Part 3

~~~ Desmond gets his welcome party ~~~

saw a meme. knew immediately what I had to do. no clue if this has been done before but this sure is how it goes

One of my biggest nitpicks in fiction concerns the feeding of babies. Mothers dying during/shortly after childbirth or the baby being separated form the mother shortly after birth is pretty common in fiction. It is/was also common enough in real life, which is why I think a lot of writers/readers don't think too hard about this. however. Historically, the only reason the vast majority of babies survived being separated from their mother was because there was at least one other woman around to breastfeed them. Before modern formula, yes, people did use other substitutes, but they were rarely, if ever, nutritionally sufficient.

Newborns can't eat adult food. They can't really survive on animal milk. If your story takes place in a world before/without formula, a baby separated from its mother is going to either be nursed by someone else, or starve.

It doesn't have to be a huge plot point, but idk at least don't explicitly describe the situation as excluding the possibility of a wetnurse. "The father or the great grandmother or the neighbor man or the older sibling took and raised the baby completely alone in a cave for a year." Nope. That baby is dead I'm sorry. "The baby was kidnapped shortly after birth by a wizard and hidden away in a secret tower" um quick question was the wizard lactating? "The mother refused to see or touch her child after birth so the baby was left to the care of the ailing grandfather" the grandfather who made the necessary arrangements with women in the neighborhood, right? right? OR THAT GREAT OFFENDER "A newborn baby was left on the doorstep and they brought it in and took care of it no issues" What Are You Going to Feed That Baby. Hello?

Like. It's not impossible, but arrangements are going to have to be made. There are some logistics.

ok I get what you're saying about the trope in general, but, notably, the Moses story is actually one that explicitly addresses this:

yeah, notably Moses' own mother got to nurse him incognito. and in rich or royal households like Pharaoh's it was/is common for that nurse to remain the child's caregiver for the first few years so fancy mommy doesn't have to change any diapers.

also, and this was written well in The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, if the mother survives but is sickly, starving, or otherwise incapable of producing sufficient milk for the child it will die or grow up stunted.

writers, this info applies to animal newborns as well. sometimes a farm or horse story will be like "oh the mother died" and I'm like "feed that baby pronto or there will be a slow death in that barn".

Something to consider in fantasy worldbuilding: in your non human cultures, how are the babies fed and cared for? You don't need your plots to go into depth with whole scenes about it, but this is one of the details that should be on your list of essential daily life stuff for your fictional communities.

As for my own writing, one of my stories does have a deuteragonist dwarven woman who played wetnurse for her ailing sister's newborn twins, and she later nurses a baby born by surrogate for the husband and amab nonbinary spouse she's in a throuple with (they and the baby are all elves, so this also comes with commentary on interspecies wetnursing)

assassins creed syndicate be like

relationships and jobs are temporary. your shitty unpopular tumblr blog is forever

Assassins Christmas

[ing] I'm late uploading this drawing; I wanted to upload it for Christmas, but I was traveling, so I couldn't work on it full-time. Anyway, I hope you like these cute assassins (plus some others).

[esp] Me atrase subiendo este dibujo, según yo quería subirlo para navidad pero anduve de viaje así que no pude ponerme a full con este, pero en fin, espero q les guste estos bonitos assassins (más algunos impostores por ahí)✨✨

Shay vs Connor out in the arctic (wym Connor doesn’t cover up his neck during the winter??)

Frey finally played acr and now I’m a happier person

KILL AI AND REBLOG AND CREATE ART IN 2026