Colors of Another Sky: Knit One, World Two

Research is critical in building any good world, and especially in an isekai. In part because you not only have to figure out the odd details of your fantastic world, you also have to make a good guess what the local characters find odd about their sudden transplant. A lot of isekai works around this with either the reincarnation gambit, or by dropping a lone character into an isolated spot so they have a chance to filch some local clothes and otherwise disguise themselves as just more ordinary kinds of strange.

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Book Review: The Troubled Empire

The Troubled Empire: China in the Ming and Yuan Dynasties, by Timothy Brook. I’m giving this history five out of five, this is exactly the ground-level info I wanted on climate, culture, and the rest of the time period for my points of historical divergence in Colors of Another Sky. And I plan to look up other books and articles by this author. Especially Vermeer’s Hat and everything he wrote on Xu Guangqi. For one thing, this author not only has an extensive bibliography, he sorts it into primary and secondary sources, so you can go straight to the source or read a myriad of interpretations….

Worldbuilding: The Back of the Book

Okay, who else likes a good glossary with their fiction? Or even better, that and a bibliography?

Twenty-XXth Century Problems

The problem with the computerization of knowledge is that your access to it is only as good as your search engine. And search engines are notoriously difficult to program, meaning they’re often of doubtful quality. The wrong words, wrong word order, or wrong abbreviation can throw your results wildly off – if, in fact, if brings up any results at all.

A Few Plotbunny Bits

Hectic day, so have a few random bits from toothy isekai plot-monsters.

Worldbuilding: Help Vaunted

Vampires, disease, chi, breath, and blood; it’s all connected. Western vampires drain the life from people with their blood, while eastern jiangshi steal qi from their victims’ breath. (So if you hold your breath, they can’t find you. As was well-illustrated in sometimes wacky detail in the 1985 Hong Kong jiangshi film, Mr. Vampire.)

Some Cool Old Shows

Okay, might be very frantic and busy today, so setting up some entertainment in advance. Here’s some neat shows I’ve found dating back to the 70s and 80s; great for trying to get back to storytelling basics Hollywood’s forgotten!

Sanbiki ga Kiru! (j-drama) (1987)

Worldbuilding: What Everybody Knows That Isn’t So

Sometimes everyone in a setting “knows” something that turns out to be flat-out wrong. The world is flat, disease is caused only by evil spirits, sacrificing hearts on an obsidian altar keeps the sun in the sky. And sometimes… everyone knows what’s actually true, but upholds a polite fiction in public so no one has to officially notice and do something about it. No one really wants to do all the paperwork to haul in someone going three miles over the speed limit on the highway, and

Worldbuilding: Some Research Thoughts

The stories that come out well (or anyway get written to the end) are those where I have at least one, preferably two striking scenes that the plotbunnies keep coming back to. I currently have two for the 1618 isekai, that seem like they ought to be spaced at least a story apart. One’s more of a “quiet recovery/ oh bleep I’m in another world” scene.

Brief Note: Busyness

Long hours at work. Hopefully it’ll make up bills for the time I was out sick, but it’s very inconvenient for writing.