fast-moving debris, that ash and soot will be inside your lungs. Pyroclastic flows are no joke, and the best way to survive one is to not be in one in the first place. There are wonderful resources you can get on them (and volcanoes in general), from a quick google search, but in general, if you’re in the area, get out of there. Do NOT do what Galadriel does in RoP, which is stand there, dumbfounded, until you get clobbered with unspeakable amounts of toxic superheated gas, ash, and volcanic rock. (That scene annoyed me so much. I don’t care if she’s an elf, I don’t care if she’s got plot armor, YOU DON’T JUST SURVIVE THAT, GALADRIEL. YOU DON’T JUST SURVIVE GETTING VOLCANO BITS INSIDE YOUR LUNGS, GALADRIEL. YOU GET POMPEII’D.) (Sources: Geology nerd, google searches.)

[@IceFireofVoid]

It's wild how people underestimate the dangers of gas and smoke in general, in favor of fire, which is the least of your worries. In a house fire, most people die of smoke inhalation long before they burn. Fire arrows were actually real, and the main part that made them effective was the smoke they produced. Sometimes toxic compounds would be added to the fabric to release poisonous gasses when the arrow landed. The fire was just a bonus. And yes, the biggest danger in volcanoes is everything you mentioned. And even if you're not in the immediate vicinity, it can still mess you up badly. One of my geology assignments in college was a research presentation on the cycle of life and death of Yellowstone. Seeing the fossils of animals from past eruptions was really something. They survived a while after the volcano blew, far outside of the immediate zone of destruction, but they still died as a direct result of it. Either from suffocating on the kicked up ash they would walk through, or due to bone diseases they got from inhaling volcanic ash. Because volcanic ash isn't just any ash. It's tiny shards of volcanic glass. Tiny particles of glass in your lungs, in your blood, in your system. Not fun.

[@joypink5599]

I’m SO GLAD you brought up Galadriel at the end there. The entire time I was reading your comment I just had the replay of that in my head, over and over. So stupid.

[@soara4634]

Fun fact, I read the other day that Pliny the Elder died trying to rescue people from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

[@GloomyFish]

reminds me of when I was a kid and wrote a story set in somewhere in America and the characters all drove to Hawaii in like 2 hours. I based that off my own knowledge of going on holiday in the UK not realising that America is massive and Hawaii is a bunch of islands lmao

[@saxosipho]

Clearly, you were secretly writing an alt-history world where amphibious cars took off.

[@NekoChanSenpai]

Hawaii is a six hour flight from LAX.

[@3starsburningbright]

As an american this is genuinely the funniest thing to me. I can’t even imagine that

[@Mx.muffin]

lmao, 2 hours isn't even enough to get to the next state sometimes

[@SnickerDoodleBug05]

Ahhh yes! Our cars are so advanced that we can drive on the ocean and as fast as 10,000 miles an hour

[@crashqueenxx]

for me its when its a vampire fic and they bite the other persons neck in a sexy way…. the veins in your neck are under extreme pressure and would burst at any puncture wound lol

[@mosasaurusrex1815]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I read Carmilla and Manor recently and it's on the chest. Where would you suggest a vampire should bite? I've also heard wrist, inner elbow, and inner thigh.

[@crashqueenxx]

@@mosasaurusrex1815 i know that thigh and wrist are also popular but those are also considered pretty major veins especially the inner thigh as thats our femoral artery! i usually have them bite the inner elbow, as its not under much pressure but there is still enough blood flow. the wrist can be okay sometimes but repeated wounds at the wrist can lead to blood loss. the chest is also a good spot as long as its not too close to the shoulder, as there is a major artery there as well.

[@mosasaurusrex1815]

@@crashqueenxx thank you so much for such a thoughtful answer! This is great info! Yeah...I'm certain the chest one is not at all close to the shoulder. If you know what I mean.

[@crashqueenxx]

@@mosasaurusrex1815 i know what you mean lol. just to mix it up a bit!

[@RegiArt7]

Shotgun!

[@radioactivebirbchild]

For me it's when someone gets something blatantly wrong about reptiles, as in, didn't even spend 2 minutes researching kind of wrong. Someone once wrote about a character having a pet Komodo dragon, which is a bit odd and rather difficult and expensive to obtain, but certainly possible. The issue was, they said it was eating crickets. CRICKETS. THE LARGEST REPTILE ON THE PLANET, WHICH REGULARLY HUNTS DEER, WOULDN'T EVEN SEE CRICKETS AS A VIABLE FOOD SOURCE! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

[@Bicornis]

Perhaps they had gotten Komodo dragons confused with bearded dragons?

[@Ca3keMeowza]

​@@Bicornis that is quite possible.

[@overpower3382]

Most images of Komodo dragons make them look like the size of a much smaller lizard. I personally did not realise just how huge they were until I looked up and image of one compared to a human just now. So I can sort of understand the mistake, but it's still silly.

[@Eliasthescumbag]

i think they were describing a bearded dragon man beardeds are COOL

[@radioactivebirbchild]

@@Eliasthescumbag they specifically stated that it was large, and an entire chapter was dedicated to trying to find it after it escaped because it would scare people. so no, they absolutely meant for it to be a komodo dragon

[@S.M.R]

9:59 OMG I thought I was the only one!!! I have noticed this in some fanfictions where minor/underaged characters were traveling without an adult. It was weird once I grew up and realized how could they afford a cruise unless they won a contest which usually happens in fanfiction. But overall this would be imposible without an adult, and minors working on a ship is completely illegal. I could go on about maritime laws and ship info, but I'm glad to hear someone else pointing it out than me. :D

[@QT-oc9rn]

As someone who is currently learning an office job after being a florist for quite a few years, let me tell you, selling flowers is NOT COZY or anything SLOW... when working in a flower shop is relaxing for you, your boss is probably broke (or you if you have the shop yourself) and the shop will close soon... Flower shops are cozy for the costumers, not the people working there. Also it doesn't pay well. It is often depicted as this fulfilling, slow cozy Minijob. It is not. I'd rather sit in an office where the amount of work and tempo is like half and the money you get is a lot more.

[@IceFireofVoid]

I think people don't realize that...y'know...flowers and plants are ALIVE. They need to be cared for on a regular basis.

[@456puff]

I’m very curious about your experience working in that field. Can you tell me about what you had to do in the average day, weird things people wouldn’t think of, and how you handled so many live flowers? Where did they even come from?

[@Night_Light9123]

And this, my little gutter pigeons, is why us authors do long searches of sometimes very concerning topics so we can accurately write something. Even then though, still get stuff wrong, and I apologise for any inaccuracies I've personally made in my writing.

[@sendborbs2146]

my search history has a lot of concerning information about street drugs...

[@marcosgonzalez4207]

I remember that always bothered me not having internet whenever i wrote something, i even choosed a real place (not in my city) to place the house of MC because the environment was somehow similar to my mental image in conveniently was on the capital of that fictional country

[@dream_walker9726]

And why my search history has definitely gotten me on a watch list.

[@Mylstrydr]

Definitely went through a long period of researching plant-based poisons... then ultimately decided to create a fictional variant of a real toxic plant just in case a reader got ideas to use it for real... because the real deal was too perfect.

[@dream_walker9726]

@@Mylstrydr i did the exact same thing omg

[@thecalvinistkat]

Brothers and sisters usually don’t sincerely refer to each other as “bro” or “sis” unless they’re purposefully being cheeky. Also, having autism rarely means you are some cute little genius with all these delicate little quirks that make you shy and adorable.

[@fritzy8318]

False. I call my bro in a serious manner constantly. Don’t talk for everyone.

[@tired-theater-dog]

the second one for real!!!! i'm diagnosed autistic and for me it means mostly that i talk a lot and hate loud noises. sure i'm also gifted and hyperlexic but people also look at me funny whenever i speak and i need to hide in my room if i have one social event in a day.

[@Peppermintgrl4life]

I call everyone bro💀

[@giantpinkcat]

I've actually seen the former being used less and less nowadays, more specifically online. I blame 'the hub' for that tho lmao.

[@ScifiMushroom]

the autism one so much! i have read some fics that represent it pretty well i think but alot of the time i feel like people dont know just how varried it can be from person to person, and also in my experience at least alot of my traits people find upsetting and times i get percieved as being shy and nice are because im masking really hard so it almost doesnt feel real to me when people write autistic characters as being wholly appealing by neurotipical standards,

[@mackenziebowman9811]

Horses are gotten so wrong in every piece of fiction, not just fanfic. Horses do not make noise constantly. They sometimes make a small purr-like noise when content or a loud snort but they do not whinny every five seconds unless they have chronic anxiety. There are two main styles of riding; English and Western. Western is used by cowboys and typically has a saddle with a large bump at the front. English is used throughout most of the world especially Europe. It drives me crazy to see in fanart a drawing of a cowboy in an English saddle. Or I will see equipment terminology be used wrong. The rope you use to lead a horse around is not a bridle. Another common mistake is how horses are ridden. They are not cars or bikes. Move too fast or too harshly and you'll be bucked off or hurt the horse. Shaking the reins does not make the horse go. Horses get tired too, they can travel for a long time but not at full speed for hours. Certain breeds did not exist in certain time periods. The medieval knight does not own a thoroughbred; they did not exist back then. The penniless cowboy in the Wild West did not own an Arabian, if he did that would be like owning a Bugatti.

[@theresahaironthescreen]

I now think I need a wild west story where everything's the same except one guy rides a bugatti.

[@Aaa-vp6ug]

@@theresahaironthescreenhave it be a plot point that that guy is known for having the “fastest horse in the west” lol

[@arimars9565]

I only am fine with the whole full speed for hours in games bc they usually do they for the characters and if we’re going to make it unreal for one, we’ll make it unreal for all.

[@herstoryanimated]

I did see in a museum a model of a samurai on a palomino Arabian, was about to go off but then read the description that said he had been gifted it from a western country. So yeah, you could have one samurai on a speed demon endurance horse, whilst everyone else is on chunky native ponies 😅

[@herstoryanimated]

Incidentally I own a very shouting horse, and even he only shouts at me for food, or if he loses his friend. He doesn't spend his life yelling.

[@kiwiqueen138]

Adding onto common concussion inaccuracies: authors always seem to get amnesia wrong. It’s not just a quick bop to the head and then all the plot important information is just gone. If you’re hit on the head hard enough to lose memories, you’re gonna be left with a myriad of conditions like loss of movement or sensation in limbs, slurred speech, loss of balance, the need to re-learn how to eat or speak or even use the bathroom on their own, seizure disorders, chronic migraines, full or partial paralysis, difficulty concentrating, light and sound sensitivity, violent changes in personality, and even permanent, debilitating mental and intellectual disabilities that cause them to be bedridden and reliant on round-the-clock care for the rest of their life. Also, if someone is unconscious for more than 15 seconds, they have obtained serious brain damage and need medical professionals on the scene ASAP. A hit to the head is no joke. It’s not just nature’s snooze button. So yeah, those scenes where the main character knocks out a guard and drags them out of sight really just means that they’ve hit a random person on the head, MOVED THEM (which can damage them even further), and LEFT them in a hidden place with no medical care in sight, possibly costing them a life of permanent disability and misery. And don’t even get me STARTED on how people think a shot to the shoulder or leg is non-lethal…

[@IceFireofVoid]

@kiwiqueen138 On that last point, not only that they think it's non-lethal, but that they act like it's super easy to willingly hit those areas. Real firearms aren't like video games. You don't have a little crosshair in your vision and the bullet goes where you clicked 100% of the time.

[@Nockgun]

@@kiwiqueen138 the leg contains the femural artery and the shoulder contains the idk artery

[@Saga_Anserum]

I thought it was "unconscious for a minute or more"?

[@dashzag]

​@@Nockgun Femoral in your legs, brachial in your shoulders. Just as a devil's advocate, shooting the thigh or shoulder doesn't guarantee you'll hit an artery. But in general I agree.

[@paulinahafer7185]

Honestly, I‘m absolutely gracious about the amnesia one because it‘s actually the one scenerio in which I‘m not interested in medical accuracy but in the imbalance of memory and the juxtaposition of who that character used to be and who that character is now.

[@acronymtine9674]

Honestly? Radiation. It's my main hyperfixation so when any media mentions radiation I'm automatically at full attention and So Many get it wrong in full confidence. I know sometimes it's just taking creative liberty but radiation does not produce useful mutations! And it dosen't visibly mutate the one affected, it affects their children. An irradiated area won't produce super frogs, it'll just kill them and the ones who do survive would likely produce entirely unviable offspring. Two heads or one eye or more limbs *sounds* cool until that animal is actually real. None of the mutations are supposed to be there so they will, in most cases, produce a horrible quality of life in the long run as they're not adapted to have that sort of body. Also, if someone's exposed the first thing that's probably gonna happen is that they start feeling nauseous or they start barfing (sometimes from both ends unfortunately). Radiation poisoning isn't fun and it sure as hell isn't clean. It's probably one of the worst things that can happen to a living thing which is probably why media dosen't portray it realistically actually because realistic radiation is just terryifying and depressing tbh. One good series (my favorite books actually!) that depicts it in a mainly realistic light is called "Gone", by Michael Grant. He does take liberty in the mutations, but those are also being affected by Unknown Forces that are really cool and well written and I don't wanna spoil it! I'm going to stop now before this comment turns into a 3k fanfic! Radiation!

[@zakosist]

I have read at least the 2 first Gone books, many years ago. Im not sure what you mean about radiation being realistic in those books

[@nmheath03]

Speaking of radioactive frogs, apparently frogs in Chernobyl are black when others of their species are green. This is a naturally evolved trait to deal with radiation, though.

[@aromanticdisgr-ace4083]

Omg the radiation poisoning thing. I've been watching and reading a lot about radiation poisoning lately and it's just about the most horrific way to die I've ever heard of. The only "mercy" there is is that, if the dose of radiation was high enough, death is usually not more than a few weeks or months away. But even in those cases, that wait for death is AWFUL. Your body rots while you're alive. And even if you survive, the wait for the sickness to heal is BRUTAL and there's nothing anyone can do but treat the symptoms and wait for your body to fix itself which can take a WHILE. And that's assuming you were just blasted by radiation, clean and awful, with no remaining radioactive material on you. If you were covered in radioactive dust or something, oh boy, you're in for a long and terrible ride. If anyone is reading this and is curious about what actually happens to the body and what the symptoms are, I must repeat that it is AWFUL and that if you're uncomfortable with graphic descriptions of severe physical damage of the human body, don't look it up. I'm serious. Live in blissful ignorance because this topic is not cute, it is not pretty, and it is not romantic. There's nothing fun here. Only horror and tragedy. You've been warned.

[@e.taylor1369]

That's rad dude

[@aromanticdisgr-ace4083]

@@e.taylor1369 I hope this pun was on purpose because I love it

[@unirytmi5020]

people often get small historical details wrong and it so easily takes me out of the story. i once read a fic set in the 70s where a character answered a phone while driving,, mobile phones weren't really commercially available until the early 80s, and were certainly not convenient nor something a middle class person would own, much less just have in their car! in general many things are much newer than one would think, and at least with tech, just because something was available didn't mean that everyone owned it. in short; please just look up when things were made please (and when they were popularized, that's important too)

[@katashworth41]

I read one where a couple got the Eurostar in the 80s, the early 80s. The Channel Tunnel opened in 1994.

[@BJGvideos]

I feel like SOME people would have had them in the 1970s but they'd probably have to be a business sort

[@R.P-e2z]

I was a teenager in the early 2000s. I had a flip phone that couldn't access the internet and charged per text. When the class rich girl got a first-gen iPhone, it was a HUGE deal. What I'm saying is that there's no way someone would have a mobile phone in the 70s. Car phones were real, but those were expensive as hell.

[@fearlesswee5036]

"Just because it existed at the time doesn't mean it was common" is a HUGE, HUGE, HUGE mistake you see everywhere, like in Battlefield One, "This prototype SMG technically existed at the time, so EVERYONE has one" when in actuality literally *one* was made, it was never fired, and then it was dismantled after no army took the contract for it.

[@shadowfoxgirl]

Yeah, I had a character playing a violin once until I realized that the violin wasn't invented until the 1600's and I was writing in the 1300's. Needless to say I had to research the types of instruments of the time period.

[@writerducky2589]

Skirts and dresses. So, so many people seem to believe they're some sort of cage for the legs. They're not. If you can't do a certain activity in a skirt it's not because you're wearing A skirt, but because you're wearing the WRONG skirt. Shape is THE biggest factor in how much mobility it offers. If the skirt is shaped like a mermaid's tail, then of course you're gonna wiggle about like one. If the skirt is shaped like a circus tent, then your legs are gonna have all the space of a circus tent available to them. Second factor is cloth, heavy, unstretchable jeans will of course offer less mobility than light, fluttery cotton. (Even though jeans are also technically cotton.) Length is only really a factor if it's at the ankles and below. And if someone is afraid that their skirt is too short and their panties will show (idk, might just be an anime thing), shorts exist. Like, seriously, that's why shorts were invented. Source: someone who's been wearing skirts and dresses all her life and done everything from swimming to horseback riding to skiing to climbing to whatever else in them. Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk😅

[@junecampbell2152]

i've found that attempting to wear skirts (unless they're wrap skirts) lower than your knees while swimming leads to you mostly either 1) floating while trying to do crawl stroke as an attempt to get to somewhere you can stand 2) if the water is shallow enough, really slowly wading through it so yes, you can swim whilst wearing a skirt, but it depends on the type of skirt source - my brother has shoved me in a lake while i was wearing a long skirt on multiple occasions

[@annasolovyeva1013]

​@@junecampbell2152 for swimming, the skirts are short of course

[@PadelbootStudios]

"Skirts and dresses. So, so many people seem to believe they're some sort of cage for the legs." Wait... what? Wha? How?! Unless it's a tight pencil skirt or leather skirt or latex skirt or perhaps denim I cannot imagine how one could get the idea. And even then mostly the longer skirts, not the short ones. If anything they seem to offer much more leg freedom, less annoying rubbing of fabric on the inner tighs (particularly relevant in summer heat) und nice air flow. Granted my personal experience is very limited due to my gender, but I did wear a dress for LARP and it felt exactly what I thought it would be. It was really nice. :D Seriously, how can one think a light summer dress is like a cage? Or a long, flowy skirt made of light materials? I genuinely cannot wrap my head around it. And yes, that even includes the anime-cliche of being afraid of panty shots (that isn't much of a cage and more of a social anxiety thing, I would argue).

[@Eliasthescumbag]

idk honestly every time i try to wear a skirt my christian parents go: NO >:(

[@ainehanley9083]

As a fellow skirt wearer this is also one of my personal bugs! Thank you for this well done explanation!

[@ChozoFS]

The suppressor thing actually bleeds over into the legal side of things, where lawmakers are really harsh on suppressors, out of fear of them being used to more discreetly kill people, when they won't hide the noise of the gunshot much at all, just sparing your poor eardrums from being damaged

[@bogwife7942]

just wear hearing protection??

[@AtarahDerek]

These are the same politicians who want to ban "ghost guns" with "30 magazine clips that can fire 100 shots a second."

[@MarcyTheKindaCoolWizard]

​@@bogwife7942just hage someone cover your ears with their hands, duh

[@DatAlien]

Isn't that mostly with supersonic rounds like 9mm while subsonic rounds like .45 are actually pretty quiet?

[@chriswarr641]

Yeah... Suppressors turn the sound of gunshots from 'so loud it easily damages hearing even a moderate distance away' to 'really loud but unlikely to damage hearing unless you are right next to it or in an enclosed space with it'.

[@TinyAzalea101]

This is very specific to the LMK fandom, but baby monkeys are NOT called cubs. It took me one google search to find that out, they’re called infants, just like baby humans. Heck, I even double checked that baby macaques are also called infants(they are) since our two main monkeys are supposed to be macaques(I mean one of them is even named Macaque-). I know a lot of people will be like “I’m just calling it a cub because it’s what I headcanon baby demons being called” but then they turn around also do that with the normal non-demon baby monkeys-

[@AtarahDerek]

You sure they didn't get it from the Jungle Book? The wolves and big cats refer to all offspring as cubs, regardless of species.

[@fritzy8318]

The what fandom.

[@InsaneBirdSkater]

Lego Monkie Kid ?

[@iShu56]

i was NOT expecting a lmk reference here lmao. Great now whenever i read the word cub in a fic i’ll be thinking about this

[@YunxiaoChu]

Cool

[@violingineer7862]

I read a fic where the author mentioned "dandelion spores" and I think about it frequently.

[@genericname2747]

My favorite mushroom

[@donotreadmyprofile9373]

maybe they're talking about sporocytes or like microspore or megaspore (angiosperms do have spores though, surprisingly but the duration is short lived unlike moss and other phylums)

[@Lafayettethebaguette]

Not the author but I was reading a fanfic where a character had their spleen removed and people said “oh no, he can’t live without that” not knowing what a spleen was. If you get your spleen removed the liver takes over most of its work but you’re more prone to getting sick.

[@MorganChaos]

There's quite a few things you can lose and live a normal life, or normal life with some minor restrictions. Gall bladder, spleen, one kidney, part of your liver, part of a lung, any reproductive organ including a penis...

[@DaftnPunk]

Detroit Becomes Human fandom gets Detroit’s geography wrong constantly as well as language, slang, history, etc.. I am from Detroit, lived there 20+ years. It’s not even me being in my high horse about it. There are no salt water beaches in Michigan, we are surrounded by lakes. But i have seen that mistake a lot. Michigan is in the Midwest, our slang is midwestern, so “pop” vs “soda.”

[@shivers.ID_]

Im writing a dbh fic rn and i think this is a sign from god that i should recheck my outline

[@BJGvideos]

Slang at least would be understandable since it's in the future

[@kaylaa2204]

With slang it could vary on the small scale with individuals. I live in a part of Ohio that trends towards saying pop. But me personally I say soda, just because I prefer it in spite of few around me using it. But yeah you should generally keep in mind the way people of your setting speak, and only break those trends while keeping in mind that you are deviating from the average person. But also it might be that these things changed since Detroit Become Human is the future. I can’t remember how far in the future so maybe the Great Lakes becoming saltwater somehow isn’t feasible, but language shifts all the time.

[@nmheath03]

The "salt water" thing stands out to me most. Like, you can just google if the Great Lakes are fresh water or salt water and get your answer in like 5 seconds

[@GazalaRose]

To add to the Great Lakes thing: the water is usually cold. Even in the summer, it doesn't get that warm. Not that it ever stopped me from swimming anyways, lol. But yeah, that's also another thing. If you're describing hot weather in Michigan by saying it's like 100 degrees, waves forming in the air... Yeah no. Hot in Michigan starts at like 70 degrees farenheit (for the people who've lived there awhile, of course.) It's warmest in the parts of a city with little to no trees, and lots of people. But even then, it doesn't get that hot. Rarely gets above 90. So, uh... not many cases of heat strokes, unless maybe you're really old, dehydrated, covered in multiple layers of clothing... Idk what people are writing in their DBH fics but surely they can't be that inaccurate, right..

[@corinneeaglebridge]

Honestly - so many things about horses and horse riding. - You can’t just ride any horse if you have never ridden before/only ridden a few times. - Horses will often reject unfamiliar riders. (Unless they’ve been taught to be a teaching horse) - Horses aren’t stupid, they have their own personalities. Some traits may be consistent between breeds (just like how certain dog breeds may have certain traits) but even then, they are not a monolith. - Riding bareback is super hard, even if you’ve ridden for years and have a super strong bond with your horse. No, you can’t just hold onto the mane and hope. Horses sweat like people do. They get slippery and it will make balancing even harder. In order to ride bareback, you’d need to fully synchronize your body’s rhythm to the rhythm of the horse’s body beneath you. And even then it’s still hard. Even people who have ridden horses for DECADES may be unable to master bareback riding. - You CANNOT be distracted when your horse is standing untethered. A horse will know when you’re distracted, and they’ll take full advantage of it. Horses are likely to know where the food is stored. Horses cannot throw up, and they do not have the ability to tell when their stomach is full. Which means that, if given the chance, horses can and will eat themselves to death! Also, horses show eachother love by biting. Which is sweet, but if your horse can reach you because he’s untethered and they love you, they will bite you too! And it will hurt! Of course, don’t tether your horse with a too tight rope - make sure that the horse can move their head, both so they can look around and so they don’t rip themselves apart if they start stressing. There’s a specific knot that I don’t know the name of that can be pulled loose in one tug. Use that one so you can untether a horse if they panic. - Big horses aren’t always war horses. (Surprisingly, it’s usually the opposite!). Most big drafts were used for farming. They were the tractors of the farm if you could afford to upgrade from oxen. They’re not built to be fast or agile. - Just because a horse is big doesn’t mean that it’s good for carrying heavy weight. Big/tall/chonky are more likely to be built to PULL heavy loads, not carry them. - Just because a horse likes you, doesn’t mean you’ll be able to effortlessly ride it. (ESPECIALLY if they’re not even saddlebroken) - Horseback riding is exercise. If you are not using every muscle in your body to ride, you’re doing it wrong. It requires every ounce of muscle control you have in your body. “Oh but these professional riders barely move at all!” that’s only because they’re good riders and know how to hide it and work with the horse seamlessly so they can compensate with their legs and waist! - Horses are super affectionate to people they like. But they’re prey animals, which means they’ll be wary of people they don’t know. They also have a “casual mode” and “work mode” depending on what they’re doing, almost like service dogs. Some horses will have entirely different behaviors and even seemingly different personalities based on whether you’re riding on them or not. I’ve experienced standoffish horses that suddenly pay perfect attention to you once you’re on them, but I’ve experienced it the other way around as well. - There are multiple ways to ride a horse. At most schools you’ll learn either English or Western. - Riding crops are not inherently cruel if used correctly. You need a horse to trust you if you want to ride it - hitting them with it would just be counterproductive. They tend to be used for light taps that are used to signal the horse. - Just because someone is wealthy, does not mean they won’t have a relationship with their horse. You just have to spend a great amount of time with them (treating them like a living being, not as a tool or object). Just because stablehands may take care of things like feeding, does not immediately mean the stablehands will be their favourite person, unless the rider neglects the horse. - Horses can’t graze anywhere. Or well, they can, but it’s dangerous. Never let your horse graze without supervising and/or checking the area. Certain plants are poisonous to horses, and as mentioned before, horses cannot throw up.

[@daynamorris2399]

I was playing D&D with my group and the DM said something about the party using draft horses to pull supplies through a forest? While horses will go into wooded areas, the trail needs to be clear

[@corinneeaglebridge]

@@daynamorris2399 I mean, logging horses are definitely a thing, but by the phrasing of supplies I’m sure that’s not what the DM meant. :( And yeah, unless there’s a clear trail, horses that are pulling stuff are not going in there. For one thing, draft horses are big and chunky, but it’s also just not practical to pull stuff through heavily wooded areas like that.

[@wjzav1971]

If horses will eat themselves to death if unsupervized, how did they survive in the wild?

[@corinneeaglebridge]

@@wjzav1971 because in the wild, they tend to eat what they digest the best; grasses that are low energy and high fiber. They also tend to eat more spread out over the day instead of all at once. Feed made for sports- or work horses tends to have more digestible energy but are also lower in fibers. This is the type of feed you’d keep in a feed room, and you feed each horse specific amounts (that are healthy for that horse) at specific times of the day. If they get in this type of feed and overeat on it, that’s a problem; the lower amount of fibers in it means the digestion goes way slower, so it can obstruct the gastrointestinal tract. This can cause horses to colic, which is one of the most common causes of death in horses, and colic can become life-threatening in really short amounts of time. TLDR; difference in what they’re eating (low energy with high fibers vs high energy with low fibers) and how much they’re eating at once

[@sammjaisais7135]

The riding using your whole body is SO REAL. When I first came to the rural town where I'm currently working, the residents quickly picked up on the fact that I like horses. Sadly, I was never able to take lessons both because of money and because there are like two places where they teach, and they're both like two hours away from where I lived. Anyway, one of the townspeople offered to allow me to ride his mare, and he led me around the town with a lead rope. Man, by the end of an hour, my legs were shaking, no joke. And that was just plain old walking. I chose not to ever ride unless I took classes, though, since I took my experience to a horseriding subreddit, and the redditors tore me a new one, and I actually felt bad for it, so... I still love horses, though.

[@m.furball5112]

Usually it's the "oh, this writer is American and didn't do research" that gets to me (doesn't have to be American, but some of the points are easy to connect). The 911 is an obvious one (also fyi, some countries have different emergency numbers for different departments). Medical care and expenses, too. Guns everywhere in countries where they should be restricted and/or illegal. How different places count the school years (both the amount of years spent in elementary/middle/high school, or how each grade is called). Drinking age is different in a lot of places. It's usually just a small enough detail to not bother me too much. I just tend to notice this when I venture to fandoms set in different countries. I don't always have the answers myself, especially if I never got into any Fandom from that country before, but I look up any question I could have when I start writing or obsessing about the fandom, so I find out pretty fast. Even if I don't know the answer I can tell when an answer is not right... Research is important, and on a lot of these points, pretty easy to find the answers.

[@annasolovyeva1013]

Americans often see Soviet Union in crazy wrong ways. E.g. NKVD doesn't mean a special service in the modern sense. It's all of the police and firefighters and border service, and more paperwork and legal authority than supersoldiers.

[@JustTochi]

I have that exact thing with names. Characters with unexplained English names in a Japanese setting, for example. Like I get that moving countries exist but if like half of your cast has names that do not feel like they work in this setting (another example: a very modern name set more than 200 years in the past) then you need to explain or imply why that's the case. Like, "they're from this area of town that houses a lot of immigrants" or something like that. Yes, foreigners are a thing but not every country is as ethnically diverse as the US. Research is key!

[@StarshadowMelody]

This is why I try to stay far far away from writing real-world locations.

[@jaspersoranges]

Also about school, the fact that some countries start school at different times of the year instead of September, for example Japan starts in April and end in early march the next year with quite a few breaks.

[@chocothebananacat7686]

One of the worst ones for me was when I was reading a fanfic about some British characters at university but the author was clearly American because they kept talking about sharing dorms and having to pick a major or take certain classes that are unrelated to their course. I was like ??? we don't do that here 😂

[@marist1079]

One of my pet-peeves in fics/media is the kind of treatment prosthetics are given. While i’m not an amputee myself and don’t have any personal experience, I am aware generally of the limitations of prosthetic limbs. So I always like if there’s some bit about a prosthetic malfunctioning, breaking, or causing more trouble for the character. Especially regarding complex, sci-fi prosthetics that have more components and need more resources to keep functioning.

[@BJGvideos]

Ever read/watched Fullmetal Alchemist?

[@roguesriot147]

My original story has some advanced technology, but not extremely futuristic. There are things like prosthetics that can almost fully function as normal limbs, advanced medicine, etc. Would stuff like that be considered disrespectful? I guess it is a fantasy world technically, as there are stuff such as monsters and a whole other realm. The advanced technology is mostly in medical fields, cities(but nothing extreme), etc

[@RDrawzDragonz]

hey um whats some of the limtitations if u dont mind me asking, ik they have limitations but im a writer too and also researching for personal reasons so im just trying to get all information possible. ive been researching for a few weeks now but im still learning.

[@CHESShireCat]

@@RDrawzDragonzIf it’s in the real world, there’s a lot of limitations that have to do with the fact that it’s not an actual part of your body. Unless you’re really rich to get some sort of fancy prosthetic and also your specific amputation is in a lucky spot where they can connect your nerves to it, you can’t control it like you do your own body. You have to imagine the control stopping at the last spot of your flesh body. Like an arm prosthetic where you still have your elbow, you’d be able to move that arm up and down and maybe “scoop” things up with it or brace yourself a little bit but you can’t move the wrist or fingers with your mind or anything. Like idk, it’s kind of common sense things but you have to really put yourself in those shoes and imagine it. My grandma has her entire arm and shoulder amputated and she got a prosthetic that was essentially just a mannequin arm to make clothes fit better and she could hang a purse on it but that was it. And she gave up on it cause she didn’t like it. The more of the body that was removed/never there, the less potential functionality of a prosthetic. And of course you can’t “feel” things through it, just the impact/contact it has with parts you can feel, the same way you can’t feel your hair getting cut but you can feel your hair getting pulled. Of course sci-fi and fantasy can throw this all out the window if they want. But at what point does it become narratively pointless if it’s exactly the same as a non prosthetic limb?

[@DakalaShade]

Not an amputee either, but one of my original story characters has an enchanted mechanical leg (above the knee amputation, combat injury - Someone blew up part of the airship he was on and he got hit by shrapnel) made from leather, brass, and blackened steel. It's a routine thing for him to have to take his left leg off, disassemble it, clean and lubricate the moving parts, and put it back together again. Toward the end of a 5 year adventure... The beautiful masterwork leg he started out with is still shiny and polished... But the bushings in the joints are worn out, damaged by sand and grit, ravaged by the constant use over many years. He knows he needs to get a new one, but he's worried whatever he gets _won't_ be as good as the leg he currently has, even with it crunching and grinding at times. Even though it wasn't as good as his real leg (no sense of touch beyond impact with items), the spells did let it move under _his_ control. He's worried because "I got this leg so I could keep being a hero. Now that my work is done... Will I still be able to get a masterwork like this, or will I now have to settle for something far less functional? Will I have to give up walking proudly, and instead be wheeled around like an old man, or to clunk around like a drunken pirate on a peg of wood?" I liked it as a way of showing the passing of time. Early on, there was very little maintenance beyond "a splash of oil when it's getting stiff" because he didn't think all that much about it _needing_ maintenance. "It's enchanted, it'll be fine." As time progresses, he starts having more minor issues that start requiring him to take it apart. He starts carrying a tool kit with him for field repairs. He has to rely on his wizard's staff as a crutch a few times when things grind to a halt. This progresses into a every-other-week maintenance routine, which stops a _lot_ of the problems. He gets into harsher environments and it becomes weekly, and he hates the area because he's having to field strip and clean his leg "all the time." He gets out of that area and the damage is already done - every-other-week, he does maintenance, but sometimes things jam up before cleaning day. He has to go back to weekly cleaning just to keep things working perfectly... And toward the end of his adventures, he's cleaning it every-other-day to prolong the usable time it has left. I'm not that mean to my heroes - He will get a new leg that's just as good... But he has to get to the point of asking about it first, which should come to his mind the next time it jams up proper and requires cleaning - only to find the bushing for his knee joint has finally worn through, and that grinding he felt was steel against steel, instead of steel against brass.

[@AbsolutelyAri1]

Saw a story that thinks pencil lead is ACTUAL lead. Sure, if it takes place in the past, that's fine, but modern pencils are made of graphite (because it's not as dangerous to touch/ingest as lead is).

[@Zuzu00000]

No, not even in the past. Pencil lead has always been made with a mix of graphite and clay or glue.

[@AbsolutelyAri1]

@@Zuzu00000 oh wow

[@Bicornis]

@@AbsolutelyAri1 Bit of trivia: the reason it's called "lead" is that people used to think graphite was a type of lead ore.

[@456puff]

Wow, I’m kinda mind blown by that. I thought they did have lead in the past.

[@FirstnameLastname-jd4uq]

Graphite (carbon) is non toxic, the only danger is the fact it’s not digestible either.

[@DarkKnightofIT]

On corsets hurting, if it's your first time putting one on (especially if you don't have help) it's _really_ easy to over-tighten it, or even under-tighten it, so if you're preparing to write something, try one on, and it hurts because it's not on properly... My personal pet peeve is mechanical stuff and gun stuff, clicked off of one because a 'prodigal gunsmith' compared the power of a .22LR to 50BMG...

[@nelsondawson9706]

No way is a 22lr comparable to a 50 bmg at all

[@Quzinqa1122]

Yes, if your corset is uncomfortable, it's the wrong size or shape.

[@_aWiseMan]

........how would someone ever compare the two? I mean even if you have no knowledge the fact they even know of the twos existence period but think they are comparable is just.....strange. never seen someone know the terminology but not know the sizing. Unless they were just comparing guns and the ammo size itself wasn't mentioned

[@fatherjune]

If you're stabbed, YOU DON'T. PULL. THE. FUCKING. BLADE. OUT!! THAT'LL JUST MAKE YOU BLEED OUT!!

[@Guppygub]

Depression being JUST sadness. As someone who has it severely it’s not just sadness, it’s feeling listless and hollow like you can’t feel anything. It’s being tired and unmotivated all the time. I see this a lot in fanfics and even in original media where a character will just sit on a rooftop and cry once and will get called depressed. But depression is a spectrum! So don’t focus on just one aspect of it!

[@Nockgun]

@@Guppygub depression i see is you letting your decay slowly as your mind gets more apathetic to everything

[@IceFireofVoid]

When I first started seeing a mental health professional for my depression, I remember telling her one time "anger is the only emotion I have that feels real". I didn't get sad. I didn't really feel anything. Depression was just emptiness and sometimes I would be angry. But I had seen so many media portrayals and people only depict it as being sad all the time, so for many years I thought I couldn't be depressed, because I never got sad. It was, of all things, Undertale that made me go seek help. Because I saw someone break down how Sans is a very accurate portrayal of depression and everything fit. The apathy, the constant exhaustion, and using sarcasm and jokes to deflect from it all.

[@Nockgun]

@ its an emotional void

[@_aWiseMan]

Yeah burn out bore out and apathy are another part of depression. And there's also ppd. Also known as workers depression where that apathy gets set back but Is is still there. Everything feels like a footnote. Happy memories don't feel happy and barely even memorable even if they were major parts of your life. And all the whole no one can really tell on the outside. Sometimes not even you

[@Tonatiub]

Personally I dont think I have ever felt depression as sadness, its more like a constant feeling of dread and inability to enjoy things fully.

[@AUCreatoer]

THE CORSETS ONE!!! The amount of grudge I have for that rumour. Like, it's not meant to hurt you! Corsets are made to support women clothing so Idk why they make it so it hurts, it only hurts when you actually tighten it too tightly.

[@sendborbs2146]

yeah when I discovered that my medical back brace was just an ugly beige belt with boning I swapped it out for my corsets and got the exact same support but prettier, now I wear them anytime I have to be on my feet for long hours or will be sitting in terrible chairs for prolonged periods (I go to the theatre a lot, a place where not only is it appropriate to wear a corset, but you damn well need one for those fucking seats)

[@marcosgonzalez4207]

It was propaganda to sell brasiers... or at least is what they said

[@AUCreatoer]

@@sendborbs2146 Nice that you find comfort in the corset!

[@AUCreatoer]

@@marcosgonzalez4207 Yeah, heard that was the case.

[@dream_walker9726]

i feel like that one is pirates of the caribbean’s fault

[@ChristineSG19]

14:49 I remember there was a whole genre of videos from the gacha community where the characters would fully lose their hair before ever knowing they had cancer and the loss of hair would be what made them realize they had it. Most of those videos were made by kids anyway but I was shocked at how common a mistake it was.

[@JuanLeon-oe6xe]

Yup, most kids/teens aren't familiar with chemotherapy or radiotherapy, they probably chalk the hair loss to cancer itself rather than the treatment.

[@genericname2747]

When I was younger I had a kid ask me if my grandmas hair fell out when she got cancer. I've never been more offended by an innocent question

[@princembat]

7:49 actually it really depends on the glasses! i used to have a pair that the screws always came loose on and those glasses always loved slipping down my face even when i was looking up, so you know they fell the moment i looked downward. and yes, those glasses gave me constant headaches, both metaphorical and literal. my current glasses though? they dont have that issue at all! i havent had to adjust the screws or even think about them, and ive had these for many many months now honestly id forgive a characters glasses constantly slipping off if they had a remark like 'wow, i really need to tighten these' lol

[@linaoswick6198]

Coming from an optician: it's also not the screws (not primarily). There are several points that need to be adjusted with glasses. The width needs to fit your face, it needs to sit at a certain distance from your eyes to be comfortable, etc. While lose screws will give the impression that the frame isn't "stable", it is not the most essential. What really defines whether or not your glasses will "slip off" if you look down, is how the temples are adjusted behind your ears. Most temples come in a pre-bended state which is normed. For some people, that will suffice completely. Depending on the length of the temple and the position and curvature of your ear shell, however, it is very likely that they should be adjusted to fit your particular ear and skull shape behind it. A good optician will always check whether the temples are long enough to be properly fitted behind your ears before you buy that particular frame. Some can be too long and need to be shortened, some are simply too short to adjust decently. Also: the heavier the lenses are, the more important a proper adjustment is. Lenses with values of +/- 0,5 weigh absolutely nothing (unless you want real glass) and hence, even unadjusted glasses are not likely to fall of easily, given that their overall size fits your face. A +5 lens (e.g.) however, will weigh a few grams more and gravity is not so easily cheated. Sorry, I know it's a bit of an essay. I hope it didn't come off as lecturing (that was not my intention), I just wanted to give my 2 cents since this is not something that's commonly known unless you work in the field or have had issues with it (e.g. heavy lenses or sensitive ears/ a sensitive nose).

[@ViridianForests]

@@linaoswick6198 Interesting! There's more factors than I thought there were. My glasses tend to slowly start slipping after using them for a few years and once it's bad enough that they're falling down my nose even when I'm just talking to someone, I go back to the optometrist and the lady there heats up the branches and makes them fit my ears again. I guess several years or constantly putting my glasses on and removing them, dozens of times per day slowly warms up the plastic and it starts to lose the proper shape? (I take them on and off all the time because I need them to see distance, but they give me headaches if I'm working on a computer while wearing them, the strength is too high for that) So seeing people's glasses constantly slipping in media doesn't really bother me, because it happens to me too. If everyone has glasses and they're _all_ always slipping though... Hm, they've got another problem going on there hahah

[@linaoswick6198]

@@ViridianForests Yup, that's it! It depends on what the temples/branches are made of as well. There are different kinds of plastic, some of which get porous and brittle after several years of use due to sweat and body heat (also, they might "shrink" a little over time - this also accounts for the central frame if it's made of plastic; that might get your glasses out of shape as well as they won't be able to uphold the center-piece's curvature), some others don't share that issue but can't be adjusted as a result. Metal temples are more likely to "bend out of shape" if stressed but aren't quite as prone to breaking (but again, depends on the exact material - this is just the case for the most common type of metal used). Sometimes, even the makeup or moisturisers you use can have a massive impact on your frames durability. Same if you sweat a lot. It won't break instantly, ofcourse, but the softeners that are mixed into the more common plastic (so the frame is adjustable) will "decay" quicker (so to speak). For metal frames, it's usually the alloying that starts peeling off and when it does, the metal beneath starts to rust. Lol, sorry, I got carried away (again). But yes, there's more to it than meets the eye (I was surprised as well when I started my apprenticeship). There's also a lot of misconceptions about contact lenses in fanfiction (they can't slip behind your eye and swim about in your brain 😂) but that's a story for another time.

[@Tonatiub]

yeah, my current glasses are not properly aligned with my ears and they slip very easily, I actually have to keep fixing them like every minute like a cartoon character.

[@fabulousjekster28]

Vampires not appearing in reflective surfaces on modern days. The whole reason dracula and other vampires in different stories from back then didnt appeared in mirrors was due to it having silver in it. Nowadays, there would be no reason for them to not to appear in mirrors, photos or even cellphone reflections unless its a really old mirror lol

[@Archbishop_of_the_Noodle]

The reason was 100% Bram Stroker and nothing else.

[@benjaminthibieroz4155]

That's the only thing I found really weird and illogical about vampires (can you find facts about fictionnal creatures illogical?). I mean the sun and water stuff fits their theme of being undead, specific plants drawing back demons is a common trope in many mythologies... but if you have physical shape, how the hell is light somehow reflected on the vampire itself for you to see it but not on a freaking mirror?

[@Archbishop_of_the_Noodle]

@@benjaminthibieroz4155 Literally Bram Stroker's idea got popular is the only reason it is a thing.

[@ZenoDovahkiin]

The origin of the myth isn't required to be part of every vampire story. If the rules of the setting states that vampires have no reflection, they have no reflection. Vampires aren't a real thing that you can get wrong in fiction, there are countless interpretations of the concept.

[@_aWiseMan]

Tbf that's not really a general thing. Many vampires werewolves and other miscellaneous monsters are heavily different depending on the story. Some vampired aren't effected by certain weaknesses. Some are immune to sunlight or have nothing to do with holy forces at all. And are just burned by sunlight. Some werewolves are more feral or less than others. And the way lycanthropy works at all is almost never the same.

[@randomweirdo6712]

Adding on to the one about people underestimating the healing time/severity of wounds: if you cut open your palm, you can't just put on some bandages and be good to go. My palm got cut on accident once and the bleeding was incredibly strong and needed a lot of pressure and time before it stopped. Then the whole hand is completely unusuable afterwards. Putting on any pressure or even moving or jostling it too hard might re-open the wounds or otherwise damage it, preventing healing. I needed around a week before I could start using it normally again, and that was in my teenage years and during the best possible rest conditions. Whatever adult is doing weird blood rituals might need even more time depending on their age, health and outside circumstances. The scars are gonna stick around for much longer either way.

[@MyaKHamilton]

I 100% agree with you because i cut my hand open accidentally a couple months ago by falling, and it took like a week for it to heal and like another week for the huge mark on my hand to go away. Luckily it didn't scar unlike when I fell and hit my head, which left a small scar on my forehead but that wound still gushed a lot of blood. I see this in a lot of Fanfictions and books to the point that a book I just read a month ago had the character cut his hand open to sacrifice some blood to a god and I'm like well he won't be doing anything with his hand or wrist for the next week or several if he keeps moving his wrist and opening the wound.

[@ViridianForests]

Urgh _this_ ! This was my big stopping point as a teenager when I read Divergent. (I did continue the book, but still, I was annoyed) They have this whole scene where they cut their palm, drop blood in the bowl of their faction, etc. I don't remember if they even bandage their hands (they've all been using the same knife too, it's madness). And then, like thirty minutes later, everyone in the Reckless faction is jumping into trains and freejumping down a hole? Like bruh, what happened to the literal knife wound in your palm, the thing you use to hold onto stuff?? The thing that really got to me was the "cut your palm" scene (my little brain forgot she cut her hand right after and frankly, so did the book, so I only realized much later how stupid the rest was). I've never cut my palm thankfully, but everyone's had papercuts on their fingers at some point right? And shouldn't that be enough experience to think something along the lines of "Oh, hey, this small cut on the most flexible bits of my skin, that I keep on using, and rubbing against things, and flexing and all that is making this particular papercut wayyyy more painful/annoying than the ones that don't move as much" ?? Like, one, a cut deep enough to draw blood for some bullshit ceremony will always take time to heal, will need a bandage, etc. It's not a scrape where it scabs over and dries in minutes, it's an intentional cut with a tool made for slicing through meat. (A tool likely sharing all the blood transmitted diseases of the community, but whatever right?) And two, there's other stuff going on under the skin! Cutting your hand is one of the most dangerous places to cut, because you can harm your nerves and tendons, which are everywhere, doing a lot of fine tuning and giving you a lot of important feedback. Sure, I'm sure a bunch of characters cut their hands shallowly enough to dodge this particular danger, but I can bet at least one person is gonna be too nervous and push too deep and then oops! "Oh no, I'm gushing blood and I can't feel my ring finger" Anyway, back to hand wounds. I cut my thumb with a bread knife by accident in 2017 and it took a month to stop aching every time I took a step. The nurse who bandaged me up said it was because it was a small (but deep) cut in one area, so it kind of accentuated it. I couldn't really do anything with my hand, everytime it brushed against something it would ache, every time it received some kind of shock (like the shock of my steps against the ground traveling up through my body) it would ache. And now the scar is so faint I have trouble seeing it unless I'm looking for it specifically. I dunno, I find hand wounds are the most common ones to see in tropes. Divergent is hardly the only place I've seen it. There is leeway for people whose bodies are in _very_ good shape (there's a very fit marathon running woman whose spine was broken when she was alone in the desert with her dog, they found her in time and she made a full recovery, which everyone said would have been impossible had her body not been in such good shape), but that's not most characters. Or characters who have some form of supernatural healing. But well, it doesn't take long to look up "how long does X take to heal".

[@sendborbs2146]

it took me having a major surgery to realise just how long big wounds like that take to heal, and how debilitating it is when it's on a major part of your upper body it took a month before I could even pick up my baby nephew, and so many months more to gain back the upper body strength I lost during that recovery time

[@_aWiseMan]

I wrote a character who accidentally sounded his hand because he got used to a healing factor but required to bleed to use his actual powers. (he has a sword that sealed his strength but gave it.back at the cost of his own blood. His healing was done by other blood so he'd constantly be playing a game of recourse management on blood or power loss.) And he cut open his hand only to release he didn't have a way to stop it and bout died because the sword just kept a sucking

[@higgy0789]

Seizures! If someone is having a seizure, DO NOT restrain them! You or the person having the seizure could end up hurt, and restricting their movement will not stop the involuntary electricity in their brain from moving their muscles anyway. Stop restraining people having seizures in writing pls On a less serious note, the writers of warrior cats know shockingly little about cats (named after eye colour right after they’re born, kittens having open eyes right after being born, cat pregnant for more than two months, a cat having six toes on one of his hind paws is only one extra toe instead of two)

[@rhondahoward8025]

The whole "swallowing their tongue" thing is false as well - at least from what I've heard. The only thing you *should* do is prevent injury, like if they start banging their head against the floor or something.

[@ZenoDovahkiin]

@@rhondahoward8025 Eh, depends what you mean by "swallow" and by "banging their head." In the worst case scenario during a full on seizure your reflexes don't make you catch yourself normally, you just fall like a wet sack, so if somebody is experiencing one while standing, catching them is generally appreciated if you can. Not to prevent them from going down, but to help them reach the ground intact, then you let them seize (source: after several seizures throughout my life, the only permanent damage is actually a fall injury from faceplanting onto hard floor). That's the main way you'd bang your head. Less from twitching, more from falling. As far as the tongue is concerned: If you're referring to the practice of giving the seizing person something to bite on, then yes, you're right: don't do that. If they're unlucky, they lose teeth. If you're unlucky, you lose fingers (or at least cripple them). Now, *_biting_* your tongue can absolutely happen, but it's the lesser evil, so you risk it. The tongue can heal from quite a bit of punishment, trust me, I know. *_However:_* "Swallowing" ones tongue is very real. That's not a seizure specific thing though, that relates to unconsciousness and refers to your tongue blocking airflow, making you suffocate. This is avoided by turning an unconscious person to their side, and first aid courses should normally teach you how to do that properly. Symptoms of a seizure _can_ (that doesn't mean it always happens) include loss of consciousness, so if somebody stops seizing but doesn't regain consciousness, treat them like any unconscious person, turn them onto their side to make sure they can breathe. That's after the seizure, though. During it, you got it right, let it pass. Don't do anything, you'll hurt more than help. However the seizure also shouldn't last more than a couple minutes usually, and if they're unconscious, it can take a while longer for them to get all the way back.

[@Tony-nt5zd]

Algo brought me here so here's mine: I work in maintenance. We don't really get seen in fiction beyond the occasional creepy side character, and the invisibility/revulsion response in society is extremely on-brand. I think the closest thing to a misconception about my field is the trope of sneaking around in vents (in reality they are almost never big enough for a person, impressively stuffed with dust, dirt, and sharp edges for you to shred yourself on, and would be noisy as hell if you did manage to crawl through them) and that in fiction, things like pipes are wiring systems are paradoxically both way more volatile and way more durable than they are in real life. It's less a field with misconceptions and more a field most people totally forget about, honestly.

[@Mariasouza-um8cx]

One thing that bothers me a lot and that is in almost every media I watched is, when a character is stabbed or impaled and the first thing they do is remove the object that stabbed them and this is something THAT CAN ONLY BE DONE WHEN YOU ARE ALREADY IN A HOSPITAL!!! When you remove what stabbed you it will accelerate the bleeding which will result in YOU DYING FASTER!!!

[@zakosist]

Yes, but i imagine in reality a lot of people could still do it due to panicking or not knowing better. Its still a bad idea

[@summerroses8841]

Furthermore, taking it out without knowing what you’re doing makes it very likely that it’ll cause even more damage than it already did

[@_aWiseMan]

I often actually see the opposite. But I guess it just depends on the writers knowledge on survival and how bleeding out works

[@boblecat]

Also, my brother is a paramedic, and DEFIBRILLATORS. They're not meant for starting your heart again necessarily, they're for resetting their rhythm, and they won't save you from everything known to man

[@nelsondawson9706]

Isn't adrenaline used to restart the heart or is that a myth

[@boblecat]

@@nelsondawson9706 Haven't a clue but it's always defibrillators in movies and my brother always complains about it

[@bleedingroze]

@@nelsondawson9706In very basic terms it increases the contractility of the heart and can help to increase heart rate, along with CPR and other drugs/emergency measures can help to resuscitate a person who is getting close to death related to the slowing or stopping of the heart. CPR is what helps to restart the heart rhythm, along with drugs.

[@rhondahoward8025]

Oh definitely. If you're flatlined, you're dead, Jim. There's no bringing you back.

[@rhondahoward8025]

@@nelsondawson9706 Adrenaline is not used to restart the heart directly, but it is crucial in resuscitation efforts. It helps increase heart rate, improves blood flow, and enhances the effectiveness of defibrillation in cardiac arrest scenarios.

[@Bone_Incidents]

“Due to his PC being full of dust, he couldn’t even turn it on” The character in this fanfic had not used his PC in 2 years, there’s no possible way for it to fill up with enough dust to stop it from playing Minecraft.

[@Jpx0999]

Surprisingly,yes It can But Only If you are already in a Very dusty Room you dont bother to clean and you have a small fan turned on 24/7

[@princessroyal80]

This one is minor but…. Glasses. You can definitely tell if the writer doesn’t wear glasses themselves. Commonly you’ll see a character, especially a woman, is magically able to shed the glasses and have no problem. Never mind that they’d probably be bumping into everything, or that they’d have a splitting headache trying to read everything from signs to menus in restaurants. It’s excusable if it’s explained how the character fixed their eyesight, like if they got contacts or if they used magic to fix their eyesight.

[@Quzinqa1122]

🤓 Exactly! 👓 "Take off your glasses and become beautiful and popular, with instantly perfect eyesight ...."

[@_aWiseMan]

This is especially the case because glasses don't just fix the world. It jsut distorts it to normal looking and that actually causes you to see everything blurrier after a while. Because your used to that distortion and how everything looks normal. It makes it worse by comparison. They be practically blind. I know I constantly forget mine and can't even read the stop on a stop sign while right next to it.

[@lukevankleef4245]

I always find it funny when native English speaking people think being a polyglot is unrealistic, despite the fact the majority of people in western countries know how to speak English as their second language. I had a semi-decent grasp on English before I got lessons in it in my last year of elementary because of the internet and watching subtitled movies on TV/VHS. Nowadays I can speak and read perfect English, with only my accent being kinda bad, lol. Of course, I KNOW that English can probably be considered the exception seeing as everybody gets bombarded with it on a near constant basis, but I still think it's funny because *technically* most non-English Europeans can speak the language to an acceptable degree.

[@lukevankleef4245]

@@mcowley895 You're right. But English speakers generally know no other languages. So like, it's more of a ''two is more than one'' deal which yeah, isn't really a polyglot since that's 5 or 6 languages, but still.

[@careless_daughter]

yeah, i would say english is the exception. to pick up a language you need to have regular access to people with whom you can converse and ideally regular access to media in that language, which makes fluency in english feasible outside of english-speaking countries due to cultural hegemony. the post is moreso talking about the unrealistic nature of learning a more obscure language as a part-time hobby (i.e. without such access to practice) and becoming fluent in it.

[@lukevankleef4245]

@@careless_daughter Fair enough.

[@ZenoDovahkiin]

@@mcowley895 Polyglot is just multilingual in Greek instead of Latin to sound cooler.

[@LizzieShiro]

As someone with friends with kids, I swear to you, kids are so insane. They are completely unpredictable. Also just want to say that a damn anime told me that if you get stabbed, keep the blade in to slow down the bleeding. Only one anime. It was Blood plus. EDIT: Back again to say that the Korean Age thing was terminated by the government a few years ago. Some go by the Korean age thing, a kpop idol I know says he's 30 when he's really 29 (we're 12 days apart birthday wise), but it's more of a social thing now.

[@split776]

The stab thing was also portrayed in a cool way in the game The Quarry - a character gets stabbed, and if you choose for him to pull the knife out he has a bad time, shall we say

[@DarkRaven4649]

IIRC Fullmetal Alchemist (Brotherhood) also touches on this. A character gets impaled, and is very aware they have to do Immediate Emergency Medicine the *second* they pull it out so that they don't bleed to death.

[@DetCoAnimeFan]

This blade thing also came up in Detective Conan. Though they said to not take out blade and immediately call for emergency services

[@Eliasthescumbag]

ye dont take out the friggin blade dave -my parents

[@papercraftcynder5430]

I vaguely remember that fact being a breakthrough moment in at least one Ace Attorney case, too.

[@supa_klo]

Hearing that you can't taste the metal on the piercings is quite sad for me. I love the taste of metal after all lol. I suspected it though, pretty sure some people wouldn't like to have metallic taste in their mouths 24/7.

[@kyradreamer4769]

I'm not 100% certain of this, so take it with a grain of salt but my best guess is that the reason you can't taste them is because they're made of better quality/less reactive metals in order to be body safe and it's more reactive metals that actually give off a taste or smell.

[@Octahedran]

@@kyradreamer4769 More or less yeah, quality does not really have much to do with it (at least past a certain point). Metal does though. There is a reason on why you see so many piercings made out of gold since its so bio-compatible and not as many out of aluminum since its oxide is somewhat toxic (this shouldn't really be a problem in piercing but most people want to reduce risk). This is why you can't really get piercings Beryllium or some equally toxic metal

[@mysticzebra5421]

(　＾▽＾) I also love the taste of metal! First time I've found someone else who does. I don't really bring it up often since I'm pretty sure that it originated from me tasting blood a lot growing up. I had chronic severe nosebleeds that required hospital visits and medication to make them stop. The blood always ended up in my mouth somehow. Now I love metallic tastes and smells and of course the taste and smell of blood. I just know people would find that weird.

[@supa_klo]

@@mysticzebra5421 same. I didn't have any bad nosebleeds, but from time to time I had a nosebleed I thought it tasted good.

[@CHESShireCat]

I have a metal bar on my teeth and I can taste it. Orthodontists loooove giving them to people so if you go see an orthodontist you might end up with one and can live out your metal tasting dreams (I have a conspiracy theory about the metal bars because I feel like I was tricked into getting it and so do a lot of my friends who have one. Not that serious of a conspiracy, just like, “there must be some reason they want everyone to have a permanent metal bar in their mouth instead of just retainers”)

[@Icey-698]

1:21 REAL, REAL, REAL But if you want some "fun" fact about touching dead bodies, hugging them, more specifically, they kinda feel like dolls/mannequins The heart isn't beating so it feels weird, almost like they're empty (Before you ask, I hugged my grandpa's corpse, that's how I know, DON'T CALL THE POLI-)

[@Me-jz9bp]

True!!! We were petting my dog while he was being put down (which is a somewhat gradual process. You don't just snap your fingers and they're dead.) and when he died, we all felt it. It just suddenly felt like a corpse and not a dog. Not sure how exactly you can tell. It must be an instinctive thing.

[@princessroyal80]

⁠@@Me-jz9bpWhen my dog passed from heart failure, seeing and feeling his body on the table just felt so… off. It was like a ragdoll that just happened to look like him.

[@TalesofTheEndTimes]

I once made a terrible mistake. A spruce hen hit a window, broke its neck, and plummeted to its death. So when I saw the corpse, I realised it would make my mother terribly sad. So I got on some disposable nitrile gloves, went over, and picked it up to take it away. …. By its broken neck. The feeling of its dead weight swaying lifelessly along the grinding sensation of its neck bones beneath my hand made me drop the bird so I could go off a ways and have a little discomfort-gag bordering on puke. Truly the most unpleasant thing I have ever done. Compared with dead fish with doesn’t ick me at all, that dead bird is a marked declaration of how very much I never want to have to so much as touch an actual deceased human body.

[@NerdKing2nd]

@@Me-jz9bp From personal experience, have gonna through putting down 3 pets that i have strong memories of over my time, it's the sudden stop of the rise and fall of the chest/breathing, its a subtle thing that we all associate with living and when it stops it is for some instinctive reason a suddenly very noticeable thing by its suddenly not being there.

[@genericname2747]

This is absolutely not comparable to your experience but. I had a pet rat die and I was so sad I started petting it. I did not realize it had been dead long enough to be cold. He felt like a sack of flesh. That sucked.

[@katashworth41]

British characters who didn’t leave the country for their degree talking about their major. We don’t have the major/minor system, also someone in their first year is a fresher, not a freshman and most universities you’re only in dorms (halls) for the first year.

[@tinyblueunicorn7807]

Not Necessarily. I'm from the UK and went to university here on a joint degree. My first year I took French as a minor, but in second and third there wasn't enough credit to keep doing it. I'm pretty sure everyone at mine took a minor, if only for the first year. Which means you'd refer to your main degree as your "major". Plus I assumed Fresher was just short for Freshman (or at least that they come from the same place)? Campus accomodation is provided and reserved for first year (students) and most people find their own after that, but they do sometimes let other students sign up for it if there are places remaining, Freshers just take priority so there are limited spaces available. Some of these details might just depend on how a particular uni runs things. The main assumption I see people make is referring to university in the UK as "college". Colleges are separate places that people might continue their education at after school and before uni (instead of two years of sixth-form for example), OR can refer to the different named "Houses" you are put in at uni (mostly randomly, it ain't a Hogwarts hat).

[@katashworth41]

@ I’m a Brit and and had houses at primary school, I was originally in St Andrews but then was made a prefect for St David’s.

[@SpeedyCheetahCub]

I think one of the things I notice a lot that fanfic authors get wrong is the lore/worldbuilding of whatever universe they are writing about. I mean, I have no problem with AUs existing when they are labelled as such, and it's nice sometimes to see various headcanons that different authors include in their works, but some people need to have a refresher on canon because it's clear they have spent way too long in fandom circles and have forgot or misinterpreted things that are glaringly obvious if you just finished the canon story. I think the biggest example of this is Undertale, because it has a combination of a bajillion AUs, so many conflicting headcanons that don't reflect the evidence presented in the game itself, and characters who are so OOC because people spend so much time in fanon that they forget what the characters are actually like in the game. It's really difficult to read good Undertale fanfics because I'm personally not a fan of the AUs and there are so many fics out there with horrendously bad characterization. I have found many good ones, but it's still a struggle. P.S. The area where you get judged by Sans at the end of the game is called the "Last Corridor" not the "Judgment Hall". Nowhere is the phrase "Judgment Hall" ever mentioned in the entire game. Yet people insist on calling it that. For some reason it has become a big pet peeve of mine.

[@IceFireofVoid]

Really early on in the Undertale fandom I used to love reading skelebros fics and mainly just fics that were set in the main canon timeline, but really quickly it got so overrun with AUs and I know they have their own merit and they're cool in their own way, but it's just not the same world and not the same characters. Like...that's not Sans. That's an OC with a vague resemblance to Sans that they call Sans. It's part of why I stopped reading Undertale fics. It was super hard to find anything set in the canon universe.

[@Zitronen_]

@SpeedyCheetahCub I'm such a huge undertale fan that this constantly annoys me, along with people just not understanding a character or stereotyping them. I have stayed very far away from aus and the fandom as a whole cuz of this ..

[@SpeedyCheetahCub]

@@IceFireofVoid Yep. I few months ago when I was still in the midst of my most recent Undertale hyperfixation, I started writing my own Undertale fanfic. The premise was "What is an Undertale speedrun like from the perspective of the characters in-universe?" and I decided to do a Glitched Soulless Pacifist run from the perspective of Sans because it would showcase both the Genocide Route and the True Pacifist Route and Sans canonically follows Frisk around the whole game once he meets them no matter which run you do. (If you kill Papyrus then he stops interacting with you, but he still follows you around. When you do the Shyren concert, the flavor text that usually mentions Sans handing out tickets is changed to describe a hooded figure watching in the distance if Papyrus is dead.) In order to make sure the story made sense, I made a few rules for myself. First of all, all of the dialogue that occurs in earshot of Frisk needs to be 100% accurate to the game. Anything they don't hear can be whatever makes sense for me to write. Secondly, the way that time travel works in canon means that the timeline has to remain consistent. If something is different between the Genocide Route, the Flawed Pacifist Route, and the double back for the True Pacifist Route, it has to be a direct result of something that Frisk (or Flowey) did differently. Third, my explanation for what the glitches in the game looked like to Sans had to make sense and be accurate to how the glitch worked.

[@mikacoderre566]

Such a good point! This bothers me so much to. I’m a fan of something that takes place in a scifi futuristic society, and it comes up a couple of times that no one uses paper anymore. It’s a really minor detail in the series, but it comes up often enough. I’ve read so many non-AU fanfics where a character casually reads a book or writes on a notepad. And it’s always jarring enough that I consider clicking away 😂

[@MarcyTheKindaCoolWizard]

As a fellow Undertale fan im split on this One one hakf, it bothers me when the fic/comic/whatever is gunning fir a more serious story and is supposedly trying to stick to canon and immediatly see the common fandom takes on characters But on the other side, i dont nearly care enough for it to be anythibg more than a passing bummer and continue reading, so long as the writing is good enough, i can forgive innaccuracies even if i might ibternally be wishing i could force the author to listen to me explain in crude detail why they are wrong

[@arsonistnpc]

i have read too many fics that describe the floor plan of a house and just.. don't mention a bathroom. some people forget to mention any rooms other than the bedroom and kitchen- which is fine if it's an apartment, i guess you can argue for communal bathrooms, but for a house?? as someone who designs floor plans for fun it takes me way out lol

[@Eliasthescumbag]

i always feel bothered by the lack of bathrooms in media even in video games where tf do people GO?

[@CoiBoiKoi717]

ARCHERY!!! While I'm not a expert, I've been in a few tournaments + I enjoy studying and doing it in my free time. No matter what piece of media I'm consuming, if it has archery you have to go in with suspension of disbelief. Characters making impossible shots, dry-firing, improper stances, being able to hold a multi-pound bow back for an incredible amount of time, etc. It's all harmless fun though, and a ton of my fav characters are these incredible god-like archers.

[@tiacat11]

LOL YES I was beta-ing for a friend of mine and their Breath of the Wild fanfic and the main center of the chapter is two characters are traveling together and one hates/is extremely jealous of the other. She originally only pulled me in to ask how long it would take to hunt/pluck a duck for dinner, but I also threw in "btw I need you to understand that Link being able to shoot a duck, period, would be an insanely impressive feat. Like whether it's in the water or you startle them and they take to the air like you're supposed to do, there's a reason modern hunters use shotguns, ain't no fucking way a person is hitting a duck with a bow and arrow irl, that's for big prey like deer and shit" Turned out to work well just for adding on to the "are you fucking kidding me" factor of the character dynamic haha

[@CoiBoiKoi717]

@@tiacat11 Tbf Link is a fucking beast when it comes to weapons, but I totally 100% agree lol :D

[@melissajill6174]

Or when every shot is an insta-kill (and they can fire into a melee combat and only hit enemies and never friends). Unless it's the MC or the MC's love interest, in which case it will just be a flesh wound.

[@InvaderGIR98]

To be fair, the Lore Accurate Link meme exists for a reason 😂​@@tiacat11

[@Flufux]

Hence why I think the Hulk is more realistic than Hawkeye...because at least the Hulk has an excuse for his superhuman powers, while Hawkeye officially doesn't have any superpowers...and still does shots that are literally impossible.

[@Clay_sloth]

9:33 I read a fic with a character who can kinda shape-shift into a snake, but they had eyelids because the character didn’t realize that snakes didn’t have eyelids lol. It was explained in a footnote by the author, like “ snakes, as a basic fact of biology, don’t have eyelids. *CHARACTER* however, did not realize this, and therefore *did* have eyelids”.

[@_aWiseMan]

I will always love when a seemingly plot hole is actually a meta joke or just a character s actual misunderstanding. When I was a kid I made many super heroes. And one of them had the ability to absorb any form of energy and release it. Now they mainly used this for kinetic energy stuff like absorbing punches and also fall damage because they are a stunt devil type character. But kid me assumed weight also counted. So they could just lift buildings and also just stop falling mid air aswell as absorbing and releasing cold. Which is not possible whatsoever. However young me didn't know what energy exactly meant. So instead that was just what the character assumed counted. And I shit you not had a dream about said characters and one BROUGHT IT UP. My dream made a meta joke about child mes plot holes and how the characters actual power was practically just reality manipulation and it physically woke me up because of it. Funniest dream I have had in a while. But tbf all my dreams are kinda weirdly lucid but not. So stuff like that just happens. I just find it funny I never really realized even later on it was a plot hole until that dream. Somewhere in my subconscious a part of my monkey brain went.....huh that's not how that works. Guess we'll just DREAM about it. So strange

[@hunterlawrence3573]

For some reason, so many writers seem to have no idea how hormonal birth control works. I’ve read fics where the characters say “Oh, I don’t need to take my pill tonight because we didn’t do PiV”???? Sometimes that could be explained by it working differently in sci-fi/fantasy settings, but a ton of writers get things wrong even in realistic settings: 1. For birth control pills to be effective, you need to take it at the same time every day. You don’t need to skip it completely to get pregnant. 2. You don’t need to have sex on the same day you messed up your birth control to get pregnant. Did you have sex the day before? Too bad, sperm can usually live for a couple days. Can you have sex the next day? Most people wouldn’t (knowingly) risk it. I get accidental pregnancies are inherently more interesting stories. But writers tend to make the most extreme scenarios possible. It’s always “I completely ran out of pills the same night I slept with my partner!” instead of “One day I forgot my pill and took it two hours later. I thought it’d be fine, but it wasn’t.”

[@corinneeaglebridge]

Yeah, and “accidentally” running out of pills feels very. Weird to me. Like I have ADHD and even I haven’t managed to do that Might just be my brand but the blister packs of pills in mine are see through on one end (so you can see which parts do and don’t have pills) and have the days of the week listed on the other side. The only way I could see someone “accidentally” running out is if they assume they still have a new pack in the box and then they don’t, but tbh even then, you’d have seen that it was the last pack when you took it out of there?

[@tenletters5889]

Learning about how birth control actually works makes me so unbelievably thankful that my ADD ass can't get pregnant

[@tenletters5889]

@@hunterlawrence3573 wasn't born with the equipment I'd need if you catch my meaning lol. Already tried alarms, still ended up neglecting them. Luckily, not a big deal since none of my medications are too strict about that

[@fruitpunchsamurai4837]

Maybe they were talking about the morning after pill? Although that one should not be used regularly, only in emergencies

[@ZenoDovahkiin]

"For some reason, so many [people in general] seem to have no idea how hormonal birth control works." There you go. And now we've not only explained writing mistakes, but a lot of real-life accidental pregnancies as well. Having sex ed, and especially paying attention are sadly not universal.

[@couchpotato9355]

ABOUT SUPPRESSORS: What the commenter says is generally true. A suppressed gun, in most cases, is quite audible, and in a lot of cases not even hearing safe. But some things are wrong or glossed over. 1.) 'Silencer' *is* a correct term. The original patent for the silencer refers to it as such (bonus fact: the use case for the design is listed as 'for use on automobiles and firearms.' Car mufflers work the same way as suppressors). That said, 'suppressor' is the more accurate term to the function. 2.)They gloss over why a suppressed firearm is still loud, and it's for two reasons, the supersonic 'crack' of the round as it exits the muzzle, and the sound of the action cycling. On a pistol, the slide reciprocates with an acceleration of about 9 Gs, which makes a good deal of racket. However, these can be worked around. For one, subsonic ammunition is often used, and, when paired with a good suppressor, you might get a slight pop at the muzzle, and only the sound of the action cycling, a sound difficult to make out past 150 feet. Another thing that can be done is simply not have a moving action. A bolt action rifle with subsonic ammunition may only produce a click from the cocking piece dropping, which is difficult to hear past 50 feet. That said, the commenter is correct in saying that, barring specific circumstances, even a suppressed firearm will draw a lot of attention, but it isn't impossible to create a whisper quiet gun. ABOUT BULLET WOUNDS: The commenter is absolutely correct, back-alley surgery is never the good choice. That's precisely what killed James A. Garfield. I have a problem with bullets getting stuck in people in general. In ballistics, seeing a round actually stop in the target is viewed as the cartridge or bullet construction being bad. Ideally, you want a round to penetrate both sides of the target and then sort of fall to the ground, though of course that is usually unrealistic. Shrapnel from the jacket or from spalling off of a hard surface are far more likely ways for metal to remain in meat. In other words, that full-power rifle round has no business coming to a dead stop inside a soft target.

[@melissajill6174]

Well, self-defense rounds (jacketed hollow points, for example) for a handgun are designed to stop in the target, but I don't know if that actually shows up in fiction (vs long gun rounds)--and the reason being that the round "petals" and expands.

[@couchpotato9355]

@@melissajill6174 that’s true, though they are inappropriate for most story settings since they are not used by militaries. If the round in question came from an officer or private citizen, however, you can definitely expect to see those type of hollow points. Even then, at close range you should still expect to get full penetration unless it’s a frangible or one of those dumbass rip-rounds

[@melissajill6174]

@@couchpotato9355 Yeah, my experience is with handguns, and I tend toward mystery vs story settings that would include modern military, Happily, I do not have experience firing at anything other than target steels and paper at the range.

[@Valdrr]

I remember being appalled after reading a fic where a character got hit in the CHEST with a 50 bmg (I doubt the author knew what caliber the gun fired but still). And then, they revealed that the bullet never actually passed through their chest, and a doctor dug it out, and the character was fine the next day. Like. Hello?

[@B_Emblem]

**slams cup on table twice** Another!

[@meh7863]

when people treat sleep and unconsciousness like the same thing: YOU DON'T DREAM WHEN YOU'RE UNCONSCIOUS

[@vixxcelacea2778]

Anyone gone under anesthetic would know this. You don't remember anything (in most cases. There are a few very unfortunate people in which it doesn't work properly on them and they're awake for a procedure) Every time I've had to have surgery, I'm always worried that I'll remember things or maybe dream. Nope. It's black out, then wake up. You only remember the last few moments before you're knocked out. Not a thing else. And you feel nothing till you're awake. So the same would go for being knocked unconscious or blacking out.

[@seguaye]

I’ve dreamt both times i was unconscious. they weren’t coherent or anything but they did happen. the first time, i was 12 or so and I huffed helium from a birthday balloon until I passed out, I was out for about a minute and I dreamt of a car driving down a long road at night time and wanting ice cream. the second time, under anesthesia, I don’t remember what it was, but I woke up feeling like I had to get back to what I was doing and I had some vague flashes of something having happened, but I was high as shit so I lost the dream very quickly. Not saying this is typical but dreaming while unconscious isn’t impossible

[@seguaye]

@@meh7863 if you have no brain activity you’re straight up dead

[@arrow_of_ravenclaw5155]

As a woman who’s a virgin, I thought we were all secretly pringles? That’s just me?

[@bleeb90]

Have you yet figured out why tampons, menstruation cups and insertable anti conception like nuva ring fit into us while we're being untouched Pringle boxes? If you actually stab through something for the first time the woman in question is a one percenter in that she has a birth defect like an imperforate or cribriform hymen. The whole social construct of having a cherry to pop and men "taking" a woman's virginity is just that - a social construct. And a misogynistic one at that.

[@Thao-nathos]

Idk if you're serious or not but it is a pretty common belief that for whatever reason the hymen has to be broken during your first time and never heals back That's absolute bullshit, not only it DOES heal back (necause it HAS an actual role, nature would not give a flying fuck about giving a creature a "freshness seal", it serves to keep your coochie free from weird shit that might rub in from say, your underwear), but it is perfectly capable of stratching more than enough to accomodate penetration with the right amount of foreplay If it DOES break, and you bleed, it means you are not horny enough, and/or your partner did a shit job at preparing you

[@kid0rchid]

Like single pringles?

[@kitkatboard]

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic so I'll delete my comment if you were. Society likes to depict the hymen as a solid seal covering the entrance, that the glorious peepee will triumphantly rupture. If it was the case, period blood wouldn't be able to exit the body. For the people who have hymens, most of the time, it's just a tiny piece of tissue on the walls of the... you know (trying not to get this comment deleted by KZbin bots). In rare occasions, it really blocks the entrance, and something has to be done to help the person evacuate blood and other fluids.

[@fumomofumosarum5893]

once you pop, you can't stop.

[@deedjrethejester]

as someone who has had many a migraine in the past as well, i've gotta say, most of them are just like "ah dang it my temple hurt and my eyes feel weird" and then i go get the migraine medicine and it's gone in 30 minutes. now what REALLY is a pain are sinus and tension headaches. because you can't just go "oh im having a headache" and take the designated headache medicine you have. also headaches can be like WAY worse than most people would think, it's awful. i wish my tension headaches didnt feel like i was being grabbed by the head with tongs they really need to make an over the counter sinus headache pill (no the allergy pills do NOT work) i can't keep turning my bathroom into a sauna the gnats are learning how to fly around and not bother me at this point

[@IceFireofVoid]

I've had a few migraines where I felt little/no pain but they almost always did something really weird to my vision. I had one in class once where the text I had written in simple pencil looks like it was changing colours between green and pink. Also had one where I lost vision in an area of my left eye for a couple hours. I can't even describe what I was "seeing" in the blind spot. It was like shifting grey squiggles somewhere between static and the surface of water. It was super weird. I took pain killers, had a nap, woke up and my eyesight was back to normal.

[@ClairJackson1]

I don't know a lot about migraines but I have had many and it felt like a throbbing pain in my temple. It would get to the point where I had to sit in a dark room due to light sensitivity and I would vomit. I will say that taking medicine did work but my migraines definitely hurt a lot.

[@theartofnina]

You've been lucky with your migraines then. I have chronic migraines that are so bad it feels like someone is smashing my temple with a hammer and I can't move or look at anything bright without feeling like I'll throw up. Medicine takes a lot longer than 30 minutes to work for me and sometimes it doesn't work at all, and migraines can last several days.

[@deedjrethejester]

@@ClairJackson1 the first migraine i had (and some after that i didn't get meds for in time. i catch mine like almost before they even start which is why they aren't too bad) was absolute hell. i've never thrown up bc of one but i remember getting like tunnel vision or a weird blind spot. which was really funny bc i was JUST writing about that sort of thing and i was like "oh just like in my fic :) (brain explodes)". incredibly funny but it did wind up lasting a few days so i was just sitting in a dark room half the time and tbh i've been light sensitive ever since.

[@deedjrethejester]

@@theartofnina yeah i have good metabolism and catch them before they can blow up my brain (they tend to start small, at least for me). migraines can range from making your eyes just feel weird to blowing your brains out for a week and it sucks. but i just feel like not enough credit is given to other headaches for how much they can also just hurt like hell. also not enough characters getting multiple headache types at once and falling to despair. like i got a tension headache and migraine simultaneously earlier and i fell into despair bc i was briefly unsure of which pain med to use (the answer is the migraine specific one)

[@ThetaGalaxy]

I'm a real science nerd and it kinda annoys me when they have a smart character just say a bunch of sci-fi buzz words. Yeah, I get it is it's actually future and alien stuff but even then, tech still follows logic. I get that not everyone feels the same though, but I truly love it when you can tell that the author has at least some semblance about what they're talking about.

[@IceFireofVoid]

@ThetaGalaxy In all my STEM classes, when we had practical laboratories or did field research, nobody there uses science buzzwords. Chemistry labs were great because we just made up terms for all the equipment based on what sound it made or what motion you had to do to use it. We'd read out the chemical formulas as if those were their names, sometimes shortening them. There was a chemical we called "the Moo" because of a portion of its formula. Physics projects were "the contraption" and "the doohickey". Of course we had to write the *actual* terms for everything in exams or on research papers, but that's not how people actually talk in a more casual setting.

[@vixxcelacea2778]

Science/tech gobbledygook in fiction is a total artform. I really like when shows actually take time to make something up that makes sense in universe and maybe tangentially correlates to real life theories and/or plausible things.

[@timo8516]

@@IceFireofVoid I do astrophysics and yes there is a big difference between what is in a paper you write and how we talk about it. It also varies a lot by field, the closer you are to industry, the more formal it gets. I would regularly roll up to work in a death metal t-shirt and the second conference I ever went to I don't think anyone there wore a tie, and there were like 50-100 people there. Literally my supervisor at the time was wearing a dragon ball z t-shirt at one point. But my dad does industrial chemistry and it was a bit of a shock for him when I showed him the group photo.

[@ZenoDovahkiin]

Saying a bunch of random sci-fi buzzwords is very realistic though. It's what we IT people do to pretend we're a lot smarter than we actually are.

[@ch1574]

It's called technobabble and it's not supposed to make sense

[@lovetolovefairytales]

That historical royal figures who were well documented humanitarians and actually had very little personal pocket money especially in wartime (like couldn't buy paper and perfume without saving up kind of budget) were drapped in diamonds (and their ceremonial velvet robes and heavy crowns) on the daily and eating bon bons while their people starved. Like, dude, freaking no. They wore very well made clothing but it was ordinary clothes. And goddamn bon bons? They couldn't even get cake at tea time because plain black bread was the traditionally served option. Yes, the youngest family member, who was frequently ill and so a touch more pampered, did have the one incident where he stopped his tutor's lesson to demand a chocolate, and got it (before the tutor told him that wasn't allowed in the school room) but I'm pretty sure this was not a regular occurrence. 😂

[@AtarahDerek]

They need to read up more on Lafayette. The only real luxury he kept with him during the Revolution was his powdered wig. And he certainly wouldn't have worn it all the time.

[@evrenisprettyuniversal]

this doesn't apply to all cases btw.

[@lovetolovefairytales]

@@evrenisprettyuniversal it applies to more than ENOUGH of them.

[@bleedingroze]

The Romanovs?

[@lovetolovefairytales]

@@bleedingroze darn tooting. There are others, of course, but the Romanovs are the primary ones. The things people get wrong about them are AMAZING.

[@jukeboxraven]

5:10 I am guilty of writing someone with a 110 fever in one of my fics that’s still up 💀 there was a person in the comments like, “bro we need to go to the hospital!!!1!” Edit: y’all I know 110’s lethal that’s the joke

[@1leon000]

110 f = 43 c

[@g5rearea]

More like the morgue. Your brain starts to cook at 107-108. They're gonna have severe neurological damage for sure.

[@jukeboxraven]

@@g5rearea well I mean they witnessed a puppet take over the world afterwards so🤷‍♀️

[@planetoforts]

110 is dangerous, likely lethal and would still leave you with heat stroke (source: I watched a kid get heat stroke and almost got it myself) but potentially survivable. Now if the character is not human then you can write it off but 110 sustained fever is almost certainly going to be lethal in a human barring special circumstances. Could be worse though. I've seen fic writer's put them at hypothermia onset at 80° F. You would probably be on the ground (possibly naked, search up hypothermia undressing) dead at that point. YOU STOP SHIVERING AT 85° DAMNIT.

[@lydiagalantmotherf]

Quite literally Walking Dead XD

[@essysworld398]

Polyamory! Throuples are extremely rare and if you start with a jealous love triangle, it’s gonna be toxic as hell Polyamory can and very often is more of an orientation like sexuality than a choice based on situation. Most people aren’t going to randomly decide to become polyamorous just because multiple people like them or they like multiple people, they just make a choice or move on. Polyamory also doesn’t increase your dating market. Most people are serial monogamous, hence they won’t agree to date someone polyamorous And last but not least: most people will know who the father is. No one wants to be swapping fluids with potentially dozens of people, so lots of polyamorous people have a very limited amount of people they bareback, very often that’ll be their nesting partner (the person they do stereotypical couple stuff with like living together, potentially marrying, and having kids).

[@kodabuck225]

1:06 as somebody who also has piercings but also lives in Canada, a correction, piercings can get cold if you are somewhere that is cold, tho in my experience, doesn't really feel cold in the traditional sense to where its in you, for me it just gets kinda painful, and i take em out if it gets below -30c and i can't bundle up over it, just to be safe

[@rainfallatnightfall]

Another one that isn't exclusive to fanfics is amnesia. There are multiple different types of amnesia and most can't be fixed by hiting them hard on the head. Do resurch before including amnesia in your fic.

[@elkien2580]

To react to that "freshness seal", let me add : characters assuming their new partner had action before/cheated on them/has been SA'd because that "seal" is "broken". As someone who did horse riding for years and knows that one bad reception after a jump can break it, it's both hilarious and infuriating

[@malchickoleander]

Also some people are literally just born without one !!!!

[@Hyreia]

Four legged animals don't have 'backwards knees' as part of their hind legs. Also the most prominent bend in a four-legged animal's foreleg is equivalent to your wrist. All of their body parts bend in the same direction yours do (assuming). The main difference is the size (length, width, etc). Then it's either something you have or don't have but it's often vestigal. These things come up with human to animal transformations surprisingly often.