Writing What You Don't Know: The Assistants

They may also eat grass if you spend too long chatting with a neighbor on what is, after all, supposed to be their walkies. : p

 

i need some help with writing a black character who is a ghost and died before i was born

i also just need creative help with this story in general

 

Can I get a bit of help with Japanese Buddhism? Nothing too deep (though if you have reference stuff for it specifically I will devour that shit because knowledge tasty) since the character's a casual believer, but he is from a more devout family and so is kind of... reflexively religious? It mostly shows through when shit hits fan.

Mostly I want to know what would be religiously appropriate for encountering death, and reflecting back on the killers/victims. I'm guessing prayers to Kannon for the latter, since his defining personality traits are compassion, empathy, and understanding. And given the whole shitty situation, he maintains that for the killers as well.

Unfortunately other than that I don't know even where to start. I keep getting looped back to other flavors of Buddhism with no reference to how the Japanese adapted it and I don't want to get things wrong.

 

a chunk of my experience is random snippets of family stuff from a family that's been out of the loop for a while
but we do celebrate bai san and attend bon dances
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestor_veneration_in_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Festival
ancestor worship kind of thing, burning paper and leaving food—the first link's for china, but my family's chinese/japanese, and there's kind of an overlap there where I'm from

 

my suggestion is to look at shinto as well? because as far as I can tell things kind of got....folded together

 

I need suggestions for certain kinds of jobs and details thereof!

The situation: I have a character who needs to be in a largeish rural town for a limited period of time - more than a week but less than a month - and since being there to visit someone is off the table, figure that they'd be there for some sort of temporary work. By preference it'd be something hands-on, not office work, and they'd be going there as part of their actual job. I've considered that they may need to deliver/pick something up, or work on repairs to something on-site, but I'm at a loss to any finer detail than that.

The town in question has schools, a rail yard, a lumber yard, a hospital, a pretty wide variety of businesses, and a rural farming community surrounding it. The character has driven in from a city; it's probably not any closer than across state, and may be further (if it matters).

I also could use suggestions of where this person would likely to be lodging during this time, being as they don't have friends or family to stay with. Some sort of motel with a discount long term rate?

 

On that time scale? It could be related to construction of a building or some kind of heavy equipment - unskilled labor would be local but there's a lot of skilled labor in a job like that. An engineer, architect, building contractor, or specialized electrician or something might be brought in from elsewhere for a particular project.

And it wouldn't have to be a motel, the town you're describing is big enough for a non-luxury hotel like a Holiday Inn or something. In fact, a town like you describe would probably call itself a city, though no one out of state would have heard of it before. (The hospital in particular tells me that locals would think of this place as a hub for the area.)

 

... Dang, I feel like I've been caught. >_>; I'm not-so-subtly basing this place off of the town I grew up in and that's exactly what it's like. XD

I think a specialized electrician is along the lines of what I want, since this character is unlikely to have gone to university but is smart and motivated enough to have pursued a trade, and it works really well with their personality. It also gives me some new options to pursue for the paranormal shenanigans in the plot. Thank you!! :D

 

Long term motels are certainly an option, if a regular budget hotel doesn't appeal. I know my hometown of 3400 people had a motel that was really a bunch of mini houses, sometimes single-occupant, sometimes duplex. A little more private than a regular hotel building, decent set up for longer-term visitors, and the kind of place jobs spring for to attract skilled electricians when they need them somewhere for a while. Not huge on amenities, and I don't recall if there was much more of a kitchen than a sink and minifridge, but they had private bathrooms and color TVs with at least a few channels and when I was a kid that was super exciting.

 

I had considered it as a possibility before I asked, but it's a bad fit from enough angles I knew I needed a different option. I'd intended to mention it was off the table but I lost the thought in fussing over wording in the original post. :X

 

Question; there's a cop character who wears a badge on a cord round her neck and not a recognisable uniform, what rank is she likely to be? I want her to show up in a thing but I don't know what exactly she'd be doing. Here's her:

 

@lvkz What era was the ghost alive in?

 

@ChelG Detective, probably.

 

Thank you!

 

its a clipon attached to the feathers probably

 

Just think of it as a hair clip and go about your business, this way lies madness.

 

Hi! I'm writing some characters going mushroom hunting in approximately October weather, and I did all the research for what kind of mushrooms (black trumpet) and where they can find them (mossy hardwood forests, damp spots, in leaf litter). This seems like ideal territory to accidentally run into snakes, but I am petering out on research spoons - is this actually a place they could accidentally disturb a snake? what kind of snake? what do snakes do when they're disturbed?

thank you in advance for your snake knowledge. mushroom details in an attached image.

Edit to add: this is a fantasy setting, I don't need to stick to IRL snake species ranges