Writing What You Don't Know: The Assistants

Or magic could use expendable, valuable resources. If you have to shatter gemstones or make solid silver vanish into the ether, it's not going to be in the budget for most people. Or it could be valuable in a different way; say you have to give up a memory or break something you love every time. As long as there's a price and it's hefty enough, some people will be willing to pay it, but not everyone will, and most people will at least have to think about it.

 

Actually, here's a lecture from one of my favorite authors (who's famous for his magic systems) which might be helpful if you don't mind listening to him ramble for an hour and mix up Greece and Rome:

 

So I'm writing a Native American character from the 40s. He's probably maya, but that is flexible and I might change it. But his main character arc revolves around dealing with toxic masculinity and internalized homophobia. But I haven't experienced that, so if anybody can give me some idea of what dealing with those involves thats super helpful.

 

Can you tell me about that? I have a character living out of a backpack bag of holding. It can hold theoretically infinite amounts, but the more it holds the higher the "cost" to cast the spell that makes it. It holds about a linen closet's worth of shit, and Keshet likes to have some empty space in it for emergencies.

 

If they are out of their depth bc their kid is mentally ill or disabled they might react in ways that would be good for people like them (i.e. neurotypical) and not good for their child.

 

If a character messily murders someone in their home, would burning the place down be enough to destroy evidence?

 

It probably wouldn't destroy the corpse; even if the fire was really hot, it'd leave bones, and then it might still be possible to ID the corpse by dental records. And I know there can be signs that indicate that a fire was caused by arson, which would be evidence in itself.

 

if the murderer was careful to leave no evidence of either artificially causing the house fire or of the murder on the victim's teeth or bones, then probably at least somewhat. It's at least possible to stage things much more convincingly as 'oh boy very tragic fell asleep and then the house burned down, nothing we could do' but depending on circumstances it may not be enough to destroy all evidence.

 

The word 'messily' is sort of your major problem there. Especially if the emergency response in the area is anywhere near competent, it would take a lot to burn the house down completely, and they typically scour the fuck out of major fire sites because any evidence of tampering or arson is pretty important. Insurance fraud and serial arsonists are both things that they want to nip in the bud.

And if 'messily' means 'dismemberment' in any way, that's another thing your murderer has to consider-- nobody falls asleep during a house fire and dies of smoke inhalation with their arm clear across the room. Either way, it'll be hard to destroy everything, and the fire might serve as primarily a distraction from the messy murder in the beginning of the investigation. If that's enough for the character in question to get away, then hey. But in my experience, large fires like that get scrutinized to hell and back.

 

I would think it would also have to burn really hot to char a corpse to the point where there was no evidence of prior trauma left on the flesh, and that might not be likely in a normal house. Though if you're talking "committed a messy murder here, then hauled the corpse out to dispose of elsewhere and burned down the house behind them to hide the bloodstains," I think that would be more likely to work?

 

Fire tends to mean that it's guaranteed they'll go over it with a fine-toothed comb.
If the target is a smoker, manufacturing a fire while they're roofied files the whole thing under accident.

I wonder, drain cleaner breaks down organic stuff, does it break down blood to the point of nonviability for dna testing?

 

Probably? It's either strongly acidic or strongly basic, but I'm not sure if just that is enough. If it's acid, then it's probably sulfuric acid, in which case you could mix it with hydrogen peroxide which would definitely ensure anything organic wouldn't last very long.
Of course, I think just drain cleaner sounds plausible enough that just using that might work in writing. Even if it doesn't work (and I don't know if it does), anyone who knows that is just gonna assume you just didn't want to give people an actual method for disposing of a body.

 

That led me to googling some stuff, and I just found this US Army lab report (Note: that's a PDF download) on using ozone and UV light to get rid of pretty much any contamination. Not exactly practical for getting rid of blood, but I guess it could be used for other stuff*, so I'm putting this here for writing reference.

*Like, apparently, bleaching yellowed plastic from old computers. (That video also includes stuff with hydrogen peroxide and UV or heat, which seems to work in a similar way.)

 

Yeah, it usually is. So is toilet cleaner. That's why everyone tells you never to mix either of them with bleach.

 

That reminds me of a thing:
So, you know how mixing bleach and ammonia will kill you? This has led some people to just go "Well then it must be a great cleaning agent!", putting on gas masks and mixing the two to clean stuff. However, not only is it stupid, it's not as effective as regular chlorine bleach, and is actually used for water treatment because it's less aggressive and more stable. The main risk isn't that it's more toxic, it's that it's a gas, and thus much easier to get exposed to.

 

Related to this: don't be my sister and clean up vinegar-related spills with a rag dipped in bleach. (She was cleaning up pickled jalapeños at work.)

 

Also don't be that one guy I saw on Youtube pranking his friends by making them smell a bottle full of chlorine gas.

 

And don't use bleach to clean up urine. You'll really regret that.

 

I was thinking of a mob hit, so it isn't necessary to conceal that it was murder, just who exactly did it.