#writing refs

[inky-duchess]

Fantasy Guide to Early 20th Century Trains

Trains were a popular means of transportation during the early 20th century. The previous decades saw to the explosion of more trains, more services and more tracks linking country communities which were isolated from cities and larger towns. So what do we need to know about trains in the early 20th century?

Typical layout

A basic layout of a train is as follows: passenger compartments, dining cars, luggage and guard vans.

Compartments: Compartments are where the passengers sat. They were divided between three classes – first, second, third. First class compartments were the most expensive. The seats were upholstered, and the floors were often carpeted. They were much larger than the other class compartments. They would be fitted with gas light like the rest of the train, the windows would have curtains, and the walls would often be panelled with wood. Second class compartments were less luxurious but pretty much the same as the first class only smaller and less grand. Third class would feature wooden benches or seats fitted with cushions or fabric, they were smaller and often more crowded. Compartments could be offered as corridor compartments which offered more movement between compartments and cars. Compartments would offer seating areas and areas to store hand luggage. Some trains travelling overnight would offer sleeper cars which offered beds and an area to wash.

Dining Cars: Dining cars were offered on some trains. There would be tables for the passengers to eat and get something to drink. Dining cars were usually offered only to certain classes or segregated by class.

Luggage Cars: Where large luggage would be stored.

Guard Vans: Where railway security staff could get warm. It also held a stove and hand-operated brakes which the designated guard would use to slow the train if needed.

Separation

Trains in this era were divided by class and in some case race. Unlike the American states and South Africa where there were laws preventing certain races from mixing with others or from using any class other than third class, Europe was a little more forgiving in the case of race. However, this is not to say there was no segregation. This was Europe at the height of the age of Empire. People who hailed from the ‘colonies’ were discriminated through subtler means than simple prevention, they would be discouraged from attempting to use the upper class tickets and sometimes they were even treated not as well as other passengers. Class was the main division on the train. First class of course had more ability to move, more access to amenities. They often had separate dining cars where they could sit down to full meals. Larger trains might even offer some other common areas such as smoking compartments. Second class were sometimes permitted to dine in the dining cars but may not have been allowed access to full meals. Third class was not permitted access to the dining cars, often having to bring along meals or buy food at the station before departure. The classes were not allowed to mingle. In cases of a first-class person travelling with a servant, they had the choice to either purchase a first-class ticket for their servant or leave them in third class.

Train and Station Staff

Trains did not run by themselves. The passengers and the train had many needs and there had to be an army of staff available to keep things chugging along *hehe*. That being said, the train staff weren’t the only people who kept things going smoothly, the station staff at each stop would also help out the staff and the passengers.

On the Train:

Drivers: These were the people who drove the train.

Firemen: These were the people who shovelled coal and kept an eye on the steam pressure.

Guards: The guards were there to keep the passengers safe. They sometimes checked tickets and would patrol the luggage cars, mainly to keep an out for anybody sneaking onto the trains without a ticket.

Conductors: Conductors would go from car to car to check tickets, collected any outstanding fares and kept an eye on things in the compartments.

Engineers: Would travel on the train to help out with repairs on the train.

Dining car staff: Such as maids to serve tea and coffee, waiters to serve food and if the train is large enough, kitchen staff and bartenders.

The Station:

Station Masters: Was the person in charge of the station, overseeing the flow of trains and passengers through the station.

Porters: Handled the luggage.

Signalmen: Oversaw the signals to keep the trains on track *hehe*.

Parts of the train

The train is a beast of many parts. A train in this era is a steam train, which links of cars connected together behind a steam engine.

Buffers & Buffing Gear: These are the parts of the train built in to absorb impact.

Cars: The segments of the train.

Couplers: This is what connects the train cars together.

Cowcatcher/Pilot: This is the frame that sits at the very front of the train used to clear things off the track.

Carriages: These are the cars that the passenger compartments are.

Headlamp: This is the light at the front used to improve visibility.

Freight Cars: Used for transporting goods.

Locomotive: This is the train’s engine. It is the driving force of the train, where the driver and the firemen would work.

Truck: The framework that connects the axles to the wheels.

Smokebox: Where the exhaust system of the stream engine is housed.

[redd956]

Some Sickness Writing Refs

Coughing

Hacking Cough

Wheezing

Shuddering

Dry/Wet Cough

Spittle

Phlegm

Mucus

Whistling Cough

Whooping Cough

Rasping

Gasping

Chesty Cough

Throaty

Croup

Chills

Shivering

Feverish

Shakiness

Trembling

Teeth Chattering

Tremors

Goosebumps

Sweaty

Drenched

Cool Skin

Watery Eyes

Bedridden

Stiff

Sore

Housebound

sick-abed

Bedsores

Suffering

Paralyzed

Debilitated

bedrid

Unconscious

Snooze

Groggy

bedfast

Dehydrated

Pale

Immobilized

Red-faced

Feeble

Incapacitated

Hospitalized

Feverish

Sweaty

Sweltering

Red-Faced

Drenched

Soaking

Teetering

Hot to touch

Beads of Sweat

Heat exhaustion

Damp Clothing

Delirious

Febrile

Clammy

Lightheaded

[starfleetshrimps]

hey gang. i have gotten into a lot (a lot) of physical fights in my time on this earth and lost most of them. here are some things to keep in mind while writing them:

- it goes fast. you don't actually have time to really think. if you're not trained in fighting then you're just sort of in a constant state of "hitting back". you don't "go for the eyes" or "go for the throat" you usually go for the stomach or arms because they're right in front of you and that's all you can hit. and it's not that you're fighting dirty it's just that you're fighting

-you will not look cool and often you will cry. it's fucking overwhelming. you're going to cry unless you're the type to never fucking cry. and even then. you'll probably cry.

-re:crying. the other person(s) will cry. there will be snot. sometimes if you hit their face your hand will slide off because of the snot. it's a defense mechanism.

-there's typically not a ton of footwork. rip to the phantom menace choreography but nobody is out here doing spins, you're just going to sort of shuffle (insert sneaker squeaking sounds here) or awkwardly roll around unless you run away

-running away is a really good tactic. unless you are slow. in which case maybe just don't start fights. however you can't really run away if you are already fully entangled. they'll just grab you and you can't run.

-if you are fighting someone in an arena type lobby (ie trailer park pit in the ground) then as soon as the fight starts you will want to end it. this is true always but if you have the ability to tap out you're probably going to take it. my strategy was always to run around the pit and throw dirt in people eyes but then they would just fucking grab me and i would almost always immediately tap out. because it's no fun.

-there is very very very little truth to the whole "small but fast/flexible/smart" thing. first off nobody is smart when you're fighting. you're fighting. the smarter thing to do is not to fight each other. jfc. anyway. if you're small and weak you will lose. doesn't matter if you're faster. you will lose.

- it hurts? like. it doesn't just hurt where you get hit it also hurts where you hit others. i once broke a guys jaw and then started sobbing because his braces cut my hand. but also if you hit someone in the ribs with your foot your toes hurt. it's not cool

-don't glamorize fighting ESPECIALLY kids fighting. it's not cool. fighting is not like in movies where you can do a body roll into a sick ass stance it's actually just sobbing and screaming and pulling hair and spitting and slapping each other. granted i haven't gotten into a fight since i was 12 but. i really don't think it would ever be that different.

-ending a fight is the worst part. most times if nobody comes to stop you, both/all involved parties just sort of slow down and slowly stop and then awkwardly look at each other with rage and confusion and regret. because fighting never ever solves anything. it's a fight to get the last pinch in but eventually you just get tired. and you want to go home. there's no handshake there's just sometimes a weird stunted nod that's more of jutting your chin out defiantly. and then you both run away crying. you don't walk away you sprint away as fast as possible because damn. that was fucking embarrassing. and it hurt. and it didn't look cool and it wasn't cool and it didn't solve anything. sometimes you apologize but mostly you don't.

-i need to emphasize the crying you will cry and be ugly

anywayyyyy dm if you have further questions. i cannot imagine much of this changes as an adult. also for the record i was an idiot kid. don't fight people that's fucking stupid.

[poppy5991]

Wow! The last post on this topic was quite popular! So here’s another from a person that actually does emergency response for a living…

Writing PTSD in first responders/emergency personnel accurately: Trauma Thresholds

(I called them out in the tags last time for Owen’s PTSD portrayal, but this is one thing Grey’s anatomy does quite well.)

One mistake I see in media/writing is a character being traumatized by something that an average person would find traumatic…but probably not an experienced responder.

We do expect to see and are trained to cope with some level of trauma in our jobs. You anticipate witnessing injury, illness, death, and grief. So things that the average civilian finds disturbing don’t phase us so much. But there are specific things that can trigger a trauma response, mainly:

Moral injury: Witnessing or being put in a situation that violates your deeply held moral values or sense of self

Projecting loved ones on to a trauma (I.e. what if that was my kid/they are the same age as my sister/my loved one was at that event)

Experiencing/witnessing violence or harassment on the job

Out of my depth: asked to work without the necessary tools, rest, or training

Here’s a couple examples of what might be par for the course versus what will fuck you (or your character) up….

Scenario 1: Paramedic responds to a heart attack on a middle aged man. Performs CPR while wife wails in the background.

Traumatic? Probably not

Scenario 2: Paramedic responds to a sudden infant death call on a six month old. Performs infant CPR. Mom is wailing in the background. Paramedic has a newborn at home with their spouse, born a few weeks ago.

Traumatic? Yep!

-

Scenario 1: ED nurse works a gunshot victim on their shift. Standard case that they see frequently in an urban ED.

Traumatic? Probably not.

Scenario 2: There is a mass shooting at a local event. Sudden influx of multiple gunshot victims. The ED is overwhelmed and understaffed. Family are showing up at the ED screaming and looking for loved ones. The shooter is still at large.

Traumatic? Yep.

-

Scenario 1: Public Health worker is doing shelter surveillance and interviewing people on their disease exposures and medical needs. Hears harrowing stories about the disaster from traumatized and scared people who may be separated from loved ones/witnessed death/lost their homes.

Traumatic? Probably not.

Scenario 2: Public Health worker is doing shelter surveillance and interviewing people on their disease exposures and medical needs. There is an unaccompanied child/dementia patient wandering around. They realize that this person’s family have left without notifying anyone and have abandoned their loved one during the disaster. The person is anxious/inconsolable and asking the worker where their family has gone.

Traumatic? Yep.

-

Scenario 1: Disaster animal shelter worker is doing intake for animals after an evacuation. Both the people and animals are traumatized and stressed, anxious about being separated.

Traumatic? Probably not.

Scenario 2: Disaster animal shelter worker is doing intake for animals after an evacuation. A man comes in and aggressively demands to be given his purebred dog. Refuses to show ID. He becomes increasingly aggressive, threatening workers but departs when police are called. Police inform worker that the man was probably trying to steal a purebred dog from the shelter to sell. When checking the microchip, realizes they are correct- they remember the owner and it is not that man.

Traumatic? Yep.

-

These are just a few examples of things that happen in real life. It can be different if you are new to the field and witnessing things for the first time, but if you’re writing an experienced responder experiencing trauma make sure to give context as to why a certain event was traumatic as compared to their normal work threshold.

Also make sure not to fall into the trap of writing “perfect victims.” People in stressful situations can and do act very poorly out of fear and often we take the brunt of it. It’s not realistic to write all the victims that your character is helping as calm, compliant, rational, and kind. They are more likely confused, angry, combative, dazed, and upset. And they are likely to view their problem or loved one as more important than everyone else’s in that moment. And to act in accordance. No matter how insignificant.

Lastly don’t forget that in addition to work, we have personal lives. While working stressful situations, we too have loved ones pass, pets get sick, have relationship problems, etc. so you can write that in to flesh out the character. It’s very much true that people with children have a harder time dealing with situations involving harm to kids, people with pets struggle more with helping in situations involving animals, etc.

[rattenmann]

THIS IS A PSA FOR TALKING ABOUT GERMANY IN HISTORICAL FICTION/NONFICTION WRITING

German did not exist as a country until 1871

no one actually gave a fuck about Prussia until 1763

and people only learned that Prussia was an actually thing and, ya know, existed in 1740

ANY TIME BEFORE 1740 NO ONE WAS GOING TO PRUSSIA

AND PRUSSIA WAS ONLY A POWER AFTER 1763

did i mention that no one cared about Prussia before Frederick the great? the guy who ruled from 1740-1786? because vie seen far to many times people talking about Prussia and Germany LONG before they should be talked about

the Keiser's and the kings of Prussia were different titles, but the same people had them

Keiser Wilhelm I was the guy in charge when Germany was fully united, Keiser Wilhelm II was the guy who was in charge during ww1 and was the last one, and Wilhelm III was a Nazi

edit: there were Germanic states so someone could be Germanic and people spoke German, but before 1871 no one was from Germany

Please be historically accurate when writing about history

[brennacedria]

This is what I use to keep track of my Dragon Age timelines, in case anyone is interested in doing the same as Veilguard gets closer. It uses a regular earth calendar, but it's been simple enough for me to translate it to the Thedas calendar--i just scrolled back to the 900s for tracking the year, and included both the earth and Thedas dates in each entry's description, like my entries here:

This is the calendar I use, if anyone is interested. It's printable, too, in case anyone wants to make notes manually on it.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pSVO3dXJIGfALerjCNXt1czCaiZU8fWt/view?usp=drivesdk

[whomst-the-hell]

do yall want to see the coolest article ive ever read

[ghoulangerlee]

turning this around in my brain as i write this fic

my perceived height difference between the four ghouls summoned already + copia

[warm-mangoes-with-chai]

[ajhasmademistakes]

#i don't care how much nonsense there is as long as the media in question teaches me what amount of nonsense i should expect and/or tolerate

Scott Pilgrim is, I think, the best example I can think of for establishing a setting's Nonsense Limit. The setting's Nonsense Limit isn't quite "How high-fantasy is this". It's mostly a question of presentation, to what degree does the audience feel that they know the rules the world operates by, such that they are primed to accept a random new element being introduced. A setting with a Nonsense Limit of 0 is, like, an everyday story. Something larger than life, but theoretically taking place in our world, like your standard spy thriller action movie has a limit of 1. Some sort of hidden world urban fantasy with wizards and stuff operating in secret has a nonsense limit around 3 or 4. A Superhero setting, presenting an alternate version of our world, is a 5 or 6. High fantasy comes in around a 7 or so, "Oh yeah, Wizards exist and they can do crazy stuff" is pretty commonly accepted. Scott Pilgrim comes in at a 10. If you read the Scott Pilgrim book, it starts off looking like a purely mundane slice of life. The first hint at the fantastical is Ramona appearing repeatedly in Scott's Dreams, and then later showing up in real life. When we finally get an explanation, it's this:

Apparently Subspace Highways are a thing? And they go through people's heads? And Ramona treats this like it's obscure, but not secret knowledge. Ramona doesn't think she's doing anything weird here. At this point, it's not clear if Scott is accepting Ramona's explanation or not, things kind of move on as mundane as ever until their Date, when Ramona takes Scott through subspace, and he doesn't act like his world was just blown open or anything, although I guess that could have been a metaphor. there's a couple other moments, but everything with Ramona could be a metaphor, or Scott not recognizing what's going on. Maybe Ramona is uniquely fantastical in this otherwise normal world. And then, this happens

Suddenly, a fantastical element (A shitty local indie band finishing their set with a song that knocks out most of the audience) is introduced unrelated to Ramona, and undeniably literal. We see the crowd knocked out by Crash and The Boys. but the story doesn't linger on the implications of that, the whole point of that sequence is to raise the Nonsense Level, such that you accept it when This happens

Matthew Patel comes flying down onto the stage, Scott, who until this point is presented as a terrible person and a loser, but otherwise is extremely ordinary, proceeds to flawlessly block and counter him before doing a 64-hit air juggle combo. Scott's friends treat this like Scott is showing off a mildly interesting party trick, like being really good at darts. The establish that Scott is the "Best Fighter in the Province", not only are street-fighter battles a thing, Scott is Very Good at it, but they're so unimportant that being the best fighter in the province doesn't make Scott NOT a loser. So when Matthew Patel shows off his magic powers and then explodes into a pile of coins, we've established "Oh, this is how silly the setting gets". It's not about establishing the RULES of the setting so much as it is about establishing a lack of rules. Scott's skill at street-fighter battles doesn't translate to any sort of social prestige. Ramona can access Subspace Highways and she uses it to do a basic delivery job. It doesn't make sense and it's clear that it's not supposed to. So later on, when Todd Ingram starts throwing around telekinesis, and the explanation we're given is "He's a Vegan" , you're already so primed by the mixture of weirdness and mundanity that rather than trying to incorporate this new knowledge into any sort of coherent setting ruleset, you just go "Ah, yeah, Vegans".

[dreadfutures]

UPDATE 11/27/2024:

The full alphabet was found and has been made into a font.

Some notes:

Elvish uses a symbol for spaces between words. They do not use punctuation. K and Q are the same Elvish letter.

The elvish writing in DA4 is a 1:1 mask of English and can be decoded! The pic below is out of date, as the whole alphabet was found. In addition, Tevene, Anderfels, Antivan, and Nevarran alphabets can be linked to each other!

English, Elvhen, Tevene, Anderfels, Antivan, and Nevarran alphabets!!!

[macgyvermedical]

Hospital Lengths of Stay

I think people outside the USA severely overestimate how long hospital stays are here.

Like, appendectomy, right? That's maybe 24-36 hours door-to-door if there's no complications. If the appendix actually burst it might be 3 days, but only because they're giving you IV antibiotics and setting up home care to do that at home would take longer than just keeping you in the hospital.

A scheduled surgery like a hysterectomy, cholecystectomy, mastectomy, or anything else they can do laparoscopically (though small "keyhole" incisions)? You're probably not staying overnight at all.

Planned surgeries that need some kind of after care (like bariatric surgery, knee replacements, hip replacements, total vaginal hysterectomies, bladder lifts, etc...) would be usually 1-3 days.

Minor heart attack? 2-3 days.

Fracture and surgical repair of a large bone (like the femur)? About 2-3 days.

What about the exacerbation of a chronic illness like asthma, COPD, heart failure, or hypertension? IF they admit you (not just stabilize and discharge from the emergency department), it will be generally less than about 3-5 days.

Gunshot wound to the abdomen with surgery to repair things? 3-5 days.

And a stroke, sepsis, gunshot wound to the chest, or major heart attack? That would be somewhere in the 5-7 day range.

Severe trauma with multiple severely broken bones and relatively extensive surgery? This might be somewhat longer, but usually for nursing and pain control reasons rather than the surgery or injuries themselves. 1-3 weeks would be usual.

In the hospital for a mental health reason like decompensated schizophrenia or major depression? A little less than a week is normal, though some people stay several weeks if medications aren't working well.

The people who stay in hospitals for weeks or months typically have whole systems that don't work, or are waiting for a major organ transplant. For example, I had a patient once whose entire abdomen was open and couldn't be closed surgically. She was on TPN (IV nutrition) and IV antibiotics and needed massive amounts of wound care done every hour or so because her intestinal contents were spilling out of her open abdomen. She was there for months and ultimately didn't make it.

Are there people who stay longer than these cases? Of course! These are just averages pulled from medicaid data and personal experiences, based on patients who are coming in relatively healthy. Patients who have other significant health problems usually stay longer than patients who come in with a single problem.

But if you are otherwise healthy except for the reason you came into the hospital, unless you fell off a building or were in a massive car accident you are probably not staying in the hospital very long at all.

[lannisterdaddyissues]

@tommyjop

Anybody else got that Evergiven sized writers block

[warm-mangoes-with-chai]

[starscream-is-my-wife]

This is part 1 of a continuation for my other post where LL Megatron gets trapped in the G1 universe, I was thinking about how someone would go insane in this cartoon world and thought "what if Megatron had someone else to accompany him" so, I gave Starscream an existential crisis

Edit: pt 2 here