One of my biggest nitpicks in fiction concerns the feeding of babies. Mothers dying during/shortly after childbirth or the baby being separated form the mother shortly after birth is pretty common in fiction. It is/was also common enough in real life, which is why I think a lot of writers/readers don't think too hard about this. however. Historically, the only reason the vast majority of babies survived being separated from their mother was because there was at least one other woman around to breastfeed them. Before modern formula, yes, people did use other substitutes, but they were rarely, if ever, nutritionally sufficient.
Newborns can't eat adult food. They can't really survive on animal milk. If your story takes place in a world before/without formula, a baby separated from its mother is going to either be nursed by someone else, or starve.
It doesn't have to be a huge plot point, but idk at least don't explicitly describe the situation as excluding the possibility of a wetnurse. "The father or the great grandmother or the neighbor man or the older sibling took and raised the baby completely alone in a cave for a year." Nope. That baby is dead I'm sorry. "The baby was kidnapped shortly after birth by a wizard and hidden away in a secret tower" um quick question was the wizard lactating? "The mother refused to see or touch her child after birth so the baby was left to the care of the ailing grandfather" the grandfather who made the necessary arrangements with women in the neighborhood, right? right? OR THAT GREAT OFFENDER "A newborn baby was left on the doorstep and they brought it in and took care of it no issues" What Are You Going to Feed That Baby. Hello?
Like. It's not impossible, but arrangements are going to have to be made. There are some logistics.
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i can't believe this is the first fantasy high art i'm posting but i saw my horrible beloved puppet and blacked out hello baron nation
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A quick tutorial on how to Download Fics from AO3
After making this poll about the panic that comes when Archive of Our Own goes down, there seems to be a chunk of folks who didn't know they could download fics for offline use, or don't know how to go about it. Here's a quick tutorial for that.
You do not need an AO3 account (unless the fic you are trying to download is restricted to AO3 users only) you only need an internet connection and a device to download to, whether it's PC or a phone.
These instructions work for both desktop and mobile. At the top of the fic, where the chapter index is, there will be the download option on the right side, and an 'Entire Work' button the left side.
For One-Shots: Go ahead and click the download button.
For multiple chapter fics: In order to have the fic download all together instead of downloading each chapter individually, make sure you select the 'Entire Work' button. Like the names says, it displays the entire work on the webpage, and will download the entire fic with all it's chapters in the correct order when you go to download.
Click the download button. You've got a couple of options:
AZW3 - Amazon-developed ebook format that is designed for Kindles and Amazon's systems. Good if you want to read off of a kindle.
EPUB - Standard file format for Ebooks and is basically used as the default for pretty much most ebook readers. This is what I prefer to use when downloading to my phone.
MOBI - An older version of the AZW3. Older but standard as well.
PDF - Downloads the fics as a PDF. Can be read anywhere you can open a PDF.
HTML - Downloads an offline version of the exact webpage you are looking at. Fine if you want to keep the 'look' of AO3 but you can't change the text size or reading style like you can with ebook formats.
Not sure which one to download? Use EPUB since it's standard and readable by pretty much everything, retains images too.
You now have your fic downloaded to your device and can read it on whatever reading app you have. YAY!
Do keep in mind that these are offline files that do not synch with Archive. So if you download an ongoing fic that updates or is edited since you last downloaded, you will need to download it again to have the updated version.
Happy Reading!
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