#just in general but also specifically because of how both of us are as people

[cripplecharacters]

Hello, I'm writing a novel and I'm curious if you have any resources or mods that could answer on the topic of full term pregnancy for characters with physical and mental disabilities? The character I'm writing is an amputee (both legs lost to sepsis) who struggles with psychosis/BPD and takes plethora of medications.

Would she have to go cold turkey to carry to term? Would the pregnancy have any negative effect on her physical disability? Just want to get my facts gathered before I start writing something I'm entirely unfamiliar with

Hi asker,

Some medicines are never safe during pregnancy because they have a proven high risk of miscarriage or serious risk to the developing baby.

But many more medicines are taken during pregnancy even if they can carry risk to the pregnant person or the baby. That's because they help the person using them so much, that the risk of not taking them is higher. They may modify doses or monitor themselves or the baby more often. So no, she does not necessarily have to go cold turkey to carry to term.

Some sources for more information:

Medicine and Pregnancy: an Overview by the CDC (US site)

Medicines During Pregancy on MyAlberta (Canada site)

You specifically mention psychosis, so maybe your character takes antipsychotics. There has been a lot of fear that antipsychotics can cause birth defects/abnormalities or miscarriages, but more recently many people are encouraged to stay on them while pregnant.

I haven't read fully through these, but they should be informative:

Use of Antipsychotic Drugs During Pregnancy on NIH (US site)

Antipsychotics in Pregnancy and Breastfeeding on RC Psych (UK site)

Antipsychotic Use in Pregnancy on NIH (US site).

There is no BPD-specific medication, so I can't really specify anything else. Some amputees take medications, and some don't, so I can't specify there either. If you know what your character takes, you can google their specific medication types + pregnancy. People get pregnant all the time, so this is not an uncommon avenue of thought.

Either way, this varies depending on what your character specifically takes. But ultimately, there is no absolute requirement that she must go cold turkey to carry to term.

Hope this helps,

mod sparrow

Hi!

One issue she could experience as an amputee is related to prosthesis fitting - I'll assume that she uses them since you didn't mention her being a wheelchair user. During pregnancy she'd probably gain weight, which might mean she will need to visit her prosthetist to make sure it's comfortable for her to walk in. She might also experience more swelling in her residual limbs, which basically means the same thing - depending on how much changes her body goes through, she might have to make a few trips. This is especially true if she's an above the knee amputee rather than below.

Amputee Coalition has a page on pregnancy that you can check out, with some possible timelines that are currently recommended (especially helpful since it sounds like your story is set in modern times).

Hope this helps!

mod Sasza

Hello! I'm someone with diagnosed schizoaffective disorder in remission and BPD keeps getting thrown at as a possibility for a diagnosis for me, and medication for BPD can range from nothing to a combination of antidepressants and antipsychotics, antipsychotics being front line for any psychotic symptoms or disorder. I have had doctors plan with me as the antipsychotic I am on (vraylar) is unsafe for pregnancy however olanzapine is often considered safer. Generally for someone on heavy-duty medication there is a safer drug in the same class their doctor switches them to and closely monitors their progress and health from pregnancy to breastfeeding.

-Mod Bert

[crwllys]

‼️ ARCANE FINALE SPOILERS ‼️

i would like to share the only bad (personally for me) part of the second season of arcane: the way they made it look like vi was more in the background than in the main story.

because right now i'm looking at the scenes and i think more and more that they were focused specifically on cait and jinx for the first two acts, and in the finale in general (we'll get to that later)

i would like to see more about her arc, for example, it would be possible to show a little better how she coped with her "breakup" with caitlyn, how she coped with hallucinations about her, jinx, vander, etc. (I don't even remember if he was there, but mostly cait was there, although maybe he was, fuck knows, they didn't show us anything). and they just gave us some kind of music video about how every day goes the same for her.

and in the finale, it generally felt like they gave zero fucks about her grief and just skipped it, not letting us see and understand how she felt after that, it was also possible to at least show how she and ekko grieved together, after all, they were also friends and they both lost loved ones, they both lost powder/jinx, we deserved to at least see it.

i also want to say that this is all purely my opinion, there may be people who do not agree with this and are happy with it, i have nothing against them and I hope you will be understanding too. i absolutely loved season 2, literally everything about it but this was just one thing that bothered me.

[transandrogyne]

i understand the confusion that arises here if you think of transmisogyny as the intersection between transphobia and misogyny -- and i'm not saying that to be an asshole, i'm saying that because i had the same confusion for a while. but using the intersection framing isn't very helpful here since transphobia is ultimately the consequence of patriarchy & misogyny which, as you point out, impacts all trans people.

so, the better way of looking at it is to understand it as a form of misogyny that specifically impacts trans women. i realize this is a subtle difference, but it is still a difference that matters nonetheless. it makes more sense, too, when you consider the mechanisms at play with patriarchy. for example, if cis women are subjugated on the basis of their ability to physically reproduce and are made to provide free reproductive labor, then what happens to the trans woman who cannot fulfill that same role? and the answer, both historically and nowadays, is the relegation of trans women to a sort of social third class. economically, we see throughout history that they are frequently unemployed or involved with sex work, which is a reality that cis women also frequently experienced if they were unable to achieve getting married, having kids, maintaining their reputation and if their husband was unable to prevent the family from falling into poverty.

this is just one example of many, but the point here is that trans women experience very similar outcomes to cis women because of patriarchy, but their outcomes more frequently resemble the worst-case social/economic scenario of cis women because they are trans. there was never an opportunity to have a better life.

trans men, on the other hand, generally have a different experience when they are understood socially to be men. stories of figures you could consider to be trans masculine are often described a women dressing as men to achieve a better life for themselves -- that reality reflects what i'm trying to communicate. that's not to say that trans men never had it bad or that they never experienced misogyny, but what it does communicate as that being perceived by society as a man has historically yielded different opportunities and outcomes than being perceived as a woman. for instance, when i read stories of historical trans men, they're usually able to sort of live under cover and work very blue collar jobs because those jobs were available to men. and if they ever had to resort to sex work, they would have to do it as women -- most johns are straight men, after all.

thus, and i'm sure you've heard this before, "transandrophobia" as a term modeled after transmisogyny doesn't make much sense because it would imply "androphobia that is specific to trans men." now, maybe you want to say, "well, i'm using the term not to talk about the intersection of 'androphobia' and transness, but rather transphobia that is unique to trans men OR the intersection of misogyny and trans masculinity." and that's all fine and good, but we've run into two very large rhetorical problems since this discussion started.

many examples of experiences unique to trans men are not really unique to trans men and there aren't very good arguments explaining why they should be viewed as uniquely anti-transmasc

many arguments i've seen at least rely heavily on a very gender essentialist outlook. i believe there are a lot of well-intentioned people who just don't have the greatest grasp on the mechanisms of patriarchy yet, but unfortunately this tendency has resulted in a not insignificant amount of arguing about trans women being male and therefore incapable of understanding misogyny and ironically misgenders trans men and denies many of our realities

i do believe it's worth talking about the experiences of trans mascs specifically because it helps us develop a better understanding of how we fit into the broader scheme of things and develop ways to fight for a better future. unfortunately, though, a lot of discussion about feminism & misogyny in general (not just w/ this conversation, i mean as a whole) doesn't really have a solid, materialist understanding of patriarchy and leads to questionable conclusions. in the case of transandrophobia, i'm concerned that the culture that has developed has only reified ppl's distrust of trans women (not instilled it, mind you -- once again, we have to return to transmisogyny here as a structural reality) and therefore severely stunted our ability as trans men/mascs to talk about ourselves in a meaningful way.

If transmisogyny is actually the intersection of transphobia and misogyny, that would be something all trans people experience, not just transfemme individuals.

If it's just a word for transphobia faced by transfemmes, then it makes sense for transmascs to have an equivalent word.

If you say transmascs can't use the word transmisogyny to describe their experiences, and essentially just use it to mean transphobia against transfemmes, then it doesn't make any sense to get upset about the word transandrophobia

[cr0wc0rpse]

A win for the moving out eventually plan. My brother said yes to being my roommate. Free roommate who I already know and know I can live with 💪 and the concept of us sharing our own place is a little insane due to how we both are. Adhd weirdguy central

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

not enough discussion about the gavins' complicated relationship with feminine-coded/beauty products, i don't think.

[destinationtoast]

background/future relationship tagging on AO3

I've encountered two opposite critiques/requests* for AO3 tagging of background or future relationships, and I don't think a single perfect solution exists. But I'm curious to see if there are strong preferences.

Scenario (see my tags for why I'm basing this on a specific situation instead of making it more generic): I'm posting a one-shot story to AO3 that is about A/B hooking up for the first time. But also, both A & B used to date C, and A is trying to help B/C to get back together, which seems likely to lead to A/B/C.

*If you're less familiar with tagging dilemmas AO3, here are the two different issues I've seen:

When I've tagged offscreen/potential poly relationships like A/B/C as relationships, I've gotten some complaints because that those relationships weren't onscreen, which disappointed people who were actively seeking out A/B/C.

When I've tagged only A/B, people who only want A/B and were trying to filter out A/B/C were unhappy, because A/B/C is discussed a bunch onscreen.

My opinion about the best thing to do here has wavered back and forth, as both of the above raise valid points. Very curious to see what others think is the best tagging practice!

[jambonsama]

If your exercises are pushing you, they will: require to take breaks between sets (for recuperation), require mental focus, probably make you kinda groan / pull faces at some point (please don't be the moaner in the gym, like that person who moans super loud constantly). If you go through one hour of workout without doing anything like that (recuperation, focusing during a set, groan or pull a face) at any point, you probably didn't push yourself much. (Which is not necessarily bad, but just saying, for me, it's a measure of exertion that I take into account to judge how much I pushed myself).

And as a baseline, I do recommend to focus prior to starting a set, just remembering the correct form mentally before going. (Which kinda goes with a warm-up set before the real sets.)

If you financially can, the single best advice I can give you is to hire a personal trainer for three months, to help you go through the exercises. They will help you have the best form. Actually, they will take of most of everything that's on this list. They will take care of your plans. They will tell when to come to the gym, where, to do what exercises, how, how many sets, how many reps, etc... You will have to do NOTHING. Nothing except the work, that is. That's what I did, and helped tremendously. In hindsight, the biggest obstacle I've had to starting practicing a sport regularly was the lack of knowledge. I feel like the list I'm providing and the info on a lucky tide gave would have already overwhelmed the me from a year ago. Having a trainer means you care about nothing except training. You don't have to ask yourself questions, you can just build a habit. You don't have to learn knowledge before even reaching the gym.

If you cannot hire a personal trainer, the second best thing is of course a course.

And if you cannot have that either, you're still fine, lots of people train alone as well; but please please please, focus on your form while going through your exercises. As on a lucky tide said, it's really important.

One thing that my trainer always asks me is how do I feel on a scale from 0 to 10 when I arrive, and same question when I leave (as in, how much energy do I have when I arrive, and how much do I have left when I leave). I think it's beneficial to ask yourself that, it helps you learn to gauge yourself and your exertion. On high cardio session, I'll end up with 0 to 0.5 out of 10 left. On high weights days, it's more like, 2 to 3 out of 10 left. Generally, when I arrive at the gym, I'm a 7 to 8 out of 10 (general energy left after a day of work at the office).

Variation in what you do will keep the whole exercising thing fun. We do need enrichment in our enclosure.

On that note, you can also incorporate: mobility, coordination, balance, etc... in your sessions. For example: when I do bench press with a barbell, I use more weight than when I bench press with dumbbells, because the dumbbells require more coordination that the barbell. It really is more difficult, so I offset that with less weight.

If you don't have access to a gym, you can work any muscle group with elastics and a bar. For example, to dead-lift without a barbell or dumbbells, you can use an elastic that you set on the ground. You step on the middle of the elastic with both feet. You put each extremity of the elastic around the extremities of your bar. You use your bar as you would a barbell. (I really hope my description makes sense). BOOM, you can practice dead-lift (in this version, the difficulty is function of high you're standing up, aka how tensed is the elastic). You can do that for all the exercises. You just need imagination, elastics, and a bar. (and basic knowledge of human anatomy, but not more than what you need to understand what the specific exercise trains in the first place).

In lifting, virtually every exercise will require to have a contracted core (again, I'm pretty sure that's not the correct English terminology, sorry). Dead-lifts ? Contract your core all the way through. Squats ? Same. Leg press ? Same. Push-ups ? Same. At most, it's necessary; at least, it can't hurt your form. So just assume that you have to contract your core, it can't hurt.

If you'd like more info on a specific point, just ask me, I'd be happy to try and answer (if I can).

yo so you said you lift & i was wondering-

do you have any advice for someone who wants to start lifting?

Because I want to start but i’ve literally never lifted anything other than haybales (😭💖) and i have no idea where to start

Hey, I can absolutely give some advice. Quick caveat: I am self taught, aka, I am still learning. But I pulled this together for a friend and I'm sure they won't mind me passing it on.

There are also tons of people on here that also lift, and I'm sure they'll add stuff in the comments. (Pls add shit in the comments, you lot.)

I need to emphasise: getting full muscle extension with correct form is the best way to build strength. Do not ego lift. I have. I injured myself. Lesson learned.

Have rest days, aim for 0.7g-1g of protein per 1lb of body weight for good growth and repair. (Also helps you feel full and stick to a calorie deficit if you're shredding.)

[jaggedjot]

The teaser does need to be understood, at least in part, as a marketing strategy to sell studio stakeholders and the average viewer on the incredibly bizarre plot point of Lestat becoming a rockstar. By introducing the concept prior to the third season starting filming, the idea can be somewhat normalised to a wider audience. That it is the focus of the teaser, with the second half effectively becoming a music video, is intended to demonstrate that the production team have the skills to render it on screen.

[scarycranegame]

people who think mouthwashing is about rape clearly haven't played how fish is made/the last one and then another

[icewindandboringhorror]

my personal Media Genres tier ranking and also Neopets Species tiers. put together in the same post just due to being adjacently related because they're on the same website lol

links to the specific tier makers: Media Genres --- Neopets

[arolesbianism]

Thinking abt my dupe ocs again... Maybe Quinn does have hashtag issues actually

[medicinemane]

The world is set on prescriptivism and... it doesn't jive with me

[inbarfink]

When talking about the distinction between Simon Petrikov and the Ice King,  it’s important to remember that originally, the Crown wasn’t trying to turn Simon into Ice King -

It was trying to turn him into this guy.

At the time, the Ice Crown - or rather the Wishing Crown - was programmed with Gunther’s wish to become Evergreen. So everything related to making the current wearer like Evergreen is a very direct result of the Crown’s Magic. The physical changes -

And the obsession with the name ‘Gunther’ -

And maybe some of the irritability and anger issues -

That is something the Crown is very directly forcing unto its current wielder. 

But everything else?

Ice King, personality-wise, was not much like Evergreen at all, or even like Gunther's view of him. And Ice Finn of the Farmworld Universe was also pretty different from the both of them.

At the time, I remember people assumed Ice Finn’s behavior is more indicative of what the Crown is actually trying to do with its wielders. That Ice King is so different because of Simon’s subconscious resistance against the Crown - while Finn’s much younger and dumber brain is a lot susceptible to the Curse’s influence to become some sort of mad world-conquering emperor of ice and snow. 

But, with the context of the Crown’s actual backstory. That doesn’t seem very likely anymore. I think what’s actually happening there is that the Crown is just trying to make its wielder an Ice Wizard on par with Evergreen (who was the Actual Goddam Ice Elemental) and that means pumping the wielder’s brain so full of Magic, Madness and Sadness to a level that is bound to overwhelm anyone.

And Simon’s and Farmworld Finn’s very different behaviors after putting on the crown is indicative, more than anything, of how their psyche reacts to Madness and Sadness in general. You know, Finn has a very proactive and kinda aggressive personality - and you add Crown-induced-Madness-and-Sadness and a compulsion to use Ice Magic as much as possible and you get all of…. this 

Meanwhile, for Simon, the compulsions of the Crown originally filtered exclusively via the language of protection 

As his madness always manifested as romantic obsession 

And using goofy humor to try and deny the pain he’s going through 

Because that’s how Simon’s mind specifically reacts to being flooded with so much Madness and Sadness.

That’s why there’s so many parallels between Ice King and the sort of mistakes and screwed-up stuff Simon does right now! He’s even kidnapping people again!

Because the Madness and Sadness of Ice King might’ve been induced by the Crown, but now Simon has plenty of personal home-grown Madness and Sadness inside him - and it’s no surprise that Curse-Induced or not, his mind reacts to it in a sorta-similar way. (Although obviously not as intensely, again, there was a LOT of MMS in the Ice Crown).

Now as for Ice Thing, and the fact that he seems to be actually rather well-adjusted under effects of his version of the Wishing Crown. I mean... not by the time of the 1000+ Era, but that’s literally eons in the future and also maybe more Gibbon’s fault. Even if the Crown will eventually take some sort of toll on him, for now he seems to be doing pretty well considering his wish. I mean, there's still some sort of Loss of Identity stuff going on

But everything we've seen of Ice Thing (in the present day, at least) shows him as a friendly and cheerful individual that gets along well with others. A far cry from how maladjusted every single wielder of the Ice Crown acted.

At the very least, if there's any notable amount of Sadness in him, we really haven't seen it yet.

There might be several factors here:

First things first, I should acknowledge the possibility that it’s just that Orgalorg’s eldritch brain is better at intaking all that MMS juice. That could play a part, but I think it’s probably more important, at least thematically, to look at the distinction between ‘I wish to be Evergreen’ and ‘I wish to be Ice King’. 

First in the sense that while Ice King was occasionally mean to Gunter at times - he was generally much kinder than Evergreen ever was for ‘his’ Gunther. So, like, pretty much the one Personality Flaw of Ice King that you can directly link to the Ice Crown’s attempt to mimic Evergreen is the occasional anger issues.

And how they relate to Gunther’s view of Evergreen, so grumpy and controlling and constantly saying ‘NO!’

(Both Finn and Simon’s demonstrable not-crown-induced trauma responses can make them pretty short-tempered as well. So I’m not going to say this is purely the effects of the Crown. It still probably plays some sort of factor at why the wielder of the Ice Crown is Like That).

And that is not a factor in how Gunter views Ice King. For him, Ice King was a doting and loving father figure - so if the Crown was ever trying to implement any sort of specific negative personality traits, this is absolutely no longer a factor. Because the original Ice Crown was a reflection of Evergreen’s abuse, and now Ice Thing is a reflection of Ice King’s fatherly love.

Which is, itself, probably an echo or remnant of Simon’s own strong parental instincts. 

Secondly, while the Crown was trying to make the Ice King just as powerful as Evergreen…. Ice King was obviously not as powerful as Evergreen. Because he was already a second-rate copy of the Ice Elemental’s power, and because Ice King was often just too doofy to use his powers correctly and probably because some remnant of Simon’s original sensible self is subconsciously holding his powers back.

Either way, being ‘like Ice King’ as Gunter sees him requires less Magic than being ‘like Evergreen’ as Gunther saw him - and therefore less Madness and Sadness. Leading to the wearer or, um, the eater being a lot more well-adjusted from the get-go.

And I think that the implication that Ice Thing has fused with the Crown, so there's never going to be another poor sap who puts on the Crown and gets Ice King'd. But if there is one somehow... at least the process is going to be less mentally detrimental that time around?

Maybe one day Simon could look back and appreciate how much he (or Ice King, or both of them, or however you want to look at the situation) is responsible for basically neutralizing the Crown that ruined his life in the first place.

[jadevine]

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

Update March 1, 2024: Hey there folks, here's yet another update! I reposted Part 2a (the "medieval warhorses" tangent) to my writing blog, and I went down MORE of the horse-knowledge rabbit hole! https://www.tumblr.com/jadevine/741423906984951808/my-post-got-cut-off-so-i-added-the-rest-of-it Update Jan 30, 2024: Hey folks, I've posted the updated version of this post on my blog, so I don't have to keep frantically telling everyone "hey, that's the old version of this post!" https://thebalangay.wordpress.com/2024/01/29/preindustrial-travel-times-part-1/

I should get the posts about army travel times and camp followers reformatted and posted to my blog around the end of the week, so I'll filter through my extremely tangled thread for them.

Part 2 - Preindustrial ARMY travel times: https://www.tumblr.com/jadevine/739342239113871360/now-for-a-key-aspect-that-many-people-often-ask

Part 2a - How realistic warhorses look and act, because the myth of "all knights were mounted on huge clunky draft horses" just refuses to die: https://www.tumblr.com/jadevine/732043691180605440/helpful-things-for-action-writers-to-remember

Part 3 - Additional note about camp followers being regular workers AND sex-workers: https://www.tumblr.com/jadevine/740604203134828544/reblogging-the-time-looped-version-of-my

--

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" per day. 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, so by the time you're done slogging through drier patches of wetlands or squeezing through trees, a deceptively short 10-15 miles in rough terrain might take you a whole day to walk instead of the usual half-day.

If you are traveling in freezing winters 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.

Traveling in TOO-HOT weather is just as bad, because pushing yourself too hard and getting dehydrated at noon in the tropics will literally kill you. It's called heat-STROKE, not "heat-PARTY."

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.

—

UPDATE January 13: Several people have gotten curious and looked at maps, to find out how a lot of cities are indeed spread out at a nice distance of 20-30 miles apart! I love getting people interested in my hyperfixations, lol.

But remember that this is the space between CITIES AND TOWNS. There should never be a 20-mile stretch of empty wilderness between City A and Town B, unless your world explains why folks are able to build a city in the middle of nowhere, or if something has specifically gone wrong to wipe out its supporting villages!

Period pieces often portray a shining city rising from a sea of picturesque empty land, without a single grain field or cow pasture in sight, but that city would starve to death very quickly in preindustrial times.

Why? Because as Bret Devereaux mentions in his “Lonely Cities” article (https://acoup.blog/2019/07/12/collections-the-lonely-city-part-i-the-ideal-city/), preindustrial cities and towns must have nearby villages (and even smaller towns, if large and prosperous enough!) to grow their food for them.

The settlements around a city will usually be scattered a few miles apart from each other, usually clustered along the roads to the city gates. Those villages and towns at the halfway point between cities (say 10-15 miles) are going to be essential stops for older/sick folks, merchants with cargo, and large groups like noble’s retinues and army forces.

Preindustrial armies and large noble retinues usually can’t make it far past 10-12 miles per day, as denoted in my addition to this post. (https://www.tumblr.com/jadevine/739342239113871360/now-for-a-key-aspect-that-many-people-often-ask )

[bisexualbaker]

Why do people keep recommending Dreamwidth as a Tumblr alternative, when Dreamwidth and Tumblr are so different?

To be flat-out honest, it's because Dreamwidth has so many things that Tumblr users say they want, even if it's also lacking a lot of features that Tumblr users have come to love:

Dreamwidth has incredibly lax content hosting rules. I'd say that it's slightly more restrictive than AO3, but only just slightly, and only because AO3's abuse team has been so overwhelmed and over-worked. Otherwise, the hosting policies are pretty similar. You want to go nuts, show nuts? You can do that on Dreamwidth.

In fact, Dreamwidth is so serious about "go nuts, show nuts", it gave up the ability to accept transactions through PayPal in 2009 to protect our ability to do that. (It's also one reason why Dreamwidth doesn't have an app: Dreamwidth will never be beholden to Apple's content rules this way.)

Dreamwidth cares about your privacy; it doesn't sell your data, and barely collects any to begin with. As far as I'm aware, it only collects what it needs to run the site. The owners have also spoken out on behalf of internet privacy many times, and are prepared to put their money where their mouth is.

No ads. Ever. Period. They mean it. Dreamwidth is entirely user funded.

Posts viewed in reverse chronological order; no algorithm, opt-in or otherwise. No algorithm at all. No "For You" or "Suggested" page. You still entirely create and curate your own experience.

The ability to make posts that only your "mutuals", or even only a specific subset of your "mutuals", can see. Want to make a post that's only open to Bonnie, Clyde, Butch, and Cassidy? You can do that! Want to make a post that's only open to Bonnie and Butch, but Clyde and Cassidy can't see shit? You can do that, too!

The owners have forsworn NFTs and the blockchain in general. Not as big a worry now as it was even a year ago, but still good to know!

We are explicitly the customers of Dreamwidth. Dreamwidth wants to make us happy, so any changes they make (and they do make changes) are made with us in mind, and after exploring as many possibilities as they can.

Dreamwidth is very transparent about their policies and changes. If you want to know why they're making a specific change, or keeping or getting rid of a feature, they will tell you. You don't have to find out ten months later that they're locked into a contract to keep it for a year (cough cough Tumblr Live cough cough).

So those are some things that Tumblr users would probably love about Dreamwidth.

Another reason Dreamwidth keeps being recommended is that a significant portion of the Age 30+ crowd spent a lot of earlier fandom years on a site known as LiveJournal. Dreamwidth may not be much like Tumblr, but it it started out as a code fork of LiveJournal, so it will be very familiar to anyone who spent any time there. Except better.

Finally, we're recommending Dreamwidth because some of the things that Tumblr users want are just... not going to happen on the web as it is now. Image hosting is the big one for this. Maybe in the future, the price of data will be much cheaper, and Dreamwidth will be able to host as much as we all want for a pittance that a fraction of the userbase will happily pay for everyone, but right now that's just not possible.

Everywhere you want to go that hosts a lot of images will either be running lots of ads, selling your data, or both.

Dreamwidth knows how much it costs to host your data, and has budgeted for that. They are hosting within their means, within our means.

Dreamwidth is the closest thing we may ever get to AO3 as a social media platform. One of the co-owners is from, and still in, fandom; she knows our values, because they are also her values. It may as well be the Blogsite Of Our Own.

[dee-the-red-witch]

How to ACTUALLY date a trans girl

(This column was originally submitted to Autostraddle as a reply to their "A Trans Guy’s Guide to Picking Up a Trans Girl" but since they've apparently passed on it, it gets to be posted up free everywhere else instead.) Picture this- you’re a trans woman who’s been in transition for three years now. Your dating life has gone from abysmal to amazing in alternate fits and spurts and you’ve found not just one, but three awesome partners despite the many, MANY pitfalls you’ve experienced along the way. And then one day, your social media feeds ping up with screencaps of a guide to picking up girls like yourself. Needing a good laugh, you click through. And read. And proceed to smack your forehead with your own palm in frustration a few times and giggle and some other lines on the first readthrough. But things feel off, so you read again. And begin to seethe. And then start opening up the Word document and start typing frenziedly into it. Because honestly? At the end of the day, as a trans lesbian who dates all sorts of people on non-male parts of the amorphous spectral mass that is Gender, I feel like I’m obligated to. I wanted to go into that first reading and find a column that actually got things right, and this was so far off the mark in the worst ways, so I feel like I have to set some things down on paper. Because this guide reads, in so many ways, like everything my cisfem friends have complained about in the straight dating scene for years. Reading through it that second time, I felt almost the exact same sense of of sheer grease and sleaze that I’ve felt reading incel pickup guides. I felt like I was being seen as a pretty object at best and a disposable sex toy at worst. I wasn’t treated as human. At best it was a bunch of stereotypes, none of which applied to me. But under it all, I saw other bits- the tricks an abuser used to lure me in. The lies my rapist fed me. The excuses made by folks online for why I should be treated like a monster or thing because of my identity. You know, the specific blend of misogyny that singles out transfem identities in general- transmisogyny. And since we’re addressing the elephant in the room, I want to address a few particular points from Gabe’s article before I give you some real idea of how to go about this. And I want to emphasize here- this is after editing out a page of swearing, going over Gabe’s own past history of transmisogynistic writing, and just cutting it down to the actual points where the original article really went wrong, and also pick up a few points at the end that’ll actually work well for trans guys or anyone else who might be interested in a relationship with a trans girl. First off, if you’re trans as well? Stop playing the ‘we’re both trans’ card. ESPECIALLY if you’re coming at it from a ‘Why yes, I used to be a woman’ angle. For one, you’re telling us at the same time that you see us as former men, which is usually very much not the transfem experience (Personally, I always felt like I was putting on a ‘man’ act. All the time. Badly.) and for another, you’re being transphobic to yourself and your own identity. If we’re there to date you, it’s as the man you are- be that guy.

Secondly, just because the trans woman experience shares similarities with the experience you had trying to be a woman up until you came out and transitioned, it also has staggering fundamental differences, and your attempts to relate are going to highlight those differences in ways that aren’t going to work in your favor. We didn’t get to go shopping in public, or if we did, it was fraught with fear at being caught out in the early stages of transition, followed by massive frustrations with both trying to figure out where we fit into women’s sizing. And then discovering that absolutely nothing available in local stores, including thrift shops, would fit right, especially not that cute choker we’d always been drooling over. That nothing smelled right for lotion or perfume because we were dealing with a body chemistry that was going through a slow shift on HRT. And we don’t need or want to be reminded of just how much we stand out from the other girls in those kind of regards.

Also, maybe, just maybe, don’t do things that would get seen as completely misogynistic and creepy if you pulled them on a cisgender woman. Don’t go digging into her socials- stalkers and chasers pull that crap and it’s beyond tiresome. Don’t try to deduce what her pretransition life was like, that’s for her to share, if she chooses to. Don’t see her as a stereotype- some of us never played New Vegas, owned cat ears, or like thigh-highs. On that first date if you ever get there, don’t bring her flowers, lovebomb her like mad, constantly find little ways to touch her, any of that- if she has any experience, she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop in response, because she’s had this treatment before and it ended oh so badly. Just be yourself. And get it through your head that the bear is still definitely a choice regardless of everything- after all, we have examples like Gabe to prove that transmisogyny certainly isn’t limited to cis folks.

What should you do? Treat her like any other woman. Treat her like a human being, because we get so little of that, even from the rest of the LGBTQIA+ community. Yes, you’ll more than likely have to take initiative, because we’re used to seeing our attractions, needs, and desires as being perceived as aggressive or predatory by others. When you touch her, do it with assertion and intent- none of the little brushes and stalker moves- ask if you can hold her hand, or put an arm around her, so she knows you actually want to be here and want contact with her. Listen to her, and pay attention- let her be open and honest about her experiences and interests, and remember what she tells you, because she’s going to need to know that she’s wanted and valued for who she is and what she’s into, and it will be part of how she connects to you. And finally? Common sense and communication- every last one of us is different in a lot of ways, and asking or making room to talk about things from physical contact and sex to social activity or group outings or anything else can save a lot of blunders from ever happening. All in all you can and should date trans women! Please! A lot of the best relationships I’ve ever had were with other trans girls and I don’t regret any of those. But you have to put down the pickup guides, stop seeing us as fetish dispensers and sexy lampshades, and actually deal with us as people, first.