Can imagination lead us to write nonsense?
CAN TWO TEENAGERS HOLD A HIPPOGRYPH BY FORCE?
Nein. If I (56 kg, 154 cm) struggle to hold on a cutey animal such as a sheep [for sure not smaller and perhaps a little bigger than a Saint Bernard dog at 80 kg average — the dog not the sheep]… A horse like animal, said 154 cm up to its withers — assuming the animal ain’t a poney or a Shire — would drag away two-less-than-130 kg-set of teenagers.
Not sorry, thinking pounds and inches/feet is not in my system, I’m a decimal thinker. So 54 kg are about 124~lb, 80 kg—180~ lb and 154 cm—5 f [ yep, I’m short]. A paint horse’s average height to withers being more or less 5 f (my height) with a weight of half a ton or 500 kg— 1102 lb approx.
If you do your Maths, you can easily see why two teenagers can’t just hold by force with the reins a wild hippogryph… Unless they’re quite strong.
Which, compared to my experience of rubbing my belly against ground because some wooly sheep is dragging my dignity through; it is definitely an error of imagination. And one of the craft’s perks.
IN DOING THE MISTAKES WILL REVEAL THEMSELVES
So yes, imagining things we can write something that might be not so true…
By doing we’re going to make mistakes. By writing we use imagination to replace what we don’t know.
J. K. Rowling for sure does know her shit about boarding schools. Unlike me. But I can bet she has never landed on her ass trying to stop a sheep from fleeing… After all, we can’t try every single action we imagine in a scene; risking stating bullets can open locks instead of ricocheting when hitting the metal. Have you opened a lock by firing a gun? I haven’t. I have fired a gun but that’s a secret…d
We must assume someone is going to realize. Specially if they’re to read more than thrice our piece. We must be prepared for it. We need to make mistakes to do things.
That’s why today’s entry is hashtagued #fuckitupbutwriteit!
I know, I know. Stephen King says we need small details to make it believable. Yet, even if the small details and the great plot distract you from the ‘other details’, the kind of details we can’t really give accountant of, the truth is; we might be found by the guy who knows.
Like me reading All you need is kill. The author had the great idea of drawing the shortsighted genius [with big front bumpers to distract a sexual brain] who can’t see without spectacles…. She never loses them to gravity or needs them to be sporty to avoid them falling from her nose. They’re round big and thin. I can tell because refraction doesn’t alter the shape of her big eyes and manga drawing tends to cliché this by drawing spirals.
I am shortsighted. Not so much as being declared ‘legally blind’ but enough to know what a myopia magna is. Thus I am aware of a few things about spectacles.
Spectacles, the bigger the frame the thicker the lense becomes and, the heavier they are. Oh, there are special plastics that make the lenses thinner? It doesn’t matter. The spectacles materials keep following this rule because physics require a certain shape in the lense for it to correct the focus. We myope people know we need to get small frames so we don’t get a thick, heavy lense. People who can be fashionable with their frames are not that shortsighted.
We know we either need a very tight arched support that will tightly hold onto our ears, or we will end up with slipping glasses going down our nose. Such detail can distract me from the iteration, the great message of killing time regressor aliens and of the whole thing. Why? Because I’m one of those upsetting disagreeable readers.
Is my irk going to stop this author from drawing manga? No. And that’s all right. That’s why you will imagine what you need to imagine and research as much as you think needed to make it believable.
Pasto kalo.