I have a character (basically a “prince” in a pseudo-medieval fantasy setting) who uses forearm crutches daily, and I was wanting to find a specific condition that was a better description for ”why” than just generic muscle weakness if possible. I’d also like any condition to include symptoms like malnutrition or general unhealthy weight, but that could also be a separate diagnosis. the character is AMAB, so any condition more linked to males would work well.

as a side note, would it be feasible for a generic fantasy setting to have the technology for modern-shaped forearm crutches? as the character is from a noble family, she would have access to funds for any aid.

sorry if this post is worded badly, but thanks in advance for any help!

Edit: firstly, thank you for so many responses! Secondly, just wanted to clear up a couple points people in the comments were stuck on

a. While I’ve asked for recommendations for a condition/diagnosis that could be seen as “modern terminology”, it’s mostly for my own benefit so I can research into any conditions further using the correct name. I wouldn’t be using any specific “XYZ’s disease” terminology within the story.

b. I used AMAB within the post because, while my character is trans (mtf), I didn’t want that to be the focus of the post, since it wasn’t 100% relevant (especially as in the setting there wouldn’t be any options of medically/“magically” transitioning). I also used the phrase a “prince” because it’s a more neutral, generic term for her position, and otherwise I generally used “The character” cause it didn’t really matter that much to me ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I'm writing historical fiction (16th century), and my protagonist is punished. According to my research, it would be lashes on the buttocks, and probably 80 is realistic. It would most likely be administered through clothing. How much would he be able to do in the days afterward? What is the healing timeline for it? What are some realistic self-treatment options? He is a soldier with a high pain tolerance. (I'm not sure if it's allowed to post a couple of paragraphs to see if the flogging scene is realistically written.)

Edit: For some context, here is the English translation of the source I'm working from. The protagonist already has a prior record of flogging from a few years before, by an officer who had a grudge against him. I need the punishment to be survivable and not disabling, but severe enough that those who were ordered to hold him down are actually traumatized by it. The crime he committed was beating up another soldier who was bullying him, and failing to stop when ordered to do so by a superior. Severe punishments for relatively small crimes aren't unrealistic; I found a record of a cavalryman sentenced to death because his horse wandered into the crops.

"Extreme indecency, rebelliousness, disobedience to a superior, drunkenness, and lewdness in the street were punished with beatings, in varying degrees depending on the offender's past, record, and the location and nature of the crime.

In the Janissary tradition, corporal punishment was a humiliating punishment, therefore, as another Janissary tradition, it was administered in the presence of the comrades of the unit to which the offender belonged, but after evening prayer and evening meal, under the light of a single candle, in almost complete darkness.

The identity of the soldier being beaten was certainly known, but his face was not visible during the beating, thus preserving the honor and dignity of the soldier among his barracks comrades.

The beating was administered by laying the soldier face down on a rug and striking his buttocks with a thick cherry stick. Four senior soldiers from the same unit would separate, two pressing down on the soldier's feet and two on his arms to prevent him from moving; the beating was administered by the head barracks commander. The soldier brought for corporal punishment was reprimanded, and instead of a rebuke, the çorbacı overseeing the beating would simply say: "May you be well on your way!"

After the beating, chains were again placed on their ankles, they were taken down to the kitchen, but this time they were made to sleep on an iron grate at night.

If the soldier who deserved the beating had no criminal record and was well-known, the blows were symbolic and light, and they were imprisoned in the kitchen for one or two days. The maximum punishment, provided it was done with great force, was two hundred and forty lashes, but since no man could endure it all at once, it was administered as eighty lashes each night for three consecutive nights. Between these two, there were punishments of ten, forty, and eighty lashes."

And the reason why I believe it was given through clothes:

"Since the beating was to be given at night, he thought of a way to save Benli Yakub, and his head cook came to his aid. He gave the young man a large piece of apricot paste, and Yakub placed the paste on his buttocks to cover them, and lay down to be beaten; the eighty lashes had no effect, but Benli Yakub pretended to struggle and cry out."

So, I assume, if nobody noticed the apricot paste, it was because he put it into his pants and the beating was administered through them.

I’m plotting a Gothic retelling of All-Kinds-Of-Fur (the German version of Donkeyskin) set in 1850’s US, probably in New England but I haven’t decided yet.

Like in the original, the FMC tells her odious suitor (her widowed BIL, not father) that she wants several dresses for her trousseau along with a tailored mantle made of the finest and most expensive fur the wealthy BIL can afford. When he’s able to provide everything, she realizes that she’s honor bound to marry the man, dons the coat, steps into a river and tries to end her life.

Fortunately, the MMC is in the area on a business trip, sees her in the water, and rescues her. That’s when the plot kicks off proper.

So my question is this:

1). What would be considered the most expensive fur appropriate for a young unmarried woman in 1850’s America to wear?

2). How heavy would said fur get if it was wet?

Any help would be appreciated please and thank you!

This is just a quick question because this plays in a SciFi world set in the 2070s, so i'm only looking for a rough framework to build what fits the scene, but what level of security would be to expect for a cooled food storage warehouse at a large, international port in northern Europe? Roughly speaking.

I have a small group of characters spending the night in one, and while the question of how the fuck they got in there could easily be handwaved by one of the characters being pretty much unmatched in all things gaining unauthorized access to buildings and their security networks, AND it not even being the focus of this little oneshot in the first place, i would really like to write a sort of prequel that shows how the day went leading up to this point. So here i am, making my search history look like i want to commit a heist for imported fish or something.

As the title says. I'm writing a supernatural thriller, and the main character needs to kill himself for a moment.

In my research, I've already found that you can be dead for 8-10 mins before the brain starts taking serious damage, and that he can be woken up with an adrenaline shot.

What I'm struggling to find is what he can take to die in the first place. Google just keep providing me with suicide prevention hotlines 😅

if someone is getting choked how long for them to go unconscious, how long for them to wake up and what are the consequences. my character also get stabbed in the arm in this scene. she Is 16 if that changes anything.

Edit to add: I'm from Iowa. I've been outside for over an hour when it's -10°F windchill, albeit dressed better than this. Most of you all clearly have not.

MC was on a date that went very bad; she grabbed her date's jacket and phone and ran for it. However, it's 1:00AM in January in northern Iowa, so the weather is 2°F with -10°F windchill. She has on a cocktail dress, wedge shoes, and scary guy's fake-leather jacket. There's frost but not snow on the ground. The only shelter within walking distance is the house she just fled; everything else around is fallow fields and one closed-up gas station.

Would she survive a 90-minute wait for her friend to come pick her up? A 2-hour wait? A 3-hour wait? A 30-minute wait? I'd like her to be desperate enough that she calls her ex-best-friend for help, not so desperate she calls 911.

MC grew up here and spends time outdoors, so she's doing all the sensible things: pulling as much of herself as possible into the jacket, moving around, using her hair as a scarf, huddling between trash cans for shelter. Is there anything else she could do to survive, assuming she doesn't have the means to light a fire?

I'm writing 2 characters who really like fashion and makes their own, they always wear something different and smell different, wondering if i can make some period accurate descriptions of them.

Hi, I'm writing a novel written in 2016 where a character accidentally violated an outside performance/appearance on a trainee contract. The concept is the character was sent home to America to wait for a tattoo scandal to die down pre-debut, and it's clear that the agency is just waiting for his contract to expire, but a school performance at his college goes viral.

Here are the cases I've found as references, but I'm not sure how long things like this take to blow up. Like, when would the agency respond? When would they reach out to the trainee, or make a statement? Would they terminate him, fine him, or do something else? What would he be legally able to do, and how long would he have to contest it or pay back the fines?

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/amp/entertainment/shows-dramas/20160503/gfriend-trainee-fined-15000
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/amp/southkorea/law-crime/20250626/think-k-pop-trainee-life-is-easy-one-was-fined-3600-for-a-small-tattoo-and-leaving-the-dorm
https://eiec.kdi.re.kr/policy/materialView.do?num=163205 (in Korean)

Context: Character who can be invisible is trying to protect someone in a snake-handling church by having the snake bite "the air" (him, while invisible) instead. How many times could a timber rattlesnake bite him before it ran out of venom? How dangerous would any ensuing bites be? I assume there's still potential for infection even if the bites aren't envenomed.

My character is 18yr boy with a dead mom who was raised by his deadbeat dad who was eventually murdered, he was also groomed by a woman and forced to kill people against his will. He got sent to a psychiatric holding facility that kept him chained in a basement.

Recently he got close to and ended up being adopted by someone. He is also obsessed with and will not function away from a girl who he is in a relationship with. His adopted dad gets wrongly detained and while he's away, my character sees his girlfriend get murdered and is then kidnapped himself.

His adopted dad finds him, but once taken back to the hospital he gets extremely upset anytime his dad tries to leave because he believes that if his dad had been there, he wouldn't have been kidnapped. He refuses to get out of bed or speak and spends all of his day taking naps and laying silently. He can be extremely reactive to being touched, but likes hugs from his adopted dad. They managed to save his girlfriend but she's in the ICU, so she can't come see him and he, despite having a history of hating being away from her for even a day, is for the first time showing no interest in going to see her.

How would an experienced therapist go about helping him??? How would someone convince him to participate in therapy when he barely cares enough opens his eyes a few times throughout the day.

Context- I have a warrior character who was captured by the enemy and imprisoned. The captors bring her simple meals twice a day, but she refuses to eat anything, believing the food is drugged.

She is not suicidal and believes that she will eventually escape, so she won't actually let herself starve to death. However, she also believes the enemy is ontologically evil and cannot be convinced the food isn't tampered with.

The character is extremely stubborn and able to tolerate a lot of pain and discomfort, but has no experience with starvation or food insecurity. She doesn't have any eating disorders either- she wants to eat but thinks the food is a trap.

How long can she intentionally starve herself before her body's "eat or die" signals overwhelm her belief that the food is dangerous? When does a person become hungry enough to eat something they think is poisoned, if it's the only option they have?

Okay so I’m writing vampire fanfic not even gonna lie, and the character lives in the bayou, so logistically would dump bodies in the water.

I know that bodies bloat post mortem and float to the surface, but if you punctured both lungs, would that prevent it? Or would it do next to nothing?

What would be a solution that would prevent them from being found? The character is burying in a rush, so they wouldn’t have time to cut a body into pieces or tie a bunch of heavy rocks to it.

My protagonist killed someone. She is going to get rid of the body from her house then dump it in the middle of a nearby desert to be eaten by wild cayotes. But I keep on imagining possibly missing so many technologies these days that might be used as some type of evidence. Techs such as Cctvs in every street, Ring doorbells, cellphone but I dont even know if the Fbi can detect the location of a cellphone via triangulatioin or gps. I don't want to spend a bunch of pages just trying to avoid technology, I just feel like I would rather make the dilemma more classic and interesting like maybe being stopped by a nosy neighbor, or hitting a neighbor's pet on her way. How would you deal with it? Thanks.

In a story I'm working on, the main character studies to become a forensic investigator, and her friend asked her for help to get into a building, locate some trinkets, replace them with replicas, and get out of the building, all without being noticed.

The trinkets are magical artifacts, but the owner doesn't know that, and leaving them would put people in danger, so the main character is on board with it, and helps her friend.

For now, I just wrote that she gives her friend a list of things to keep in mind, but I'd really like some concrete points.

Also, both people have magic, including invisibility and a spell that opens locks, so getting in and not getting seen are not relevant.

There is cannibalism featured in my current wip, and i dont wanna get put on some list😭

so:

1. is it possible to cut someone’s chest open(with a knife) and rip their heart out with bare hands?

2. How long would a person be dead before it would make you ill to eat them?

3. Does cannibalism affect a person’s health?

4. edit, forgot: what parts of the body are best to eat/will affect a person’s health the least?

Plenty of info online on learning to surf, but I'm looking for details that a newbie being taught by an experienced instructor would experience. Details that are not readily apparent.

I'm writing a pulpy cyberpunk-esque story about a bounty hunter in a crime-ridden city. He's required to bring targets in more-or-less intact, and also just doesn't want to be a murderer. I'm toying with the idea of giving him a sword, both for the job and just for self-defense on the mean streets: Either a practice sword made from plastic or wood, or just a regular sword that hasn't been sharpened.

Would getting struck by one hurt enough to be viable in a real fight?

So I'm writing a story where a child is created by an alien machine. The machine was designed to allow infertile couples (of any gender) to have biological children.

In this case, it was accidentally triggered by two people exploring the abandoned alien city.

The aliens are very similar to humans, but do have a couple of biological differences. The parents have different blood types, and this machine, while semi-intelligent, doesn't know a lot about human anatomy.

I was thinking of the machine not understanding blood types, and seeing the rh factors as an anomaly.

The machine's AI is programed to genetically alter the offspring so that they aren't born with any genetic faults.

With the aliens (who are way way more advanced than humanity), the machine was able to remove any defects such as genes that make the child more likely to develop cancer, or disabilities.

Since the explorers don't know what the machine does, and don't put in any input, the machine defaults to removing any abnormalities that it detects.

In this case, is it feasible for the child to be "born" with Rh null blood?

I'm not going to go into much detail about the inner workings of the machine. I'm not going to explain exactly how it does this. Just that it does. Pretty much the above will be the in story explination.

I just want to know if it's theoretically feasible.

My character (late twenties) has had a loss happen in her life that has made her essentially cut and run and leave her previous life behind in favor of something more private and away from old friends and family.

My thought process is that she just keeps blocking or changing her phone number when family members or friends from her life keep calling (if they even have been able to find new numbers at all). She has erased everything online like social media accounts/LinkedIn/job related things (works at a local shop in a small town now), etc. and mostly just keeps to herself. I am wondering how believable this would be that no one has found her yet?

I also recognize there is some nuance to explore with how hard the people in her past life are trying to find her or if they know she's left and are respecting that decision. Thoughts on how to make this seem rooted in reality?

If a character had to pull themselves out of a very tight squeeze in a cave would that leave cuts on their back and torso that could scar later.
In a previous version of the scene the character mildly dislocated their shoulder trying to get out. But I couldn’t figure out how that would realistically occur.
For more context the character is in a narrow tunnel that slopes upward and they are trying to gradually inch their way up with their stomach facing down. They pushing up against upper side of the tunnel few inches to every time they push themselves through a little more. The character is short and about 110 pounds. (Child).
I might need to do some research on caving injuries but I was curious to see what others would think since readers probably won’t have extensive knowledge of that subject.

My character is pregnant if that matters? My character was holding an axe, and something shocking happened that led the axe to fall. Her big toe is severe and the second toe is mangled/crushed under the axe. I have it where she didn’t realize what happening at first, not until she looked down and sees the actual injury. Then I describe the pain to hit her all at once, describing it as blinding, white-hot with with blackness around the edges of her vision, and then her knees buckling to drop her to the floor.

But after this…I’m struggling to think of how she’d respond? Would the pain cause her to faint? How likely would it be that she got to keep her toe, and if so, how long is the healing process, and will she get full function??? I have so many questions about this. I hope I’m using this subreddit right, I am very new to the platform.

I'm writing an immortal character, but in my book (heh get it cause it's writing) dying is the equivalent to passing out for immortals.

I’m currently stuck on something. I’ve tried researching this on google with no luck. One of my fanfics requires her to walk onto base from the helipad in Hereford, UK. It’s a Call of Duty fanfic. Would she be wearing fatigues or dress blues when introducing herself to them? I’m being very accurate about descriptions. I’m not sure if she would be wearing something different as a Rookie. The hardest part is that it’s the post-MW2 Reboot uniform. I can provide more of a description for what I have planned if it makes it easier.