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Reasonably accomodating clothes
Jun. 17th, 2018 02:58 amWhy do characters in stories who grow wings get hung up on finding stuff to wear?
Halter necks are a thing.
Granted a lot of them will be flimsy squares with a couple of ties on the corners, but I found a perfectly respectable looking button up shirt that just happened to have no back on the first page of the results.
Clergy shirt fronts also offer several options, though granted with very specialised collars.
Sleeves are then an issue, but gloves and arm warmers are available, and that wasn't the bit the character I was just reading was having trouble with.
I mean they were resorting to sticking stuff to their chest rather than acquiring a commonly available garment.
It's daft.
The obvious utility of snuggie blankets don't need resorting to when the story keeps saying how warm wings are, but, it's out there, as are chest warmers.
... and the more I looked, the more I realised this is a combination of gender and disability speaking.
Men's shirts only commonly happen in shirt shape, as far as I can tell. Backless clothes are for women. Which is mind bogglingly stupid, given who commonly has straps to hide and that men are just as capable of wanting to show off.
And disability gets you thinking around corners, because a lot of things need adaptations to make a tricky thing possible again. Getting clothes to fit a diversity of forms is pretty basic.
Or should be.
Stories always get hung up on the wrong stuff about transformations. Like, I read them as disability stories, like even if someone is turned into a ghost the actual thing they're experiencing is a set of suddenly acquired impairments and a world that is refusing to accommodate them. But mostly stories will be like 'oh no! shock! woe! no one has ever faced this challenge before!'
When if you strip it down to the actual problems - mobility, communication, can they or can they not touch, speak, use body language in accustomed ways - it's all stuff people can and have dealt with. A ghost can't manipulate objects in the world but can speak? Well they won't need a wheelchair and a sip and puff tube is unlikely to work for them, but otherwise they're experiencing sudden impairments in their limbs and need the kind of help a paralyzed person would. Suddenly a puppy lacking fine manipulators and cannot speak? You need nice big buttons to jump on, or something you can control with your mouth, and some communication software. It's not new at all.
I'm sure there's even clothing designed for flying in, with the wind and sun and all, though granted finding it in halter neck would at minimum take some doing.
I realise the bit the writer is interested in tends to be 'oh wow your wings are so big and shiny and sexy let me show you how sensitive they are'
which always seems inconvenient really, like, that's a really large surface to be that sensitive
but if they're going to spend time on the clothes problem it ought to occur to them it's solvable.
PS Tens of thousands of words and new wings dude hasn't thought of turning a chair backwards. It's all woe is me I can no longer chairs how do you chair this is terrible I must bring a stool. I'll grant that there are chairs that wouldn't work well backwards, but he hasn't thought of it once yet, and it's winding me up.
Halter necks are a thing.
Granted a lot of them will be flimsy squares with a couple of ties on the corners, but I found a perfectly respectable looking button up shirt that just happened to have no back on the first page of the results.
Clergy shirt fronts also offer several options, though granted with very specialised collars.
Sleeves are then an issue, but gloves and arm warmers are available, and that wasn't the bit the character I was just reading was having trouble with.
I mean they were resorting to sticking stuff to their chest rather than acquiring a commonly available garment.
It's daft.
The obvious utility of snuggie blankets don't need resorting to when the story keeps saying how warm wings are, but, it's out there, as are chest warmers.
... and the more I looked, the more I realised this is a combination of gender and disability speaking.
Men's shirts only commonly happen in shirt shape, as far as I can tell. Backless clothes are for women. Which is mind bogglingly stupid, given who commonly has straps to hide and that men are just as capable of wanting to show off.
And disability gets you thinking around corners, because a lot of things need adaptations to make a tricky thing possible again. Getting clothes to fit a diversity of forms is pretty basic.
Or should be.
Stories always get hung up on the wrong stuff about transformations. Like, I read them as disability stories, like even if someone is turned into a ghost the actual thing they're experiencing is a set of suddenly acquired impairments and a world that is refusing to accommodate them. But mostly stories will be like 'oh no! shock! woe! no one has ever faced this challenge before!'
When if you strip it down to the actual problems - mobility, communication, can they or can they not touch, speak, use body language in accustomed ways - it's all stuff people can and have dealt with. A ghost can't manipulate objects in the world but can speak? Well they won't need a wheelchair and a sip and puff tube is unlikely to work for them, but otherwise they're experiencing sudden impairments in their limbs and need the kind of help a paralyzed person would. Suddenly a puppy lacking fine manipulators and cannot speak? You need nice big buttons to jump on, or something you can control with your mouth, and some communication software. It's not new at all.
I'm sure there's even clothing designed for flying in, with the wind and sun and all, though granted finding it in halter neck would at minimum take some doing.
I realise the bit the writer is interested in tends to be 'oh wow your wings are so big and shiny and sexy let me show you how sensitive they are'
which always seems inconvenient really, like, that's a really large surface to be that sensitive
but if they're going to spend time on the clothes problem it ought to occur to them it's solvable.
PS Tens of thousands of words and new wings dude hasn't thought of turning a chair backwards. It's all woe is me I can no longer chairs how do you chair this is terrible I must bring a stool. I'll grant that there are chairs that wouldn't work well backwards, but he hasn't thought of it once yet, and it's winding me up.