#i think it's less that i might be genuinely faceblind and more that i don't like staring at people's faces straight-on these days

[hua-fei-hua]

tag game from @cadriona~~ 15 questions for 15 mutuals

1. are you named after anyone? uhhh my middle name comes from like, One of my white ancestors, though i don't remember the exact tracing of the bloodline rn

2. when was the last time you cried? honestly not sure, but i feel like it was not terribly long ago. less than a month ago, i think; i can be a crybaby sometimes

3. do you have kids? legally no; biologically also no; but emotionally? the number is fathomless.

4. do you use sarcasm a lot? i don't feel like i'm a terribly sarcastic person, but many other people disagree. just today one of the kids at work asked me why i use sarcasm a lot! i think at this point my habit of "saying ridiculous things with full sincerity and then expecting people to understand that its sheer absurdity means it's a joke (but still actually doing said ridiculous thing if people call it a bluff)" is just hard for people to parse in general, but since i just roll with whatever they think i'm being, it's not a big deal.

5. what sports do you play/have played? this question is so funny bc recently i've been joking that i'm the only non-jock at my workplace, but my coworker in aquatics tried to rope me into lifeguarding for the summer when he found out i could swim, and i did marching band in high school. oh, and i took a fencing course in uni before plague.

6. what's the first thing you notice about people? their jacket, then their hair. if you change both of these things at once i might have trouble recognizing you.

7. eye color? brown. you know how dominant genes are.

8. scary movies or happy endings? for the most part happy endings, but if you're too saccharine about the beginning and middle then i'm going to wish you gave me a scary movie instead.

9. any special talents? i can do calligraphy with italic / oblique pen tips (think gothic blackletter, even tho gothic is probably one of my shittiest hands); i can burp at will still; i can touch type at around 92 wpm (certified)

10. where were you born? in a hospital <3

11. what are your hobbies? good lord that's a doozy these days. regularly i read n write fic (obviously), play genshin (still), study fandom (specifically the weeb sphere and its history), and code my shrine of cringe neocities. (and also sometimes stream any one of these things to friends) irregularly i watch youtube, keep a diary, read manga n watch anime, press flowers, do calligraphy, scanlate manga, typeset n bookbind fic (physically restrained by everyone from buying $500 worth of fonts bc Literally no one understands my font disease except other typesetters) mostly, but i have god knows how many other dormant hobbies (arranging music, editing fonts, edit videos, etc.) hiding in the cracks that i should probably just put on a resume by this point. you know how it is with adhd.

12. do you have any pets? not anymore, unless you count [pet] projects, in which case yes, the spreadsheet project abt fandom migrations in particular

13. how tall are you? abt 5'6", more specifically 166.4 cm.

14. favorite subject in school? chemistry, though i english/literature was a close second, and math (aside from geometry and statistics) is still beloved.

15. dream job? someday i'm gonna teach chemistry to a bunch of high school idiots, and i'm gonna love them all so fucking much, and i'm gonna be so fucking happy that i'm still alive.

tagging (if you want!!) @stardust-make-a-wish @reach-4-thesky @cece-0708 @yongnep @kanonavi @krackerka @isnt-it-pretty @yume-fanfare @aranarumei @italiantea and now staring at my mutuals list i have started to lose my nerve so i'll leave it at ten LOL but if you wanna do it too you can just say i tagged you ( •̀ ω •́ )y

[winterandwords]

If someone wanted a brief description of what Rafe looks like, where might they look for such information … for reasons.

Or, alternatively, provide me with a brief description of Rafe, if none exists elsewhere :p. For reasons.

Because of who I am as a writer, little details are scattered through Bridge From Ashes but there's no straight-up "This is what he looks like" moment. Also, it's from his POV, so descriptions of himself are usually relative to other people and again not clear statements.

So. In terms of build, he's a big dude, 6ft 4in with broad shoulders. In the parts of the book where he's in his mid-twenties and meets Gillen, he's physically strong because he has to be, but he doesn't eat well and it shows. He could do with a few homecooked meals and less alcohol.

Later, when he's in his early thirties and working for the Authority, he's a bit healthier looking and more muscular in that he has to be fit for his job, but not like gym-abs-and-dehydration looking. Just normal-person-with-physical-job shaped.

He's naturally blessed in the face department, described as "beautiful" by the evil guy in the prologue, which is why Rafe doesn't think about his own appearance very much apart from resenting it and he hates compliments.

By the point where he meets Gillen, he has a bunch of facial scars. The most obvious are the one that runs from the corner of his mouth to just under his left ear, and the other through the right side of his top lip. Clear descriptions of the injuries that cause those are at the very beginning of BFA. They heal badly and they genuinely fuck with his facial symmetry. The other scars he has then are smaller and less severe, but still definitely noticeable.

By the time he's been working for the Authority for a while, he's collected a lot more scars on his face, including a few more severe ones that are serious enough to unsettle people in a world where it's unusual to have any scars at all. Think more than Ben Barnes' character in the Punisher after the thing with the mirror, but less than Michael Pitt's character in Hannibal after the bad shit goes down.

His torso, arms and back are also covered in scars. Some of those happened in the course of a life of crime followed by a life of reluctant law enforcement, but a lot of them are either self-inflicted or self-inflicted by proxy. He's a hardcore masochist who's into cutting and burning. The ones that get mentioned specifically a few times are a row of neat lines below his collarbone.

I'm faceblind so I struggle a LOT with describing actual faces and I don't know how helpful it is when I try. Olive skin, brown eyes, high cheekbones, strong brow, full lips, permanent dark circles under his eyes. Frustratingly for me, he doesn't look like any real person I've seen and I can't hold images of faces in my head, so he's a bit of a blur.

OK, hair. Black, thick, slightly wavy, a bit longer when he's younger (not long enough to tie back but long enough to look messy) and shorter when he's working for the Authority.

Clothes. Very "cyberpunk aesthetic man" on Pinterest, long black leather coat that's seen better days. Authority clothes are either "cyberpunk soldier" for missions or smart black with a structured long black coat the rest of the time.

That description was the opposite of brief. Apparently I don't know how to describe characters briefly.