hopelesslehane:

ladyeternal178:

saladmander:

ok but like when did self-sacrifice become synonymous with death? writers seem to have forgotten that people can make personal sacrifices for the greater good without giving their lives. plots about self-sacrifice and selflessness don’t always have to end in death. suffering doesn’t have to be mourning. you can create drama and emotional depth on your show without killing everyone. learn to explore the meaning of living rather than dying

Death. Is. NOT. The. Only. Way. To. Advance. The. Narrative.

Fun things to sacrifice for your loved ones in your free time that don’t include death and actually set up for a whole new season of high level drama:

- humanity (mostly applicable to sci-fi/supernatural genre)
- memories (mostly applicable to sci-fi/supernatural genre)
- love for that special someone (mostly applicable to sci-fi/supernatural genre)
- emotions (mostly applicable to sci-fi/supernatural genre)
- rank/position/
- yourself/your brain/your skills (give yourself over to bad guys and become their brainwashed agent so your loved ones live)
- years of bloody ruthless traditions to make way for peace (hi lexa and fuck jroth tbh)
- freedom (includes that of speech/mind/will)
- your grandpa’s fortune
- hell even material possessions have that girl sacrifice her goddamn house so they can pay off her gf’s student loans or whatever juST STOP KILLING CHARACTERS TO FURTHER YOUR PLOT

angryinkeddrunk:

drbobbimorse:

angryinkeddrunk:

(This is all just personal opinion)

“It ran away.”
No. That’s not fair.
It’s dead. It’s not coming back. Don’t do that to a child. Death is really important to understand.

YES they might be heartbroken over it but you need explain the truth to them as best you can depending on their age. It will help them understand loss.
I learned about death from an early age watching lions rip apart buffalo on animal planet. That bitch is DEAD. lol.
When my cheap ass fish would die, they where dead. They went up to “fishy heaven”. When one of my cats died, it was dead. It went to “kitty heaven”. My mom used to read me a book about how things that die go to heaven. I was sad but my tiny, imaginative child brain could grasp the concept of my animals going to a “happier” place because they were sick.

I just don’t see why or how lying is better other than to protect their little feelings. No one wants to see their child sad but like I said before, I think it’s important to understand loss. Kids get hurt, it happens, it prepares them for adult life.

I’m no parenting expert and I know there are plenty of reasons I wouldn’t understand as to why people think lying would be better. This is all just a pet peeve of mine.

Okay so I’m a mortician-in-training and, right now, I’m taking the required thanatology class which is all about death, dying and bereavement. Our most recent readings were all about children and how to help them make sense of the loss and separation of a loved one. Apparently, most adults seem to think children don’t grieve but they do. Children essentially have seven stages of grief: shock, alarm, disbelief, yearning, searching, disorganization, and resolution. Their grief is harder to understand and assess because they have neither the vocabulary nor life experience to easily express their feelings and needs. A child’s belief structure and how they respond to death is determined by their age/developmental level, the manner of the death, and their relationship with the deceased.

• Birth - 2 yrs: only non-specific distress reactions
• 2-5 yrs: don’t understand the permanence of death; concerned about physical well-being of deceased; not capable of cognitive reciprocity; may want to see and touch deceased’ repeatedly asks same questions about deceased; may act as if death never happened or in a regressive manner; may experience guilt (like, if they once said something like “I wish so-and-so would go away forever, they might think they caused the death)
• 6-9 yrs: more complex understanding; realize death is irreversible and that its universal; find it difficult to believe that death will happen to them (believe it happens only to older people); death can be personified and this allows them to run and hide from it; tendency to engage in “magical thinking” (don’t let them do this, its as bad as you lying to them; keep them grounded in the reality of the death), have strong feelings of loss but have extreme difficulty expressing it; often need permission to grieve
• 9-12 yrs: have cognitive understand to comprehend death is a final event; can understand and accept a mature, realistic explanation of death; short attention spans (they could be sad and grieving one moment and laughing joyfully the next, and someone could see that and negatively comment on it. Like, “how can so-and-so be acting like that?” This can intensify their already fluctuating emotions and present feelings of guilt and low self-worth); their vocabulary is advanced enough to express their feelings but they may not want to talk about what’s bothering them (they’ll let it build up and manifest in behavioral problems); interest in the physical aspect of death and what happens after; may imitate decreased’s mannerisms
• 13-18 yrs: understand the meaning of death; realize its irreversible and happens to everyone; normal puberty will intensify grief by adding to already conflicting emotions; often put in position of being the protector, comforter, caregiver (feel they must comfort others t their wen emotions are suppressed; they’ll look find on the outside but be falling apart inside); experience conflicting feelings about death (try to overcome fears by confirming control of their mortality; risk taking behavior); males are more likely to express grief in aggressive behaviors while females need comfort, to be held and reassured

There’s basically 10 rules:

1. Tell them ASAP: its important to start with what they know about death and then expand on that; be gentle and trustful; tell them in a comfortable, safe and familiar place and make sure its in language they’ll understand; never assume they understand the way you do
   
2. Be truthful: kids can sense dishonesty ok?! So don’t create lies to protect them; don’t make up stories that’ll have to be changed later on cause that only confuses them and promotes emotional instability; don’t withhold information either (within reason, see #3), place emphasis on the facts, and avoid euphemisms (i.e., “passed away”, “departed”, “went away”, “got sick” (they’ll associate illness and death go hand-in-hand and may think a common cold will kill them), etc)
   
3. Share only details they’re ready to hear: truthfulness should be balanced with their readiness for details (like, tell them someone died in a horrible auto accident but maybe not say they were decapitated and their head flew off down the highway in the process); children with actualize a crisis like an adult; its not uncommon for them to ask about a death later in life and that provides the opportunity to deliver info that wasn’t previously shared (i.e., the decapitation)
   
4. Encourage expression of feelings: a child will experience stages of grief very similar to those of adults (adults typically follow the Kubler-Ross 5 stages while kids have 7, seen above) and they rely on adults for permission to “feel” loss; best way is for them to learn is to hear and watch adults because they get their understanding of grief through their senses; its not unusual for them to go up to people and just make a statement like “My dad died” cause they want to see how that person will react and give them a clue as to how they should react, so its important for adults to “feel” their grief in the presence of the child; explain why you’re sad and reassure them that its okay for them to feel sad and cry and that its okay if they aren’t
   
5. Take child to the funeral: seeing is believing; they should be given the option to view the body but don’t force them; a funeral can be a positive experience but their level of involvement in the funeral process should be their individual decision; give them the choice as to the extent of their involvement
   
6. Take child to the cemetery: it can be comforting to them to know where the body is buried and how it got there; it can also help them direct their grief at an appropriate object (this lessens emotional disorganization), and it lessens the child’s chances of denying or avoiding the death
   
7. Let them tell others about death: adults “talking over” kids creates anxiety; when the child can explain it to another person, in their own words, they feel more in control and have a greater understanding; let them speak!
   
8. Encourage talk of the loss: this allows feelings to be expressed and incorrect ideas about any aspect of the loss to be corrected
   
9. Be available to answer questions: you need to answer each question as sincerely and accurately as possible; understand that some can’t be answered but simply being available is important; and be patient cause they will ask the same question repeatedly
   
10. Never tell them how they should or shouldn’t feel: you don’t like it when people do it to you, so don’t do it to kids; they should be encouraged to express any feeling and they should feel accepted for it; being told “not to feel” a certain way leads to emotionally “playing dead” and that’ll create repression, which creates interpersonal conflicts in later life due to inability to communicate emotions
    

This was a super interesting read.

nolacousland:

This is a really good article about how quickly people actually die from cuts and punctures inflicted by swords and knives.  However, it’s really really long and I figured that since I was summarizing for my own benefit I’d share it for anyone else who is writing fiction that involves hacking and slashing your villain(s) to death.  If you want the nitty gritty of the hows and whys of this, you can find it at the original source.

…even in the case of mortal wounds, pain may not reach levels of magnitude sufficient to incapacitate a determined swordsman.

Causes of death from stabs and cuts:

• massive bleeding (exsanguination) - most common
• air in the bloodstream (air embolism)
• suffocation (asphyxia)
• air in the chest cavity (pneumothorax)
• infection
  

Stabbing vs cutting:

• Stabbing someone actually takes very little force if you don’t hit bone or hard cartilage.
• The most important factor in the ease of stabbing is the velocity of the blade at impact with the skin, followed by the sharpness of the blade.
• Stabbing wounds tend to close after the weapon is withdrawn.
• Stabbing wounds to muscles are not typically very damaging.  Damage increases with the width of the blade.
• Cutting wounds are typically deepest at the site of initial impact and get shallower as force is transferred from the initial swing to pushing and pressing.
• Cutting wounds have a huge number of factors that dictate how deep they are and how easily they damage someone: skill, radial velocity, mass of the blade, and the size of the initial impact.
• Cutting wounds along the grain of musculature are not typically very damaging but cutting wounds across the grain can incapacitate.

Arteries vs veins:

• Severed veins have almost zero blood pressure and sometimes even negative pressure.  They do not spurt but major veins can suck air in causing an air embolism.
• Cutting or puncturing a vein is usually not fatal.
• Severed arteries have high blood pressure.  The larger arteries do spurt and can often cause death due to exsanguination.

Body parts as targets:

• Severing a jugular vein in the neck causes an air embolism and will make the victim collapse after one or two gasps for air.
• Severing a carotid artery in the neck cuts off the blood supply to the brain but the victim may be conscious for up to thirty seconds.
• Stabbing or cutting the neck also causes the victim to aspirate blood that causes asphyxiation and death.
• Severing a major abdominal artery or vein would cause immediate collapse, but this takes a fairly heavy blade and a significant amount of effort because they are situated near the spine.
• Abdominal wounds that only impact the organs can cause death but they do not immediately incapacitate.
• Severing an artery in the interior of the upper arm causes exsanguination and death but does not immediately incapacitate.
• Severing an artery in the palm side of the forearm causes exsanguination and death but does not immediately incapacitate.
• Severing the femoral artery at a point just above and behind the knee is the best location.  Higher up the leg it is too well protected to easily hit.  This disables and will eventually kill the victim but does not immediately incapacitate.
• Cutting across the muscles of the forearm can immediately end the opponent’s ability to hold their weapon.
• Cutting across the palm side of the wrist causes immediate loss of ability to hold a weapon.
• Stab wounds to the arm do not significantly impact the ability to wield a weapon or use it.
• Cuts and stab wounds to the front and back of the legs generally do not do enough muscle damage to cause total loss of use of that leg.
• Bone anywhere in the body can bend or otherwise disfigure a blade.
• The brain can be stabbed fairly easily through the eyes, the temples, and the sinuses.  
• Stabs to the brain are more often not incapacitating.

The lungs as targets:

• Slicing into the lung stops that lung from functioning, but the other lung continues to function normally.  This also requires either luck to get between the ribs or a great deal of force to penetrate the ribs.
• Stabbing the lung stops that lung from functioning, but the other lung continues to function normally.  It is significantly easier to stab between ribs than to slice.
• It is possible to stab the victim from the side and pass through both lungs with an adequate length blade.  It is very unlikely that this will happen with a slicing hit.
• “Death caused solely by pneumothorax is generally a slow process, occurring as much as several hours after the wound is inflicted.”
• Lung punctures also typically involve the lung filling with blood, but this is a slow process.

The heart as a target:

I’m just going to quote this paragraph outright with a few omissions and formatting changes for clarity because it’s chock-full of good info:

…[stabbing] wounds to the heart the location, depth of penetration, blade width, and the presence or absence of cutting edges are important factors influencing a wounded duelist’s ability to continue a combat.

• Large cuts that transect the heart may be expected to result in swift incapacitation…
• …stab wounds, similar to those that might be inflicted by a thrust with a sword with a narrow, pointed blade may leave a mortally wounded victim capable of surprisingly athletic endeavors. 

Essentially, the heart can temporarily seal itself well enough to keep pressure up for a little while if it’s a simple stab.  The arteries around the heart, while they are smaller and harder to hit, actually cause incapacitation much more quickly.