Tag Archives: world building

Changing Coasts

This weekend I realized that I’ve been setting my story in San Francisco when I’ve been visualizing it in NYC. D’oh! I’ve been imagining House Ibsen’s exterior as an old brownstone. While this wouldn’t have been an insurmountable problem, many of my characters work in film and fashion, and these industries are much larger in the Big Apple. I’m working with a Fall 2001 time frame because I know I want Hurricane Katrina to take place during the second novel. This means 9/11 will play a larger role than I’d originally planned.

Most of all this means that all the background work I’ve done on setting my first novel in San Francisco—divvying up the city into territories, choosing real world locations for certain scenes, etc.—has to be redone for NYC. Hopefully I’ll be able to use the SF background I’ve developed for a later installment. I don’t know where my characters will take me after Hurricane Katrina, but they’ll probably hit the West Coast eventually.

I’m happy I caught this now! I feel a little foolish, but it can be difficult to get out of our own heads and see the gaps in our thinking.

Have you had to make a similar turn-around in your writing? Please tell me about it in the comments!

On Alphas and Omegas

Yesterday I took a walk and ran into an older woman. She was also out walking and just seemed to need to talk. It sounds like she’s alone in her home most of the time. I can relate. It’s increasingly easy to become isolated in today’s world. When you’re not young, healthy, and able to be active in work, school, or social groups, the walls close in. Many people seem to think social media is an adequate substitute for real contact and communication. I think that’s because these folks have a vibrant support network and active life which social media merely supplements. For those who can’t fully participate in our able-body-oriented world, social media is something, but nothing can replace in person interaction. So I let the woman bend my ear for a while and validated the positive choices she was making.

The interaction made me think of a line in Patricia Briggs’ Alpha and Omega series (I’ll paraphrase since I listen to the audiobooks):

“I bet complete strangers come up to you and tell you their deepest secrets all the time.”

Charles says this to Anna, explaining that it’s a trait of omega wolves. In Briggs’ universe, omega wolves are a rare combination of dominant and submissive traits. Omega wolves share the dominant urge to protect, but don’t feel the need to fight for dominance or kill like submissive wolves. Omegas also are the only wolves that are not affected by a magical compulsion to obey a more dominant wolf’s orders. One character in the Alpha and Omega series calls omegas “dominants who are really, really zen.”

If I lived in Briggs’ universe, I’d be an omega. I’ve had total strangers come up to me and say, “I have this feeling I need to talk to you,” and proceed to spill their darkest troubles. The closer our association, the more people seem to feel compelled to tell me everything. This is a useful trait for an author, as I get to hear a lot of fascinating stories. I also enjoy helping people attain some measure of peace.

Being an omega is tricky, however. I’ve run into trouble because those with more…aggressive…natures sometimes suddenly realize they’ve told me highly sensitive information. Even though I’m good at keeping secrets, these people suddenly view me as a threat. Their fear then drives them to attack.

Another trait of omega wolves is that others feel the need to protect them. This is also a double-edged sword. Sometimes I have unconsciously relied on that protection and left myself vulnerable to harm.

I won’t list all the reasons I’d be an omega, but thinking about this topic in conjunction with world-building, I decided that the dominance angle comes from werewolves’ human creators and is not an essential part of werewolves.

From my participation in BDSM, I’ve seen extremes of dominance and submission. Werewolves as presented in Patricia Briggs’ novels offer a useful paradigm for categorizing kinky humans.

  • An Alpha is the most dominant person or wolf in a given area. They assume responsibility for others’ safety. Dominants feel compelled to jockey for position and will fight to attain and maintain the highest social rank possible. Kinky human dominants who pursue healthy relationships usually want to be alphas.
  • A Beast is an alpha who does not feel the need to protect others. In kink terms, this equates to the predators, abusers, bullies, and well-named Assholes in Leather among us. These people promulgate the disgusting trope that submissives are (or should be) doormats. This GoodReads thread has a great discussion on this topic re: the Alpha and Omega series.
  • Omegas may equate to switches. In the kink world, a switch has both dominant and submissive aspects which they switch between.
  • Submissives are those humans and wolves who aren’t preoccupied with fighting for position (at least not to the extent dominants are). In the context of a BDSM dynamic, a submissive obeys their dominant and does their best to please them within agreed bounds. Contrary to the belief of many human Beasts, submissives need not submit to anyone but their dominant partner(s) without prior consent. Briggs’ werewolves are different in that all wolves must submit to the most dominant wolf present. This and several quotes from the books perpetuate the “submissives are doormats, the lowest of the low” trope.

This paradigm can even be useful outside of kink circles. In my mind it runs into two problems, however:

  1. The aforementioned “submissives are doormats, the lowest of the low” trope. Submissives can be very powerful!
  2. Actual wolf pack dynamics.

I encourage you to read the full article I’ve linked above. Here’s the gist, though:

studies of wild wolves have found that wolves live in families: two parents along with their younger cubs. Wolves do not have an innate sense of rank; they are not born leaders or born followers. The “alphas” are simply what we would call in any other social group “parents.”

The whole alpha thing was a mistake born from observing captive wolves. Captive wolves are usually a group of unrelated specimens. They’re not family. This leads to the abnormal preoccupation with social dominance researchers observed. I also think researchers may have laid human preoccupation with dominance over their observations, distorting what they actually saw. This doesn’t mean wolves in the wild don’t care about dominance at all, just that it’s not behind a lot of pack behavior.

I’ve already noted that I like to remain as true to current science in my writing as possible. Therefore, the werewolves in my universe will not have any of that “alpha vs. omega” nonsense. Therianthropes of all kinds will behave according to a combination of their human nature and the way their animal nature behaves in the wild. That means my werewolf packs will be families. (And yes, I’m planning more than just werewolves!)

Introducing Homo sapiens sanguis

A guest post by Emily Graves, DO and Yoko Ichinose, PhD¹

We’re delighted to publish excerpts from our paper “Introducing Homo sapiens sanguis”.

Homo sapiens sanguis is a novel subspecies of Homo sapiens. Known in folklore and myth as vampires, this is the first scientific paper on H. s. sanguis and their culture. We have named this subspecies to reflect their diet and predatory nature.

H. s. sanguis refer to themselves in English as kindred and in Arabic as ainsiba’. Arabic is the official kindred language. H. s. sanguis diverged from H. sapiens about 98,000 BCE. They evolved in parallel with their primary prey, H. sapiens. The kindred feel that speaking Arabic helps preserve their culture and continues to connect them to their subspecies’ origins in the Fertile Crescent. […..]

A bloodborn, or naturally concieved, specimen’s lifespan averages 1,000 years. Gestation takes 90 months. Puberty occurs at 100 years of age. H. s. sanguis are considered adults upon completing the fledging ceremony. This ceremony takes place in up to four stages: ceremonial first kill after onset of puberty, ceremonial first kill after emergence of talent (if later date), fledging journey, final ceremony. Kindred are considered elderly at about 700 years old. Talents will be discussed later in this paper.

Turned specimens live a maximum of 900 years as their resurrection makes them at least the equivalent of a pubescent ainsiba’.

Most H. s. sanguis die in combat in the prime of life.

Ainsiba’ government places strict controls on the birth or creation of new kindred. The aim is to maintain a 1 death to 1 birth or creation ratio. [….]

All H. s. sanguis require blood from H. sapiens to survive.  The bloodborn meet nearly all their dietary requirements with human blood alone, but they can eat human food in order to keep up appearances. Turned kindred must supplement their blood diet with human food. All H. s. sanguis require Vitamin D supplementation because they cannot make it from sunlight due to an extreme UV-B allergy. Kindred cannot survive more than 24 hours without blood. Blood from non-human animals is not an adequate substitute. Animal blood can sustain kindred for up to a week, but has many painful and debilitating side effects. Infant bloodborn, the newly turned, or the elderly (~700+ years old) can only go a maximum of 12 hours without blood.

Figure 1 shows the minimum number of H. sapiens prey required to feed one ainsiba’ for 1 year. In this scenario the H. s. sanguis may create a menagerie of human prey upon which they feed in rotation. The standard U.S. Blood donation is 500 ml or 1 pint and contains roughly 450 calories.  Male H. sapiens provide slightly more protein, as their blood’s plasma content is 55%. Female H. sapiens’ blood is 60% plasma, making them more desirable when an H. s. sanguisrequires an immunity boost. We will not discriminate between sexes in our calculations. An average bloodborn ainsiba’ must consume 3,000 calories per day from blood to survive, while an average turned kindred must consume only 2,000 calories of blood per day and can make up the remaining third of their daily calorie requirement with food. Thus a bloodborn requires 3,333.33 ml or 6.67 pints per day while a turned requires 2,222.22 ml or 4.44 pints per day. We will use the bloodborn figures in our calculations.

The Red Cross requires that humans wait 8 weeks minimum between donations for full reccovery. However, humans generally take 4 to 6 weeks to regenerate 1 pint of blood. Let r represent the number of days a bloodborn allows a human to regenerate blood. Let 人 represent the number of pints or feedings per cycle. This gives us the formula:

7 x r = 人

Figure 1.

r

人

28

196

42

294

56

392

Figure 1 shows that an H. s. sanguis feeding from an H. Sapiens menagerie at 1 pint per human on a 28 day cycle requires a minimum of 196 humans to survive. A bloodborn feeding from their menagerie at 1 pint per human on a 56 day cycle requires a minimum of 392 humans to survive.

Maximum allowable bloodloss and minimum allowable hemoglobin are highly individual statistics. H. s. sanguis learn quickly to estimate the point at which they must stop feeding by their prey’s symptoms and the blood’s qualities. This is only partially instinctual and must be taught. This fact along with the desire not to overhunt their prey led to a prohibition on creating kindred by any means without government permission. Kindred born or turned without government permission are called orphans and are hunted and exterminated. Any ainsiba’ who create orphans are executed. The kindred goverment maintains staff whose mission is to report suspected orphans in emergency rooms worldwide.

An adult human male weighing 175 lbs with an intial hemoglobin of 17 g/dl and a final hemoglobin of 10 g/dl may loose 2456.6 ml or 4.91 pints before transfusion is required. Thus, if a bloodborn drinks 4 pints of blood from each human, a minimum of 49 and a maximum of 98 humans are required to feed 1 bloodborn per day.

Feeding from so many humans each day and maintaining such a large menagerie are prohibitive in practical terms. Many H. s. sanguis therefore either supplement their diet with or subsist entirely on bloodbags.

Using the above calculations, however, we can estimate the maximum population of H. s. sanguis which can exist for a given H. sapiens population. To do so we use the following formula, where p represents the human population and v represents the kindred population:

p / 392 = v

For example, the 2011 human population of San Francisco, California is about 706,856 people. Therefore a maximum of 1,803 kindred may live and hunt in this city. These calculations presume that every member of the adult human population is a feeding candidate. The actual ainsiba’ population is likely half to two-thirds this quotient. [….]

The one food  H. s. sanguis avoids is garlic. Garlic causes no ill effects, but it smells like rotting flesh to them and is unappetizing. Kindred have twice the number of olfactory receptors as humans: 12 million compared to humans’ 6 million. This assists H. s. sanguis in hunting prey. They use a combination of the chimicals in sweat, scent, and exhaled carbon dioxide to track and select prey. Kindred can discriminate potential prey’s state of health, whether they have any drugs in their system and, often, which drugs, and blood type. Bloodborn kindred tend to prefer blood type O. This may be due to the properties which make it the universal donor. The turned generally prefer blood types compatible with the blood type they had prior to resurrection. Both types of  H. s. sanguis prefer overweight and obese prey. Obese prey are less likely to escape and their blood provides more calories. [….]

H. s. sanguis adapts their internal temperature according to their fluid levels. When water reserves are full, their resting body temperature is 99.9℉, measured orally. When reserves are low, the acceptable temperature range shifts to 93-106℉. Heat accumulated during the day is offloaded as much as possible at night.

Due to the above, H. s. sanguis generally require more frequent hydration than humans, particularly when active, and are more susceptible to heat exhaustion. Depending on humidity, an apparent temperature of 80°F or above could be dangerous for a kindred. This is another reason H. s. sanguis traditionally prefer nighttime. Crypts, caves, and the like offered stable, comfortable temperatures and humidity before air conditioning.

When H. s. sanguis experiences heat exhuastion or dehydration, first they will go mad with thirst. If the kindred cannot quench it and the heat exhaustion is not ameliorated, starvation will be accelerated by continued fluid loss. As the ainsiba’ continues to dry out, a point of no return is reached when a biological self destruct signal is tripped and the immune system imitates the UV-B allergy, immolating them. The length of time this takes is highly individual, depending on many factors including individual biology, nutrition, weather, and access to aid. The longest our colleague, researcher Dane Grokelstern, PhD, has observed a subject surviving is 8 hours. The average so far appears to be 3. If you have any specimens, please direct them to Xeno Labs, care of Dr. Grokelstern.

All of the above helps explain why  H. s. sanguis has not physically taken over Earth. During times of famine prior to industrial agriculture, kindred were more vulnerable than humans.

Most have milder allergies to silver. Silver causes contact dermatitis. Lengthy exposure can result in welts, rash, hives, blisters, and lesions. If any silver is left in a wound, it will heal as slowly as the same wound on a human body.

As noted above, H. s. sanguis is also allergic to UV-B. This is an extreme allergy cumulating in immolation. The mechanism of immolation is unknown at this time. [….]

H. s. sanguis may appear pale, however this is the effect of lack of blood rather than little melanin. Contrary to popular belief, H. s. sanguis are dark-skinned. The bloodborn are born with dark complexions. Turned ainsiba’ complexions resemble their most tanned possible state as a human. This provides some protection against UV-B. The darker a kindred’s skin, the longer they can stand exposure to UV-B.

¹These are characters from my novel, House Ibsen. All facts and calculations in their paper are real except for the existence of Homo sapiens sanguis. As far as we know, anyway… 😉

Vincente for Presidente and the US Electoral System

If you haven’t already seen former Mexican President Vincente Fox’s YouTube videos addressing US President Donald Trump, you should. They’re hilarious. Here’s one of my favorites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ukv9v7IGZw

Vincente Fox’s humor makes me think he’d make a wonderful US presidential candidate, though I know nothing of his policies. This also made me reflect on a high school friend who wanted to be POTUS, but couldn’t because he was born in China prior to his parents’ immigration. While I understand the reasons for not allowing people like my friend to run for president, it saddens me that we lose out on some folks who would make fantastic elected officials.

I often think about what I would do if I was in charge. This helps me both think through the issues and build story worlds in which I can experiment with those policies and their opposites. Donald Trump’s election helped bring debate over the electoral college to the forefront. Before Trump was elected, many of my friends and I were for abolishing the electoral college. But once Trump’s election was on the horizon, I changed my mind.

The founders wrote the electoral college into the constitution as a fail-safe measure. They envisioned the electors’ job as preventing demagogues and unqualified or incompetent candidates from rising to power. Yet in the 2016 presidential election, they arguably failed to do so.

I believe this failure is the result of the way the electors’ job description is written. Electors are told they are “faithless” if they do not vote for the candidate who wins the majority of votes in their state. Many states fine faithless electors. With this state of affairs, we might as well eliminate the electoral college and implement true direct democracy. But we need electors to be the nation’s failsafe. So I’d rewrite their job description to be explicit about their mandate to prevent demagogues from achieving office. A faithless elector would be one who failed to prevent another Trump from becoming POTUS. How the nation would determine the president-elect is unacceptable would need to be spelled out. When there is not an untenable candidate in the race, electors would simply be required to certify the accuracy and legitimacy of their state’s vote tallies (so rather than voting for a candidate as in the current winner-take-all system, the certified state vote tallies would be added to those of all other states, creating a nationwide popular vote). This would mean acting to eliminate voter suppression, ensuring security, and eliminating fraud.

I would also make nationwide changes to the voting process. Election Day would be moved to Monday and declared a federal holiday. I would follow Australia’s example and pass a law requiring all eligible US citizens to vote. To make that easier, I would create an electronic, online voting system that would allow people to vote from the convenience of the nearest online device. I’d supplement this system with vote by mail and polling stations at every library and school computer center to ensure access. Naturally, this would require strong security protocols, but I’m convinced it can be done.

If you were in charge, how would you change the United States’ voting system?