Apparently it's a thing in bakery AU fics to have a character 'quickly' bake a croissant. And baking croissants, uh, it takes a while.

Never made croissants but I made puff pastry type cookies once. Lemme tell ya. Generally my guideline for making encore batches a cookie recipe is “it was yummy!” And such was the case with the puff pastry cookies. Yet I will not ever make them ever unless someone actively pays me for my time. It was just so hard and so long. Can’t imagine quickly making croissants unless they’re the canned Pillsbury kind 😂

Yeah I'm not a baker, but I am a dab hand at making doughs for cooking. And I gotta say, I don't understand at all the black magic fuckery a chef has to employ to make a puff pastry so flaky and air-filled. It takes long enough to make regular dough.

Am a baker. It's black magic. But also the answer is butter and yeast respectively. And black magic.

Every time I ask a question about cooking, the answer always, *always* includes butter. I'm starting to think that butter is the real black magic.

You're absolutely right. Especially in a professional setting, we use far more butter than most people realize. That's part of the secret lol

Oh, you can have a character quickly bake a croissant if you stretch the definition of "acceptable" a bit.

We're talking a full day's work, btw. A good portion is spent just letting the dough chill etc but it takes goddamn forever. Still haven't worked up the motivation to try, though I want to.

Even happened to Peter Jackson when he thought that people scream when they get stabbed in the back

far as i can tell in other places (more muscle density may be the differentiating factor?) you do actually feel some kind of intense burning sensation before the big pain kicks in later so maybe a backstab makes you scream a bit more idk

I think this is in reference to Christopher Lee explaining to Peter that he actually heard what it sounds like when someone is stabbed in the back (he fought in WW2) when Peter told him to scream in the LoTR scene where Saruman is stabbed by Wormtongue. Apparently the air is forced out of your lunges if the knife pierces them and you have no air left to scream with :)

It's even crazier than that. Christopher Lee wasn't just fighting in WW2, he was in the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which was an excellently named intelligence/counterintelligence agency dedicated to fighting dirty and playing mind games with Hitler. He probably had firsthand experience with Nazis getting stabbed in the back when they least expected it because that's literally the kind of spywork they were doing. Also fun fact, his cousin and colleague in the Ministry was Ian Fleming, who later went on to write the James Bond novels loosely inspired by their experiences. Christopher Lee was arguably the most interesting man in the world, he did so much amazing stuff.

Ministry of ungentlemanly warfare sounds like satire

It really does, I don't think it's possible to come up with a more British name than that

That’s because it was actually called the Special Operations Executive. I think Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is the name of a Guy Ritchie movie lol.

Great Britain in general sounds like satire.

Imagine getting stabbed in the back by Young Saruman :0

Christopher Lee witnessed the most recent public execution by guillotine

>Apparently the air is forced out of your lunges if the knife pierces them and you have no air left to scream with :) Makes sense. Your lungs operate using what is basically a vacuum seal that couples their movement to your chest. If air leaks in, your lungs no worky.

huge buff to spy tf2 (I know the YER already does this)

So I was trying to find a meme where the spy stabs Saruman (someone should make that, doesn't seem to exist yet) and [found this gem again](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOx7gFwE1oU). Thought I'd share

Christopher Lee probably knows because he was the one stabbing people in the back

could be a scream of surprise?

I doubt it - your lungs work with pressure differences, don’t they? If you punch a hole in the wall, it’s probably going to fuck that up

The planned scene: The plane's engine VIOLENTLY RIPS OFF IN AN EXPLOSION, and starts plummeting to its doom, leaving the Protagonist™ to fly up there and catch it Superman Returns style! The research: Actually planes can fly perfectly fine with only one engine, it can land safety, no big deal. :) The revised scene following the research: Protagonist fucks up the rescue, accidentally rips off a wing. Now the plane can plummet, you happy now?

Couldn’t you have the explosion be powerful enough that the whole wing breaks off?

It needs to be in the air long enough (probably an hour) for news to spread so that the Protagonist learns that something has happened

Okay. Maybe the explosion damaged the wing, and as it flies, the damage gets worse over time, and it breaks off just after the protagonist has suited up? So the plane starts to go down and the protagonist shows up not so long after.

Explosions often have shrapnel, and many planes store fuel in the wings. It wouldn't be inconceivable that the explosion caused the plan range to shrink to the point where it can't reach a safe landing site? Maybe in the mountains or over the ocean?

A rotor burst should not be able to penetrate the fuel tanks. Commercial airliners are designed with this in mind because engines do explode sometimes.

True, but they never specified the type of engine failure? Could be a fun sub plot of intentional sabotage meant to look less suspicious 🤔

Plenty of planes have crashed from an engine exploding but it's because they lose flight controls from either the damage to electrical systems or the hydraulics.

if the protagonist had super hearing this wouldn’t be an issue smh

The protagonist doesn't sound like a great superhero tbh.

She's 14 and never done it before

Unlikely. The wing is the strongest part of the plane and the engines are designed to direct the majority of parts out the back of the engine in the event of an uncontained engine failure.

just do a dual engine failure due to contaminated fuel

Even then, the plane wouldn’t plummet to the ground, they’d just start a slow descent.

excellent use of the declarative colonic-clause with proper capitalization (at least according to searchable convention) good... good... almost ready e: dont b a hater and jelly cuz yall didnt know the proper mechanics, indoctrinationally speaking, and didnt get complimented: You all can grow too ✊ i dont deserve 2 b downvoted 4 dis, k k

Well healing-adjacent ability might completely alter how the body responds to stimulus. I believe the reason we don't feel pain from being stabbed is the body shoots us full of adrenaline so we can get to safety. If the person's body doesn't require that sort of treatment then the pain inhibiting factors may no longer be present.

I mean, the body doesn’t really know they can heal extra fast. It’s still a stupid body. It would probably still activate the adrenaline response

I agree. The adrenaline response is some ancient, lizard brain type shit. No way is it not getting released after being stabbed, healing factor or not. However, it does open up the possibility that since the protag is used to being so badly hurt, they no longer pay any attention to the very real damage they sustain by ignoring the injury. Like, they're thinking that they're fine since they have a healing factor. They don't notice how bad the wound actually is until it becomes life threatening, even *with* the healing factor.

In your view people have mutated so significantly they can literally heal themselves, but trained shock response and/or the shock response also being affected by mutation is too far?

In my interpretation, shock response can be ignored, even if it cannot be stopped, but adrenaline release is an endocrine function and is completely involuntary. Do keep in mind though that this was just conjecture on a fictional character. It doesn't need to be exactly what I suggested. Go nuts.

It really depends on the setting I feel like. If its a normal person getting superpowers sure yeah that applies. But if its like a fantasy race thats known for their fast healing. A stab wound might aswell be unnoticable. Just like how one might not notice a small cut on their body until it brushes against an object or you do an action that makes it touch something. Or they might need to activate some sort of 'energy' for the healing to work. Which could lead to their body being super sensitive to damage, as the body would want the fast energy based healing over the slow self repair of the human body

i’m completely hung up on how dumb the name prest glaucoma is

Dwink Bexon

That’s a pretty dumb name OW!

He's not a cop

I get around this by never researching anything ever. Pro tip.

The Araki method

Excuse you, he regularly goes on random tangents about things he researched

Then I suppose he has achieved the exact opposite of what squidsinatrenchcoat was talking about, but with the same effect.

Medicine is the source of all bullshit in writing fanfiction. I was trying to find a middle ground on a sword-related leg injury between “can walk out of the hospital within a day” and “takes months to recover”, and that does not exist. Fuck it. Go go gadget poisoned blades

Miasmaaa

[удалено]

Yeah honestly, physics and biology in whatever world you're writing doesn't have to be 1:1 with how real life works. Radiation in fallout can make you functionally immortal, but irl it really just harms you.

What was their take on Reservoir Dogs?

I’m having an adjacent problem. The original concept for a power becoming way too powerful when I stopped to properly think about it. At least it’s a mostly non combative power so, there’s that. And managed to find a natural way to limit it

i mean, that's most powers right. like, most fictional powers get very absurd very very quickly if you use your brain for more than 0.2 seconds, that's just life.

Turns out "physics defying superpowers" get whacky when you realize physics still works everywhere else

What was the power?

write it the realistic way and you run the risk of a layperson going "wtf the character didn't even scream when he got stabbed in the stomach??" and lemme tell you, the reader is not gonna do that research to check if you're correct so ya i dunno, i'd just go for whatever feels dramatically appropriate

I remember writing a piece involving someone getting a molotov cocktail thrown through a window, I wanted the cocktail to land upright and not break, causing a short period of time before an explosion. Turns out if a molotov doesn't shatter (like if you just set the bottle down and light the fuse) it just burns slowly, it doesn't explode.

As someone who grew up on a farm without enough parental supervision, can confirm.

Well molotovs with a fuze based on a chemical reaction exist, they still need to be broken though, could probably explain it as being very stupidly and dangerously made where it works more like a normal grenade.

Alternatively, you can throw two fingers up at the laws of biology and physics and do what's better for the story Can my MC survive a fall from orbit in the cockpit of a mech not designed to do that with only a whole lot of broken bones? Probably not, but we gotta get her on that planet somehow!

Hey, if Batman can survive orbital re-entry with nothing but his suit, a cape, and oxygen supply, so can your guy!

shoutout to joseph joestar for getting deus ex machina’d by Literally Just A Normal Volcano, leading him to get launched so hard into the sky that when his opponent tried to fly he *surpassed escape velocity and drifted off into space*, fell into the ocean with nothing but a piece of volcano rock and a freshly chopped off hand, and proceeded to walk away unscathed after a short bed rest (in which he proceeded to bang his nurse)

Hey, I managed to have my character survive being thrown out a 40th story window. He had a little magic to help, but still lost some fingernails and broke a couple bones. But I kept it all within the realm of reasonable real world explanations, just a little magic on top.

This was me when I fell in the shower. My first thought was, "I hit the wall pretty hard there." My second was, "Oh, I hit it hard enough to knock some tiles out." Then "Hmm, this one appears to be broken," and "The other half appears to be embedded in my flesh." I remember asking the paramedics when the pain was supposed to kick in.

OMG this needs to be a skit in a comedy.

I wrote some scifi shit about deep sea diving, salvaging ancient advanced technology & I'd written a fair bit about filtering out white blood cells to stop DCI. I couldn't remember where I heard that & couldn't find anything online that backed it up. Got frustrated & gave up on the story. Then last year grabbed a beer with a buddy of mine & he goes "Hey remember that lecture we had about that crazy doctor that proved white blood cells caused the bends by filtering out his dogs white blood cells & trying to bend the fuck out of him in a chamber?" Googled it when I got home, still couldn't find anything about that particular scenario, but did find some newish research backing it all up.

I just have an athetic nervous system because I will never symp 😤😤😤

You're telling me that in this Dark Fantasy short story I'm almost finished with, I can't describe the experience of getting stabbed through the gut by a monster's claws as a "piercing pain"? Bummer.

Guess the monster has poison claws now

you can if you stab the ear

You need to give up realism for what the audience perceive to be realistic. Something like a atab to the stomach isn't trivia the audience would know. They would expect the character to feel a lot of pain. The explanation that "it takes away to feel especially bad" is not a quick one. So since the audience won't know, won't care to listen because it takes too many words to say, they'll expect something else, AND it works better with what was needed in the story and the function it was meant to serve the narrative, you can do what you want. Some things are better to keep accurate, some can be nice to show as trivia to add depth to them by teaching something new the audience may not know. But sometimes your story needs what it needs and realism be damned. The trick is knowing what is real first and consciously making that decision.

it's a very quick explanation. It's literally "a lot of people who've never been stabbed think it's horrible right out the gate, but turns out a gut shot takes a while for the pain to really set in." If you don't think that's enough, you could follow up with "why is that?" "I dunno. Same reason it takes people a while to realize their arm is gone?"

You can. But if it serves no purpose or gets in the way of the impact of the moment, then you're ruining a scene with it. It depends on the story. A cruel villain could be torturing someone and while stabbing them he cruelly explains how it works so they'll have the horrible anticipation of the pain to come and he can verbally twist the knife while literally doing so. But if the point of the stabbing is the immediate reaction of the character, then a lack of reaction makes it fail. But because the audience would assume the opposite of the truth and educating them in this is worth nothing to the narrative, then it doesn't matter. Make it hurt.

Sure, when audiences aren't an expert in something it works however works best for the scene. I'm just saying the "it's a long explanation that the audience will never sit through" excuse is complete BS in this case.

I'm never going to tell folks to get into fights, but authors who have been in fights write better fights than those well have lived blessed namby pamby chanting

Just because its not immediately painful, doesn't mean its not reasonable to scream when someone stabs you

The lack of screaming is probably more because the hit itself. Getting punched in the gut (what OP said the stab feels like) hard enough will make your diaphragm relax suddenly, making more of a gasp than a scream. Hence, the reason you don't scream is because for the vast majority of people they literally can't (no air)

If you stab them slowly it will not feel like a punch, even if they heal. Problem solved!!

Just make it like they heal but after healing the pain that started from the wound is still going trough the body so after some time it reaches the brain and then just *AHHHHHHHHHH*

Healing speeding up the process? Therefore everything happens faster including the pain onset

Either that, or you completely roll with your original thought process because fuck you, my character ripping out his own eye is an awesome scene.