Just Out Of Curiosity Bc Some People I Know With Glasses Can Just Go A Few Hours Or A Day Without Them

just out of curiosity bc some people I know with glasses can just go a few hours or a day without them and be chill but I need them on all the time or I’ll go crazy

Don’t make me come over here and throw this at u 😡😘

Last Line Tag

Thank you @sharkblizzardblogs for the tag! (Post here.)

Gently tagging (no pressure): @hallowedfury @jovialnightmares @awritingcaitlin

From The Queen of Lies:

She had let herself believe for a few inconsequential days that she was the plucky, dauntless heroine of a novel who could carve out her own happy end.

Hey you, yeah you. The writer reading this.

It's okay to scrap things in a draft. It's okay to start again. It's okay to change things. It's okay to do whatever the fuck you want

Do what makes you happy.

You got this!

Preindustrial travel, and long explanations on why different distances are like that

I saw a post on my main blog about how hiking groups need to keep pace with their slowest member, but many hikers mistakenly think that the point of hiking is "get from Point A to Point B as fast as possible" instead of "spending time outdoors in nature with friends," and then they complain that a new/less-experienced/sick/disabled hiker is spoiling their time-frame by constantly needing breaks, or huffing and puffing to catch up.

I run into a related question of "how long does it take to travel from Point A to Point B on horseback?" a lot, as a fantasy writer who wants to be SEMI-realistic; in the Western world at least, our post-industrial minds have largely forgotten what it's like to travel, both on our own feet and in groups.

People ask the new writer, "well, who in your cast is traveling? Is getting to Point B an emergency or not? What time of year is it?", and the newbies often get confused as to why they need so much information for "travel times." Maybe new writers see lists of "preindustrial travel times" like a primitive version of Google Maps, where all you need to do is plug in Point A and Point B.

But see, Google Maps DOES account for traveling delays, like different routes, constructions, accidents, and weather; you as the person will also need to figure in whether you're driving a car versus taking a bus/train, and so you'll need to figure out parking time or waiting time for the bus/train to actually GET THERE.

The difference between us and preindustrial travelers is that 1) we can outsource the calculations now, 2) we often travel for FUN instead of necessity.

The general rule of thumb for preindustrial times is that a healthy and prime-aged adult on foot, or a rider/horse pair of fit and prime-aged adults, can usually make 20-30 miles per day, in fair weather and on good terrain.

Why is this so specific? Because not everyone in preindustrial times was fit, not everyone was healthy, not everyone was between the ages of 20-35ish, and not everyone had nice clear skies and good terrain to travel on.

If you are too far below 18 years old or too far past 40, at best you will need either a slower pace or more frequent breaks to cover the same distance, and at worst you'll cut the travel distance in half to 10 or so miles. Too much walking is VERY BAD on too-young/old knees, and teenagers or very short adults may just have short legs even if they're fine with 8-10 hours of actual walking. Young children may get sick of walking and pitch a fit because THEY'RE TIREDDDDDDDDDD, and then you might need to stay put while they cry it out, or an adult may sigh and haul them over their shoulder (and therefore be weighed down by about 50lbs of Angry Child).

Heavy forests, wetlands and rocky hills/mountains are also going to be a much shorter "distance." For forests or wetlands, you have to account for a lot of villagers going "who's gonna cut down acres of trees for one road? NOT ME," or "who's gonna drain acres of swamp for one road? NOT ME." Mountainous regions have their traveling time eaten by going UP, or finding a safer path that goes AROUND.

If you are traveling in winter or during a rainstorm (and this inherently means you HAVE NO CHOICE, because nobody in preindustrial times would travel in bad weather if they could help it), you run the high risk of losing your way and then dying of exposure or slipping and breaking your neck, just a few miles out of the town/village.

And now for the upper range of "traveling on horseback!"

Fully mounted groups can usually make 30-40 miles per day between Point A and Point B, but I find there are two unspoken requirements: "Point B must have enough food for all those people and horses," and "the mounted party DOESN'T need to keep pace with foot soldiers, camp followers, or supply wagons."

This means your mounted party would be traveling to 1) a rendezvous point like an ally's camp or a noble's castle, or 2) a town/city with plenty of inns. Maybe they're not literally going 30-40 miles in one trip, but they're scouting the area for 15-20 miles and then returning to their main group. Perhaps they'd be going to an allied village, but even a relatively small group of 10-20 warhorses will need 10-20 pounds of grain EACH and 20-30 pounds of hay EACH. 100-400 pounds of grain and 200-600 pounds of hay for the horses alone means that you need to stash supplies at the village beforehand, or the village needs to be a very large/prosperous one to have a guaranteed large surplus of food.

A dead sprint of 50-60 miles per day is possible for a preindustrial mounted pair, IF YOU REALLY, REALLY HAVE TO. Moreover, that is for ONE day. Many articles agree that 40 miles per day is already a hard ride, so 50-60 miles is REALLY pushing the envelope on horse and rider limits.

NOTE: While modern-day endurance rides routinely go for 50-100 miles in one day, remember that a preindustrial rider will not have the medical/logistical support that a modern endurance rider and their horse does.

If you say "they went fifty miles in a day" in most preindustrial times, the horse and rider's bodies will get wrecked. Either the person, their horse, or both, risk dying of exhaustion or getting disabled from the strain.

Whether you and your horse are fit enough to handle it and "only" have several days of defenselessness from severe pain/fatigue (and thus rely on family/friends to help you out), or you die as a heroic sacrifice, or you aren't QUITE fit enough and become disabled, or you get flat-out saved by magic or another rider who volunteers to go the other half, going past 40 miles in a day is a "Gondor Calls For Aid" level of emergency.

As a writer, I feel this kind of feat should be placed VERY carefully in a story: Either at the beginning to kick the plot off, at the climax to turn the tide, or at the end.

Preindustrial people were people--some treated their horses as tools/vehicles, and didn't care if they were killed or disabled by pushing them to their limits, but others very much cared for their horses. They needed to keep them in working condition for about 15-20 years, and they would not dream of doing this without a VERY good reason.

Character Voice Tag (1)

I've got two of these to do! For this one in particular, I was tagged by @winterandwords (here)!

My line was "You can't make me do that"

The following characters are from my WIP Supernova Initiative (I have an actual scene with a very similar phrase, so that's fortunate! I just adjusted the wording to fit this game a better, so here goes the - almost - dialogue from excerpt from that scene)

Jack - [sternly, rolling his eyes with a scoff] “I don't work for the Junction, I'm not risking my life to solve your political mess. You can’t make me do that.”

The 'Director' - “Hmm. Actually, I think I can.” [He walks up to the screen on the wall, tapping a button to reveal the image of Jack's friends, as well as his sister, tied up in another brightly lit room] “Because the funny thing is, it looks like you weren’t the only one snooping around where you weren’t invited. They were so easy to catch - didn’t even notice what hit them. And their screams were so delightful~”

Jack - [thrashes against his cuffs, noticing with horror that, not only his team was captured because of him, but that his sister had been injured. Knowing from experience what this man was capable of the sight spiralled him into a rageful panic] “You MOTHERFUCKER! Leave them out of this! When I get out of here I’ll kill you. I swear I’ll fucking kill you, you sick piece of shit.”

The 'Director' - “Struck a nerve, didn’t I? Good. I suggest you watch your tone, or I tell the interrogators to pay your pretty little team a visit again. After all, they were trespassing on high-security property - maybe I want to know why. And you wouldn’t want that to happen, now would you?”  [His finger hovers over the comms, ready to make good on his threat]

Jack - "Okay, fine! I’ll… I’ll do it. I'll steal that crappy experiment for you. Just leave them alone"

The 'Director'- “Splendid.”

Tagging (gently): @clairelsonao3, @little-peril-stories, @yet-another-heathen, @talesofsorrowandofruin, @rickie-the-storyteller, @tabswrites, @lassiesandiego, and OPEN TAG

Your line of dialogue is "Don't shut me out."