Iron Company Ramblepost #4 - the research you don't see

[doodlemancy]

my philosophy on Research, Accuracy and Realism in fiction is this: ground your thing just enough in reality that the unbelievable parts can be believable. Iron Company is set in the 1930s and i'm kind of back and forth a lot on just how period-accurate i want to be. i've been thinking a lot about what my Rules are for this, and i don't think i have Specific Rules so much as i'm just running on vibes re: what is and isn't important. i'm not trying to write period-accurate dialogue, for example! not by a long shot. that'd be cool for a different piece of fiction, but it limits my expression for what i'm doing here so, nyeh. i'm also, for example, using the Julian calendar even though this is an alternate earth with a completely alternate history/continents/etc. BUT i am choosing to deprive myself of other things that would be much more convenient to the story, like having walkie-talkies (not really in use until WWII, and they were fuckin chonky for a while).

if you've played the demo, you might remember the scene with Mister the horse. if you haven't played it: there's a horse. his name is Mister. he pulls a cart containing Petra, Sykes, Mayor Rose, and a few of their belongings out to the edge of the woods. this scene has a hilarious research-to-content ratio, because i've seen posts online from Horse People how frustrating it is to them to see Horses Done Wrong in fiction. and i get that. i'm always thinking about, like, how much i loved Russian Doll (2019) vs. how much the poorly-researched "video game development" scenes made me cringe. so this was my Horse Research:

• could a single horse pull three people in a cart, and would Mister be able to cover the necessary distance i've imagined? (answer: i'm probably cutting it a little close to the weight limit for a single horse. but if you had a REALLY BIG working breed and it wasn't a very big cart, probably? also i didn't specify the exact number of miles they're going in the text anyway but it's a totally doable distance for a horse)

• are apples actually a good snack for horses or did movies teach me to feed horses something they kinda shouldn't have, in the same way everyone's always giving cats saucers full of cow milk? (answer: apples are in fact great snacks for horses. ALSO DON'T GIVE CATS COW MILK FOR GOD'S SAKE IT MAKES THEM SHIT SO BAD)

• how would John Sykes and Petra Raskoph, being two people who are both pretty familiar with horses, approach meeting a new horse? (answer: horses' eyes are on the sides of their head, so you come up on them from the side in order to not startle them. patting them on the shoulder is usually a safe bet. like with any animal, snacks are a powerful tool for making friends)

• Sykes likes animals; this is a charm point of his that i bring up here because we're halfway through the chapter, he's been angry and standoffish the whole time, and i want to really show that he's not actually 100% fury and vinegar. so, he's paying close attention to the horse in this scene, and he shows further interest by asking Rose how old Mister is. how long are horses' working lives? at what age could a horse be said to be getting up there in the years, but "still spry"? (answer: it depends on the type of horse and the type of work, but lots of working horses can work into their 20s. Mister is 15.)

maybe i still got some stuff a little wrong-- when you don't have a lot of context for a subject, even research can't always save you-- but i'm closer than i would be if i wasn't just rolling along with my assumptions. maybe it was a lot of extra effort for something really small-- but i learned some stuff! tbh the research has been one of my favorite parts of this project so far (except when it's not) (stay tuned for a future ramblepost where i tell you about how a canvas flap and some lashing drove me insane for two days in a row).

Comments

[doodlemancy]

it's so funny to me what i pick and choose. like food specifically, sometimes i think about it real hard (ready-to-eat canned and boxed options are becoming A Thing in the early 20th century; it's still so new you have to put HEY DINGUS THIS IS READY-TO-EAT on the package) and other times i'm like I'm Not Going To Overthink Seasonality Because I Am Sleepy sldkfjghfds

OHHHHH that kind of stuff is so fascinating though. i actually was reading the other day about pre-AC methods of keeping buildings cool and like, what are we even doing nowadays. just building shit unthinkingly and then letting the AC struggle against our hubris!!