tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63202693129578013902024-03-18T00:33:02.100-07:00TalkToYoUniverseWhere I talk to you about linguistics and anthropology, science fiction and fantasy, point of view, grammar geekiness, and all of the fascinating permutations thereof...Juliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.comBlogger1256125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-60416926681185433772016-06-13T13:18:00.000-07:002016-06-13T13:18:23.374-07:00Moving to a new site - visit Dive into Worldbuilding, the Blog!New Blog Address: <a href="http://dive-into-worldbuilding.blogspot.com/">http://dive-into-worldbuilding.blogspot.com/</a><br />
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Friends,<br />
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I've now been running Dive into Worldbuilding as a show for five years (!), and for the last year, it has been the primary content of my blog. I've decided the best plan would be to unify everything under the Dive into Worldbuilding name, so I've taken the contents of TalkToYoUniverse and ported them all over to <a href="http://dive-into-worldbuilding.blogspot.com/">dive-into-worldbuilding.blogspot.com</a>. I have an updated and beautifully clean table of contents there which includes all the summaries and videos I've ever done with Dive into Worldbuilding, so that you can look up anything you like.<br />
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That means this is the last post to this site. All new posts will be at the <a href="http://dive-into-worldbuilding.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Dive into Worldbuilding blog</a>.<br />
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It's kind of scary to make a change like this, after 1274 posts. I thought about redirecting people from here to there, but there are a lot of blog posts here in the archives, and people might find them easier to access directly, so for now I'm keeping this blog up. <br />
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Thank you all for your support of my blogging and my writing, and for continuing to follow me all this time.<br />
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I hope to see you at the new blog!<br />
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Juliette<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-72339826685465923172016-06-07T11:54:00.002-07:002016-06-07T11:54:51.454-07:00Bathing and Laundry - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summaryThis topic was a natural one to follow on from last week's Bathrooms hangout! After all, sometimes laundry is done in the bathroom...<br />
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We started with close-to home context for bathing and laundry, talking laundry machines and where they might be located, typically in bathrooms or garages (at least in my neighborhood!). Of course, there are also contexts where such machines are not in the home at all, and people go to special laundry rooms or laundromats. We reminisced about collecting quarters to use in laundry machines! These days, apparently, some laundromats use cards instead (which sounds like a good idea).<br />
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The technology of a washing machine is also interesting. The latest development is to improve their efficiency in using water and electricity, but the machines themselves were groundbreaking, and life-changing, for many. Doing laundry used to take days, and suddenly it could be reduced to a couple of hours of simply setting it up and looking in on it.<br />
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Though Cliff couldn't attend this week, he suggested we speak about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhobi" target="_blank">Dhobi</a>, who are a group of people in India whose vocation is doing laundry for others. Wikipedia refers to them as a caste. Traditionally they would pick up people's laundry and clean it by beating it on rocks in the river; the process would take 6 days. This job is a necessary one, but considered lowly because of having to deal with other people's dirt. It has also become more difficult for these people to retain their livelihood because of the introduction of washing machines in India.<br />
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Brian noted that the idea of dirty laundry is very powerful. You are not supposed to expose your dirty clothes. Morgan said that even in a laundromat you don't show your laundry to others, or leave it around. I spoke about my experience with a Japanese host family where my hostess informed me that I was supposed to wash my own underwear.<br />
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There is a whole range of products designed to clean clothes, and to get stains out of them.<br />
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In fiction, I mentioned Ancillary Sword, which includes the observation that someone's personal attendant is attempting to wash paint out of her gloves. I also mentioned that there's a scene in my own book where someone is using a steam press to press napkins. Generally, though, it seems that laundry is not extremely common in fiction.<br />
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Having dirt or stains on your clothes is stigmatized. We often make a run for the bathroom as soon as we drop something on our clothes so as to stop it from becoming a permanent stain.<br />
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I brought up the relationship between bathing and laundry as regards personal cleanliness. Recently I read an article that talked about how people in the Middle Ages might not have bathed, but that they would have used linen to scrub their bodies down regularly. The person writing the article had done a month-long experiment where they did not bathe, but laundered their linen underclothes regularly, and then reversed the process. Apparently, omitting the laundry was a lot worse! It suggested that people - at least people who were able to afford linen underwear and laundry - did not smell as bad as we might imagine.<br />
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I had a strange thought about what laundry would be like for the Imbati caste in my book, because so many of them wear black. You'd definitely have to watch out so you wouldn't accidentally dye things that weren't supposed to be black!<br />
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I mentioned the bath scene in the movie My Neighbor Totoro, which is one of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies. In Japan, you soak yourself in the bath but you don't get clean there; you get clean in a shower area before you get into the tub. There is less embarrassment associated with being naked in the bath, and more with the actual process of getting undressed. Some people bring washcloths or towels to cover themselves while in the bath, but some do not. We talked about hot spring baths, or Onsen. I told a funny story about how I once took a bath in a tub that literally had a fire under it! (Moral: don't mix up the words for "hot water"= oyu and "cold water"= omizu.)<br />
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Che said she'd read that mucus bathing would be more effective than bathing with water. We all shuddered!<br />
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We also mentioned architecture and bathing. You have Roman baths, and our baths with showers, baths without showers, showers without baths... Generally there's something to contain the water. You also have the question of whether the water falls straight down or hits you at an angle.<br />
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Science fictionally, we have the idea of a "sonic shower" from Star Trek. Author Linda Nagata employed the idea of cleaning the body with nanites.<br />
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Controlling the water is one of the main goals of bath architecture. Really you want to have a fully controlled pipeline with a few well-contained openings in it. We mentioned how water pressure was generally created using gravity. You have to watch out to make sure the weight of a full bathtub won't break through the floor!<br />
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We briefly mentioned how bathing has increased longevity, and how washing improved health outcomes in hospitals. The question of getting clean if you can't move your body without help also came up, as did the hygiene hypothesis for the rise in allergies.<br />
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It was a pretty interesting discussion! Thanks to everyone who attended. This week's hangout will meet tomorrow, Wednesday, June 8th at 10am Pacific. We'll be discussing Rewards and Motivation. I hope you can join us!<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-84608671151726273982016-06-03T11:31:00.004-07:002016-06-03T11:31:42.216-07:00Bathrooms - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summaryI'm so glad we got to do this hangout, finally, because it was really fun. Bathrooms are very funny, after all! They don't seem to appear a lot in serious fiction, and when they do appear in movies or TV, they never seem to mean anything good. They typically either come with bathroom humor, like in The Iron Giant or something awful, like a dead body.<br />
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Sometimes a bathroom can appear when a character needs to change their appearance. We mentioned The Bourne Identity and The Terminator as movies where this had happened. I mentioned Kelly Robson's Waters of Versailles as an example of bathrooms in literature, but even there you don't see too many of the toilets in question. Deborah mentioned that she just loves working with bathtubs in her Darkover novels.<br />
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I mentioned that in Australia (and also in Europe, typically), the toilet is separate from the bathroom.<br />
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There are different styles of toilets. Someone mentioned three seashells from Demolition man, but we also talked about the squat toilets that Tom Selleck encountered in Mr. Baseball. Squat toilets are more common in Japan than in the US, and they require a degree of training and muscle strength!<br />
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We talked about separating bathrooms by gender. Is it even necessary? Should we separate by "number one" and "number two" instead? What about disabled stalls? What about changing tables, which really don't belong in the disabled stalls, but take up a lot of space. Are they only in the women's, or on both men's and women's bathrooms? In public bathrooms, often people are trying to fit in as much as possible, which leads to sub-optimal organization.<br />
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We talked about how it's annoying when little kids crawl under the stall walls. Secure stalls with private space would be good, but how much surveillance do you need for safety? Will people have sex in bathrooms, or do drugs? Deborah told us that her daughter once got locked in a stall and Deborah had to kick the door in.<br />
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If you are designing bathroom facilities, they need to fit the needs of the user. This includes aliens! But you can also see forms of bias in how facilities are designs.<br />
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We talked about hand dryers, and the noise pollution they create. We debated the Dyson airblade style of dryer, because of the recent article saying they spread germs. Of course, our perception of how bad the spread of germs is is relative. Our psychological tolerance of the idea of germs is pretty low, but the Dyson isn't spreading much, because 97% of germs come off your hands just with water, and soap only raises that to 99%.<br />
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A lot of features of bathrooms are actually deliberate to discourage germs. Germs can't survive on cold porcelain. Sometimes there are a combination of features that come together to discourage germ survival in the bathroom.<br />
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Kimberly said that if you go into an alien's bathroom you could catch something that could eat your face! Certainly, the expectations for what kinds of microbes should be discouraged would be different for aliens. What if they had a hot bathroom? What if you had a researcher who was specially charged with studying the bathrooms of an alien species, and figuring out how to arrange bathrooms for the ambassador on Earth?<br />
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In fantasy, or at least medieval fantasy, the topic of bathrooms is often avoided. People might use a trench, or just magic, to get rid of unwanted things.<br />
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Che mentioned outhouses. In the 1900s, even though there were modern toilets, the toilet was often in an outhouse behind the house. This was in fact the case with the bathroom in my own husband's mom's place in the 1990's!<br />
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We talked about Japan, and how they have the tradition of toilet slippers which are worn only in the toilet room (you'll be embarrassed if you wear them out into the house!). They also have techno-toilets with lots of buttons that can be very confusing (even shocking!).<br />
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We talked about "finding the dirtiest surface." Many people go to the bathroom to find it, but that's not accurate. Our psychological idea of the dirtiest surface does not match the reality. Professionally maintained bathrooms are usually very clean. We have cultural hangups about how dirty bathrooms are.<br />
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We also talked about what we keep in bathrooms. It's not a "cool dry place," but often medicines are kept there anyway. Moisture over time is definitely a possible problem. If you were wealthy, you might have a separate dressing room, dressing table, etc.<br />
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When flush toilets were first invented there was backlash against bringing them into the house. They took up what was formerly the dressing area. Our home bathrooms are shared by the people in the house. You may also be in a communal living situation where shared bathrooms are down the hall, while you would be expected to dress in your bedroom.<br />
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Cat boxes are sometimes kept in bathrooms. You can train a cat to use the toilet (yes, it's possible!).<br />
Laundry machines are also often kept in bathrooms.<br />
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Deborah told us about a "composting privy" which was particularly for solid waste so it could be used for agriculture. They used waste for compost at George Washington's Mount Vernon farm, too.<br />
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Plumbing is actually very complex, and designed to confine the water as much as possible. This is why you get "wet walls" in buildings. Catching and reusing water can be important, especially when it is scarce. Flush toilets use a ton of water. We noted that you don't see many clogged toilets in fiction!<br />
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This was an interesting conversation, and at the end of it we decided to take up bathing and laundry next. I hope to have that summary written shortly. Thanks to everyone who attended!<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-50969464239357627082016-05-22T10:14:00.001-07:002016-05-26T06:43:23.224-07:00Come see me this weekend at BayCon!This is going to be a really awesome BayCon - I love my panel schedule, and I hope you can come be a part of it. Non-western mythology, swearing!!! and linguistics for the storyteller with Lawrence Schoen. We're going to have a great time.<br />
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Remember, this year the convention is at the San Mateo Marriott!<br />
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Here's my schedule:<br />
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<h2>
Autograph Session: Csernica and Wade</h2>
Saturday 14:00 - 15<span class="aBn" data-term="goog_1666835454" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ">:00, Convene </span></span>Lobby (San Mateo Marriott)<br />
Juliette Wade, Lillian Csernica</div>
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Beyond Olympus and Asgard: Myth and Storytelling outside the Western Canon</h2>
Sunday 11:30 - 13:00, Collaborate 2 (San Mateo Marriott)<br />
Lance Moore Mr., Heidi Stauffer, Bret Sweet, Juliette Wade, Thaddeus Howze</div>
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Frakking Piece of Shaz-Bat</h2>
Sunday 13:00 - 14:30, Collaborate 2 (San Mateo Marriott)<br />
Are made up swears and slurs acceptable in speculative fiction, or
are they just a form of slipping crude language into stories without
offending readers?<br />
Jacob Fisk (M), Carrie Sessarego, Juliette Wade, John O'Halloran</div>
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Linguistics for the storyteller</h2>
Sunday 17:30 - 19:00, Engage (San Mateo Marriott)<br />
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Juliette Wade (M), Lawrence Schoen (Language GOH)<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-86386746883677567042016-05-20T13:10:00.003-07:002016-05-20T13:10:26.057-07:00Pat MacEwen - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summaryWe had a great visit with author Pat MacEwen. She was here to talk to us about her story in the May/June issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, entitled Coyote Song - and about her expertise in forensics, which features in the story.<br />
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Pat says it's an advantage to writers to have a "checkered career," as she was originally going to be "Jacques-Yvette Cousteau," i.e. a marine biologist. However, life took her in other directions. She says she likes having a background in anthropology. She feels that a lot of anthropology people are "misfits much like science fiction and fantasy fans," with a "taste for the Other."<br />
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She told us that the three steps to forensics are, 1. learning how to see what's there, 2. figuring out how that got that way, and 3. proving it.<br />
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In crime scenes, you see what you expect. You have to train your eye to look for things, such as shell casings. In fact, if you bring a shell casing with you, drop it on the ground and train your eye on it, thereafter you will have an easier time seeing others. Also it's important to figure out what is normal. There is such a variety of people, we can't necessarily predict what will be normal to them.<br />
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Pat's first novel is called Rough Magic and involves the fae and forensics.<br />
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She's also spent a lot of time working on archaeological sites, including mass graves in northern Iraq. She doesn't like getting shot at. She told us that no one will sell Zimbabwe paper to make money because they had 3 million percent inflation. This crisis contributed to genocidal tendencies.<br />
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Pat describes economics as the basis of all the stuff going on in the world. We should keep our eye on "love, lust, liquor and lucre."<br />
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Coyote Song was a story written on the basis of stories she picked up at crime scenes. It involves the Cambodian Angel of Death, as well as a Native American character and a character with ties to Vodou. Pat is very interested in unusual, culture-specific phenomena like Banginget, where Cambodian people in their late 20's to early 30's wake up, scream and die in the middle of the night. Maybe it's genetic; maybe it's a nightmare leading to tachycardia. The families of the victims would hide the bodies because they didn't want them to be cut up, and to CA police it would then look like a homicide.<br />
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So Pat does lots of research, files the serial numbers off people she's met, and creates totally unique stories. She has a deep interest in Native American culture because she has a mixture of ancestors from Cherokee, Sioux, Oneida, and Onondaga peoples. She is very interested in cases like the California Miwoks trying to repatriate bones which have been held in museums. When she works with Native American culture she asks people to read the story to see if she's "out of line."<br />
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She says that Stockton, where she lives, is very cosmopolitan. People speak 125 languages and dialects there, and it is home to the oldest Sikh temple in the US.<br />
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When I told her that there was a great deal of practicality in her stories, she explained that her mother had cerebral palsy, so practicality was critical. Furthermore, in crime scenes, you have to adjust to them, not the other way around. "You can't apply time management to crime scenes." Practically, you can't do everything. There will be a mistake. 95% of what you do won't matter and isn't relevant in court, so you hope your mistake is in the 95%. She has done things like stop by a local hardwarestore to pick up metal screen to help the plaster hold together when she was taking footprints in soft dirt under a bridge.<br />
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[content warning on this paragraph]<br />
Pat says nobody does what you see on TV. No one is actually on the cutting edge. Techniques have to be proven in court, and they also involve considerable expense, so they have to be worth the expense. There have been problems with the FBI, such as the hair analysis issue. However, the FBI can also do amazing things like fingerprint ID. Apparently they have an office for detached fingers and hands; local departments can cut pieces off with pruning shears and send those pieces to the FBI where they can be treated with dyes etc. to get fingerprints that wouldn't be recoverable locally. DNA can now be extracted from hair - they use the mitochondrial DNA present in the hair shaft. She told us a story about how the police had been authorized to get a hair sample from a rape suspect (not from the head) and the police had to be pretty forceful to get it (ripping out a handful!).<br />
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I asked Pat about archaeological digs and how much we can get with certain types of technology, and how sometimes things get left untouched in anticipation of technological advances that won't destroy the evidence. She told us that there was a period of war in 500 AD when suddenly they started finding arrowheads stuck in bones instead of spearheads. Even if you have no pueblos and no maize, the style of shells, tools, and bird whistles change over time. You can have sudden changes in war technology. The use of an atlatl (spear thrower) actually changes your skeleton. The use of a bow changes it in a different way. She has done work examining skulls and seeing how biologically different they are between one tribal group and another.<br />
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She once went to Kosovo to do some work. She was told not to learn the language because simply speaking a local language might commit a person to one side or the other of local conflicts between Albanians and Serbians. The word "pivo" for beer could get you in trouble because it was in fact a Serbian brand of beer. Pat said she drank Turkish beer while she was there. She told us that because the area was Muslim, there were minarets, and calls to prayer at 5am. Also, dogs in the area had gone feral and would run through the town during the night like the Wild Hunt. They would also attack children.<br />
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We returned again to the question of what is normal, this time in the context of medical treatments. In some cultures, heated cups are placed on the back for the flu. To California police this can look like child abuse. Pat said they made an effort to tell people that the cups wouldn't pull bronchitis out through the skin.<br />
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Deborah, one of our discussants, told us there are times when conventional wisdom doesn't work, as when you are foraging for mushrooms. Apparently there is a mushroom considered a delicacy in Vietnam, that looks a lot like a poisonous mushroom that grows in California. Pat told us that ammonita will kill your liver. She also said that in Italy, pharmacists are trained in mycology so that they can help people tell what they will be able to eat and what might be dangerous.<br />
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"It's called a liver for a reason; you don't live without it."<br />
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Pat said her grandmother was Cherokee, and they did a lot of berry and mushroom gathering, particularly morel mushrooms. She said that there are two varieties of katniss, one of which is deadly. You have to watch out for these slight variants in wild species which may make them totally inappropriate for consumption. There are also things like red tides which make foods poisonous. Pat says if a berry is blue or black, it's probably safe; if it's red, it's 50/50, and if it's white, don't eat it under any circumstances.<br />
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Pat considers Coyote Song the first part of a series. The second story is now in edits, but she has at least two more in mind. The first has Cambodian culture, the second has magic with insects, the third has Santeria, and the fourth may have golden Buddha babies.<br />
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This was a great discussion and ranged all over, sometimes too quickly for me to keep up with notes. I recommend that you watch the video for more.<br />
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Pat, thank you for joining us and sharing your amazing expertise! Next week we will meet on Wednesday, May 25th at 10am. I'm checking into the technical issues that scuttled the hangout this week, but planning to be there to talk about Bathrooms. I hope you will join us!<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-40317402947051621512016-05-16T16:35:00.001-07:002016-05-16T16:35:33.548-07:00Seasons - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summaryWe had a great chat about seasons, which in my head came with a secret soundtrack of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. I started by mentioning how when my Australian husband moved to California, I told him that it doesn't rain during the summer, and about how halfway through the summer he said to me, "You meant it <i>doesn't rain</i> in the summer." Coming from his cultural and climate context, he'd thought I meant it doesn't rain <i>much</i> in the summer.<br />
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Che told us she's lived in Montana where they have all four seasons, piles of color-changing leaves in the fall and snow in the winter. When she moved to California, though, she realized there were two: hot, and not hot. Some would of course say that there is the rainy season and the dry season in our are.<br />
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Brian said that you have to be at a temperate 40-50 degree latitude to get four seasons. The equator and the poles have no seasons. At the pole, there might be sun at midnight but it is still cold. Four seasons were not a European invention, but the concept comes from the latitudes that experience it, which means fictional worlds may or may not have seasons in the same way.<br />
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In ancient Egypt, seasons were defined by the floods of the Nile. In the Middle East, seasons were based on what was coming down the river (which implied what season it was in a different place!).<br />
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Seasons are usually based on agricultural expectations and the need to be able to predict those year by year. The Vikings had to make sure they had lots of food stored up because it was impossible to produce any during the winter; they could only eat stored food and fresh fish.<br />
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In Japan, they define four distinct seasons. The seasons are extremely important to the culture of Japan, and have deep literary associations. Personal letters in Japan generally start with some kind of comment on the season. There are also smaller-scale seasons defined by the period of time when some festival is going on, like the Gion festival season in Kyoto.<br />
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Seasons were a problem in Australia because they were reversed by the southern hemisphere location, but people from England still tried to run their agriculture the same way. This did not end well.<br />
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I mentioned my visit to an Australian aboriginal cultural center over Christmas break. One of the things they discussed there was how the local people had organized their seasons. In fact, they recognized six distinct seasons based on what kind of natural phenomena were occurring. There was the season of eels, and the season of bees, etc.<br />
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You really don't have to feel restricted by the standard definitions of the four seasons!<br />
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We also spoke about N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season. In the world in this book, geologic disasters (volcanoes, earthquakes, etc.) happen so frequently that any strange period of disaster caused by the earth is called a "fifth season." The people in this world talk about how many seasons old they are.<br />
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How often do people talk about the seasons? Maybe not at all, or maybe a lot, depending on the significance of the changes of season and how they affect the lives of the characters living in that world. If the season is having a major effect on a character, such as a character who is stumbling through the snow in winter and trying not to die, it's definitely worth mentioning that! On a space station, the idea of season may be entirely irrelevant (unless it affects imports). In my Varin world, the cities are underground, so most people have very little idea of the season; however, the farmers and firefighters and others who work on the surface most definitely have to keep track of the season in order to stay safe.<br />
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If you are inventing new types of animals for your world, it's a really good idea to consider how their lives will interact with the seasons. You may also have something similar to the 17-year-cicada season, or a season of madness or heat for some creature. I mentioned The Madness Season by C.S. Friedman.<br />
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Brian Stableford's Critical Threshold deals with seasons, involving a mating dance of butterflies that has psychoactive effects, and influences human culture on the planet.<br />
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Brian Aldiss' Heliconia Spring, Heliconia Summer, and Heliconia Winter interact differently with seasons, in that the seasons may each last hundreds of years. And who could forget George R.R. Martin and "Winter is coming?"<br />
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If you are maintaining an awareness of your planet as a planet, it's a good idea to know the basics of orbital patterns and axial tilt, as well as spin direction, because those can affect how your seasons work.<br />
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Thank you to everyone who joined us for the discussion! This week, Dive into Worldbuilding will meet one day later than usual, on Thursday, May 19th at 10am Pacific. We will be talking about Bathrooms, so that should be... interesting. I hope you can join us!<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-2797433211032380202016-05-02T06:57:00.003-07:002016-05-02T06:57:41.381-07:00Schedule for this week - Hangout on Thursday!I've had an appointment come up that I can only schedule for Wednesday this week. Therefore, the hangout on Seasons will be moved to Thursday, May 5th at 10am Pacific on Google Hangouts.<br />
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I hope to see you there!<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-48810371123022999422016-04-28T11:27:00.003-07:002016-04-28T11:27:51.288-07:00Randy Henderson and Finn Fancy - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summaryIt was delightful to have Randy Henderson join us to talk about the world of Finn Fancy, despite the technical difficulties we had getting the hangout properly started.<br />
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I asked him about the series, and he told us that there were now two books out: Finn Fancy Necromancy, and the most recent release, Bigfootloose and Finn Fancy Free. The third is with his editor, so that means there's more Finn Fancy to come!<br />
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In our conversations before the hangout, Randy had mentioned that we haven't talked about Urban Fantasy much on Dive into Worldbuilding (which is true), so I asked him to give us a sense of the way he views the genre. He told us that Urban Fantasy has different "flavors." Mythic like the work of Charles deLint, folklorish, noirish like the work of Jim Butcher and Kat Richardson, or paranormal romance.<br />
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His own take on the genre in Finn Fancy isn't particularly urban, though it still falls under "Urban Fantasy." The stories are set in the seaside town of Port Townsend, in contrast with others who use fictionalized cities. Because of this, he says, there are fewer necessary levels of worldbuilding. The "map level" is taken care of, as is the national and cultural level, along with some aspects of gender dynamics and economics. Where you get to put your attention as an author of Urban Fantasy is in the overlay of the magical world and its properties. You explore the aspects of the magical realm, including hierarchies, power structure in magical communities, etc.<br />
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I asked Randy how much research he had done for this series, and he said he'd done very little - but it seems he just feels like it wasn't much compared to other projects he's attempted. He said he'd been writing epic secondary world fantasy, such as one with roman/gaulish culture, but he'd burned out. He started the Finn Fancy series imagining, "me, with magic," and then went from there. Only once it because clear that this was becoming a full book, he says, is when he had to think it through more and shore up the worldbuilding consistency, etc.<br />
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I asked him about his choice to use the 1980's as a featured time period in the book. "The 80's are my jam," he said. "That was the era of my youth." It was also a golden era of science fiction and fantasy movies, and advanced Dungeons and Dragons.<br />
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The way that the era appears in the book is that Finn has been in exile in the fairy realms since 1986, when he was 15 years old. Meanwhile his body has been occupied by a changeling. Unfortunately, when he goes back, the memory transfer that is expected to occur doesn't happen - leaving Finn in a much older body feeling like a 15 year old from the 80's. In a sense, Randy says, this kind of relation between the fairy world and the real world makes a book like this similar to a portal fantasy. Of course, the moment Finn gets back to 2011, he is framed for another crime, and off we go again.<br />
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I asked Randy a question that had been posed in a message by Cliff Winnig. That was to ask Randy about how important family was in the book. Randy said he made a conscious choice to involve family, because he wanted to get away from the "lone grizzled badass" character. He wanted comedic family dysfunction, an ensemble in the style of Arrested Development/ Joss Whedon. That creates lots of potential tension and many storyline possibilities.<br />
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The family is a family of necromancers who run a magical mortuary as the family business. Randy wanted to make sure that the hero could not get out of situations by blasting stuff. Finn's power is talking to the spirits of the dead, but it drains his life force at the same time.<br />
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This was where we discovered a key piece of research Randy had done - which, it turns out, was repurposed from a nonfiction piece on necromancy he'd written for Fantasy magazine. That's the great thing about real-world research: it never stops being useful! Randy also said he was inspired by a book called The Master of Five Magics, which he called a love story to magic systems. Each system has distinct rules, sources, etc.<br />
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In Randy's world, he has the following magic user types:<br />
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Wizards - people who can make fireballs and lightning<br />
Thaumaturges - magical inventors<br />
Sorcerers - makers of mind illusions<br />
Necromancers - people who can speak to the dead, etc.<br />
Alchemists - people who can activate magical properties of things. <br />
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In addition to these human Arcana, he also has Fae, and Faeblood creatures, which are blends of fae plus real creatures. Faeblood creatures include a lot of mythological creatures like centaurs.<br />
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Randy said that when he began Bigfootloose and Finn Fancy Free, he had to go further into explaining everything he'd explored in the first book.<br />
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Book 1: The Fae realm was something he used to explain Finn's exile, while the faeblood creatures were just there to be cool.<br />
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Book 2: Randy had to lay the foundation for this to be a series, and understand the system, the interactions between people, the power economy, etc.<br />
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He says a lot of his insights into how the world worked came from asking "Why would/wouldn't they do this particular magic thing to get out of this situation?"<br />
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He sketched a hierarchy of the faeblood, and defined the fae realm and its different demesnes, which include three different fae types: those focused on wisdom and justice, those focused on cunning and deception, and those focused on the arts.<br />
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Randy told us that after writing Finn Fancy, he binge-read the Dresden Files books so as not to cover the same ground. One thing he caught was the phrase "the Merlin" for a powerful magic user. As he explains, it's not stealing, but coincidence arising from both books having grown from the same influences.<br />
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It's hard to resist the urge to go big with the stakes, Randy says. He wanted to have Finn more concerned with trying to live than saving the world. We discussed how saving the world can feel big and vague if it doesn't also have personal aspects. Randy said this was one of the things that hurt the Star Wars prequels. The original series had personal duels, but the prequels had no personal stakes, just got really flashy and large in scope without creating the emotional connection. He said that when he was going over the books, he'd say to himself, "No, let's not just have a cool battle scene" - he'd go back in the book and establish a precedent for that battle to occur. Backwards plotting like this can be very helpful in revision.<br />
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I asked Randy about the premise of Bigfootloose and Finn Fancy Free. He says it picks up three months after the first book, as Finn goes on adjusting and catching up (slowly) on cultural stuff. By this time, Finn has learned about 1989. To get out of necromancy, Finn joins a dating service, where he encounters a Sasquatch looking for love. This leads him somehow to get mixed up in a faeblood rebellion.<br />
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Randy said it's hard to write a book a year, though it's a great problem to have. The odd thing is that because he has to keep writing, he's entirely in the headspace for the new book by the time he's having to talk with people about the old book coming out! He says he can see how he's grown as a writer through the process. He is able to think ahead better.<br />
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The third book will be called Smells like Finn Spirit (and yes, Finn will have caught up to 1992 in his cultural explorations!). Apparently this book wraps up an arc from books 1 and 2, and will involve Finn saving the world. It has a section in the fae realm.<br />
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Randy says he loves writing this series because it gets him back in touch with the sense of wonder and joy that he always got out of reading science fiction and fantasy. He is really enjoying the worldbuilding he gets to do. He says he thought it would not be as much worldbuilding as epic fantasy, but actually there is plenty to do!<br />
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He urges writers not to write what you think is hot, but to stick to what you love.<br />
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We spoke briefly also about writing short stories. Some people say you should start with them, but that's not necessarily true. You can do different kinds of things with short stories vs. novels. They are easier to finish, and they can help you practice revision etc. in shorter cycles. Randy said he has written a lot of them and they helped him get to the point where he felt safe investing time in novels. The processes are similar but different.<br />
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Randy, thank you so much for joining us! It was a great discussion.<br />
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Next week we'll be meeting on Wednesday, May 4th at 10am Pacific and we'll be talking about Seasons! I hope you can join us.<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-38096660400976957992016-04-19T11:46:00.001-07:002016-04-19T11:46:04.991-07:00Subconscious Worldbuilding - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summaryWhat if you're not worldbuilding?<br />
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Actually, you are - there is no world on a blank page/file until you put words there - and you can't possibly avoid it. Each word comes with a piece of world built into its connotations, its ins and outs. But I have met people who told me they were not worldbuilding for their stories.<br />
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So what happens when you think you are not worldbuilding, but you are anyway?<br />
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You get a glimpse into the subconscious structure of the fictional world inside your brain. Even if you are putting a single alien/fantasy made-up word on a page, it will still come with associations due to sound and due to similarity to existing words. Even then, if you take your awareness and make it conscious, you can start to play with people's expectations. What if you give your hero a horrible name?<br />
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Technology sets are another key issue. When we see a cell phone, we expect a computer. When we see one element that makes us think of a particular historical time period, our subconscious expectations fill in all kinds of other aspects of that time period. If you see the word King, you will tend to think medieval.<br />
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If you don't want readers to go in the expected direction, you have to block them, redirect them, and do it early. You have very little time to depart from the schemata - scenes/sets - that readers bring up before they will start feeling like you have betrayed them and their expectations.<br />
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This is why you often see people picking words carefully. Would you use King? If the situation is a little unexpected, might you use Majesty instead? Or Eminence? Brian mentioned Prince, which has an expected meaning of "king's son," but in fact is a ruling title in its own right in many real-world places. Picking words is really critical, because they bring important implications with them.<br />
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We talked about Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern, which starts out looking quite medieval and then later turns out to be a world colonized by spacefaring humans. Many of us thought this gradual change was well done, but it doesn't work for everyone. People do drop out over a series.<br />
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In terms of climate, Che mentioned that it's very easy to write exactly what you experience.<br />
Brian mentioned the problem Star Wars has with single-biome worlds (very unrealistic!).<br />
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There are also cultural expectations that sneak in, such as the idea that the "north" will be advanced and the tropics less advanced. These are colonial assumptions that we bring with us from our history.<br />
<br />I mentioned that I'd like to see an Inca fantasy. Brian said yes, that they would weave their way out of problems. Ropes and knots were their specialty, and super-sophisticated. He also mentioned floating gardens, and villages in the lakes of Bolivia. They had no plows, no animals they could ride, no enormous beasts of burden, but they were very technologically advanced. <br />
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We also talked about Etruscans, Romans, and Vikings, just to acknowledge that they were pretty advanced in their own ways. Roman concrete remains a mystery to this day because it was a family trade secret. Local materials in a place can vary widely. People indigenous to an area will optimize those materials, but colonists will typically try to import their own ways, even from a very different climate, and can run into problems. What if your home methods don't work?<br />
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One of the things that can enter into worldbuilding when we're not looking is our own history of reading science fiction or fantasy. Our expectations of fictional worlds are set by that which we have previously read. I mentioned how Aliette de Bodard described writing her sf/f in English, and said that it was easier for her because the sf/f she had read had been in English. The reading we do sets patterns in our minds that become easier to tread again.<br />
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Kimberly noted that sometimes no matter how hard we try to keep our worldbuilding conscious and specific, readers can overwrite it with their own preconceptions. We asked, "How do you put in enough?" The answer isn't clear, though, because different people will have a harder or easier time departing from their own schemata.<br />
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You can put evidence for difference into your story in many different ways. You can have outsider characters who are explicit guides to the world and can explain its rules (as with Breq in Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie).<br />
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Another bias that often hides in fiction is racial bias. This topic could be an hour all by itself, but definitely watch out for it.<br />
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The best approach for an author is to try to make deliberate decisions to create expectations, defeat expectations, or re-derive a more standard expectation in a different way. Re-deriving is an interesting thing. Say you'd like to have a seven-day week in your world, with a two-day weekend, but you don't necessarily want to refer back to our world and the Norse (etc.) derivations of the weekday names. You have to find an alternate basis for the same system. Think through food production and when it occurs, and how that would affect the flow of life in your fictional region.<br />
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Brian pointed out that there are times when you can't work on food,
such as during the far northern winters. Often you have a lot of intense
time on followed by a long time off (hoping the food will last!).
Summer vacations in the US are long because children had to be allowed
to participate in the agricultural harvest. We joked about the pyramids
of Egypt, but Brian pointed out that there have been big, fortified
granaries before.<br />
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Brian told us about the origins of
veal crates. They may seem cramped, but they originated in climates
where there was snow, and for long periods, cows couldn't forage. In
Switzerland, he explained, you could only keep the animals by bringing
them inside on the ground floor of your house and feeding them with as
much hay as you've managed to grow during the last season. The cows
would give birth over winter before forage is available, so the calves
live in a cramped, dark place until the weather allows them to go out.<br />
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Pigs are easier to grow than cows under the same conditions, which is why some populations rely more heavily on pig meat.<br />
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This topic is one that tends to lead us into a discussion of ways to depart from the subconscious default, and there are a ton of ways to do that! Thank you to everyone who attended.<br />
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Remember to join us tomorrow (Wednesday, 4/20/16) to talk with author Randy Henderson! I hope to see you there. <br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-72880392058664835412016-04-18T12:26:00.002-07:002016-04-19T11:44:44.472-07:00Food - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summaryFood is a huge topic. There's growing, processing, making, eating, transporting foods. There's TV culture surrounding food; there are eating disorders, and relationships with food. There are meals, and how they are defined. There's also storing and preserving food, and protecting it from vermin.<br />
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Deborah told us about her breakfast, because she'd grown much of it herself. Freezers were mentioned, as ways to control when you can eat the food.<br />
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A lot of our time (a lot!) is dedicated to food, but at different points in history it has even taken more time. Hunting and gathering took lots of time; so did farming and raising animals.<br />
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These days there are some people (adults on their own) who don't know how to cook for themselves, but who rely on the support of others to cook for them, and the support of civilization (restaurants) is pretty critical in that process.<br />
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Cooking for yourself is very different from cooking for others, and often less motivating.<br />
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The financial cost of food is very important. The percentage of one's income that one spends on food may differ depending on where you live.<br />
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We spoke about food deserts, which are urban areas where nothing is available except cans, boxes, and convenience stores. Lack of access to fresh, healthy food can lead to health problems. Recently, we've been seeing some movements toward urban agriculture to combat the problem of food deserts.<br />
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Deborah talked about the farming she and her husband do on 1700 square feet of their property. That much land produces a lot of food in northern California, but might not in another region.<br />
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That brought us to climate, which is a critical aspect of food production and what will become available. We also briefly discussed the challenge of climate change and its impact on food production.<br />
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We then dove into fiction, considering how one would create a world where some people couldn't eat the dominant food crops. How would social relations work if food for one group was poison to another? In our world, there are social traditions like bringing bread to new neighbors, and even in our world, that could be complicated if the new neighbors were gluten-free. In Japan, the tradition is to give soba noodles to your neighbors when you move into an area (because "soba" means nearby). Would food gifts like that be inappropriate? How much awareness of the dietary differences would there be in the larger culture?<br />
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Deborah told us she loves describing food in her books - not just good food, but also horrible food. Both can reveal character, and bad food can even give you a plot twist if people get sick.<br />
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We talked about Dune by Frank Herbert, and specifically about how water was treated. That brought us to the manners surrounding food, and how they might relate to political power.<br />
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If you are dealing with aliens, of course, their food needs may be different. Would snake people only eat every three days? I mentioned my wolflike character, Rulii, and how he eats "scout's strength" (a special meal) before he goes out on a scouting mission, intending not to eat for a few days afterward.<br />
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It may be useful to remember that the composition of meals influences what comes out the other end (and how much!). You can't extricate intake from the subsequent output!<br />
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We spoke about food phases, or taste in food. People with autism sometimes need to have food that is stable, routine, and predictable. The texture of food can be a critical component of whether someone likes it. In general, people have to balance between stable and predictable food routines and any desire for novelty or variety.<br />
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We also mentioned how people talk at the table (or generally while eating). In addition to other topics that may come up, we also tend to talk a lot about food or food behavior. This can mean that if characters in your book sit down to eat but talk exclusively about Plot Business, that the interaction will come off as unrealistic. Think about what opportunities you might have to let people talk about their food as a topic-changing move, or character-building move, etc.<br />
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Mealtime group conversations can be very complex, especially at big family reunion dinners! Does politics get discussed at the table? How personal is it? How does it get connected to the individuals' identity?<br />
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I mentioned a couple of food examples from books I have read. One was the drink "safe" from The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, a drink that no one particularly liked, but which was impossible to poison undetectably. The other was the odd food habits of Presger Translator Zeiat from Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie. She drank fish sauce, and ate whole oysters (shell and all)... and this was a core part of her character.<br />
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If you are served bad food, do you have to eat it? What does the culture demand?<br />
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If you have special dietary requirements, do you bring your own meal when you are a guest somewhere? Or do you demand that the host cook something you can eat? Under what conditions might one of those two solutions be better than the other?<br />
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We also discussed "food surprises," which is when people serve people food without telling them what is in it, and potentially try to trap them into eating something they've said they can't eat. While some people doubt others' professed allergies, it is potentially deadly to feed them the wrong thing and <i>you should never do this</i>. In a fictional situation, you might end up being asked questions like "Did you mean to kill the ambassador?" It could potentially make for an interesting, if awful, plot twist.<br />
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This is such a big topic that we barely scratched the surface, but it was a fun discussion! Thanks to everyone who attended.<br />
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This week's hangout will be on Wednesday, April 20, at 11am Pacific (one hour later than our usual time) on Google Hangouts. We will have a chance to talk to author Randy Henderson about his book, Finn Fancy Necromancy, and about the genre of Urban Fantasy in general. I'm really looking forward to it, and I hope you can join us!<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-60967453645665986632016-04-13T13:34:00.003-07:002016-04-13T13:34:25.911-07:00Worldbuilding under the radar - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summaryThis discussion focused on the kinds of worldbuilding details that might come out automatically without being noticed by a writer. In particular, we talked about critical underpinnings for a world. Measuring distance. Measuring time. Measuring money.<br />
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"What is the name of your money, and why?" we asked. In our own world, gold pieces were not called "gold pieces." There were Crowns, and shillings, and pennies, and Spanish silver, and pieces of eight. There are still nickels. These words have historical origins and such origins are worth thinking through for a secondary world. The Canadian "loonies" and "twonies" were mentioned.<br />
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It's important also to ask, "Why are the nobility rich? Where do they get their money?" Do they own all the land, as is the case in many places, so they are entitled to skim off the proceeds of the use of that land? Where else might their money come from?<br />
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Morgan mentioned that some places have two different currencies. Money considerations have to be practical, because "you can't walk around with everything in pennies." Ask yourself whose face you would put on a coin.<br />
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Other kinds of measurement can also sneak in. How do we measure height? What about weight? What does the choice of measurement say about the world? Science fiction often uses the metric system because it's considered scientific. Fantasy often uses archaic measurements. Do you measure in feet and inches and pounds? How about kilograms, or stone? These measurements vary in our world, and will suggest different things about yours.<br />
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How do you measure temperature? Do you avoid measuring it at all? Do you talk about temperature in Fahrenheit or Celsius, or Kelvin?<br />
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How does time get measured? We talked about days of the week, which have a long history that goes back to Norse gods in some cases. Why would your world have seven days in a week? Would it? Would it have the concept of weekends? Why? I mentioned how I re-derived the week structure for my Varin world, and also re-derived seconds and minutes and hours, so that the world would feel much like ours but have a very different fundamental basis.<br />
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Sometimes you don't need to use precise measurements, but can rely on characters' judgment of things instead. Does the precise height matter? How would the presence or lack of precise measurements affect a reader's impression of the world?<br />
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We talked about how, as a writer, you can rely on the translation effect. If you are using familiar measurements, you can simply say that these measurements are a translation of the measurements that the people of your world normally use. That can be helpful to keep your story comprehensible!<br />
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Often people neglect to think about climate and how it relates to the kind of food that is available for people to eat. Does food have to travel far for your people to eat it?<br />
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What does the transport system look like in this world? If you are moving food by horse, then you will have to find a way to get it to market before it spoils, which limits the range of what you will have access to. There is a long and rich history of food access in our own world that is worth researching. Roman roads had a huge influence.<br />
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We talked briefly about inventing fantasy foods.<br />
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We also discussed the question of "If it's a rabbit, should you call it a rabbit?" How does the creature compare to an animal in our world? Will it be helpful or confusing to use a new term? How do the differences in this creature become relevant to the story, necessitating a special word for it?<br />
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The more alien words you use in a story, the more you will alienate your reader and make them feel distant from the story's narrative. So sometimes you will want to use a rough translation to English to help keep that distance from intruding into the reader's experience. Use of alien words needs to be supported by context.<br />
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Che told us about how sensory differences influenced culture in a story of hers, because werewolf people had something called a "scent conviction" where a person could be placed at the scene of a crime by their scent. This also entailed that there existed people called "scrubbers" who could remove a person's scent from a place.<br />
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This is a huge topic, and in one hour we could just scratch the surface, but we had a very enjoyable talk! I have to get two more report summaries up, one from last week and one from this week, but I do want to let you know that we will have a guest next week!<br />
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Next week, Wednesday, April 20th, 2016, we will be meeting an hour later than usual, at 11am Pacific. Our guest will be author Randy Henderson who will speak with us about Finn Fancy Necromancy and worldbuilding in Urban Fantasy. I'm really looking forward to it, and I hope you can attend!<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-91683215546332043942016-03-30T09:42:00.001-07:002016-03-30T09:42:42.760-07:00Fábio Fernandes - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summaryIt was fabulous to talk to Fábio Fernandes, who joined us all the way from Saõ Paulo, Brazil, by the magic of modern technology! He kindly taught us how to pronounce the name of his city, so definitely check out the video for that, if you've been curious.<br />
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Fábio is very active in science fiction. He started by telling us of his editing work with Future Fire Magazine and with the Postcolonialist anthology We See a Different Frontier. He's been working trying to increase the visibility of new science fiction authors from other countries, and spoke highly of Lavie Tidhar and Aliette de Bodard. He also attended Clarion West. His work has appeared in <a href="http://www.perihelionsf.com/1512/fiction_2.htm" target="_blank">Perihelion SF</a> and other venues. <br />
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He has been writing in English for the last 10 years, but in Portuguese for the last 30 years! He wants to show the English language audience that there is more out there, and more in the world. He's been in anthologies since 1996, and in 2000 published a short story collection, and in 2009 his first novel. Four years ago, he says, he stopped writing in Portuguese.<br />
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He says writing in two or more languages "calls you to do a rewiring in your mind."<br />
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He says that in Portuguese, science fictional subjects get treated differently. In Brazil, there is not so much hard SF. He enjoys the work of Alastair Reynolds and Kim Stanley Robinson. He says, "you check what is being written now in English to keep up." Brazil is very strong in Urban Fantasy, not Magic Realism as he finds many people often expect. 95% of the market there is only in Portuguese.<br />
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He works in a hard science fiction world, set about 2000 years in the far future. Many of his stories are parallel in this same universe, and he is working on a novel called Obliterati. He explores the world and problem-solves through telling stories. Humankind in his universe once colonized several stars, but then an invisible enemy appeared and destroyed most planets. The stories occur about 20 years after this destruction, when humans are living inside asteroids, in miners' communities and outposts.<br />
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Humanity has no organized military forces in this universe, because he says you don't take these things for granted. There are researchers and scientists trying to make a living. The humans were not anticipating aliens. Humans found they needed a surveillance mechanism, so they created cyborgs called "kinocchio." The word comes from "kino," movie, and "occhio," eye, in Italian. The cyborgs move among humans, recording events, solving disputes and problem-solving without a military. They serve as arbiters, and are featured in the story <a href="http://www.perihelionsf.com/1512/fiction_2.htm" target="_blank">Mycelium</a>. Their alien enemy is attracted to, and traces them via electronics, so they develop biotech instead, a form of fungally-transmitted telepathy.<br />
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He told us about a story called "Nine Paths to Destruction" which is the last in the series and told from the first-person point of view of a Buddhist monk.<br />
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The human population in his universe comes largely from Southeast Asia, India, Brazil, and Africa. He asks, "How can they thrive in space?" and tries to build things in without being "fanatic about them." This includes religion. He told us about a character named Jorgenson, the first transwoman to be Pope. She comes to this position because she is trying to revive the Catholic church in space after its destruction, giving people a way to survive spiritually as well as physically.<br />
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Fábio says, "I'm trying to create a universe where people can be the most human they want to be." He doesn't want to see any more Captain Kirk figures in science fiction. He told us that he really likes The Expanse and had to be careful not to overlap with it.<br />
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We also spoke about language. Fábio says, "I'm also a language geek," which of course made me smile! He's studied Latin, Greek, and Japanese, and likes to read books in other languages including Italian, French, and German.<br />
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In his Obliterati universe, he wanted an organic evolution of language. He looked at languages like Catalán and the Caribbean Papiamentu for inspiration. Catalán, he says, is like a mix of new Romance languages and old Latin. He is planning to go to Barcelona in November to learn more of the language, which has fascinated him since he was a teen. He told us Papiamentu came from Curaçao and Suriname, the former Dutch colonies in the Caribbean. It uses a mix of Portuguese and Spanish sounds. To him it sounds like "Papu"= "chat" plus "-mento"= formal, making it a sort of "formal chat." He says it is so close to his native language that it is hard to speak. This makes sense, because it's easy when two languages are so similar to slip back into an earlier learned pattern.<br />
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He is creating a language for the Obliterati universe that combines a lot of different Earth languages including indigenous ones. One language he's mixing in is Yoruba, because a number of Yoruba speakers went to Brazil, and lots of words from that language got mixed in locally. The language he's creating is called "Mistureba," a Brazilian Portuguese for "a mixup of things" that he said wouldn't be comprehended in Portugal.<br />
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He told us that he got along fine linguistically when he visited Portugal. Apparently the Brazilian telenovela shows are popular enough there that people have started comprehending more words from Brazilian Portuguese!<br />
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I spoke briefly about pidgin and creole languages for reference, since the languages he's working with here are creole languages. A pidgin is a collection of words that becomes the lingua franca in a place where a lot of different people come together speaking mutually unintelligible languages. They gradually come to a tacit agreement about which words are most useful and comprehensible to all, and use those, but it doesn't have a strong grammatical structure. A creole language develops when a second generation is born to a group speaking a pidgin language. The children learn the pidgin natively, and their natural language systems create a more fully realized grammar for the language, turning it into a creole.<br />
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Fábio remarked that in TV and literature colony planets seem always to have everyone speaking the same language. If you are working with non-English languages, it becomes a conundrum for you to write a story for the benefit of the reader, because you have to write it in English.<br />
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He says he is amazed that people can handle orcs and elves but not blacks or female protagonists. It's a similar problem with languages. People can speak many languages - hundreds, in fact.<br />
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He told us he really liked Jack Vance's The Languages of Pao, and also Dune by Frank Herbert for how they worked with language.<br />
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He wants to provide this new language, Mistureba, through hints in his stories. Some characters in the novel, Obliterati, speak only Mistureba.<br />
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This was a fascinating discussion and ended too soon! I hope you will take advantage and check out the video.<br />
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Fábio, thank you so much for joining us! I'm really glad our technology allowed us to connect successfully. Today we meet at 10am Pacific to discuss Worldbuilding Under the Radar. I hope to see many of you there!<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-82289584037542537162016-03-21T14:20:00.003-07:002016-03-21T14:20:55.881-07:00Social Media - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summaryOur first observation at this hangout was that we were using a social medium! Also, that the pluralization of "medium"/"media" was getting iffy with language change and we were liable not to be utterly strict in its usage. We spent a bit of time talking about how to define a social medium. Parameters can differ, and our modern technological definition of social media is not the only usable one.<br />
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We listed a few modern technological social media, like Facebook, Google+, Twitter... Morgan also suggested Livejournal. We asked ourselves if blogs could be considered social media. They do allow for comment and response, but are not as active as the ones that constituted our core group.<br />
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Social media allow for instantaneous communication over distances, but also allow for an audience that is far larger than a single person. I characterized Twitter as being like "a cocktail party the size of the entire world."<br />
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Social media in our modern sense generally allow for both mass and individual communication.<br />
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Historically, what were the roots of social media? We talk about letter-writing, which could be a very swift method in the era when a community had both morning and afternoon post. However, the post has changed drastically since that time depending on location.<br />
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What kind of message you send depends on the properties of the medium. And that generally means language.<br />
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Morgan mentioned how social media provide a mask for people, which leads to both good and bad outcomes as masking can.<br />
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What gets communicated over social media will depend on the speed and the size of the message. The Storify service grew out of Twitter restrictions.<br />
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Twitter's length restrictions also influence speech and written language. The acronyms and abbreviated spellings are a natural response to a 140 character limit. Also, any service which provides a thumbnail image of the sender (and most do) is likely to promote subject-dropping in English, which normally requires sentences to have subjects.<br />
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We often see types of code coming out of social media. Hashtags are an example of a very effective type of code that has a special function.<br />
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We also talked about tweeted novel queries, and how horrid it would try to be to get a novel description down to 140 characters. The elevator pitch is bad enough! Query letters are also challenging because of their length requirements relative to the totality of a book.<br />
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Che brought up the important point of how social media change what we make public. What is "public"? Are your Facebook friends all "friends"? This kind of language use actually leads to a change in the meanings of words. Privacy is a huge issue. Social media act like a sort of public lottery, where you can't necessarily tell what is going to pop out and become known by all. What goes viral? Some people think they know, but you can't always tell. Another privacy question comes up with parents who share information about their children on social media. They might accidentally contribute to doxxing of their children.<br />
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Companies who host online support groups or chat groups can decide suddenly to make ostensibly private information public.<br />
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The historical root of social media argumentation would appear to be serial editorializing arguments in newspapers.<br />
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It's also important to keep in mind the pitfalls of a written medium that preserves people's contributions. As it is often said, "the internet is forever."<br />
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Accessibility is a potentially big problem with social media. It's easy to assume that everyone has access to it, but in fact both distance and finances can contribute to a lack of accessibility. The "room" doesn't contain everyone, and we shouldn't assume that it does.<br />
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We talked a bit about the language difference between Facebook and Twitter, and why I personally find Twitter interaction so exhausting. It has a lot to do with conducting multiple conversations at once.<br />
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In cyberpunk, the online realm or the computer realm are often portrayed as worlds with their own internal landscape. Che said she wants to see science fictional captains tweeting things like "OMG planet!" In fiction, people often send messages instantly. There are also cases of hive minds, or unified minds like the ship minds in Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice. We don't often see people in science fiction sending cat videos, however!<br />
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It's important to remember that not all of our linguistic interaction is message-sending. A lot of it is affective politeness speech that helps to maintain relationships, and cat videos etc. on social media are a lot like the affective politeness of that medium.<br />
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Finally, reach and involvement are key factors. Part of the reason it's hard for new social media to succeed is that they have to have an overwhelmingly strong reason why people will want to use them. One of the major properties that gives success to a social medium is the sheer number of people able to participate in it.<br />
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As is true with many of our discussions, I felt like we barely scratched the surface with this one. Again, this week's hangout will occur on Thursday, March 24 and we will be speaking with author Fábio Fernandes. I hope you can join us!<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-36689066118749386902016-03-21T10:12:00.001-07:002016-03-21T10:12:15.787-07:00Roles in Government - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summaryWe've spoken about government before at Dive into Worldbuilding, but this week we decided to talk a bit about what kind of roles you can find in government - in other words, what kind of people work there. Whenever you're designing a government, knowing what its structure is is pretty important, but then again, so is knowing who makes it work.<br />
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How are laws made? How are people chosen? Where are the forces that might cause corruption?<br />
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The go-to form of government for a lot of epic fantasy is the monarchy. In this case, you are usually working with a hereditary monarch. It's important to understand what kind of rules define who is next in line for the throne, and how people might be able to influence succession. It would also be good to know what exactly the monarch controls (and what their resources are).<br />
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Who are the monarch's representatives? Does anyone complement or counteract the monarch's role?<br />
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Research on real monarchies is obviously a great way to get ideas that aren't totally generic.<br />
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Single powerful rulers, like dictators, are easy. Not easy, but less complicated to manage than large governmental systems. You still need to figure out what their enforcement strategies are, though. Who are the enforcers? How are they controlled? Why do they follow the monarch? What constitutes the rule of law in your system? What are the consequences of changing the monarch?<br />
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Then there is the question of staff. Bureaucrats are part of many government systems, and deserve to be explored. What are taxes, and how are they collected? Is it just sending your buddy out with a club and a sack to canvas the town? We mentioned the Tudors, and how Cromwell was bureaucrat #1. People in the system can skim off money, so no one should have both the books and the key to the treasury. How do you make people pay?<br />
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I mentioned Yes, Minister, because it clearly showed (and made jokes about) the elected officials, the appointed officials, and the staff. A person who has been around long-term can have considerable power just by virtue of the fact that they are not constantly having to re-learn their job. That person becomes the arbiter of "this is how things are."<br />
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When we look at a congress, they too come with staff and interns. If you have elections, who is running the elections?<br />
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I mentioned my Varin government system, because it is a mixed system with a seeming monarch who is in fact elected by a small group of fifteen people out of a pool of twelve candidates. The biggest trick if you have a complex system of government, and a complex system of succession, is to keep readers' focus on the story. The government structure can't be what the story is about! It's easy to get distracted by structure, but you have to keep the focus on people. Who are the people involved, and how are they hurt or helped by the structure, and by the events?<br />
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My discussants recommended House of Cards on Netflix.<br />
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I mentioned the Iroquois system, which is definitely worth looking into and which had significant influence on our own system of government. One unusual feature of it is that women picked the representatives for each tribal group.<br />
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Scale changes a lot of things. Small population, or small population of the government itself, means that there is more influence for individuals.<br />
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No matter what structure you choose, ask yourself, "What are the points of influence?" Sometimes you find things like a culture of ratting out neighbors for favor from the powerful.<br />
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Is there a secret police body where no one knows who is actually a member (as in Perdido Street Station)?<br />
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Are there fake or puppet elections?<br />
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Is the government run by a person, or by an AI?<br />
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The belief that government will function as advertised is very important. When lack of confidence intensifies, you tend to get revolutions. If you are going to have elections, you have to have confidence in the results of that election.<br />
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It's important to note that government can be very reliable for privileged groups, and very inconsistent or even actively harmful to marginalized groups.<br />
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Politics tends to favor the top, and to favor the government players.<br />
<br />Thanks as always to my wonderful discussants. This week's hangout will be on Google Hangouts on Thursday, March 24th at 10am. We will talk with author Fábio Fernandes and learn about his work. I hope you can make it!<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-79333239335363034432016-03-11T13:15:00.002-08:002016-03-11T13:15:35.935-08:00Kelly Robson and Waters of Versailles - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summary (with spoilers!)It was great to talk to author Kelly Robson, and to share her excitement about her Nebula nomination for <a href="http://www.tor.com/2015/06/10/waters-of-versailles-kelly-robson/" target="_blank">Waters of Versailles</a>. At 18,600 words, the piece qualifies as a novella (for anyone thinking about the Hugos). She told us she'd been hoping it would be shorter, because novellas are so hard to sell. It bounced at a couple of venues before Tor.com acquired it through a personal connection.<br />
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I asked her what the original kernel of the story had been. She told us that she'd been inspired by reading historical nonfiction for fun - specifically a book called The Sun King by Nancy Mitford. She followed that book up with the book Versailles by Tony Spaworth, which she described as less "juicy."<br />
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In these readings, she became fascinated by the water system of Versailles, which featured flush toilets in the year 1738. She said that thousands of people were living there, and this led to much squalor; water distribution was "a huge problem."<br />
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This interest of hers combined with her experience writing a wine column for Châtelaine magazine, where she learned the language of people passionate about wine and fine living - she says there's a bit of that in the story as well.<br />
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The main character, Sylvain, is a manly man from the southern Alps. He wants to be in Versailles to take power for himself, but can't respect the shallow, lazy people. In reading the story, I felt there was a sense of tension between the power of the rich aristocracy and the power of his home, which includes the power of nature as embodied in the nixie who appears in the story.<br />
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The historical context of the story, Kelly told us, was that Louis XV has returned to Versailles, which is not in good condition. Sylvain when he arrives takes the waterworks for his own by bringing a nixie from the glacial pools of the Alps, and getting her to force the water to flow. The nixie is a child - bored, mischeivous, and not wanting to do what she's told. Kelly told us that once she watched a two-year-old for 36 hours and it was utterly exhausting!<br />
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Sylvain puts a lot of energy into being a courtier, maintaining his social standing, and appearing where he needs to be (like attending the king's waking, keeping lovers, etc.). He also works to put pipes in to expand the plumbing, which runs from cisterns on the roof down to the toilets. The first toilet goes to the king, then one to his mistress, etc. Everyone wants them. Kelly chose to refer to these toilets as "thrones," a delightfully impudent word choice. Sylvain has to deal with the fact that the king's cat has taken over his "throne," and he needs a new one; also that the bored nixie keeps targeting him with drips.<br />
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We spoke about the sex scene that opens the story. A fun way to approach a sex scene, Kelly says, is to have something else going on. In Sylvain's case, this something else is getting away from the drips. I personally considered this opening scene to be something of a metaphor for his whole problem, as it concerns Sylvain's difficulty getting into privileged spaces while maintaining his plumbing!<br />
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Kelly told us about some advice she received at Orycon 2012 from the estimable Steven Barnes. He said when you get a story idea, you usually get either a character or a problem. If you get the problem first, you should ask, "Who is the absolute worst person to give this problem to?" And if you get a character first, then ask, "What is the worst thing that can happen to this person, and how can I make him do it to himself?" According to Kelly, it was this advice that really changed the story and made everything about it work. It was also something that changed her writing generally. She says she now also puts quite a bit of work into scene craft, so every scene has its own hook, and conclusion, and she considers what the scene's role is in the story.<br />
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I asked her about the story's title, and she told me "the title was always there." So was the story arc. She knew about the beginning and the end, and a few points in between.<br />
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Louis XV, the king in the story, "had mistresses up the wazoo," so Kelly took advantage of this to add complication to the story. The way that the king maintains his relationships - all of which are tainted by power - disgusts Sylvain. Sylvain himself maintains a relationship with a lady-in-waiting named Annette, which starts as shallow but becomes a bit deeper. Kelly thinks it's unusual in that the two of them don't end up in a romantic relationship. The father-child relationship is more important in this particular story.<br />
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I asked Kelly about her choice of the Alps for Sylvain's origin, and she explained that she is from Jasper, near Jasper Park in Alberta, Canada, and loves the mountains. Her love informs Sylvain's yearnings.<br />
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Kelly would like to write more in this world. She is planning a novella about Annette. This is a world where magical creatures are known to exist, and people believe in human-animal hybrids. The nixie is part salamander and part human, and it's hinted that the king's lineage is not 100% human.<br />
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She told us that she made up the songs that Sylvain sings in the story. This brought us to the interesting question of how an author builds and maintains trust with the reader. The use of specific real details forms a strong foundation that is really important in speculative fiction, where readers are asked to believe many totally made-up things.<br />
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Kelly also mentioned the workshop Taos Toolbox and recommended it highly. As she said about writing, "It's a solitary pursuit, but you can't be solitary all the time."<br />
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Kelly, thank you so much for joining us, and good luck at the Nebulas! Next week, Dive into Worldbuilding will meet on Wednesday, March 16th at 10am Pacific, and we will take up the topic we had to cancel a week ago, Social Media. I hope you can join us!<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-64283622408898675902016-02-24T09:45:00.001-08:002016-02-28T20:30:39.299-08:00Andrea Stewart - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summaryWe were joined for this hangout by author Andrea Stewart, who told us a bit about her worldbuilding and her work. Her work has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, IGMS, and Galaxy's Edge.<br />
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We started by talking about a piece she had in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Set in a psudo-Chinese culture, it featured an opium den with magical smoke, in a place where the land surrounding the city was dying and this had become the people's escape. Very cool story! Andrea explained that her mom is a Chinese immigrant, so half her family is Chinese. One of the key differences, she says, is in conversational interaction style.<br />
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I asked her about her series, the Changeling Wars. She told me that it had begun as a writing exercise, where every person in a group picks a word, and then each member has to write a piece that uses all the words chosen by the group. She describes this series as being part of a move from dark fantasy to a bit lighter fantasy. The first book begins when a woman walks in on her cheating husband, and her emotion is so powerful in that moment that it awakens magic in her. It turns out she's a changeling, and not just adopted, as she believed.<br />
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Andrea has very warm words for writing exercises, which she says can spark ideas you might not otherwise come up with.<br />
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Changeling Wars is a portal fantasy involving the Fae. There are twelve families jostling for power among the fae, and the main character, Nicole, is a changeling who can open and close doors between the worlds. Her power can't be canceled out. Everyone therefore is trying to kill her because she upsets the power balance between the families. It's in first person point of view, and starts out as an urban fantasy. Nicole is very "type A," practical, and wants to work for a promotion, not suddenly to have magic! The story is set in Portland.<br />
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Andrea told us that to research for the story she traveled to Portland and took pictures and notes. In fact, she had started writing the book before she took the trip, and her experience there really changed how the story came out. She said she liked Portland's reputation, but found when she got there that some car chase scenes she'd written wouldn't work. She had begun some research on YouTube, but that medium has limitations despite the amount of video that people post. Andrea says that Google Street View is excellent, but only gives you one time of day, and can't give you smells, sounds, or changes of light. She did her visits between draft 1 and draft 2 of her first novel.<br />
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She says, "I want to set a fight scene in the Japanese Garden sometime."<br />
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She also did research on the fairy world, by going to the library and looking at folklore. It's influenced by Scottish folklore, but nonetheless, a lot of the book's twist on the fae is uniquely her own. She says she has outlined five books for the series, but imagines it could be as many as six to ten.<br />
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She told us a bit about the protagonist's life. She is coming to terms with her cheating husband, and wondering whether she still wants her marriage. She also comes to feel that she does not belong in either the Fae world or the real world. Nicole is half Chinese and half Scottish. Andrea makes use of the idea of third culture people, who come from a place where they don't quite belong in any of the cultures that enter into their makeup. She asks questions about what makes a family as Nicole works on finding her role between the two worlds. In Book 3, Nicole has to learn about aspects of fae culture, including politeness rules, that everyone expects her to know.<br />
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Andrea said she had fun with the clothes in the book, and the difference between mortal clothes and shimmery moving dresses influenced by medieval fantasy.<br />
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She says that science fiction and fantasy go together, and that there is not a clear border between them, especially since science fiction and science are part of our world.<br />
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She wanted to keep the magic consistent. People have specializations, like magical travel or quicker swordplay, or changing the shape of objects. They can set wards. There is also ice and fire elemental magic. These are all powered by emotion. It's therefore possible to get burnt out emotionally and not be able to work magic. People have different recovery rates. Pschology enters into her decisions on this.<br />
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I asked Andrea whether she had a "story bible" and she said "I have a few of them." On e for magic and how it works, one for the properties of the world, and another for the different families, locations, characters, and relationships. She says she works in Word.<br />
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We also talked a bit about her work in progress, which she read from at WorldCon. She had written the book, and then split it into two books and sent it out. The book's title is still in flux, but it features two coutries, the last two standing against an army of conquering nonhumans. The technology level is Renaissance. It has dragons! But not in the way you might expect, Andrea explains. She describes the book as Breaking Bad meets The Other Boleyn Girl, with dragons. The protagonist must ask how far she's willing to go to save her country, and whether she's willing to enslave the dragons. It features themes of tribalism.<br />
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Andrea says she is still revising to make the split between the two books work - separating the arcs, and making sure book 1 has a resolution, while still leaving things open for the second book. I said that splitting a book like that gives you room to take your time, and she agreed that there was more space to go into emotional implications that can't be skipped. "That's how your reader connects to your character," she says. "How are people going to care?"<br />
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The split version has room for travel to enemy lands, and to explore the reasons why people fight. It also has more room for internal politics, conflict over decisions, and exploration of consequences like refugee populations.<br />
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Thank you so much for joining us, Andrea! It was great fun to hear about what you are working on.<br /> Here is the video of our discussion:<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-29568320349464387342016-02-05T17:01:00.004-08:002016-02-05T17:01:58.318-08:00Culture Shock: A Dive into Worldbuilding Hangout SummaryWhen we started our discussion on Culture Shock, I pointed out that I wanted to look at various kinds of culture shock - not just that experienced by travelers, but also that which can happen in the workplace, or in marriages between families, etc. As it turned out, the discussion went to some interesting places but didn't quite cover all of the things I'd been thinking of. We'll have to come back to it again!<br />
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I spoke about the culture shock I experienced during my first visit to Japan, when I was living with a host family who would tell me to do and say things but not explain why. I had to bathe at particular times, and say "osaki deshita" when I came out. It took me some time and independent research to figure out what exactly was going on! Unfortunately, one of the things I learned was that this particular host family had been trying to take advantage of my presence to make money. The reason it took me so long to realize this was actually culture shock - I was just assuming that any discomfort I suffered (as when I was not allowed to heat my room against the cold) was due to my lack of understanding of cultural details.<br />
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Cliff told us a story about a coworker, a woman from a traditional Muslim community where men aren't permitted to touch women who are not close family members. She became very upset when a coworker tapped her on the shoulder. This was problematic because she had kept her expectations for touch behavior unstated, and they didn't match the culture of this Silicon Valley company.<br />
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We talked a bit about social casual touching, which (along with personal space) often has complex rules and boundaries that are extremely firm and can be very upsetting to people - but differ widely across cultural communities. Sometimes the rules are religious and sometimes they are more widespread across the culture.<br />
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Cliff told us about a situation from his work in progress, where arthropods have difficulty interacting with a human merchant when the research the human has done is insufficient and the negotiation goes wrong. The arthropods have very strong rules about communal vs. individual behavior, and again, there is unfortunate boundary-crossing.<br />
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I mentioned that very often in science fiction - and certainly there are a great number of salient examples from Star Trek - the aliens' motives and requirements are made light of or considered quaint or funny. I believe that to be a common error in the way these things are treated, because cultural differences can have life or death consequences.<br />
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Politeness can be a big problem because the base assumption is usually that "if you're not polite, you're being intentionally offensive." The consequences of rudeness or even cultural awkwardness can be serious and long-lasting.<br />
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Morgan told us about the Ukandir people in her work in progress, where keeping track of bloodines is really important, and a person who has not done this is treated as shocking and becomes ashamed of not knowing.<br />
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I mentioned that in our world, bloodlines and the policing of them are incredibly important to people's life outcomes, as with the "one drop rule" to determine whether a child is considered a member of the white or black communities. In this case, it has long been a life or death matter.<br />
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Culture is strange, because it is arbitrary on many levels, yet real in its structures and consequences.<br />
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Cliff returned to the idea of making light of alien cultures, and pointed out that (especially early) Star Trek was based in many ways on the idea of American exceptionalism, where it suggests that the crew has the best point of view and other cultures are based on something not valuable. In other ways, though, it uses its aliens to reflect aspects of our own culture metaphorically. It can get people to look at their culture from the outside.<br />
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I spoke a bit about my story, The Liars (Analog May 2012). It featured a cultural system that had many problematic aspects, but the worst problem arose when that system was pressured by human action, which made the problematic parts worse. In the end the humans could only remove themselves to try to make things better.<br />
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We also talked about unexpected consequences of historical decisions. China's one child policy has led to an overpopulation of men, and stigmatization of second children. It has also led to loss of vocabulary for complex kin relationships.<br />
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We agreed that there could be cross-generational culture shock, because older people are often offended by younger people's language. Glenda remarked that "long-haired music" before the 1960s referred to classical music, and Morgan noted that "golden oldies" are defined differently by different generations.<br />
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The idea of culture shock is a really great tool for authors working in speculative worlds. Much of science fiction depends on creating culture shock in the reader. A point of view character who is a stranger to their environment is a terrific tool, also. This has been used in many stories, including Shogun. A stranger gives you the opportunity to explain the rules in naturalistic settings. If there are no real outsiders, you can still have characters come from different cultures or subcultures within the story. A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar does this very well, as do many historical novels. Jane Austen immerses you in a culturally distinct world. Ursula K. LeGuin also uses the technique of using a contrast of cultures, neither of which is like our own.<br />
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Without outsiders, portraying a culture effectively is much harder. This is especially true for short stories, where there is less time to let people learn the alien culture.<br />
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Morgan told us how her shapeshifters were more tolerant of nudity before and after shifting than the non-shifter population.<br />
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Cliff and I talked briefly about how there is culture shock between parents (especially new parents) and non-parents.<br />
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We really enjoyed the discussion and plan to take it up again.<br />
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Next week, Wednesday, February 10 at 10am Pacific, we'll be joined by author Andrea Stewart, who will tell us about her work. I hope you can come!<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-27057948005631890072016-01-29T12:09:00.002-08:002016-01-29T12:09:33.299-08:00Inheritance - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summaryInheritance is a surprisingly rich topic in worldbuilding and storytelling. The plot of King Lear depends on it, as do all those stories about the third son going off to seek his fortune, and all the ones about dynastic struggles and lines of succession.<br />
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You can inherit property, titles, land, and so much more.<br />
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It's hard to talk about inheritance, at least of titles, without involving issues of gender. The British crown recently changed its rules to include girls more directly in the succession, but when Queen Elizabeth took the throne, it was because there were so few boys in her generation of the royal family. There have been similar issues with the Japanese Imperial family, where the Crown Prince and his wife have had a daughter, and she is their only child.<br />
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Empires and crowns often have issues with trying to prove an unbroken line of succession, due to the idea of the divine right of kings and emperors. The Imperial Household Agency of Japan is known to have forbidden archaeological research because of its interest in preserving the image of an unbroken line stretching back to the sun goddess Amaterasu.<br />
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Glenda pointed out that gender is critical to the idea of patrilineal vs. matrilineal inheritance. Morgan noted that in orthodox and conservative Jewish populations, one's identity as a Jew is inherited matrilineally.<br />
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In an agrarian society where there is a benefit to having many kids to work a farm, there is a natural problem that arises when you talk about inheriting the land, because land can only be divided so many times.<br />
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Morgan brought up property and monetary assets. Assets that have named beneficiaries are relatively straightforward. If there's a will, these will be distributed according to the will. But what constitutes a will? What if there is no will? Will money be distributed by the state, and how? Will the State eventually inherit the money if there are no living heirs?<br />
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Morgan told us how she had worked through the inheritance rules of her secondary world. Kenehar has a system most like us. If you are a business owner and you die, the partner will inherit the business. However, Kenehar has been invaded by the Ukandir, who work based on houses. The title of Head of House is inherited by bloodline, but the Head doesn't own the house's assets, and property belongs to the House. Imposition of the Ukandir laws over the Kenehar system lead to complications. Morgan told us that people who leave the Ukandir houses and make money from outside jobs can still have their assets appropriated by the house if they die. Disinheriting someone from a house meas that you never existed as part of it.<br />
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I spoke briefly about inheritance questions regarding the throne of Varin, my own secondary world. In Varin there is no blood line, but the Heir is selected by successive votes of a fifteen-member Cabinet between candidates put forward by each of the Great Families.<br />
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How does an unfit ruler become ruler? By blood inheritance? Or by some other method?<br />
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People often compete for an inheritance. Lots of movies have that as part of their premise. The Aristocats is one of those; Who Framed Roger Rabbit? another; All of Me yet another.<br />
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The role of Executor is crucial. Is that person named in the will? Someone needs to be in charge of distribution. Sometimes people can show up with false wills, or less-than-recent ones. How can you tell which one is valid? Must there be witnesses to a will, or a notary? Think about what happens if there is no legal will. What happens if there is a letter but it's unsigned?<br />
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In the Mystery genre you see a lot about inheritance and wills. Another question that comes up is the rights of the caretaker. What benefit, if any, accrues to the person who took care of the deceased through their last illness? Did the deceased recognize that person and their efforts or not?<br />
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The will of the deceased is not necessarily just. The will may have conditions intended to influence the behavior of heirs from beyond the grave, such as requiring a relationship with the guardian of the assets in order to maintain access to them.<br />
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There was a Twilight Zone episode where anyone who wanted to inherit part of a considerable fortune had to wear a mask for 24 hours, and that mask was a hideous reflection of their inner character. Over the 24 hours their face became molded to the mask so it was permanently that way. Conveniently for the story, the deceased was right about the character of the heirs, but what if he hadn't been?<br />
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We also mentioned Trusts, which make for a delay in inheritance.<br />
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Regents can get in all sorts of trouble! Look at what the Steward of Gondor did: the position became a hereditary rulership because the kings had disappeared, but there were big problems when the kings returned. This thought made me ask, "What if the regent or steward is good and the heir is bad?" What if you wanted to get rid of the heir in order to protect the kingdom, but your ethics couldn't let you kill them? Could you send them away? Could you groom a different heir to be a good person?<br />
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Some interesting issues came up right at the end, such as the relationship between the ruler and the culture of a kingdom, and whether the culture would sustain itself if the hereditary succession of the ruler was broken.<br />
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We also spoke about cases where Native American people object to scientists studying the remains of their people and what their legal rights are when they are not necessarily directly related to the deceased.<br />
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We also asked whether cultural heritage could be a form of inheritance.<br />
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By the end of our discussion, we wanted to make sure to talk about this topic again!<br />
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Next week we'll meet at 10am on Wednesday, February 3rd to discuss Culture Shock. What happens when you move into a new culture, or convert to a spouse's or other new religion? I hope you can join us!<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-21306587184546162122016-01-15T23:08:00.003-08:002016-01-15T23:08:55.093-08:00Isabel Yap - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summaryThis week we had author Isabel Yap join us! After reading two of her stories, Milagroso at Tor.com and The Oiran's Song at Uncanny Magazine, I was quite surprised by a comment that she'd made to me when we spoke privately about her worldbuilding. So I started by asking her how she defined worldbuilding, and wasn't surprised when she said that she thought mainly about secondary worlds. She noted that worldbuilding panels at conventions very often feature secondary worlds. She describes herself as comfortable with contemporary fantasy, using a modern setting with a few changes. She has tried to come up with new worlds.<br />
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I explained the definition of worldbuilding that I use in my hangout series, that worldbuilding has to do with the creation of a world on a blank page. She said she appreciated the more expansive definition. She likes to go about presenting our world in a different way.<br />
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She told us that she has a background in fan fiction. The fun part there is that you get to use canon. Other people have done the heavy lifting of creating the world, she says, and thus words and character names evoke a whole lot. Working in original fiction, the task is different. "They are coming to my world completely cold," she says. "How can I get them to care?"<br />
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With fan fiction there is a kind of co-creation between the fan and the work. Isabel likes to ask "what ifs" about a story, and do character sketches and backstories, etc., for example: what would happen 10 years after the Hunger Games? She always asks herself if this would make sense in the context of canon.<br />
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She says even during this time she was always writing original stories, too. She notes that as a reader growing up, you don't see much short fiction. She says she wasn't aware that such things get published, and wasn't conscious of any need to publish them. She remarks that in short fiction, every sentence really matters.<br />
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Isabel told us that she wrote "Milagroso" during her stint at Clarion in 2013. In week 1 she'd written a story about two hackers traveling around the world, but had received feedback that there was no sense of setting in it. She decided, "I'm going to show my class that I can write setting." That, she says, was the first driving factor behind the story, while the second was instructor Nalo Hopkinson. Isabel told us, "I wanted to write a very Filipino story." This was important, she says, because she grew up with the perception that "no one will really get it if I write about my life." However, Nalo made her feel safe because they were both writers of color.<br />
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She described the research she did for the story, which features a festival she hadn't attended herself, but which several of her friends had attended. She spoke to high school friends and watched YouTube videos about the festival in general and about how to make kiping, which features prominently. She was very happy when the story was well received by her classmates. She describes the setting as almost like a magical setting, but taking place in a near future which is very like the present.<br />
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Glenda asked if it mattered whether the description featured things that were "real" or not. Isabel responded by describing the difference between the reactions of Filipinos to the story vs. non-Filipinos. She said that the Filipinos were more likely to say "I know exactly what you're talking about," while non-Filipinos unfamiliar with the festival were more likely to remark on the emotional impressions of the description. Isabel said she was thrilled when her sister really "got" the story.<br />
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The second story we discussed was The Oiran's Song. Isabel told us that it also involved a lot of research because it is historical fiction, even though its not set at a specific historical period. She had always wanted to write about a soldier and a courtesan, but the story didn't really start coming together until she learned about the difference between an oiran (whose duties include sexual ones) and a geisha (more of an entertainer). Studying the history of the role of the oiran helped her pick the approximate historical period, and she then had to decide roughly which war she was depicting. She read a whole book on the Floating World (the world of artists and courtesans in Japanese history). She also got some inspiration from a couple of manga series. She wanted to show the oiran breaking down and feeling her life was hard... but "Spoilers!" she said, she is also an assassin and a demon! She describes the story as personal and triggery.<br />
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Pat asked if the oiran were still around, but to our knowledge they are not - the geisha and the maiko remain, however.<br />
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I asked if she had a particular world she preferred to work in, but her preference is for discovering new things, and writing in our own world, which feels quite natural. We discussed how difficult it is to write about people whose experience is not the same as ours. She feels nervous, she says, not writing about Filipinos. "I'm going to mess up this American..."<br />
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She mentioned the critical question that many writers face, where they can't travel everywhere in the world and wonder if that should stop them from writing about something. She says it shouldn't, but that one must make sure to be careful and do research. She is comfortable working in Japanese settings because she consumed a lot of Japanese media growing up, and studied Japanese starting in the 6th grade. She also spent 3 months studying abroad in Tokyo, which gave her an interesting perspective on the relation between the narratives featured in media and the reality. In the case of shojo manga, she says, it's remarkably close.<br />
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She urges us all to check out Filipino Speculative Fiction, which is a strong anthology series, and also The SEA is ours.<br />
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Isabel is currently working on a project called The Hurricane Heals series, taking the story of 5 magical girls, but instead of setting them at the typical age for maho shojo stories, they are 25 and dealing with the reality of adult lives in the US. Apparently one of the stories features a monster showing up at a strip club in the middle of a bachelorette party. She wanted to work with the magical girls trope, but make it more realistic.<br />
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We briefly discussed how authors consider different kinds of things "realistic." Isabel told us about looking at things like Power Rangers and asking "but how would that actually work?" When does it hurt? When is it tiring? Pat added, "Who gets to wash out all the bloodstains?" These works (like Power Rangers) have a narrative format so familiar it becomes invisible. It is interesting to ask what happens when those elements become visible.<br />
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Isabel says, "I do have a perverse love of the painful stuff."<br />
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Another thing she is working on features two handsome young men (bishonen) in space. She also is working on a secondary world fantasy that draws on Filipino myth, complete with some interesting gender flipping.<br />
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Isabel, thanks so much for joining us and talking about your work! We'll be looking out for it. I hope you will all enjoy the video below. Join us next Wednesday at 10am to talk about Inheritance!<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-22831771714696241842016-01-10T18:08:00.000-08:002016-01-10T18:08:06.565-08:00Announcement of change: this week's guest is Isabel Yap!This week, on Thursday, January 14th at 8pm Pacific (that's pretty late for East Coast folks, sorry), awesome author Isabel Yap will be joining us to talk about her writing and her worldbuilding. She is the author of Milagroso and The Oiran's Song, and I'm really looking forward to learning more about her worlds.<br />
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Make a note of it, and join us on Google Hangouts!<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-6022896592867153702016-01-08T14:00:00.001-08:002016-01-08T14:00:52.587-08:00Hospitality - a Dive into Worldbuilding Hangout SummaryWe had a great time discussing hospitality, which has a lot more consequences in a great many more stories and experiences than it might appear at first glance!<br />
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Hospitality, of course, is that thing where you invite people into your home - or welcome people to a place you control, as when you find people entering airline "hospitality suites." Hospitality can be voluntary and involuntary. When British Royalty are coming to your house, you don't have any choice but to be a host.<br />
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Cliff noted that Hospitality drives many sections of Tolkien's The Hobbit, as in the opening when the dwarves arrive and Bilbo is forced to deal with them. Also, in Game of Thrones, many events are set in motion when the king's court shows up at Winterfell. A large portion of Nicola Griffith's Hild is driven by the fact that the king and his court must move from place to place, eating the hosts out of house and home as they go. Hospitality is also a key issue for Shakespeare, as in King Lear. It's also critical to many plot points of Wagner's Ring Cycle, and in Dante's Inferno there's a special area of Hell dedicated to people who have been traitors to their guests.<br />
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People who fail as hosts are often marked permanently as evil people. When hospitality fails, bad times are coming.<br />
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There are hospitality holidays. These include Halloween, where you are supposed to prepare for strangers to come to your door and demand candy, and Passover, where you are supposed to invite people to come in and join you for your meal. There are hints that Christmas also used to have a strong hospitality element associated with caroling, as in "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" where the carolers demand to be taken in and fed.<br />
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Hospitality rules have changed in modern life, but they are still critical. The Syrian refugee crisis is about hospitality.<br />
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In general, the more isolated and dangerous the location, the stronger the rules that say you have to help one another, and take people into your care.<br />
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The Christmas story is about a failure of hospitality that landed Mary and Joseph out in the stable. The Bible and the Torah are filled with hospitality-based stories. In the Torah you can encounter angels who disguise themselves as guest. Even older traditions have similar stories, as when Odin (Wotan) travels in the form of an old man to test people's hospitality.<br />
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Such a test of hospitality is essentially a test of the host's moral character. As such, you as an author could do a lot with hospitality to indicate the characteristics (good or bad) of your protagonist. After all the dwarves have arrived and been taken care of, we end up feeling quite strongly that Bilbo is a good guy.<br />
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Morgan mentioned international student exchanges as a good example of a hospitality-based activity. Adoption is also a form of hospitality.<br />
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In Star Wars, Lando is a bad host and has to make up for it.<br />
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There are also stories about dishonest guests. Vampires must be invited into the home, but once there, don't carry out the traditional duties of guests! They are predators taking advantage of hospitality rules.<br />
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Morgan noted that in cities, it can be risky to take people in. This leads to culture clashes where people coming in from desert (or forest) environments expect hospitality but can get none. There are circumstances in cities where people end up sitting in dangerous or unsafe circumstances because asking for aid might be worse.<br />
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Conflict can also come from different cultural expectations surrounding the roles of host and guest. In the Netherlands, the host is supposed to serve food until the guest stops eating; in Japan, the guest is supposed to eat until the host stops serving. This could make a Japanese guest in a Dutch home rather uncomfortable!<br />
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Hitchhiking is a form of hospitality. There are stories about ghost hitchhikers, and predatory supernatural hitchhikers.<br />
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Rules surrounding the host's role vary based on circumstance. When guests from far away come to visit, do they stay at your home? They most often do at ours. When we have gone to Europe, friends have often hosted us in their homes. However, when we go to Japan, we typically get help from our hosts finding an inn not from the house, because the houses are too small to accommodate extra residents.<br />
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In Japanese history, there was another twist on hospitality, where the Shogun required his vassals to live with him for half the year. This kept local leaders from consolidating their power in their places of origin and from conspiring with each other against him.<br />
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In English history, feudal lords would gather in London to play politics and display wealth. As in the Japanese example, this expenditure for travel and showing off was good for the king, and bad for their own power.<br />
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We also talked about fostering. When children were fostered, they could be hostages or brainwashed (conditioned?) by the hosts as well as being welcomed. There are instances of this in Game of Thrones, and also in Anne McCaffrey's Pern books. The Pern example was particularly interesting because of its association with craft guilds. Fostering served to keep skills from dying out in the isolated locations where they were practiced.<br />
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An Irish king called Niall of the Nine Hostages kept women of his subject kingdoms hostage in his court, and also used them to spread his DNA through the population. This would mean that rape was involved, as a breach of hospitality.<br />
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Some stories have featured travelers expected to sleep/have sex with a host's female relatives.<br />
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In Beaumarchais' The Marriage of Figaro, much of the plot revolves around the lord's attempts to have sex with Figaro's fiancée before they can get married. We talked about whether Droit du Seigneur was a real thing, or just a rumor.<br />
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Slave traders can pose as hosts who then drug and chain up their guests and sell them.<br />
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Morgan brought up the question of the purposes of hospitality, and its limits. Passover hospitality is for a meal, not for an indefinite period. There is also that expression "guests are like fish - they smell after three days."<br />
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We discussed the question of children moving back in with their parents, how college was expected to help kids (in America at least) transition out of the home, and how children moving back in encounter the tricky situation of not quite being a household member, not quite being a guest.<br />
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Boarders are often called "paying guests" so they lie close to the borderline as well.<br />
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Bed & Breakfast places are sometimes hotel-like, but sometimes are also instances where people invite you into their homes.<br />
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There are a lot of potential plot and conflict ideas that can grow out of the expectations surrounding hospitality. I hope you have found this discussion interesting!<br />
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Thank you to everyone who attended. I hope you enjoy the video.<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-12194302373750106492015-12-17T19:24:00.001-08:002015-12-17T19:24:08.003-08:00Body Modification - a Dive into Worldbuilding Hangout SummaryI recommend this video for brainstorming because of its broad-ranging discussion. <br />
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We had a fabulous discussion on body modification. We started out with its modern meaning, talking about people who inject saline solution to change the shape of their faces, or the man who has tattooed himself to look like a lizard and had a crest inserted in his head to make him look less human.<br />
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However, there is a whole lot more that could be considered types of body modification. For example, foot binding in China was a very dramatic historical form of body modification, and things like castration to make a eunuch or castrato would also count as body modification. Cliff suggested that even circumcision might also be seen as falling under this category. Che mentioned that the Maya aristocracy shaped their heads by tying their babies' heads to boards, and also as adults inlaid their teeth with jade. Scarification and tattoos are found all over the world, and also count as modifications.<br />
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Very often, body modifications have an important social meaning. They can mark membership in a religion or other social group, and they can also mark changes of status (such as gaining adulthood or seniority).<br />
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We asked, "Do temporary changes count?" Henna tattoos are associated with special social circumstances, but fade with time. Hair style changes may not count because they are too easy to change.<br />
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In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox had a third arm added to his body. It's arguable whether his second head was added or original.<br />
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Neck stretching, which occurs among the women of the Padaung people of Burma as well as among several groups in Africa including the Ndebele, is a form of body modification. We discussed whether the neck was actually stretched, and whether the rings could be removed.<br />
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We noted that some of these body modification practices were intended to show that a person was aristocratic, and some were specifically geared to render a person unable to perform labor. Foot binding was one such practice, as was the growing of very very long fingernails. There have historically been various ways of marking oneself as being outside the working class.<br />
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Tattoos have in the past (and in the present, for some jobs) been a problem for people seeking jobs in the US. Cliff mentioned that his wife had a belly ring, but as a doctor, she received pushback from patients who didn't feel it fit the stereotypes of what a doctor should be like.<br />
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Our thoughts on body modification also took in modern beauty modifications, such as breast implants, botox injections, and even extreme dieting. Weight changes aren't necessarily permanent, but there remains the question, "What are you willing to do to your body for a job?"<br />
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Body modifications may also be coerced, such as female genital mutilation. But what about unintended modification? Does the damage done by coal dust count as a body modification? What about the sun damage sustained by people who must work all day in the sun?<br />
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We also talked about teeth, including the straightening and whitening of teeth as well as more unusual things like sharpening, etc.<br />
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There are also medical modifications, as when people get a pacemaker implanted, or get an artificial knee or hip. Morgan told us that her husband had had cataract surgery, and now his eyes glow in the dark.<br />
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In science fiction, many body modifications have been cybernetic as well as mechanical. Cliff recommended <u>I, Cyborg</u> by Kevin Warwick. In the book, Warwick talks about having cybernetic implants put in that allowed him to trade neural signals with his wife, among other things.<br />
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This led us to the idea of prosthetics, especially the modern thought-controlled ones, as a form of body modification. Do these things, which are attached to the outside of the body but function as body parts, count as body modification? What about exoskeletons that allow paraplegics to move, and may be brain-controlled, but are not actually a part of the body? A wheelchair is not considered a part of the body, but it does form an important part of a person's identity, as do other forms of mobility or functionality aids.<br />
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This thought led us to cochlear implants, which have raised very complex cultural and identity questions in the deaf community. Are these, and medical interventions like artificial ear bones, worth considering body modifications?<br />
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And what about genetic modification? To cure disease, or to create particular traits? If you were to alter the genetics of your child, what would you be doing to their identity? Would these changes be permanent? In Iain Banks' Culture books, people can change their gender.<br />
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We argued that humans have done rather extreme genetic body modification on a lot of different animal species, including turkeys and dogs.<br />
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Cliff mentioned a story he'd read where children were accompanied by adults whose bodies had been modified to be child size. Other stories we've read have had people modified to breathe underwater, or breathe nitrogen (other atmospheres), etc. Lois McMaster Bujold had people adapted to microgravity with four arms and no legs. Neuromancer featured a large number of cybernetic and other modifications, while in C.S. Friedman's book This Alien Shore, the first faster-than-light engine had made dramatic genetic alterations in humans so that they had now become significantly alien to one another.<br />
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Che remarked that one sees body modification mostly in science fiction rather than fantasy. What would it look like in fantasy? Che mentioned a story where someone had been punished by having the arms of the baby she killed magically grafted to her head. She also recommended the Monsterblood Tattoo by D.M. Cornish, where monster organs grafted magically into human bodies gave them particular powers.<br />
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Glenda mentioned the idea that eating the heart of a lion will give you a lion's strength, and this took us to the idea of magic potions. Magic potions might change your body's attributes, whether permanently or not.<br />
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This got us thinking that taking steroids was a form of body modification, if done over a long period. We also talked about medications and other techniques used to make genetically small people taller.<br />
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Cliff suggested that Gollum was modified by the One Ring, and so were the Nazgul, but we noted that in fantasy, complete transformation is more common. One of the brothers who were transformed into swans did end up with one wing after he was changed back.<br />
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I was really impressed with the range of topics we touched on, and hope these will get you thinking for your own projects. Thanks to everyone who attended!<br />
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Our next hangout will be in the new year on January 7th at 10am Pacific, and will be hosted on the Google Hangouts service if possible. I will keep you updated on how our technology is changing to the best of my ability. Our January guest will be Charlie Jane Anders, who will join us to talk about her book All the Birds in the Sky at a time to be announced.<br />
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I hope you all have wonderful holidays! <br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-20253393906253946632015-12-16T13:14:00.002-08:002015-12-16T13:14:49.751-08:00Megan O'Keefe and Steal the Sky: A Dive into Worldbuilding Hangout SummaryWe were joined by awesome debut author Megan O'Keefe, who spoke to us about her book, Steal the Sky, which will be out in January! As she described it, Steal the Sky is about a con man and his best friend who try to steal the airship of a mean lady. Things go sideways and they get involved in a coup...<br />
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This is an adventuresome book! So we dived a bit into the worldbuilding that Megan had put together.<br />
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The first thing we talked about was this substance called "selium," which she says can be pronounced either with a long or short "e." It's a gas with special properties, mined through "firemounts" - volcanoes, in other words. It exists in the earth's crust and bulges up in hot magma areas. It's mined by "sel-sensitives," who are magic users attuned to this particular substance. These magic-users can control the selium in different ways, depending on their level of skill.<br />
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Megan said she was "allergic" to the Aristotelian concept of elements, i.e. earth, wind, fire, water.<br />
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Selium is used for many things in this world, one of which is for lift. Some of the sel-sensitives can just move the gas; others can change its colors or do more destructive things with it. The miners are not sophisticated users. Sophisticated users are seen as dangerous and pogroms are used to get rid of them. Also, overuse of selium magic leads to a disease called bonewither.<br />
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I asked Megan how she explored the selium system and discovered new things about it. She said that if a person can change the color, why couldn't they change the texture, or other things? The underlying backbone of the system needs to be known to the author, but mysteries can be left for readers.<br />
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Megan told us about her research. She studied geology in college, so the geological research she did for the book was a refresher. She looked up upswelling. She created an Australia-sized continent with lots of volcanoes, where the earth's tectonic plates are moving slowly - more slowly than the one over Hawaii. There is lots of spreading, and there are earthquakes, though none occur in this book. The seismic activity does have some mythological implications for these people.<br />
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Socially, she said that the native Katari people of this land were pushed off by the Valathean Empire, who sent them off to less seismically active areas. There is a belief that they can take back their land when certain conditions are met. The Katari are more accepting of sel-sensitives. Sel-sensitivity is not genetic, but is caused by the environment, ingesting the groundwater, etc. However, Valatheans thought it was genetic. The story takes place three generations after the conquest, so those Valatheans who live on the Scorched Continent have a new identity. Of course, the Valatheans gave the continent that name. Their own area of the world is jungle-y. Megan says that the city where the story takes place is like a frontier outpost, with a degree of lawlessness.<br />
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In fantasy stories, Megan explains, often characters develop powers they shouldn't have, and people come to get them but they are saved by revolutionaries. In the case of this character, nobody saved him, and he was experimented on. Eventually he got away from them, and now he cons and harasses them to release his anger and get back at the people who hurt him.<br />
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Another character in the story is Ripka, the female protagonist and watch captain. Her motive is to care for things. She grew up low-income and watched refugees from the war come through. She's facing tough moral decisions. There is something of the feel of a Western to the aesthetics in this book, including the sense of expansion and the desperation and hope in the city.<br />
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The two ethnic groups, Katari and Valathean, are on the cusp of full integration. There is some friction between these groups but as yet the Empire has a stranglehold. Megan told us she got a lot of her inspiration from England's trade empire, and influences from Portuguese and Dutch history.<br />
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She told us there are "two and a half" points of view. The "half" is a Katari who shows up every five chapters. It's not clear if she's a bad guy because she has complex motivations and is seeking revenge in complex ways.<br />
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Overall, this is a secondary world fantasy, with a world not related to earth.<br />
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I also asked Megan about the flight of the airships. These are like sailing ships with a wood body and sails... except that the typical sailing ship wouldn't work well in the air because it would have no way to steer. Selium provides the lift, but the ships also have ailerons and propellers and flight control surfaces. Megan says she got her research for this from her own experience as a private pilot. There are no dirigibles, but "fliers" look something like Chinese or Nile river barges with buoyancy sacs above them. Note: they still have ailerons!<br />
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The Scorched continent has a monsoon season. This causes more bugs, while more water animals start coming in from the coast. Animals in this world include marsupial rats, goats, rock cats (the size of savanna cats). There are poisonous bugs and aggressive, softball-sized bees. Also, giant spiders the size of your hand!<br />
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Rajnar asked about volcanic vugs, the pockets where gemstones form. Apparently, in this world selium can form into stones under the proper circumstances. There are extremophile creatures, but they are not (yet?) encountered by the characters.<br />
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Megan told us that people in this world wear glasses. That has some technological implications. We asked, "why wouldn't they then have telescopes?" However, a lot of different technologies come together to create something like a glass bottle or a pair of glasses or a telescope. Faience glass, which was made in Egypt, did not involve the kind of grinding technology necessary for a telescope. It's also tricky to get glass to be clear (rather than translucent). Megan told us, "For me, everything follows something else. They [the people in this world] want to read longer, but why? What is important to them?"<br />
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I asked about the Black Walk. This is a method of capital punishment unique to the city featured in <u>Steal the Sky</u>. Normally, people will go around this volcanic area - a hot aquifer covered over with a layer of shattered obsidian. People who are stripped and asked to walk across it will quickly lose their shoes and then their lives, being cut and then burned to death.<br />
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I asked Megan if she had a favorite thing about this book. She said it was the friendship between the protagonist and his best friend. She said it was special because it was a really solid friendship, despite being tested multiple times. In particular she said she felt that friendships aren't usually given enough weight and importance, that they are treated as too fragile in many stories.<br />
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There are also sequels coming up! Book 2 will take us to a southern coastal city with different cultural mores, and different architectural style... and an island prison off the coast, while Book 3 will give us a peek into the Valathean Empire. Megan says she also has novellas planned.<br />
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Thank you so much for joining us, Megan! It was really fun to explore your world and your worldbuilding process. The book will be out in January, so look out for <u>Steal the Sky</u>...<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-26922153370457346322015-12-15T21:52:00.002-08:002015-12-15T21:52:42.404-08:00Fairy Tales: A Dive into Worldbuilding Hangout SummaryWe thoroughly enjoyed this hangout, but one of the resolutions that came out of it was that I need to invite fairy tale experts Alethea Kontis and Theodora Goss to come and hang out with us on the same topic sometime!<br />
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The first questions we asked were, "What makes a fairy tale world recognizable?" and "What makes it stereotypical?" We agreed that fairy tale worlds are often magical, but don't always have a strict magical system. They often have talking animals, some of which turn out to be enchanted people! Characters tend to be archetypal, and there is an oral narrative feel to the story. They are similar to folk tales, and possibly a subset of folk tales with particular features. Folk tales also commonly have talking animals and magical births, as well as people who can be swallowed whole and still emerge alive.<br />
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A fairy tale world tends to have magical properties, though spells can be cast in it. There can be witches.<br />
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I mentioned Alethea Kontis because she is an expert on fairy tales and blends lots of them marvelously in her books.<br />
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Glenda mentioned that typically, fairy tales feature a pre-modern context rather than a modern technological setting. Obviously, modern versions like Once Upon a Time have begun to change that. There have been a lot of changes in fairy tales over time, though. The older forms of fairy tales were much darker, with more deaths and violence. The old tales also had a teaching aspect. Some of these qualities have been updated in the form of urban fantasy, but urban fantasy can have more consistent and systematic rules. We speculated that Magical Realism might be closer to fairy tales in the way that it imbues the world with magical properties. <br />
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In a fairy tale world, the characters may not know all the rules, but the author should. I mentioned our earlier discussion with Laura Anne Gilman about her book, Silver on the Road. That story has many things in common with fairy tales, in that it features localized place magic, and a very organic magical system.<br />
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We also noted that fairy tales often have their own particular logic, which is not the same as that of other kinds of stories. There is a level of trust established between the storyteller and the listener that makes certain kinds of events and reasoning possible. We spoke about how Spirited Away, the film by Hayao Miyazaki, utilizes some of this same fairy tale style logic, with rules like, "hold your breath across the bridge," that have no reasoning behind them, yet are accepted as part of the way the world works. There is also the idea of not looking back, which occurs at the end of the film, and also in quite a lot of stories going all the way back to Greek mythology with the story of Orpheus. There is a common inventory of talismanic objects, places, and relationships (including childless parents and parentless children!).<br />
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Mythology, folk tales, and fairy tales are all related to one another in many of their features.<br />
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Che asked if we had ever seen fairy tales within a magical secondary world. None of us could think of an example. Legends are relatively common, but they often turn out to be real.<br />
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There is a very common trope, in fact, of the world in which gods and magic are real. If you live in that kind of world, do you extrapolate from it at all? Do your teaching tales take a metaphorical form when magic is real? Would a place like our world be mythical to them?<br />
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When you are working with a type of story, often what you see is that there is a prototype form that the world or story takes, based on a shared set of features - but not all of those features are always shared. Thus, it's possible to avoid European defaults and still have a story with the same power and flavor as a fairy tale.<br />
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Thanks to everyone who participated! I hope you will join us tomorrow to talk about body modification and worldbuilding. We'll meet at 10am Pacific on Google+.<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320269312957801390.post-79346112060461916142015-12-08T12:53:00.000-08:002015-12-08T12:53:06.903-08:00Personal Titles (Honorifics, etc.): a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summaryWe had an interesting discussion. Titles include things like the Japanese suffixes for names, including:<br />
-san on names, and also on professions when you don't know a person's name<br />
-chan for intimates, usually young women but not exclusively<br />
-sensei for teachers, doctors, dentists, and artists.<br />
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In English we have Mr., Mrs., Ms., Miss, Ma'am, sir, and (I hear) Mx.<br />
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If you don't know someone, what do you call them? Honey? Sir? Ma'am? In Japan, you usually use a kin term that approximates their age and gender.<br />
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There are also professional titles. Doctor can be a profession, or it can indicate the completion of a degree. Whether people use the title "Doctor" after they have earned it depends on public perception of its use - and this is something to keep in mind when designing titles in a secondary world. Lawyers in our world don't use the title "doctor" though they have earned the academic equivalent. Using a title can create a social distancing effect, even as it creates a certain type of respect. Whether you drop the title or add it creates a different effect depending on the title.<br />
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Another important question to ask is how you get a title. How is membership in this social group awarded? Is it hereditary, like "Your Highness" or "Your Majesty" for kings and queens? Is it awarded by a king or queen, like "Dame" or "Sir" the knighthoods? What about Baron, Count, etc? Do you get this title because you are married?<br />
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Who is entitled to award titles? Is it a "God-given" title requiring a religious figure to award it?<br />
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The details will vary depending on the world and its cultural influences.<br />
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Morgan told us about her title system, which has a special name for the Ruler, one for the Ruler's Spouse, the Heir, and then family members not in the order of succession. A title tells you about relationships between people in this world.<br />
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Titles often come with strong associations, such as the word King, which should be used with care if you don't want all its associations to come with it. Mayor has a very specific definition, as does Governor. I made up my own title, Alixi, for city rulers in Varin, because that position doesn't fit with the associations of either Governor or Mayor.<br />
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There are also military ranks and titles. These can be defined differently depending on which branch of the armed forces you are talking about. Titles tend to be conservative, in that they reflect the social order and authority of the past.<br />
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Ms. came to be because of a demand for a title that did not have the marital implications of Mrs. or Miss.<br />
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Varin uses caste names that come before the first names because they used to be titles.<br />
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Many military titles came from French. In fiction we often see Captain or Lieutenant. Sometimes we see Roman ranks like Decurion or Centurion.<br />
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If a group of people gets conquered by another people, they will often be forced to use the conqueror's titles.<br />
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When you choose a term different from the expected one, in fiction, what you are doing is telling the reader to be on the lookout for differences in the social relationships.<br />
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Thank you to all who attended! Here's the video:<br />
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#SFWAproJuliette Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02879627074920760712noreply@blogger.com0