My MC hit her father with a pan and he's still alive...Realistic?

YES....

Sounds realistic to me. If he doesn't get hit in the head to hard he won't die.

Hitting someone's head with a pan is not necessary damaging, I mean, besides the temporary unconsciousness and some bruising. No blood or broken bones necessarily involved.

If she is not expecting to be attacked, she would look for something what she could grab instantly, so without opening any drawers...

A frying pan, right? If you're talking something like a sauce pan, the impact would be a lot lighter and, depending on the material, might even bounce off without doing anything but making him mad. It would still hurt, but not as much as a good cast iron skillet, with which you could probably kill someone if you weren't careful. Something less tropey... If she's in a kitchen, that leaves any number of small appliances, heavy ceramic plates or large bowls drying in the rack by the sink, heavy glass flower vase on the counter or table, solidly built bread tin, cutting board, spice rack, five pound bag of flour/sugar (if your MC can get a good grip on something like that; they tend to be a bit awkward)...anything hitting the face, especially the bridge of the nose/eye area, can give your MC a few good seconds to grab something more substantial before the attacker recovers. If you read up on emergency room incidents, you'll see just about anything can do serious damage in the right circumstances.

I was hit in the head once by a cast iron skillet (don't ask). It hurt like all hell but wasn't hard enough for me to pass out.

If you do have someone hit hard enough to lose consciousness, you may want to do a little research into concussion symptoms so the father's reaction afterward is realistic. Unlike in the movies, most people don't get clobbered on the head, then wake up and act like nothing happened.

As long as it's not a cast iron pan, yeah, he should be fine. He'll just have a massive headache afterwards and a big bump.

redpbass said:

A frying pan, right? If you're talking something like a sauce pan, the impact would be a lot lighter and, depending on the material, might even bounce off without doing anything but making him mad. It would still hurt, but not as much as a good cast iron skillet, with which you could probably kill someone if you weren't careful. Something less tropey... If she's in a kitchen, that leaves any number of small appliances, heavy ceramic plates or large bowls drying in the rack by the sink, heavy glass flower vase on the counter or table, solidly built bread tin, cutting board, spice rack, five pound bag of flour/sugar (if your MC can get a good grip on something like that; they tend to be a bit awkward)...anything hitting the face, especially the bridge of the nose/eye area, can give your MC a few good seconds to grab something more substantial before the attacker recovers. If you read up on emergency room incidents, you'll see just about anything can do serious damage in the right circumstances.

Click to expand...

Bags of sugar (and possibly flour) will split on impact, though it does, I suppose, depend on the material the bag/sack is made from. Plasctic will split - trust me on this. My mother had a huge kitchen and at one end was a wall to wall floor to ceiling set of cupboards. For some reason best know to mother she kept large bags of sugar in one of the the very top cupboards, which was about 10 yards up. So . . . a friend of my bro comes into the kitchen and slams the door shut. The vibration made the bag of sugar shift - it hit the door or the cupboard and landed on the friends head. It split open and the sugar was all over him. I laughed so much that it hurt. He was not stunned - more shocked and indignant. I'd go with a heavy frying pan - and it might depend on where on the head he is hit. If you clout someone on the nose it can stop them because their eyes will water and they cannot see where they are going for a while. Might also have a nose bleed. I know I did.

Like ChaosTitan, I was hit in the head with a cast iron pan. It was thrown, hard, from about a foot away and hit me smack in the side of the head. I'm fairly certain I had a concussion, because I don't remember how I made it from the lawn and onto the deck, but I didn't pass out completely, or hit the ground unconscious. So... your character better hit her dad really hard

Some 50 years ago or so my grandmother hit my step grandfather with a cast iron frying pan. Threw it at him from a distance of about 5 feet. She was 5'3", he was 6'2". It bounced off his head. He did not lose consciousness or go down. But he had a hell of a headache for several days. If you want your Dad character to pass out, she probably can't throw it. Take the handle in both hands and swing like a baseball bat.

MM

Getting hit in the head with a cast iron pan is absolutely survivable, especially if he was drunk, but my question is- why is the MC still around when he wakes up? I myself would be in the next county.

DrunkenLilacs said:

So many personal anecdotes! I think I'll stick with the pan, then. She hit him straight across the face and then again on the side of the head after he still tried to claw for her.

Thanks for the responses!

Click to expand...

As a martial artist and klutz, having been struck in the head and having struck myself in the head more than once, it's mostly about where the hit lands. Back of the head is more likely to knock someone unconscious. I watched a classmate pass out in a sparring match from little more than a glancing blow that way.

Strikes around the temples are pretty nasty, as well. Top of the head hurts like a mother, but is usually more of a goose-egg than a knockout. Of course, a concussion can come from any direction, provided it's a hard enough hit to slosh your brain against the inside of your skull.

A bit of trivia; traumatic loss of consciousness for more than a few minutes risks brain damage.

Hits to the face don't often result in unconsciousness, as far as my experience, but they are very efficient at disorienting people. Facial injuries hurt and bleed a lot, and then of course they screw with your vision at first. Even a padded fist can cause a nosebleed, so you can bet a frying pan to the face is going to do some damage.

A one-two swing to the face and the temple sounds like a fine way to leave a guy sprawling.

I was hit in the face with a baseball bat (an accident...) when I was 10, and it wasn't all that bad.
I mean, it looked absolutely terrible, but I didn't even go right home after it happened because it didn't hurt much.

But I think a baseball bat is just as "tropey" as a frying pan.

Not the mama!

My friends wife hit him over the head with a frying pan when he came home drunk. It did knock him out and the next day he had a massive bruise on his temple.

Another vote for a cast iron skillet - have your MC use both hands and make it a home-run swing... That'll get 'er done!

It's tropey, but unless you wanted to go rolling pin or steak knife, also tropey, I don't see what else you could do. Cutting board, as someone above said, or maybe a frozen block of meat like a pot roast or turkey.

MaryMumsy said:

If you want your Dad character to pass out, she probably can't throw it. Take the handle in both hands and swing like a baseball bat.

Click to expand...

I agree with this ^^

As an aside, I'm often dismayed at how easily people die in books/movies. It's actually pretty hard to kill an adult without some sort of scary-ass manmade weapon. We're sturdy little blighters in general.

Well you could always go the Lil Mo route and hit Trevor with an iron.

Steam&Ink said:

As an aside, I'm often dismayed at how easily people die in books/movies. It's actually pretty hard to kill an adult without some sort of scary-ass manmade weapon. We're sturdy little blighters in general.

Click to expand...

It's funny, I read this and reared back in disbelief. What? We're incredibly fragile little snowflakes! Thing is, we're both right.

Media portrayals of violent deaths are usually sanitized and made cartoonish. People die and always have time to utter the clue that leads to their killer or they can have a tearful farewell with their best buds. Gunshot wounds are especially silly. On the other hand, if James Bond were to take half of the close-fisted punches he takes in the first quarter of his movie the man would look like hamburger, would suffer major brain damage from all the concussions and with his insistence on going into blast zones and other places where explosives and guns are in widespread use would likely be deaf as a post. Then the movie *really* picks up and he just gets squished.

Whanging someone on the head with a frying pan is likely to hurt like hell and stun them a bit and maybe give them a light concussion. Or, it could drop them right there on the spot and give them a major concussion that may take hours to days to come out of. Or, with the right amount of force and some luck it could kill them stone dead because humans are frail little creatures.

I've been punched, stabbed, shot at and generally roughhoused my way into some decent damage over the years. My luck held and I tucked and rolled and flexed and tightened and did all the right things to still be here. Sadly, too many people don't roll quite right and so they splat when they should bounce. They tense up when being relaxed would have saved them. It's luck most of the time and I feel blessed not to bear too many scars from earlier adventures. In that respect I feel pretty durable. Yet, I see videos of the effects of people not being so lucky and it churns my stomach. We're all made mostly the same way and if your luck runs out or you don't quite dance the dance then you may come away with a broken limb or a bruised internal organ or more horrible damage.

I agree with you wholeheartedly that people are much more effective at mangling each other when they aren't using their bare hands. Too bad we're such pernicious tool users.

Happy Tuesday! Hahahah.

It also depends on what part of the pan connects. The bottom of the pan has a greater surface, which spreads out the area of impact and lessens the damage. If she hit him with the edge of the pan, it could crack his skull and there could be internal bleeding, leading to death.

Think of it this way...if a person is hit with the edge of a blade, they get cut. If that person is hit with the flat of the blade, there isn't much damage.

Hope this helps!