New Worlds: Debt
They say love makes the world go round, but after writing this week’s essay for the New Worlds Patreon, I think it might actually be debt instead. Comment over there!
Posts Tagged ‘patreon’
New Worlds, Year Three: now available in convenient ebook form!
You can tell I’ve been busy with writing Night Parade and copy-editing The Mask of Mirrors, because I completely forgot to mention here that New Worlds, Year Three was available for pre-order!
Well, now you can just go ahead and get it. As usual, it contains all the content from the third year of my Patreon — now revised and expanded — and you can get it from Book View Cafe (the publisher), Barnes and Noble (for Nook readers), Google Play, Kobo, and Amazon US or UK. (I don’t have it up on iTunes yet — I’ve been having some difficulties there — and for some reason Indigo isn’t carrying this one yet, though it has all my other BVC ebooks.)
A print edition will follow, but isn’t quite ready yet.
New Worlds: Before (and After) Money
I don’t know if it’s tax season that made the Topic Backers from the New Worlds Patreon vote for an economics theme this month — but voted they have, and so they shall receive! After all, that’s the trade we’ve agreed to. And certain kinds of trade are the subject of today’s essay: specifically, barter. Including how I previously said a wrong thing about it, and need to walk that statement back.
Comment over there!
New Worlds: Evidence
The New Worlds Patreon wraps up this pass through legal topics with the question of evidence: what we accept as legally valid, what we don’t, why, and how that’s changed over time. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Other Kinds of Trial
In this time of lockdown, the New Worlds Patreon continues! (I mean, my regular life is only about one step away from lockdown regardless. Though I do miss going to the dojo.) This week we move on to other kinds of trial — specifically, the various types of ordeal once used to determine guilt or innocence. Comment over there!
New Worlds: In the Courtroom
Do you like watching legal dramas? This week, the New Worlds Patreon goes into the courtroom for a look at how trials operate — which turns out to be quite variable depending on the circumstances and which legal system your country runs on. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Legal Systems
I’ve been putting off tackling the topic of law in the New Worlds Patreon for about three years now, because it’s so complex and interwoven with other things. But I finally made myself put it into the poll, and my patrons voted for it, so as a law-abiding Patreon creator, I have obeyed their wishes. Starting with the basics of legal systems — themselves rarely the direct subject of fiction, but a necessary foundation for what comes after. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Gambling
The New Worlds Patreon closes out its third (!!!) year on something of a dishonest note — because where games and sports go, gambling isn’t far behind . . . nor is its false-faced cousin, cheating.
Comment over there!
New Worlds: Sports
Quidditch may not be a very well-designed sport, but one thing J.K. Rowling got right — sports can be an important part of a fictional society. Comment on the latest New Worlds Patreon essay over at Book View Cafe!
New Worlds: Games
It’s a good thing I happen to have this month’s New Worlds posts written in advance, because I have been slapped flat by the Cold of Doom. But thanks to prep work, that doesn’t prevent me from sharing with you this week’s essay on games! Comment over there.
New Worlds: Toys
Another month, another theme for the New Worlds Patreon! To kick off our spin through leisure activities, we’re starting at the young end, with toys for children. Or, y’know, objects “for ritual use.” Depending on how much the archaeologists are throwing their hands up into the air and shrugging. 🙂
Comment over there!
New Worlds Theory Post: Where Do You Start?
Year Three of the New Worlds Patreon has had quite a lot of months with five Fridays, and this is the last one. Which means it’s time for a theory post! This time around, it’s the question of where to start the worldbuilding process — which parts of it should be high-priority, and which can be left until later. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Poison
As the New Worlds Patreon comes to the end of another month, we turn our attention to poison! Both the cause and the cure of suffering, depending on how it’s applied — as Paracelsus very wisely pointed out. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Other “Medicine”
Warning: this week’s New Worlds Patreon essay includes quite a lot that is squicky or horrifying. Not in a super-graphic way, but simply in the realization that the medical treatments of the past were often howlingly wrong at best — and lethal at worst.
Comment over there!
New Worlds: Herbalism
Before there were synthetic chemicals, there were medicines extracted from leaves, flowers, seeds, nuts, fruit, bark, wood, roots, and every other bit of plant matter you care to name. This week, the New Worlds Patreon discusses the ancient art of herbal medicine! Comment over there.
New Worlds: Elemental Imbalances
For the first month of the New Year, the New Worlds Patreon is turning back to the topic of medicine! Starting with elemental imbalances. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Special Cities
The New Worlds Patreon wraps up December and 2019 with a discussion of special cities: capitals, but also cities whose age and prominence gives them particular privileges among the settlements of the realm. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Cities II – Inside the Walls
More on cities! This time the New Worlds Patreon goes inside the walls (and a little bit outside them) to talk about how cities are laid out and why. Comment over there!
A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
I have a new blog crush. And if the phrase A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry makes you perk up, you just might find it interesting, too.
I can’t remember who I saw linking to this guy’s analysis of the Siege of Gondor, but it’s an entertaining read — all six parts of it. And in the course of reading it, I noted that he linked to various other posts he’s written, many of which sounded interesting. But the nail in the coffin of me walking away was realizing he had a link at the top titled Resources for World-Builders.
*_*
Bret Devereaux turns out to be a military historian specializing in the Roman Republic, but with interests ranging around the ancient Mediterranean and into medieval Europe, plus at least some awareness of other parts of the world like India and China. His seven-part takedown of Sparta is gloriously scathing, and has single-handedly ensured that if some unknown force ever tells me I have to choose where and when in history I’m going to be sent back to, Sparta’s going to be at the rock bottom of my list. Or the three essays tearing apart the claim that Game of Thrones is a “realistic” representation of medievalism — with bonus essays like “The Preposterous Logistics of the Loot Train Battle” (tl;dr: Dany could have saved herself the trouble of attacking, because Jaime’s entire force would have starved to death even after eating all the food they were supposedly transporting to King’s Landing). But what really sealed the deal for me was probably the Practical Polytheism series, which digs into how Mediterranean polytheism worked, and how it’s different from the kinds of assumptions we tend to make today.
It’s a new enough blog that if you don’t mind falling down a rabbit hole for a while, it’s not that difficult to read the entirety of the archives. (I know because I’ve, uh, done it.) As the Practical Polytheism essays and the two most recent posts on ancient writers show, the focus is not entirely on military matters — in part because, being an Actual Historian of these things, he’s well aware that you can’t properly discuss armies without paying attention to things like agriculture or religion. The two Lonely Cities essays crossed my screen just in time to influence the current New Worlds Patreon topic, and I’ll definitely be swinging back to some of his military writing when I get around to that subject myself. So I highly recommend the blog to anybody who’s interested in worldbuilding or military history . . . and I know there’s at least a few people around these parts who fit that label. 🙂
New Worlds: Cities I – Where and Why and What
As befits their size, cities are going to require more than one essay to unpack. The first installment looks at them from the outside, considering what makes a city and where it tends to be found. Comment over there!
