#may also tie into the dirty cop theory

[pineappleliar]

For anyone deep in the Disco Elysium dialogue sauce I have something I don’t see on the disco reader and is a lil questionay so for recreation purposes be on day 2, have NOT investigated the water lock yet, and (I think this is important) succeed on the window check behind the Hardie boys (requires a crit success, you need to succeed but not actually advance the plot, similar to the Feld building situation if you succeed that early).

When I talked to Kim after assessing what caused the billboard to be knocked over, I noticed that the description of the driver becomes wanting to shake ‘her’ hand instead of ‘his’ hand. Makes me think that if you know about Ruby before the investigation you get a ‘her’ instead of ‘him’, maybe. This is why I’m asking, for science.

[jeanjauthor]

I tried 3000-Year-Old Hairstyles • Using Iron Age Tools!

Obviously artists will want to know these things if they’re drawing Bronze Age (or a little later) hairstyles...but writers may also want to know this information.

It will make your characters seem more real if they ever have to (or want to) pin up their hair like this, without constantly referring to the ubiquitous “thong” to tie it back...which is so boringly ubiquitous (and I’m guilty of this, too; don’t get me wrong!) that it’s sort of a mini-trope that people take for granted.

It actually turns out that hair pins and clothing pins were VERY common in ancient times, to the point where losing them was just an utterly common thing.  Metal ones weren’t super-common, and certainly wouldn’t have been cheap, but they definitely would have been a status symbol, a display of one’s wealth.

Yes, it’s an expensive loss if you lost a metal pin, but whatever we find in the way of metal, there surely would have been plenty of bone and wood pins, too.  Certainly, they would have been even more common than metal ones (and considerably cheaper in many ways), but also far more likely to decay and vanish into the soil when lost.

Spiral braid holders would’ve been exceptionally tricky to carve from bone or wood, compared to metal wire. (Not impossible, but quite tricky by comparison.) So if a character of few means or resources were to get a metal hairpin, that might be one of the first ones they splurged on. Additionally, the top (wide-mouthed end) of the spiral was probably fashioned in a way that it could have been twisted so that the upper end could penetrate the braid.

From there, it could be turned a few times, further locking the spiral into the plait. This would work best if there were several more interweavings of the braid below the anchoring point--the cinchng taper of the spiral would help keep the lower sections from unbraiding themselves, in turn helping keep the upper weave in place, further locking the spiral into the end of the hair.

I know from personal experience (when my hair is long enough) that if I’m not doing very hard work/heavy labor, I can twist it into a bun and fasten it with just 1 straight pin, if that pin is long enough, and you do the scalp-scrape-and-wavy-penetration she describes in the video. (A wooden pin actually works best for this, as the grain will ‘catch and hold’ my hair a little better than metal or polished bone, even if the wood is sanded & painted.)

Of course, two straight pins are going to hold better, and several will work best...but if they’re straight and fairly polished, with no textures such as ridges for the hair to catch on, they will eventually work their way out and potentially be lost, especially if the hair is pinned to the back of the head.  If you look closely at the pins, they have ridges near the diamond-head bits. Those are designed to catch on the tightly-wrapped hair and provide hopefully just enough friction to keep the pins from shaking loose, without (again hopefully) catching and holding too much on the strands of hair when it comes time to pull them out and comb the oil and dust of the day from your hair.

And yes, most people of the Americas and Eurasian continents combed their hair frequently in the Ancient days through to the Middle Ages. (Natural African hair was also kept well-groomed, but I’m not even going to pretend I know much about it, other than that good hair grooming was a sign of good manners & good hygiene wherever one lived.)

Now, the finer-toothed the comb, the better your hair would look, but it wasn’t always easy to detangle it even with a wide-toothed comb.  The best solution was always to secure one’s hair by tying or plaiting in some way--men and women both--though women were more likely to pin their hair up, according to grave goods.

However, with that said...if anyone was a warrior, it would be far more likely that they kept their hair cut short, male or female, to cut down (literally, lol) on the chance of their hair being grabbed by an opponent and used for leverage in making a close-quarters attack.  This is why archaeologist don’t often find hairpins in the graves of warrior women...leading to the (idiotically misogynistic) idea that graves with warrior-goods (armor, weapons, etc) were somehow entirely the graves of men alone, “...because surely they’d have feminine things like hair pins in the graves, instead of swords and daggers and no hairpins!”  Uhh...not if they’re warriors with hair too short to be grabbed and used as a handle, bucko!

Anyway...when it comes to researching the setting, customs, clothing, hairstyles, and so forth for a story, writers...don’t just rely upon dry dusty archaeological findings.  Look around and try to find experimental archaeology attempts. (Or attempt something yourself; use discretion & modern safety standards, blah blah blah, ymmv ofc.)

Sometimes a seemingly academically sound theory ain’t worth squat when you try it in real life...and sometimes you’ll stumble across a new way to do a thing when you literally try to do it yourself with similar tools and a bit of open-minded thinking.  And if you can translate that into a story, you’ll bring that story to even greater life, by giving readers glimpses into your characters’ daily lives.

...Why is that important?  Because right now, we could seriously use some solidly good, deeply immersive fiction for escape. It’s vital to protest against dirty cops and that Black Lives Matter...but it’s also vital to pace ourselves, and that means taking time off now and then to relax, unwind, escape from reality, and just take a break.  Since we’re all in quarantine (or should be, in America)...sometimes the best way to do that is via a book or a short story or whatever.  Immersive fiction, with depth and details, can provide that escape by replacing our actual surroundings with reasonably detailed descriptions of Other Times & Places.

And that is the best goal a writer can have, these days: to give our readers a decent escape from everything. Even if only for a little while.