Thad wrote:I've probably mentioned this one before, but of the many things that annoy me about depictions of deserts in fiction is this: why are people always traveling in the fucking daytime?
If it is 110 degrees out in the daytime, you find shade and wait until it gets dark. Maybe not if you're in seriously rocky terrain where there's a chance of tripping and twisting your ankle in the dark, but if there's nothing but flat ground or sand dunes as far as the eye can see, you travel at night.
I mean, it's okay if the story hook is that you're writing about a bunch of dumbasses who aren't from the desert, are lost/looking for treasure/whatever and lack basic common sense. But if your protagonists are, say, a tribe that is from the desert, they should know to fucking travel at night.
On the other side of the coin, I hate how often people in cold climates in cartoons or video games (you see it less in movies that are filmed on location because the actors are human and so they probably complain about dumb clothing choices pretty fast) are wearing big bulky jackets, but aren't wearing hats, facial coverings or gloves. Your extremities get cold before any other part of your body does and if you walk around with a big jacket on and no gloves or scarf on, your fingers and nose are gonna fall off before a person with just a sweater on, but their extremities covered would ever feel cold, especially if they are moving around.
Similarly, I hate people in medieval battles never putting helmets on before they go into battle.
We gotta tell who the main characters are. Just give them fancy helmets, people had fancy helmets. Knights were all about heraldry and telling everyone on the battlefield who they were visually so their deeds would be noticed.
We gotta see the actor's faces. So give them visors or open face helmets. Lots of people fought with their visor up or removed once engaged in a melee, they needed to breath freely and see shit.