Since the Vote Was Overwhelming...

Welcome to the first weekly newsletter! The exact format and contents will evolve over time, just to make sure that it stays relevant and doesn't become a burden.

News- Book one has been out for a few weeks now. Sales seem ok, but we are crucially short on reviews and ratings. Anything you could do to help would be appreciated. Vol. 2 is available for pre-order. Vol. 3 continues to be underway. Progress is steady, which is a relief given that the holiday season tends to play hell with any sort of scheduling.

Behind the Scenes/FAQ: “How did you think of that?”

I wanted to start here before getting to the philosophers/philosophy, because discussing anything else builds on this basic idea. How do I think of something, create a scene, or an arc or a concept? Basically it’s mental scrapbooking.

You may remember a few years ago, when the notion of “remix culture” was suddenly the hot new thing, and everyone got very excited about taking old things and turning them into new things? And then it kind of petered out because that is how everything gets made and always has been? It’s basically that.

Let's look at a case study from waaay back in Volume 2. Remember the whole mini-arc at the Pitz game? Two teams in the same city, sectarian and political rivalry, wearing colors, fan behavior, the sport itself, the fan experience- the whole bit was assembled from bits and pieces I have picked up over the years.

The basic structure of the sport comes from the “Mesoamerican Ballgame.” It has several names, and was played in a variety of ways. There is even a modern revival of the sport. I chose Pitz, and bastardized various forms of the rules. I learned about it from reading, from visiting Mayan ruins in Mexico, from watching documentaries, and watching videos about the revival on Youtube.

Then you have the teams. This was lifted almost entirely from the “Old Firm,” the Celtics and the Rangers in Glasgow, and their old rivalry. One Catholic, the other Protestant. Each with their own turf and colors.  A very good friend of my father was born in Glasgow. My dad watched him get refused service in a chip shop one time, way back in the day. Wrong religion, and the lady behind the counter barely let him get a foot through the door. The whole neighborhoods/colors thing going back at least as far as the Romans, incidentally. Which ties directly into the fans.

The fans are modeled pretty directly on British fans in the late 90’s and early ‘aughts, when hooligan culture was at its peak. Something I learned about living near the Arsenal in the early ‘aughts. I can vividly remember the pubs and kebab shops with big “Home Fans Only” signs on them. Vinnie Jones was turning into a movie star, the Holligan’s Hero going legit as Bullet Tooth Tony. The first football chant I ever heard was “Could You Do A Chicken Supper, Bobby Sands?” Which… yeah. I never had the slightest desire to watch a match in person.

The spells flying back and forth is something Italian friends described to me, only they were shooting bottle rockets across the pitch. Dropping things from the balconies onto people below? Also real, also a thing that was going on while I lived in London. The word “Hillsborough” triggers damn unpleasant memories in the UK.

But for all the violence and horror, football was and is something really special to people. It was something they love, and that moves them. “You’ll Never Walk Alone” comes directly from Liverpool, of course, where it’s written in iron letters over the gates at Anfield. Or when Ireland got knocked out of Euros by Spain, the fans sang The Fields of Athenry for damn near eight minutes. The broadcasters just shut up, stopped the commentary, and let them sing. Tens of thousands of fans, singing together. Telling their team that they may have lost the match, but not their love.

Is it such a leap from there to religion? I’m far from the first to make the connection. Terry Prachett did it long before I did. There is more than a touch of the Unseen Academicals in that mini-arc. That intense blend of fanaticism, culture, identity, and the shared ecstasy of the moment. Of being part of the shared euphoria, knowing that you are a hair’s breadth from another Hillsborough, or some terrorist deciding that now is the time and this is the place.

So how did I come up with the idea for that mini-arc? I didn’t script it in advance. I just played it out. I had established the game at the start of Vol. 2, and that the cousins were fans. Then I plugged it into my setting, and played it out. What does an inter-city rivalry look like, here? What are the fans like, the colors, the team names? What are the stadiums like? How do they handle tickets and security?

The answers came, easy and hard, from all those little scraps I had collected over the years. I had to put them in the right order, think a lot of things through, go back and check a whole lot of other things. But the basis was all those scraps of images and facts and emotions. Remixed into something new, or at least, new-ish.

Next week, Philosophy in context.