Attendre et espérer!

if one/both of your new roommates is a child you assume responsibility of that child

Because automatic weapons, barbed wire, landmines, chemical weapons, and more accurate artillery were invented. Precursors already existed, but the advances made into military technology before and during WWI outmoded the use of cavalry for pretty much everything.

Limited military use cases for horses still remain, but in the past horses pretty much held the roles we give to tanks, APCs, trucks and light vehicles today. Or, the versions of those roles that existed without access to other technologies that enable modern logistics like refrigeration, real-time communication, timekeeping if you go back far enough.

Horses didn't go away overnight, and had been in decline for a while by the late 1800s. When firearms became portable and accurate enough to be wielded as the primary military weapon, a firing line could potentially shred cavalry. Then automatic weaponry allowed only a few operators to do that. By the 1910s it was pretty much over.

The reason I am saying all of this is that today, all of the tack, clothing, equipment, and practices attributed to the most widespread (read: post-colonial) equestrian styles are former military technology. I do not just mean 'english style' riding, 'western style' riding also is: just with more steps in between, from the cavalry use during the Spanish Reconquista (they kept the moorish influences, though!) that informed later use of horses by Conquistadors in Mexico, who brought cattle to Mexico, which necessitated cattle workers also learning equestrian skills, etc. Today, western-style riding has also been adopted by certain modern militaries as well, for the use cases that still call for horses. So there is no dodging the militarism there.

After all, getting a Disability is not a goal that anyone strives for, like, say: an Olympic gold medal, or an "A+" on their final History Paper, that someone would be justifiably proud to achieve.

And having a Disability does not get anyone admiration from strangers the way being the descendant of a famous person might.

But Disability Pride is not declaring yourself happy Because You're Disabled.

Disability Pride is knowing, deep inside, that you Deserve Happiness

Even when collective voice of Society accuses you of being a burden

Disability Pride is knowing, deep inside, that Happiness is Possible

Even when the collective gaze of Society sees only a reason to mourn

Disability Pride is knowing, deep inside, that you can still Bring Happiness to Others

Even when it might not be in the same way as before you became disabled.

Head-hopping generally happens in third person limited, i.e. a narrative filtered (we use the term focalised) through the perspective of a specific character. So using third person (he, she, it, or they if you're punchy) and keeping the perspective tightly focused on (limited to) what that person knows. It's the most commonly used perspective in contemporary fiction.

Head-hopping is when the narrative shifts from being focalised through one character to another character in quick succession, by which I mean between paragraphs or even sentences. It's the most common technical issue I see in narrative prose. NB I'm not talking about having multiple povs within an extended piece, where individual scenes or chapters have a new pov. I'm talking about rapid shifts, sometimes back-and-forth, within continuous scenes.

Why does this matter? Well, as I say, if you've got the chops, go ahead and polyphonically knock my socks off. But it's not easy. I did write a piece once that did this, to prove to a friend that it could be done - yes, proving someone else wrong is a great reason to write a piece of fiction. It was very tricky, and the pov only shifted a handful of times, after each character had had a few paragraphs to establish their perspective. The story, which was called "The Lost" (thematic link to form) was about two people bringing their understanding of each other closer and closer together (content linked to form). My friend didn't notice until I pointed it out. And then she was furious with me. Yay friendship!

But this isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about those sudden shifts, where the reader is left uncertain whose perspective they're following, and is thrown out of the text. It generally happens in scenes where two or more characters are in conversation with each other. I think it occurs for two reasons, both of which ultimately come down to control over point of view.

The author is visualising the scene as if it's a film or piece of TV happening in front of them. This means that they are not themselves anchored in the perspective of one of the characters. They've not decided through whom the scene is focalised.

This means that they're not fully immersed in the experience of the pov character - which means in turn that they're not fully immersed in the reality of the scene.

Basically I'm saying that the scene is not yet fully imagined. What's most likely happening in this stage of writing is that the author is establishing the dramatic parameters of the scene, i.e. what are the beats in the conversation; how is power shifting around; what individual character trajectories are being followed, and so on. Because the scene is in the process of being imagined, the pov shifts around to help with this work.

The solution is to realise that the scene is effectively still in draft. You need to be clear on whom this scene needs to be focalised through; fully immerse in their perspective; and rewrite the scene filtered through that consciousness. (This doesn't usually involve much rewriting. It does mean more thinking, and more craft.)

I nearly wrote "filtered through that lens" there, because it's a good way to get the message across. But I consciously decided against. Because head-hopping often arises when the writer is operating a camera on the scene. And narrative prose is not primarily a visual medium. The recording device you're operating when you write narrative prose is not simply visual. It is a means to record consciousness, which implies all that a character experiences, not just what can be seen (and excludes what a character does not or cannot experience, hence suspense, irony, etc.).

Your task, as a writer, is to come as close to that consciousness as possible. This is why, as I wrote the other day, so much of the actual work of writing takes place in the thinking. Once you're solid on that ground, then you need to understand that the medium by which you represent this experience in narrative prose is language. Not paint or film or colour or light, but the sounds and rhythms and structures and syntax and intertextualities and all the rest of it that language offers. (I'm leaving aside experimental narration here; as I say, in the end, anything goes. Flick through Ulysses to see what happens when the visual elements of prose - the materiality of the book - are exploited for narrative effect. But then Joyce did love the cinema.)

Third person limited, particularly when it becomes close to free indirect discourse, is one of the most effective tools we have to do this. So my advice is to be aware of hopping between heads. Observe the head-hopping, ask yourself what this means for your immersion in your story-world, and, if necessary, push that further into the character's pov. The more you are immersed, the more the reader will be immersed.

And the more you are immersed, the more your technical choices are guided by that immersion. It's a true delight when the words seem to be coming from the made-up person in your head, rather than from your own clumsy brain. Sometimes you find yourself using words you weren't entirely sure were within your vocabulary. That's fun!

Act out a short scene from your character's perspective. Choose one that involves another character. (You can do this in your head or get up and block it out if it helps.) In other words, don't have the camera up front, have the camera on your character's shoulder. Then, try to ease yourself away from using the imaginative metaphor of the camera. Experience the scene not only in terms of what your character sees, but what they feel, sense, think, know, and so on. Think of it as a consciousness recording device, if that helps. You're trying to embody the experience of this character in this moment. How does it feel to move like them, react like them, be in the world like them? In this moment?

Write this up in first-person. This should pull you more closely into the consciousness of the character, making you expand the field of language by which you represent them on the page (and what's available from on screen). Your focus could be on what they are thinking and experiencing about the other character: their doubts, their certainties, their conscious and unconscious desires from this interaction. When you've got a good chunk, take a look through this and try to work out what's idiomatic about their language: look at sentence structure, sentence fragments, tone, style, etc.

(I see that one all the time. Character B asks question. Character A reflects on that question and the options available to them as answers. Character B prompts Character A to respond. Reader ("U") thinks: Aha, the real-time issue... Because we think much more quickly than we write or read. So in fact, all those thoughts will have happened in a split-second, rather than the time it's taken you to write them or me to read them. So don't sweat it, unless the time taken to respond is making Character B feel something, and Character A is registering this.)

Shifting away from thinking you're a camera operator to a prose writer helps solve a lot of problems with time management within scenes. You don't, in fact, have to faithfully represent visually everything that happened. You can just crack on with the narration. Say a character's getting out of a car. Yes, you can faithfully describe this and the time it takes. Or you can say. "He got out of the car." Job done, on with the story. Time's bendy in prose, because time is bendy in our heads. You'll be surprised at what you can cut, and how much more effective it makes your prose.