Flight

[annarti.livejournal.com]

So I've uncovered something of a massive plot hole. Like, huge. Part of SH:Gold will involve long distance flying, so I figured that, after eleven years, I'd work out some cruising flight speeds for the girls. Googling has found this reasonably easily, using the average cruising speeds of migratory birds and the larger birds of prey, which is anywhere between 20kph and about 80kph. So, for the twins:

Cruising speed 50kph (or 30mph)
Top speed 90kph (or 55mph)

Also, I dunno what it is that makes birds able to stay aloft for hours, days, freaking MONTHS at a time, but the twins have that because magic, so they can stay aloft for as long as the plot requires them to. Be knackered by the end of it but that's their problem. So let's bring up the map and work some stuff out open up that gaping plot hole.

Flying for, let's be generous and say 10 hours a day. That's 500km. Even from the farthest northern reaches of Kazin, they would easily get them back to Ni-Yana in less than two days. The average large migratory bird generally covers 650-800km in a day, which is more. Even looking at the most piss-weak of migratory birds, they still manage about 160km a day, so again, they'd be home within the week.

Why the frig am I bothering with horses? =| Why all this 'OMG we must know what's happening in Ni-Yana!' stress? All the 'OMG we need to be at [place] before [thing happens] in a week!' Why has Nimay never decided 'Stuff it, I'll just fly there, back for dinner tomorrow boys'? I've always written it off as her being the general, doesn't want to leave her boys for an extended period of time. Except that two freaking days isn't an extended period of time.

Really all I can come up with to explain why she hasn't done this is that if I hadn't thought it was possible, maybe she hadn't, either. She's been able to fly for her entire remembered life, but she's never before had reason to test her long range capabilities. There's no point in reaching Kazin before the rest of the boys on a normal mission, and she wouldn't think of flying home early at the end because boooyyyyys she loves them. She knows flying is significantly faster than horses, but, like me, maybe she hasn't really considered just how much faster. Having never actually tested it before, maybe even she can't grasp that she could fly across two kingdoms in two days. Maybe, once the plot does call for it in Gold, she's just cruising along after a couple of hours and suddenly holy shit red sand why didn't I do this earlier? REGRET AND WASTED OPPORTUNITY AND SO ON.

Do you buy it? I'm not sure I do, but I can't think of another way around it. And if I can't, well, that's a shitload of take it back to the drawing board right there.

I scared.

Also Yan has the same flight speeds because I can't find squat on bat flight speeds and he's fifty times bigger than a bat anyway. So. Whatever. Damnit I was counting on him being weeks away, at least, when shit was going down in Ni-Yana. This is Not Cool.

Comments

[drazzi.livejournal.com]

Which birds did you look up?





I dunno, I never questioned the girls not flying off on their own, because distance. And needing to stick together. And such.

[annarti.livejournal.com]

Yeah that's been the reasoning until now. But it'd only be a three day round trip, absolute tops.

Anyway. Having slept on it, I think I can maybe pull it off as long as Nimay recognises it and goes 'well shit, I coulda done this earlier and saved a lot of time and stress.' Let's roll with that.

[silvanime.livejournal.com]

Ouch. Yep, I can see how that is a problem. I suppose you could up the scale of the map, but that would mean journeys via horse (and any other form of transport) would take longer and I imagine there'd be other ramifications I'm not seeing.

I suppose you could always try the regret and wasted opportunity angle to see if it flies (pardon the pun). Otherwise, I'm not sure quite what to suggest.

[annarti.livejournal.com]

Yeah, upping the scale of the map would shove Tsayth so far south that they'd start getting rain, for one thing. They'd start getting forests and wood so there'd be no reason for the alliance with Llayad and they probably wouldn't be nearly so much the sea-faring people they are, and they'd probably take over the world. So. They need to stay a desert.

That and it would take freaking MONTHS for anyone to get anywhere by horse and that's just inconvenient.

I'll roll with my 'lost opportunities woe~' idea and hope that works. Otherwise... ow...

[little-lynnet.livejournal.com]

Works as a reason for me, though you'll probably want to add it on your list of stuff to put into previous books when you're editing them.

Also, don't forget that wings are muscles. If they're not used to flying long distances (and they have no reason to be*), flying at their top speed is liable to do them injury. Even if they got to Ni-Yana in, for example, a day, there's no guarantee they'd not injure themselves too badly to fly back again. You could give 'min another shining moment of expertise awesome by throwing healing issues into the discussion.


* And you don't need more reason than you've given here either. The one thing I'd wonder with that explanation is why the girls never dreamed of trying their flight limits at all when they were growing up. ('may at least. 'min strikes me as a bit too much of a homebody to go wanting to see how far and how fast she can roam.)

[annarti.livejournal.com]

That's the thing, though. I'm being as super conservative as I can be here--that cruising speed is what I'm equating to long distance, flying-through-the-day type stuff. Top speed is almost double that, but I'm working things out with the cruising speed and giving them only ten out of 24 hours of flight time. As I say, even with the most piss-weak little migratory birds that are small enough to fit in your palm, they can fly 200km in a day, and the girls have more awesome wings than that. There's no way it could take more than four or five days from the furthest reaches of Kazin to get back to Ni-Yana, and that's being leisurely and relaxed and basically very un-Nimay.

The one thing I'd wonder with that explanation is why the girls never dreamed of trying their flight limits at all when they were growing up.
Exactly. That's the bit I don't know that I can futz my way around. She's had wings her entire remembered life. She MUST have thought about this stuff before.

[little-lynnet.livejournal.com]

Asking them to fly from wherever they're starting to Ni-Yana is pretty much like asking you to run an entire marathon right now, without any prior marathon running training. Well, if the wings are physical as much as they are magical anyway because otherwise you can wave the physical issues away entirely. *holds up hands helplessly* I'd look into muscle strain injuries, really. "Let's not do that because the danger of physical injury and getting stranded alone is too great" would be a perfectly viable reason to discard the idea in its entirety, but I don't know enough to guarantee that's truly viable as a reason not to do it. (I blame numbers.)

Exactly. That's the bit I don't know that I can futz my way around. She's had wings her entire remembered life. She MUST have thought about this stuff before.

Thought about is not the same as acted on, though, and I think you might have something somewhere where Mithé discusses hiding the wings with one of the girls. He could easily have had a conversation about it with 'may and convinced her not to act on it and then she grew up and got responsibilities and she never got the chance or... whatever. For all we know she decided to try it once and never again. Or, if you want to go that route, Yan could've stopped her from thinking about it before with magic and now she's older/stronger/more aware/whatever-works and she can and she'll marvel at why she's never thought of it and it'll give the reader one more reason to dislike him. There's scads of ways to fix up this bit.

[annarti.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking I should figure out exactly how much of their wings is magic and how much is muscle. Cos the things aren't physically attached to them, so there's 100% magic between wing and shoulder, but... yeah. This needs something concrete.

Mithé--not to mention Laeron, and later Melraan--are far more likely to encourage her than hinder her. It's why she was admitted seven years early into army training in the first place. Although~ Mithé was unsure at the beginning. It was only Laeron's and Niloren's convincing that got him to agree. Maybe he could warn her not to push herself just to please the weapons masters? OOH and he could get Nol in on it. Mini!'may listened to Nol far more than she does now X3 Go on desert survival trip, Melraan says 'YEAH AWESOME FLY TO KAZIN!' while Naraan goes 'yeah, see, no' cos he's disturbingly sensible for an archer. Put enough weight on it that it all just makes Nimay think 'maybe later' and then, with Own missions and the rest, later never comes. And then she does it in Gold and goes 'well shit, wasted a good thirteen years there, nice work self.'

Right. This will be a 'pretend I said all this stuff earlier about why they didn't think of this earlier' moment. As there are always bound to be. How do people release the first book of a series before they've even written the second, let alone the last? MANIACS. RECKLESS MANIACS.

[ladylight.livejournal.com]

Ouuuch.

It sounds like the dark day I discovered how much distance a horse can cover in a day (not nearly so much as I thought). ;_;

To be fully honest with you, I think "Nimay never thought of it" or "Nimay never tried it out" wouldn't work with May's character as it is, because May is intelligent and adventurous, respectively. If she were a ditz or had a phobia of her own flying powers, you might have a little more squeaking room, but not as matters and her personality stand.

To take my dilemma as an object lesson ... I started out by trying the Polyfilla approach, contrived all kinds of colourful excuses for the horses to be Better Than Normal Horses and/or Get from A to B another way, and finally ended up with people who actually knew half a thing about horses saying, "Uh ... that still doesn't work."

And I had to rewrite it all. IT ALL. THREE QUARTERS OF SOULFIRE SEEKING, NARTI. OH GOD THE PAIN IT STILL HURTS.

But my advice would still be ... *sorrowfully presents scalpel*

There are some plot holes that weren't designed to be flown over. I wish I'd started fixing my logical horse malfunction as soon as I became aware of it. Maybe I'd only have had to rewrite half. X(

I think there are still a few ways you can approach the fixering, though ...

- Nimay does scout by air for the Own quite a bit (more insertions than deletions! more fun than surgery?)
- Nimay doesn't scout by air for the Own because it's too tiring to stay aloft too long (and thus you have to drastically reduce her stamina and Min's - flights of hours, not days - major surgery)
- Nimay doesn't scout by air for the Own because she only develops or expands her flying abilities later in the story than you originally had (major surgery on any previous incidences of flying, but possibly with less post-op complications than option #2).

[annarti.livejournal.com]

But my advice would still be ... *sorrowfully presents scalpel*
I knew someone would say that, and despite how much it hurts, I'm grateful you did :< There is just no perfectly logical, realistic and in-character way to brush this one aside. Whatever I come up with will, I'm sure, be so obviously 'author didn't think of this, quick, shove in some Selley's No-More-Gaps and nobody will notice >>'

OOH UNLESS. SUDDEN THOUGHT because I've been stewing on this for close to a week now. Maybe she does think of it, and starts off, but then within a convenient hour or two Yamin calls her and says 'honey, shit's going down, get back here plz now.' Something with Rumal and Nol mebee, or Assili being a prat, something that's not going to hold off while the general's gone for so much as an hour. Prior to that they have no hugely pressing reason to find out what's shaking in Ni-Yana. It's really only that one stretch where I need to hold her back.

Internal tensions and the threat of the Own killing itself, sounds more legit. Give her external reasons as to why she can't dump them for a week. Yamin's a great mediating force, but only if the two parties are at least partially willing to negotiate. She's used to healers, who are under her command at the end of the day. In the face of two big angry muscley warrior blokes about to physically rip each other to shreds, she wouldn't have the guts or the 'voice' (shuddup you know what I mean) to pull them into line. If punches start flying she'd be well out of her depth, and that'd be a situation only the general could a) drag them out of and b) keep them out of. I could even work it into the whole 'Rumal is more than just a dick (OR IS HE?)' plot point and it'll be like I planned it from the beginning.

SOUND LEGIT? Maybe? Major surgery will still be needed, but it'd be less of a heart-and-lung transplant and more amputating an infected foot.

Also, using her as a scout is really something I should do anyway, regardless of plot holes. Gold is apparently going to be the Book of Flying, looking at my diagram of mapping out people's flight paths and such.

(I still say Isaille etc should just ride dragons, then it's just a simple matter of Find -> Replace
"But how did they get so quickly from--"
"Because dragons.")