little_details

Setting: England, 1930s, public school

Situation: brief scene where character A pauses near a cricket match, and calls out 'nice one!' after character B makes a particular play.

I don't want to make elementary mistakes in this small scene (e.g. using baseball terminology), but more to the point, I want to choose something that actually is a nice bit of cricketing.

Character B is batting. (In the crease?) He has been batting for some time, which I take it means that he is successfully hitting the ball between fielders, and also blocking shots that might hit the wicket.

If character A takes note of this, what would he describe it? E.g., running up a score, having a good innings? I'd like it to show briefly that character B has been batting for a good long time. A reason for character A to stop and watch.

Then, I'd like some suggestions for a particular play that this batter could make. Some squiggly (sic) bowling that he manages to block, or being able to hit something difficult. Could it be deceptively slow or fast, or with an odd bounce? How would you describe that? It does not have to be terribly dramatic or showy, just something that a real fan would know is difficult. The scene is brief, but I'd like it to ring true.

Thanks in advance!

Scene: New York City, NY, USA, 1943-44

A part of the novel I am currently working on features a court case presided over by a judge of African-American extraction. I understand that at the time, black people were second-class citizens in the South and in the Mid-West, thus such an occurrence wouldn't have happened there - am I right in guessing it was more plausible in New York? Were there black judges in America in the '40s?

EDIT: I searched Wikipedia but came up with nothing. Thank you to all who assisted me.

I've googled "ungulate anatomy," "bipedal ungulate" and suchlike, but I'm not having a lot of luck. Help?

I'm writing a story in an Earthlike world, wherein human colonists are in the process of subjugating an aboriginal race of sentient humanoids. I want to make this native race just different enough from humans to make humans fear them. One physiological difference I was thinking of was making their legs more like an ungulate's.

You can probably guess that I play a lot of World of Warcraft, too - for those of you who play, draenei, tauren, and succubi have legs like that - an extra joint in the lower leg that bends forward. There's an entry in another LJ community that illustrates how ungulate legs might work, here. (Work safe, but mildly suggestive.)

My questions relate to the feasibility of such a construction, and the likelihood of a humanoid race evolving with ungulate legs. The hypothetical humanoid race are nomadic plainsmen, and accustomed to running long distances while following herds of wild cattle-analogues. Would a race like this absolutely need a heavy tail to balance its upright posture? Would there be any specific advantages or disadvantages when paired up against a human's more primate-like leg structure?

(What the heck do you even call that third joint? I have two knees and two ankles, but I don't have any of those ... backward ... bending ... joints. Maybe they're called fetlocks?)

I appreciate any help you can give!