I have to say that I appreciate Tumblr showing me all the lesbian adverts this month and I’m going to be really sad when June ends and the lesbians will, most likely, disappear from my dash (or at least from the ads).
Tim shifted from foot to foot, clutching the package of oreos tighter in his grip. He bit his lip and stared at Jason’s closed door. He let out a sigh and raised a hand, ready to knock when the door was pulled open.
He blinked and stared up at Jason who was looking at him expectantly, eyebrow raised. Tim’s eyes drifted down and found Jason without a shirt. He sucked in a breath at the scars littering Jason’s chest, something twisting uncomfortably in his chest.
“Oh, sorry,” Jason mumbled, taking notice of his change in demeanor. “I guess I should’ve expected you’d forget about the scars.” He stepped back into his room and pulled open his dresser, throwing a shirt over his head. Even when the fabric came down to cover his skin, Tim couldn’t pull his eyes away, imagining how much pain or how many fights Jason had gotten into to get so many scars.
As far as Tim knew, Jason was a skilled fighter who’d been ready to knock him on his ass down in the Cave. He couldn’t imagine how Jason could ever lose a fight even though he said Tim was able to win against him when he remembered how to fight.
“Hey,” Jason said, softly. “Hey, Tim? Are you okay?” He reached out and touched Tim’s arm lightly and he jerked, eyes snapping up to Jason’s face.
“Sorry, I-sorry,” he said, shoving the package of oreos against Jason’s chest before he turned on his heel and hurried down the hallway.
“Hey, Tim,” Jason said, following after him.
Tim wrapped his arms around himself, pushing into his room.
“Tim, what’s wrong?” Jason asked behind him.
He didn’t respond, gaze fixed on the floor as he tried to make sense of what he’d seen.
“Come on, Timmy,” Jason said, voice soft. “You can talk to me. What’s wrong?” His hand was gentle as it came to rest on Tim’s arm. He turned him around, but he didn’t look up.
“You…your scars…” Tim whispered. “You have so many scars.”
“It’s part of being a vigilante. We don’t win every fight.” He let out a breath. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed and I’m not sure if I should tell you, but you have scars marking your body, too.”
Tim hunched his shoulders. “I haven’t looked yet. But you’re such a strong fighter. You’re so strong. How…how did you get so many scars?”
“Believe it or not, Tim, there are fighters better than me in the world. Bruce is one of them and he’s gotten just as many scars as the rest of us.”
Tim stepped forward, closing the distance between them. He rested his head against Jason’s chest and shut his eyes. Jason’s arm wrapped around him and pulled him close, hand running up and down Tim’s spine.
“Are you gonna be okay?” he murmured.
“I guess…” Tim said. “It was a bit of a shock.”
Jason patted his back. “Did you need something before you ran off at the sight of my…because of that?”
Tim’s face heated. “I wanted to apologize. For getting you in trouble with Bruce.”
Jason’s body shook underneath him as he laughed. “You didn’t get me in trouble. He’s a bit of a hard ass, but that’s not being in trouble, so don’t worry about it. Anyway, how do you know I wasn’t just using your amnesia to get his spandex in a twist?”
Tim’s stomach turned. “Were you?” he asked.
“No,” Jason sighed. “No, I wasn’t.”
“Okay.”
“Hey, do you want to do something? I’ve got a whole package of oreos I can’t eat on my own. I could sure use some help.”
Tim laughed and stepped back out of Jason’s hold. He looked up and gave him a smile. “Sure, what were you thinking?”
“Let’s see…we have endless movies and T.V. options or the latest gaming consoles. We have a fully stocked library and probably a hundred rooms in this place that could be explored.”
“Games?” Tim asked.
“Oh, you’re going to love this,” Jason said, grinning pulling at his lips. “Let me just go grab the oreos,” he said, rushing back down to his room.
Tim stepped into the hallway and Jason didn’t even bother slowing down as he hurried back. He grabbed Tim’s hand and pulled him down the hallway. Tim grinned, laughing as they hurried down the stairs and into the entertainment room they’d been in the other night while watching movies.
“Go ahead and take a seat,” Jason said, shoving the oreos into his hands. “I’ll get things set up.
Tim sat cross-legged on the couch and pulled open the oreos, biting one in half as he watched Jason fiddle with cases and disks. He carried two white remotes over to the couch and handed one to Tim.
“What are we playing?” Tim asked.
Jason grinned. “Mario Kart.”
The screen lit up with the start menu and Jason quickly flicked through the settings, queuing their game before Tim could even read the words on the screen.
“Go ahead and pick your character. You’re the blue box,” Jason explained.
Tim nodded and scrolled through the characters until he settled on a green dragon looking thing.
“Yoshi, nice,” Jason commented.
The screen changed and Jason flicked through different pictures of race tracks before clicking one.
“So, you’re going to hold the remote sideways, like that,” Jason said, showing Tim his own hands. “You press the ‘2′ button to go and tilt the remote back and forth to change direction, got it?”
“I think so,” Tim said, uncertainly.
“You’ll get the hang of it,” Jason said, popping an oreo into his mouth as the stoplight on the screen started to count down. Tim bit his lip as the race started and he belatedly pressed the button to make his character move, leaving him in last place.
Jason leaned forward, eyes intent on the screen. He’d easily pulled ahead of all the other characters. Tim fumbled the first turn, jerking his remote too far to the left. He struggled to get back on course and kept going, intent on making it through the course without letting it get the best of him.
Tim fought to keep his eyes on his own character, wanting to watch Jason expertly drive around the course and use the shining mystery blocks to throw weapons and attacks at the other drivers who tried to pass him or make him fumble. Tim ran over more than one banana peel because of it.
The other characters were halfway done with their third lap when Tim was starting his. He hit a mystery block and blinked when a blue shell started spinning around him. He frowned and released it.
“No, Tim, no, no, no!” Jason said as he watched what happened.
“What?” Tim asked. “What did I do?”
“Shit, shit, shit,” Jason cursed. “Come on, come on…”
Tim watched as the blue shell he’d fired showed up behind Jason and hit him, causing him to stop dead a few feet from the finish. A few players streaked passed and claimed the first few places while Jason fought to get his character moving again.
Tim laughed, sinking back into the couch cushions. Jason glared at him when he crossed the finish line and Tim couldn’t care less that the game ended before he could get to the end.
“You think you’re funny, don’t you?” Jason asked.
Tim grinned.
“If that’s how it’s going to be, let’s see how well you handle Rainbow Road,” he muttered, flicking through the race tracks.
Tim chuckled, not caring if he was going to end up coming in last place again because he was having a great time watching Jason give this game his entire focus.
For someone who hates writing weddings and has successfully avoided putting them into her fics for 20 years, how am I writing my fourth one since January? >.<;
Me: *picks up “dead” bat in my yard so my dog doesn’t eat it*
“Dead” bat: O_O
Me: O_O
Me upon realizing I am holding a very not dead bat and not dead bat realizing it has been picked up by a large creature at the exact same second: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!
He scream
You want rabies? That’s how you get rabies
1.I picked it up with a towel and gardening gloves and never once touched it with my bare hands.
2.
3.The bat was at the bottom of my porch where I have to take my dog out but I guess I should have just left it there for her to eat right?
4.It was in a position that made it clear that it was most likely hurt from hitting my house and not just sick. It’s warming up in my area and they are just coming out from the winter and it was most likely confused because I live right next to the highway and there’s a lot of noise.
5.You can only get rabies from a bat by being bitten or otherwise getting its saliva in your bloodstream. And it was two inches long and I’m a grown ass adult with a towel and gardening gloves and a thick ass sweater.
Good thing you tagged it as “stupid people” because you obviously don’t know enough about the situation
I’m sorry I tagged it that way. That was incredibly childish of me. I’ve just had it pounded into my head that you don’t mess with sick or injured wildlife because of the risk of exposure.
I’m a registered Veterinary technician and I’ve worked with a rabid cat and it was terrifying
I’m sorry I got so defensive. I’ve seen a lot of bats killed in my area because people are misinformed about the rabies situation. I used to play with them as a kid by throwing sticks in the air and watching them swoop to get them and each year they were noticably fewer until they were just gone.
That was the most adult way I’ve ever seen an argument addressed on the internet.
OH MY GOD whyyyy did no one tell me you’re supposed to send thank-yous after interviews?? Why would I do that???
“Thank you for this incredibly stressful 30 minutes that I have had to re-structure my entire day around and which will give me anxiety poos for the next 24 hours.”
I HATE ETIQUETTE IT’S THE MOST IMPOSSIBLE THING FOR ME TO LEARN WITHOUT SOMEONE DIRECTLY TELLING ME THIS SHIT
NO ONE TOLD YOU???? WTF! I HAVE FAILED YOU.
Also:
Dear ______:
Thank you so much for the opportunity to sit down with you (&________) to discuss the [insert job position]. I am grateful to be considered for the position. I think I will be a great fit at [company name], especially given my experience in __________. [insert possible reference to something you talked about, something that excited you.] I look forward to hearing from you [and if you are feeling super confident: and working together in the future].
Sincerely,
@mellivorinae
THIS IS A LIFESAVING TEMPLATE
YOU ARE WELCOME
My brother got a really great paid internship one summer. The guy who hired him said the deciding factor was the professional thank you letter my brother sent after the interview.
should it be an email? or like a physical letter?
email, you want to send it within a few hours at max after the interview if you can so it’s fresh in their mind who you are.
Confirmed! I interviewed for a job right after arriving in NY. The interview went incredibly well, and I went home and immediately wrote a thank you letter and put it in the mail. I had a super good feeling about this interview.
I didn’t get the job.
However, a few weeks later, I was called in to interview with another editor in the same company, and I did get that job. I found out later from the initial editor (the one who didn’t hire me) that he had planned to offer me the job, but since I didn’t follow up with a thank you letter, he assumed I didn’t really want it. He offered the job to another contender–but when he got my letter in the mail shortly after the offer had already been made, he went to HR and gave me a glowing recommendation. It was based on that recommendation that I got called in for the second interview.
So: send an email thank you immediately (same day!) after the interview. If you’re feeling extra, go ahead and send a written one too. OR go immediately to a coffee shop, write the letter, and return to the office and give it to the secretary.
Either way, those letters are important.
Pro tip: If you really want HR to develop a personal interest in your application, publicly thank them on linkedin. Just make a short post telling your network about how X recruiter really went above and beyond to make you feel welcome, or about how be accommodating and professional they were, or whatever. Make sure to use the mention feature so they’ll get a notification and see it.
Flattery will get you everywhere… and public flattery that might make its way back to their manager, doubly so.
Obligatory plug for one of FreePrintable.net’s sites: ThankYouLetter.ws. They have a whole section with interview thank you letter templates, and a page with specific tips for interview thank you letters. (There are also tons of other letter templates if you browse around a bit.)
In modern popular culture torture is consistently linked to
interrogation: to getting information from a prisoner.
Now I’ve written several times why this trope is not only
wrong but also harmful and is used in the real world to justify torture. O’Mara
and Rejali also cover this in depth over several hundred pages for anyone who
wants more information.
I often get asked for realistic alternatives: what does actually work? How can characters,
bad or good, actually go about gaining information in a realistic way?
This isn’t going to be an exhaustive list, and I feel I
should state that I have no practical experience of interrogation. Hopefully
though it can serve as a starting point that will help you think about how characters come by information in
your stories.
The first important
point is that interrogation generally isn’t very effective.
Very little useful information comes from interrogation of
suspects when compared to all the other sources of information police and
intelligence agencies draw on.
There are a several reasons interrogation isn’t hugely
useful including:
·
Human memory isn’t that good. Even well meaning
people who want to help forget important details.
·
People are much better at lying than detecting
lies. Even people who describe themselves as good at detecting when someone is lying do a very poor job.
·
Memories are easily modified in stressful
situations. Even someone who isn’t trying to can plant suggestions leading to
false memories, directing the interrogation in a particular direction without
even realising it.
Some useful
information does come from interrogation (and I’ll come back to how to handle
it in a moment) but, realistically the following are more important sources of
information in any investigation:
Physical forensic
evidence
This doesn’t just mean things like hair samples and DNA.
Computer records, credit card bills, surveillance camera footage, library
records and letters can tell you an awful lot about a person. Reading a
character’s emails or letters and keeping track of their bills can reveal a lot of plot relevant information such as
whether two characters are in contact or why a character might be desperate for
money.
Gathering this sort of information takes a lot of time and
hard work. It’s not as simple as collecting
evidence, such as a piece of hair or a computer hard drive, the information has
to be analysed and interpreted correctly.
The hair could be DNA tested and cross referenced with a
database or simply identified as human and of a particular type and colour.
(Identifying it as human is important, I know at least one forensic tech who
was handed cow hair and told it was definitely from a suspect)
The computer hard drive would need to be poured over file by
file. It’s not quite enough to suppose character A could access character B’s
emails, A has to have the time and inclination to read the damn things.
An important point to consider is how dedicated your
characters are. Careful collection and examination of evidence is probably the best way of finding something out.
But it requires patience, hard work and a lot of time.
There’s a reason police work is a full time job and there’s
a reason a lot of people in professions like policing might think torture is
easier. Gathering and analysing evidence
is hard.
It’s worth considering whether your character has the
resources and inclination to go down this route before you decide to use it.
Observation
This is the stake-out scene from every police movie and tv
show. It’s having one character physically following and watching another
character for as long as humanly possible, recording everywhere they go and
everything they do.
It means finding out where a character lives, watching them
at work, noting where they eat lunch and who with. Finding out where they go in
their free time and how often. When they go to bed. Who they visit. How long
they do it for. The minute detail of everything someone does in their day recorded
for a period of weeks or months to build up a picture of the person.
If that sounds creepy that’s because it is.
This is a very time consuming strategy. It requires a lot of
focus and patience and dedication or the ability to hire someone who has those
qualities. It’s simpler than systematically gathering physical evidence and
it’s easier to do discretely.
Informants
This is probably the simplest major method of gathering
information. It can be as complicated as the Soviet Union network of paid informants
or as straight-forward as people coming forward and volunteering information.
This is incredibly
important to police investigations. Information from voluntary informants
led to the capture of the London tube bombers in 2005. The suspects were identified
by their family and neighbours who went to the police.
This sort of informal reporting doesn’t just occur in police
contexts. From a writing perspective the way I tend to think about it is in
terms of crossing societal lines.
Every culture and subculture has ideas about what is and
what is not acceptable. Every group has an idea of what’s ‘going too far’.
You might be writing a story set around a violent, criminal
subculture where theft and murder of other adults are the norm. But the same
characters who wouldn’t dream of reporting an enemy for killing another adult
might feel differently about the murder of a child.
A religious character might excuse their priest’s affairs,
but report anything they’d see as desecration or blasphemy.
A scientist might ignore a colleague harassing their lab
assistants but report data fraud.
Think about what matters to the characters and you’ll be
able to tell when they’d freely
volunteer information.
If you can’t think
of anything emotional that would cause them to inform remember that your
characters could pay informants. And then consider how many people who really
need some cash might be in a position to watch or steal from other characters.
Cleaners, drivers, people who deliver supplies- anyone who
would be on a low wage, have regular contact with the character but only a
superficial relationship could be a very valuable informant.
Interrogation
At the time of writing there is really not enough systematic
research on effective interrogation. As a result I’m going to try and
concentrate on things we’re reasonably sure help
rather than getting bogged down in academic discussions about what might be useful. Those discussions are
interesting but not much help to writers.
1)
The first important point is that interrogation takes time.
If a character is volunteering information that probably
won’t take as long but somewhere in the
region of 3-6 hours would still be reasonable. A witness to a crime or
victim would probably need time and reassurance in order to tell the
authorities what they know to the best of their ability.
Someone who isn’t
really willing to talk (for whatever reason) will need much longer. A day is
actually unusually short. Weeks or even
up to a month is not unreasonable.
Timeframes are going to vary depending on the characters and the situation the
plot has put them in but I think it’s important to remember that interrogation
isn’t quick and it isn’t simple.
2)
Interrogators and characters being interrogated should
speak a common language.
It sounds simple and obvious but if the characters can’t
communicate effectively interrogation is almost
certainly going to fail.
Using translators does not seem to be as effective as using
people who speak the language but there haven’t been systematic studies of
speakers vs interpreters as far as I know.
3)
Good record keeping is essential for effective interrogation.
That’s straightforward in a modern setting with recording
equipment but less so in a historical one.
Having a record of everything the suspect character says
when interviewed means that everything they say can be analysed by multiple
people, can be cross checked against what they said previously and can be
stored in a legible format in case it’s needed later.
Checking what a
suspect character said today against what they said yesterday or even last week
helps investigators to tell the difference between fact and fiction. Lies
are difficult to keep consistent, especially over longer periods of time.
Inconsistencies can be helpful and consistencies can help highlight areas
investigators should look into in greater depth.
Having multiple people able to analyse information also
helps hugely, each individual brings their own specialist knowledge to the
investigation. Which can be as simple as recognising a local’s nickname (and so
correctly identifying them later) or as complex as analysing how a suspect
claims they made a bomb and recognising that that process wouldn’t work.
4)
Even someone who genuinely wants to help will forget
details and get things wrong.
That isn’t unusual and it certainly isn’t a sign that the
character is unwilling or being deliberately unhelpful. In fact a story that sounds too detailed and too precise might well be
a sign of a pre-scripted and pre-rehearsed lie.
5)
Very very few people refuse to talk.
Whether they talk about anything helpful is of course another matter but the stereotype of a tough
criminal sitting completely silently and staring down a cop is incredibly rare
in reality.
A smart interrogator
will try to get their suspect chatting in the hope that some useful information
will come out.
Let’s say one of our characters is suspected of being part
of a larger conspiracy of some kind. And he won’t chat about any of the
‘interesting’ material the cops have found in his house, but he’s happy to talk
to the interrogator about the local football team.
The interrogator might notice that he seems to go to watch
the local team regularly and that he goes with the same set of friends. Friends
who might not be part of this conspiracy but might have heard something useful
from the suspect.
A smart suspect will
try to keep up a conversation peppered with misleading hints and
misinformation.
6)
Have the interrogating character establish a friendly
rapport with their interviewee.
It is easier to talk to someone who comes across as
friendly, interested in what you have to say and broadly sympathetic to your
position.
It is much more difficult to talk to someone who shouts,
screams and acts in an aggressive and confrontational manner.
The interrogator’s job is primarily to make it easy for the suspect to talk. Everything
else follows from that.
A polite, engaging, sociable character who can keep calm
under pressure would be a good pick. Someone who can be ‘friends’ with anybody.
Let me stress that
this can be extremely difficult. We’re talking about a character who can
walk into a room with the worst possible criminals and try to make friends with
them; a character who is successful
at doing so. Don’t be afraid to show the kind of toll that takes on the
character.
7)
Don’t let suspects talk to each other before hand.
I’ve discussed elsewhere why solitary confinement is
harmful- keeping characters completely isolated might well impair their memory
of events.
But allowing characters to talk to each other before their interrogated also affects
memory both for characters who want to
mislead interrogators and for characters who want to help.
Essentially we edit our memories all the time. Discussion of
shared experiences with other people is a major trigger for natural alternation of memories.
Four witnesses of the same events who don’t talk to each
other in advance will give four different but broadly similar accounts.
If the same witnesses talk to each other before they’re interviewed
they might well all report the same
inaccuracies.
8)
Have interviewed characters tell their story backwards.
This is a pretty simple memory aid that makes it easier for
interrogators to spot inconsistencies in a story. These inconsistencies don’t necessarily indicate a lie but they
highlight areas a character might be unsure of or might have inaccurate
memories of.
For instance if a character witnessed a car crash they might
be instructed to start their account from the moment the ambulances arrived at
the scene and work backwards from there until they reach the moments just
before the crash.
This technique can also help remind characters of additional
details as they tell the story.
9)
There is no reliable way to tell if someone is lying by
looking at them.
Even people who judge
themselves as ‘good’ at detecting lies perform poorly in tests.
There are no reliable ‘tests’ for lying. There are no working lie detector tests and based
on how complex an action lying is short of literally reading minds I don’t
think it would be possible.
The only reliable way to tell if someone lied is to double
check everything they said.
10) Body
language is not a reliable indicator of a character’s guilt or innocence.
A lot of people still believe that it is and there isn’t
necessarily anything wrong with your characters believing that- but I’d advise
caution.
An interrogator character might recognise that a suspect
character is nervous, but to instantly ‘know’ why they’d need to be psychic.
The vast majority of people who conduct interrogations in
real life have little to no formal training. In the USA (2013) the average was
between 8-15 hours of the full training program. Consider how many hours you’d
spend on a year long full time education course and you’ll get an idea of how
little training that is.
We are what fills in
the gap.
People with almost no training look to our portrayals of tough, aggressive interrogators who ‘always’ get
results and, consciously or not, those portrayals influence them.
The truth is interrogation isn’t a great way of getting
information and interrogators are only human: they don’t have a supernatural
insight into the suspect or crime.
But we tend to write them as if they do. Personally I think
that’s part of the problem- We focus on interrogation because of its dramatic
potential. That focus warps how both the public and people involved in investigations view interrogation. It places
too much focus on a comparatively poor information gathering technique and
leads to assumptions that interrogators are capable of more than they
realistically are.
Trust, human interaction and treating other people as human
is important. Anything that undermines that undermines interrogation.
Note on the record-keeping in historical circumstances: the Inquisition actually invented the basis of modern indexing, so as to be able to compare what all the people connected to a case said, or what a given individual said in two interrogations years apart.
The latter ability, to confront a guy with his exact words six years ago, was a terrifying unheard-of power in the Middle Ages. For period pieces, it could enhance your story a lot to recreate that shock.
Okay, but the fact that he asks/calls out to the ambiguous anyone before he gets to Dick’s name just hit me and, like. Wow. Wow, that is just seriously something else when taken in context of when this is obviously supposed to happen.
Can we as millennials and gen-z’s collectively agree that NObody Cares about elbows on the table like Why was that Ever A Problem for Anyone?? We can chill right?
nobody asked for this but the origin of not putting one’s elbows on the table comes from the late 18th/early 19th century when wooden ships were still used in the navy- sailors would balance their plates between their elbows while eating to keep them from sliding around. because sailors developed a reputation on-land for being uncouth and aggressive, the placing of elbows on the table became associated with such behaviour.
some cultural historians believe it also goes back further, to the middle ages, when large banquet-style meals were served on trestle tables that had no side support. if someone put their elbows on the table, they risked bringing the whole table down with them.
so basically, there is no longer any need to NOT put elbows on the table, and there hasn’t been since the advent of steamships.
I love this because now i can smartass the next person who tries to give me shit for it
