Onward to other types of body modification!
This is one of the months with five Fridays, so the next New Worlds Patreon essay will be a “theory piece,” talking about some of the underpinning concepts and ways to approach this subject in fiction, rather than specific cultural content.
From cosmetics (a temporary and easily removable alteration to one’s appearance), we move on to the more lasting or even permanent alterations grouped under the name “body modification.” But there are enough types of modification that I’ve had to separate them out into two posts; this first one discusses things I’ve decided to call “adornment,” i.e. small changes that mostly add on to the body’s appearance in some fashion. The larger changes that reshape the body to a more substantial degree will come next week.
Also, I’m pleased to say that the New Worlds Patreon is fairly close to its next funding goal! So if you’ve been thinking about becoming a patron, or sharing it with people who would enjoy this sort of thing, please do — then we can have a print edition of the collected essays, along with the ebook!
There was a brief period of time in junior high where I went to the effort of putting on makeup every day.
. . . that didn’t last long.
I am a fundamentally lazy creature, and especially now, when I work from home and can go days at a time without seeing any human beings I’m not related to, routine makeup is just a thousand times more trouble than it’s worth. I only bother with it now when I’m appearing in public professionally: going to a con or a reading, doing a video interview, or something in that vein. And even then, I rail a bit at the fact that I’m expected to do such things, whereas John Q. Author is not — but at the same time, I’m aware that we have a deep-seated bias toward pretty people, and I derive a benefit from looking my best. (A benefit John Q. Author can also reap, if he knows how to put on makeup subtly enough that he’ll just look polished rather than obviously made up . . . because unless you’re Johnny Weir or equivalently flamboyant, being a dude with a painted face is seen as strange nowadays.)
All of which is a lengthier than usual introduction to this week’s post from the New Worlds Patreon, which (you guessed it) is about cosmetics. What kinds do we use? What do we use them for? And how come I don’t see more magic or high-tech makeup in fiction?
Also, don’t forget that New Worlds, Year One: A Writer’s Guide to the Art of Worldbuilding is now available for pre-order! You can get it from Amazon US or UK (as well as other countries, but I don’t have direct links for those), Google Play, Kobo, and Indigo, with Barnes & Noble and iTunes to follow as soon as I can work out some technical issues. And, of course, it will be on sale at Book View Cafe (the publisher) on the release date, April 10th.
I met Christopher Paolini on a panel at Denver Comicon last year, and we wound up chatting for a while afterward. Then we wound up chatting for an hour on camera, because he periodically interviews other authors, and invited me to be one of his guests.
In the video we talk about worldbuilding, writing process, and a bunch of other things. I’m only sad that we stopped recording when we did, because it means you miss out on the part where we started nerding at one another about kdramas and Bollywood and Nirvana in Fire — which, okay, drifted away from the professional focus a bit, but only bit, because we both still think like writers even when being fannish about stuff. But if we’d recorded that it would have been two hours and nobody would have watched the whole thing, so.
Can you believe it’s been a year since I started New Worlds?
I both can and can’t. On the one hand, the time has flown by. On the other, I have nearly sixty thousand words’ worth of posts I’ve written in that time, so, yeah, that’s a thing. In fact, it’s a thing that is in the process of becoming an ebook — there are some outlets where you can pre-order it now, and more to come. New Worlds, Year One will be released on April 10th, at which point I’ll be more than a month into Year Two. And in honor of that, I’ve made a new funding goal: if I reach $250/month, I’ll create a print edition of these books to go along with the ebooks.
Anyway, this week’s post is brought to you by Black Panther and all of its amazing visuals, especially as they relate to personal appearance. I’m not going to get through that whole field of topics in a month, but we’re starting off broad, with an overview of standards of beauty. Comment over there!
My New Worlds Patreon project is going strong, and about to pass the one-year mark. Everybody who is a patron tomorrow (when the March pledges are processed) will get access to the special anniversary reward, and patrons at the $3 level and above will get a complimentary copy of the upcoming ebook, which collects the first year of essays. Go here to join their ranks!
I mentioned last week that the post on divorce marked the completion of one year of the New Worlds Patreon, but I neglected to mention that I’m going to have a special reward for patrons to celebrate the occasion. So if you’re interested in backing the project, do so by the beginning of March and you’ll be included in that!
There’s still so much I could say on the topic of marriage, but since I try not to sit on any one subject for too long, we’re wrapping up this month of the New Worlds Patreon with divorce.
And that concludes the first year of this project! It’s going strong, with enough topics on my hit list that I’m sure I’ll be able to fill a second year — and probably a third — and at the rate I keep coming up with new things to discuss, probably a fourth. Now is a splendid time to become a patron (because it’s always a splendid time to become a patron!). If you are one already, thank you so much for your support.
Historical romance novels are full of families concerned about dowries, but you hear much less about bridewealth and dower (not the same thing as dowry) in the West. Any way you slice it, though, getting married has often required a lot of financial planning. Read the latest New Worlds Patreon post at Book View Cafe, and comment over there!
Onward through the topic of marriage! Now it’s time for the New Worlds Patreon to talk about monogamy vs. polygyny vs. polyandry vs. things like line marriage, and the social effects these different structures have. Comment over there!
Marriage is one of those enormous topics I’m not getting through in a single post. I could probably fill all of this February and next February just discussing it and its ancillary subjects. But we’re starting off with the question of why people get married and who’s allowed to do it, as our first installment of the New Worlds Patreon this month. Comment over there!
I have two posts up at BVC today. The first is an expansion of my post in response to the passing of Ursula Le Guin; with the benefit of a little more distance, I have additional things to say about the effect she’s had on my life and career.
The other, of course, is my New Worlds post for this week. Completing our tour through certain features of the natural world, I discuss deserts: not always hot, not always filled with sand, but very interesting for stories.
Our jaunt through the physical landscape of your invented world continues with a discussion of mountains and how people relate to them: as resources, mythical loci, places of danger, boundaries, and more. Comment over there!
This week on New Worlds: plate tectonics! And also mountains, volcanoes, earthquakes, and other things that go along with the fact that our world is a big ball of rock plates floating on a sea of molten lava. Comment over there!
Kicking off the new year, I’m going back to the physical world with the topic of rivers and how societies use them.
I’ll also note that Patreon backers have a chance this month to vote on how these posts will be organized into ebooks. So if you would like to register an opinion on that, sign up as a patron and let me know what you think — with some extra perks in the process!
The most recent New Worlds Patreon post is a bonus one, focusing more on the concepts in worldbuilding rather than the content — in this case, liminality, as we approach the liminal moment of turning from one year to the next.
And since I think I forgot to link to last week’s post, go back and read about residence patterns if you missed it before!
The dust is settling at Patreon, with the planned changes to their fees taken off the table (hallelujah!). And so I continue with the New Worlds series, with the latest post covering fictive kinship — the ways someone can be family without being related by blood. Comment over there!
The most recent Patreon post is “Third Cousin Twice Removed”, about kinship terminology and which categories we differentiate or don’t.
For those who haven’t heard, Patreon is planning to institute some changes in how they handle the processing fees for pledges. Unfortunately, their plan for doing this involves charging the fees to patrons — which is especially bad for people who have made a lot of small pledges, since (for example) each $1 pledge will actually cost $1.38. Patreon creators are pretty united in saying this is a bad idea, since it’s already causing people to reduce their pledges or cancel them entirely; if you want to speak out against it, there’s a petition you can sign, or you can send a comment to Patreon directly via Zendesk (note that you’ll need to register at the end of the process for your message to go through). I encourage you to do this; the messages I’ve gotten from Patreon indicate that public pressure may already be having an effect, so let’s keep it up.
Over on the New Worlds Patreon, my theme for December is going to be kinship — the anthropological term for “family,” and a favorite subject in the field. We start with lineage, including a discussion of how people often misunderstand what matrilineality means. Comment over there!
The last November post for the New Worlds Patreon covers dining customs! How do you eat? When? Where? And with whom? All interesting questions to consider . . .
