It seems we can’t go three months this year without tripping over a fifth Friday. But that’s okay, because it gives me a chance to work through more of the “theory posts” that are one of the bonus funding goals for the New Worlds Patreon. This time around I’m discussing the concepts of emic and etic frameworks from anthropology and folklore, and how to apply them to worldbuilding.

This is your periodic reminder that the New Worlds series is supported by my excellent patrons. If you get value out of these essays, please consider joining their ranks — you get a photo every week, and at higher levels of support, things like ebooks, opportunities to vote on upcoming topics, and behind-the-scenes glimpses at my own projects! Or recommend this series to friends; I always welcome new readers and patrons.

Come on a trip with the New Worlds Patreon! Not the kind of trip I just went on; the sort where your mind is opened to the cosmos and you see things that aren’t there. We’re discussing hallucinogens!

The New Worlds Patreon is here to relieve your pain, by discussing painkillers both ancient and modern! Comment over there.

Drink up! The New Worlds Patreon’s tour of drugs continues on to another one so commonplace we don’t even think of it as a drug: alcohol, in all its myriad forms. Comment over there!

Wake up! My lovely patrons have voted; this month’s theme for New Worlds is “drugs,” and we’re starting off with coffee, tea, and other stimulants. (Yes, that coffee you’re drinking is a drug.) Comment over there!

I was fascinated when I found out that vaccination against disease goes back centuries further than I thought. So this week on the New Worlds Patreon, we’re talking about immunization — and how the technology to do it (at least for smallpox) is available in pretty much any century! Comment over there . . .

This didn’t go up on Friday, but better late than never: medical month continues in the New Worlds Patreon with germs and bad air! Competing theories for what causes disease, which overlapped just often enough to obscure the fact that one of them was wrong. Comment over there!

As befits the material, the topic of epidemics expanded wildly out of proportion with the rest of last week’s essay on disease in general — so this week, the New Worlds Patreon is talking about plagues and their effect on society. Grim stuff, but hugely influential in history, to a degree I think we sometimes underestimate in modern times. Comment over there!

My lovely Topic Backers for the New Worlds Patreon have selected “medicine” as this month’s theme — which was supposed to begin with a different essay, only halfway through writing it I realized that a) it needed to be two essays and b) I had also started in the wrong place. So we begin with disease itself, and the mind-boggling extent of its effect on our history and our world. Comment over there!

This week on the New Worlds Patreon, we wrap up the topic of travel (for now) with air travel, space travel, magic travel, and so forth. Comment over there!

And remember that patrons get extra bennies, like photos every week, ebooks, chances to vote in the topic polls, extra essays, and more. More details on Patreon!

The New Worlds Patreon tour through the subject of travel continues this week on the water! Which is a very different game from traveling over land, and everything from physics to religion gets involved. Comment over there!

I’m totally riffing off of “Paul Revere’s Ride” for this installment of the New Worlds Patreon. Since I need some principle on which to divide the topic of travel, I’m using the different modes by which we go: on land, by sea, and then . . . well, you’ll see. 🙂

So I’ve hung one lantern in the belfry-arch, to signal that land is up first. Comment over there!

From the start of the New Worlds Patreon, I’ve been offering my patrons a weekly photo, many of them drawn from my travels around the world. It’s appropriate, therefore, that our topic du mois should come around at last to travel — beginning with some top-level considerations, like why people travel, what happens when they do, and the importance of infrastructure. Comment over there, or become a patron over at Patreon itself!

The question of how to gracefully work expository detail into a story was too large to address in a single essay, so the discussion that began in March continues today, with character, scene, and plot-level methods of integration.

If you’ve been enjoying the New Worlds Patreon, please consider becoming a patron! You’ll get weekly photos and can opt for a variety of other rewards, like ebooks, voting in the monthly topic polls, bonus behind-the-scenes content, and more. I post the essays on Book View Cafe rather than restricting them to patrons only because I like the broader range of discussion that becomes possible — which is especially key when I’m trying to give a sample of the different ways things have been done throughout history and around the world — but it’s support from my patrons that make the whole series possible. I never could have embarked on this project without that support, so I thank each and every one of them.

The initial tour of the New Worlds Patreon through governmental topics ends on the question of what form that government takes. Next week we’ll be back with part two of the exposition question — how you work all your lovely worldbuilding into the story. Comment over there!

Not all of the rationales for someone to be a leader fit into last week’s essay, so this week, the New Worlds Patreon continues that topic in a more spiritual vein: divine rights, i.e. the religious justifications for kingship (or whatever term is assigned to the leader in question). Comment over there!

In order to hold power, you need some rationale for why you should have it. This week the New Worlds Patreon delves into some of the foundations of power, and some considerations that go along with them. Comment over there!

The New Worlds Patreon is finally tackling a fairly central concept we’ve missed up until now: government! Beginning with the lack thereof, i.e. the largely egalitarian social structure often found among mobile hunter-gatherer groups, and the two types of status that shape how people are treated. Comment over there!

Another Friday, another New Worlds Patreon essay! This week I round out the discussion of visual arts with something near and dear to my heart: photography. Is it even an art form? Come and find out why some people say ‘no’!