Kelly Robson and Waters of Versailles - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summary (with spoilers!)

It was great to talk to author Kelly Robson, and to share her excitement about her Nebula nomination for Waters of Versailles. At 18,600 words, the piece qualifies as a novella (for anyone thinking about the Hugos). She told us she'd been hoping it would be shorter, because novellas are so hard to sell. It bounced at a couple of venues before Tor.com acquired it through a personal connection.

I asked her what the original kernel of the story had been. She told us that she'd been inspired by reading historical nonfiction for fun - specifically a book called The Sun King by Nancy Mitford. She followed that book up with the book Versailles by Tony Spaworth, which she described as less "juicy."

In these readings, she became fascinated by the water system of Versailles, which featured flush toilets in the year 1738. She said that thousands of people were living there, and this led to much squalor; water distribution was "a huge problem."

This interest of hers combined with her experience writing a wine column for Châtelaine magazine, where she learned the language of people passionate about wine and fine living - she says there's a bit of that in the story as well.

The main character, Sylvain, is a manly man from the southern Alps. He wants to be in Versailles to take power for himself, but can't respect the shallow, lazy people. In reading the story, I felt there was a sense of tension between the power of the rich aristocracy and the power of his home, which includes the power of nature as embodied in the nixie who appears in the story.

The historical context of the story, Kelly told us, was that Louis XV has returned to Versailles, which is not in good condition. Sylvain when he arrives takes the waterworks for his own by bringing a nixie from the glacial pools of the Alps, and getting her to force the water to flow. The nixie is a child - bored, mischeivous, and not wanting to do what she's told. Kelly told us that once she watched a two-year-old for 36 hours and it was utterly exhausting!

Sylvain puts a lot of energy into being a courtier, maintaining his social standing, and appearing where he needs to be (like attending the king's waking, keeping lovers, etc.). He also works to put pipes in to expand the plumbing, which runs from cisterns on the roof down to the toilets. The first toilet goes to the king, then one to his mistress, etc. Everyone wants them. Kelly chose to refer to these toilets as "thrones," a delightfully impudent word choice. Sylvain has to deal with the fact that the king's cat has taken over his "throne," and he needs a new one; also that the bored nixie keeps targeting him with drips.

We spoke about the sex scene that opens the story. A fun way to approach a sex scene, Kelly says, is to have something else going on. In Sylvain's case, this something else is getting away from the drips. I personally considered this opening scene to be something of a metaphor for his whole problem, as it concerns Sylvain's difficulty getting into privileged spaces while maintaining his plumbing!

Kelly told us about some advice she received at Orycon 2012 from the estimable Steven Barnes. He said when you get a story idea, you usually get either a character or a problem. If you get the problem first, you should ask, "Who is the absolute worst person to give this problem to?" And if you get a character first, then ask, "What is the worst thing that can happen to this person, and how can I make him do it to himself?"  According to Kelly, it was this advice that really changed the story and made everything about it work. It was also something that changed her writing generally. She says she now also puts quite a bit of work into scene craft, so every scene has its own hook, and conclusion, and she considers what the scene's role is in the story.

I asked her about the story's title, and she told me "the title was always there." So was the story arc. She knew about the beginning and the end, and a few points in between.

Louis XV, the king in the story, "had mistresses up the wazoo," so Kelly took advantage of this to add complication to the story. The way that the king maintains his relationships - all of which are tainted by power - disgusts Sylvain. Sylvain himself maintains a relationship with a lady-in-waiting named Annette, which starts as shallow but becomes a bit deeper. Kelly thinks it's unusual in that the two of them don't end up in a romantic relationship. The father-child relationship is more important in this particular story.

I asked Kelly about her choice of the Alps for Sylvain's origin, and she explained that she is from Jasper, near Jasper Park in Alberta, Canada, and loves the mountains. Her love informs Sylvain's yearnings.

Kelly would like to write more in this world. She is planning a novella about Annette. This is a world where magical creatures are known to exist, and people believe in human-animal hybrids. The nixie is part salamander and part human, and it's hinted that the king's lineage is not 100% human.

She told us that she made up the songs that Sylvain sings in the story. This brought us to the interesting question of how an author builds and maintains trust with the reader. The use of specific real details forms a strong foundation that is really important in speculative fiction, where readers are asked to believe many totally made-up things.

Kelly also mentioned the workshop Taos Toolbox and recommended it highly. As she said about writing, "It's a solitary pursuit, but you can't be solitary all the time."

Kelly, thank you so much for joining us, and good luck at the Nebulas! Next week, Dive into Worldbuilding will meet on Wednesday, March 16th at 10am Pacific, and we will take up the topic we had to cancel a week ago, Social Media. I hope you can join us!

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Andrea Stewart - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summary

We were joined for this hangout by author Andrea Stewart, who told us a bit about her worldbuilding and her work. Her work has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, IGMS, and Galaxy's Edge.

We started by talking about a piece she had in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Set in a psudo-Chinese culture, it featured an opium den with magical smoke, in a place where the land surrounding the city was dying and this had become the people's escape. Very cool story! Andrea explained that her mom is a Chinese immigrant, so half her family is Chinese. One of the key differences, she says, is in conversational interaction style.

I asked her about her series, the Changeling Wars. She told me that it had begun as a writing exercise, where every person in a group picks a word, and then each member has to write a piece that uses all the words chosen by the group. She describes this series as being part of a move from dark fantasy to a bit lighter fantasy. The first book begins when a woman walks in on her cheating husband, and her emotion is so powerful in that moment that it awakens magic in her. It turns out she's a changeling, and not just adopted, as she believed.

Andrea has very warm words for writing exercises, which she says can spark ideas you might not otherwise come up with.

Changeling Wars is a portal fantasy involving the Fae. There are twelve families jostling for power among the fae, and the main character, Nicole, is a changeling who can open and close doors between the worlds. Her power can't be canceled out. Everyone therefore is trying to kill her because she upsets the power balance between the families. It's in first person point of view, and starts out as an urban fantasy. Nicole is very "type A," practical, and wants to work for a promotion, not suddenly to have magic! The story is set in Portland.

Andrea told us that to research for the story she traveled to Portland and took pictures and notes. In fact, she had started writing the book before she took the trip, and her experience there really changed how the story came out. She said she liked Portland's reputation, but found when she got there that some car chase scenes she'd written wouldn't work. She had begun some research on YouTube, but that medium has limitations despite the amount of video that people post. Andrea says that Google Street View is excellent, but only gives you one time of day, and can't give you smells, sounds, or changes of light. She did her visits between draft 1 and draft 2 of her first novel.

She says, "I want to set a fight scene in the Japanese Garden sometime."

She also did research on the fairy world, by going to the library and looking at folklore. It's influenced by Scottish folklore, but nonetheless, a lot of the book's twist on the fae is uniquely her own. She says she has outlined five books for the series, but imagines it could be as many as six to ten.

She told us a bit about the protagonist's life. She is coming to terms with her cheating husband, and wondering whether she still wants her marriage. She also comes to feel that she does not belong in either the Fae world or the real world. Nicole is half Chinese and half Scottish. Andrea makes use of the idea of third culture people, who come from a place where they don't quite belong in any of the cultures that enter into their makeup. She asks questions about what makes a family as Nicole works on finding her role between the two worlds. In Book 3, Nicole has to learn about aspects of fae culture, including politeness rules, that everyone expects her to know.

Andrea said she had fun with the clothes in the book, and the difference between mortal clothes and shimmery moving dresses influenced by medieval fantasy.

She says that science fiction and fantasy go together, and that there is not a clear border between them, especially since science fiction and science are part of our world.

She wanted to keep the magic consistent. People have specializations, like magical travel or quicker swordplay, or changing the shape of objects. They can set wards. There is also ice and fire elemental magic. These are all powered by emotion. It's therefore possible to get burnt out emotionally and not be able to work magic. People have different recovery rates. Pschology enters into her decisions on this.

I asked Andrea whether she had a "story bible" and she said "I have a few of them." On e for magic and how it works, one for the properties of the world, and another for the different families, locations, characters, and relationships. She says she works in Word.

We also talked a bit about her work in progress, which she read from at WorldCon. She had written the book, and then split it into two books and sent it out. The book's title is still in flux, but it features two coutries, the last two standing against an army of conquering nonhumans. The technology level is Renaissance. It has dragons! But not in the way you might expect, Andrea explains. She describes the book as Breaking Bad meets The Other Boleyn Girl, with dragons. The protagonist must ask how far she's willing to go to save her country, and whether she's willing to enslave the dragons. It features themes of tribalism.

Andrea says she is still revising to make the split between the two books work - separating the arcs, and making sure book 1 has a resolution, while still leaving things open for the second book. I said that splitting a book like that gives you room to take your time, and she agreed that there was more space to go into emotional implications that can't be skipped. "That's how your reader connects to your character," she says. "How are people going to care?"

The split version has room for travel to enemy lands, and to explore the reasons why people fight. It also has more room for internal politics, conflict over decisions, and exploration of consequences like refugee populations.

Thank you so much for joining us, Andrea! It was great fun to hear about what you are working on.
 Here is the video of our discussion:

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Culture Shock: A Dive into Worldbuilding Hangout Summary

When we started our discussion on Culture Shock, I pointed out that I wanted to look at various kinds of culture shock - not just that experienced by travelers, but also that which can happen in the workplace, or in marriages between families, etc. As it turned out, the discussion went to some interesting places but didn't quite cover all of the things I'd been thinking of. We'll have to come back to it again!

I spoke about the culture shock I experienced during my first visit to Japan, when I was living with a host family who would tell me to do and say things but not explain why. I had to bathe at particular times, and say "osaki deshita" when I came out. It took me some time and independent research to figure out what exactly was going on! Unfortunately, one of the things I learned was that this particular host family had been trying to take advantage of my presence to make money. The reason it took me so long to realize this was actually culture shock - I was just assuming that any discomfort I suffered (as when I was not allowed to heat my room against the cold) was due to my lack of understanding of cultural details.

Cliff told us a story about a coworker, a woman from a traditional Muslim community where men aren't permitted to touch women who are not close family members. She became very upset when a coworker tapped her on the shoulder. This was problematic because she had kept her expectations for touch behavior unstated, and they didn't match the culture of this Silicon Valley company.

We talked a bit about social casual touching, which (along with personal space) often has complex rules and boundaries that are extremely firm and can be very upsetting to people - but differ widely across cultural communities. Sometimes the rules are religious and sometimes they are more widespread across the culture.

Cliff told us about a situation from his work in progress, where arthropods have difficulty interacting with a human merchant when the research the human has done is insufficient and the negotiation goes wrong. The arthropods have very strong rules about communal vs. individual behavior, and again, there is unfortunate boundary-crossing.

I mentioned that very often in science fiction - and certainly there are a great number of salient examples from Star Trek - the aliens' motives and requirements are made light of or considered quaint or funny. I believe that to be a common error in the way these things are treated, because cultural differences can have life or death consequences.

Politeness can be a big problem because the base assumption is usually that "if you're not polite, you're being intentionally offensive." The consequences of rudeness or even cultural awkwardness can be serious and long-lasting.

Morgan told us about the Ukandir people in her work in progress, where keeping track of bloodines is really important, and a person who has not done this is treated as shocking and becomes ashamed of not knowing.

I mentioned that in our world, bloodlines and the policing of them are incredibly important to people's life outcomes, as with the "one drop rule" to determine whether a child is considered a member of the white or black communities. In this case, it has long been a life or death matter.

Culture is strange, because it is arbitrary on many levels, yet real in its structures and consequences.

Cliff returned to the idea of making light of alien cultures, and pointed out that (especially early) Star Trek was based in many ways on the idea of American exceptionalism, where it suggests that the crew has the best point of view and other cultures are based on something not valuable. In other ways, though, it uses its aliens to reflect aspects of our own culture metaphorically. It can get people to look at their culture from the outside.

I spoke a bit about my story, The Liars (Analog May 2012). It featured a cultural system that had many problematic aspects, but the worst problem arose when that system was pressured by human action, which made the problematic parts worse. In the end the humans could only remove themselves to try to make things better.

We also talked about unexpected consequences of historical decisions. China's one child policy has led to an overpopulation of men, and stigmatization of second children. It has also led to loss of vocabulary for complex kin relationships.

We agreed that there could be cross-generational culture shock, because older people are often offended by younger people's language. Glenda remarked that "long-haired music" before the 1960s referred to classical music, and Morgan noted that "golden oldies" are defined differently by different generations.

The idea of culture shock is a really great tool for authors working in speculative worlds. Much of science fiction depends on creating culture shock in the reader. A point of view character who is a stranger to their environment is a terrific tool, also. This has been used in many stories, including Shogun. A stranger gives you the opportunity to explain the rules in naturalistic settings. If there are no real outsiders, you can still have characters come from different cultures or subcultures within the story. A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar does this very well, as do many historical novels. Jane Austen immerses you in a culturally distinct world. Ursula K. LeGuin also uses the technique of using a contrast of cultures, neither of which is like our own.

Without outsiders, portraying a culture effectively is much harder. This is especially true for short stories, where there is less time to let people learn the alien culture.

Morgan told us how her shapeshifters were more tolerant of nudity before and after shifting than the non-shifter population.

Cliff and I talked briefly about how there is culture shock between parents (especially new parents) and non-parents.

We really enjoyed the discussion and plan to take it up again.

Next week, Wednesday, February 10 at 10am Pacific, we'll be joined by author Andrea Stewart, who will tell us about her work. I hope you can come!

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Inheritance - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summary

Inheritance is a surprisingly rich topic in worldbuilding and storytelling. The plot of King Lear depends on it, as do all those stories about the third son going off to seek his fortune, and all the ones about dynastic struggles and lines of succession.

You can inherit property, titles, land, and so much more.

It's hard to talk about inheritance, at least of titles, without involving issues of gender. The British crown recently changed its rules to include girls more directly in the succession, but when Queen Elizabeth took the throne, it was because there were so few boys in her generation of the royal family. There have been similar issues with the Japanese Imperial family, where the Crown Prince and his wife have had a daughter, and she is their only child.

Empires and crowns often have issues with trying to prove an unbroken line of succession, due to the idea of the divine right of kings and emperors. The Imperial Household Agency of Japan is known to have forbidden archaeological research because of its interest in preserving the image of an unbroken line stretching back to the sun goddess Amaterasu.

Glenda pointed out that gender is critical to the idea of patrilineal vs. matrilineal inheritance. Morgan noted that in orthodox and conservative Jewish populations, one's identity as a Jew is inherited matrilineally.

In an agrarian society where there is a benefit to having many kids to work a farm, there is a natural problem that arises when you talk about inheriting the land, because land can only be divided so many times.

Morgan brought up property and monetary assets. Assets that have named beneficiaries are relatively straightforward. If there's a will, these will be distributed according to the will. But what constitutes a will? What if there is no will? Will money be distributed by the state, and how? Will the State eventually inherit the money if there are no living heirs?

Morgan told us how she had worked through the inheritance rules of her secondary world. Kenehar has a system most like us. If you are a business owner and you die, the partner will inherit the business. However, Kenehar has been invaded by the Ukandir, who work based on houses. The title of Head of House is inherited by bloodline, but the Head doesn't own the house's assets, and property belongs to the House. Imposition of the Ukandir laws over the Kenehar system lead to complications. Morgan told us that people who leave the Ukandir houses and make money from outside jobs can still have their assets appropriated by the house if they die. Disinheriting someone from a house meas that you never existed as part of it.

I spoke briefly about inheritance questions regarding the throne of Varin, my own secondary world. In Varin there is no blood line, but the Heir is selected by successive votes of a fifteen-member Cabinet between candidates put forward by each of the Great Families.

How does an unfit ruler become ruler? By blood inheritance? Or by some other method?

People often compete for an inheritance. Lots of movies have that as part of their premise. The Aristocats is one of those; Who Framed Roger Rabbit? another; All of Me yet another.

The role of Executor is crucial. Is that person named in the will? Someone needs to be in charge of distribution. Sometimes people can show up with false wills, or less-than-recent ones. How can you tell which one is valid? Must there be witnesses to a will, or a notary? Think about what happens if there is no legal will. What happens if there is a letter but it's unsigned?

In the Mystery genre you see a lot about inheritance and wills. Another question that comes up is the rights of the caretaker. What benefit, if any, accrues to the person who took care of the deceased through their last illness? Did the deceased recognize that person and their efforts or not?

The will of the deceased is not necessarily just. The will may have conditions intended to influence the behavior of heirs from beyond the grave, such as requiring a relationship with the guardian of the assets in order to maintain access to them.

There was a Twilight Zone episode where anyone who wanted to inherit part of a considerable fortune had to wear a mask for 24 hours, and that mask was a hideous reflection of their inner character. Over the 24 hours their face became molded to the mask so it was permanently that way. Conveniently for the story, the deceased was right about the character of the heirs, but what if he hadn't been?

We also mentioned Trusts, which make for a delay in inheritance.

Regents can get in all sorts of trouble! Look at what the Steward of Gondor did: the position became a hereditary rulership because the kings had disappeared, but there were big problems when the kings returned. This thought made me ask, "What if the regent or steward is good and the heir is bad?" What if you wanted to get rid of the heir in order to protect the kingdom, but your ethics couldn't let you kill them? Could you send them away? Could you groom a different heir to be a good person?

Some interesting issues came up right at the end, such as the relationship between the ruler and the culture of a kingdom, and whether the culture would sustain itself if the hereditary succession of the ruler was broken.

We also spoke about cases where Native American people object to scientists studying the remains of their people and what their legal rights are when they are not necessarily directly related to the deceased.

We also asked whether cultural heritage could be a form of inheritance.

By the end of our discussion, we wanted to make sure to talk about this topic again!

Next week we'll meet at 10am on Wednesday, February 3rd to discuss Culture Shock. What happens when you move into a new culture, or convert to a spouse's or other new religion? I hope you can join us!

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Isabel Yap - a Dive into Worldbuilding hangout summary

This week we had author Isabel Yap join us! After reading two of her stories, Milagroso at Tor.com and The Oiran's Song at Uncanny Magazine, I was quite surprised by a comment that she'd made to me when we spoke privately about her worldbuilding. So I started by asking her how she defined worldbuilding, and wasn't surprised when she said that she thought mainly about secondary worlds. She noted that worldbuilding panels at conventions very often feature secondary worlds. She describes herself as comfortable with contemporary fantasy, using a modern setting with a few changes. She has tried to come up with new worlds.

I explained the definition of worldbuilding that I use in my hangout series, that worldbuilding has to do with the creation of a world on a blank page. She said she appreciated the more expansive definition. She likes to go about presenting our world in a different way.

She told us that she has a background in fan fiction. The fun part there is that you get to use canon. Other people have done the heavy lifting of creating the world, she says, and thus words and character names evoke a whole lot. Working in original fiction, the task is different. "They are coming to my world completely cold," she says. "How can I get them to care?"

With fan fiction there is a kind of co-creation between the fan and the work. Isabel likes to ask "what ifs" about a story, and do character sketches and backstories, etc., for example: what would happen 10 years after the Hunger Games? She always asks herself if this would make sense in the context of canon.

She says even during this time she was always writing original stories, too. She notes that as a reader growing up, you don't see much short fiction. She says she wasn't aware that such things get published, and wasn't conscious of any need to publish them. She remarks that in short fiction, every sentence really matters.

Isabel told us that she wrote "Milagroso" during her stint at Clarion in 2013. In week 1 she'd written a story about two hackers traveling around the world, but had received feedback that there was no sense of setting in it. She decided, "I'm going to show my class that I can write setting." That, she says, was the first driving factor behind the story, while the second was instructor Nalo Hopkinson. Isabel told us, "I wanted to write a very Filipino story." This was important, she says, because she grew up with the perception that "no one will really get it if I write about my life." However, Nalo made her feel safe because they were both writers of color.

She described the research she did for the story, which features a festival she hadn't attended herself, but which several of her friends had attended. She spoke to high school friends and watched YouTube videos about the festival in general and about how to make kiping, which features prominently. She was very happy when the story was well received by her classmates. She describes the setting as almost like a magical setting, but taking place in a near future which is very like the present.

Glenda asked if it mattered whether the description featured things that were "real" or not. Isabel responded by describing the difference between the reactions of Filipinos to the story vs. non-Filipinos. She said that the Filipinos were more likely to say "I know exactly what you're talking about," while non-Filipinos unfamiliar with the festival were more likely to remark on the emotional impressions of the description. Isabel said she was thrilled when her sister really "got" the story.

The second story we discussed was The Oiran's Song. Isabel told us that it also involved a lot of research because it is historical fiction, even though its not set at a specific historical period. She had always wanted to write about a soldier and a courtesan, but the story didn't really start coming together until she learned about the difference between an oiran (whose duties include sexual ones) and a geisha (more of an entertainer). Studying the history of the role of the oiran helped her pick the approximate historical period, and she then had to decide roughly which war she was depicting. She read a whole book on the Floating World (the world of artists and courtesans in Japanese history). She also got some inspiration from a couple of manga series. She wanted to show the oiran breaking down and feeling her life was hard... but "Spoilers!" she said, she is also an assassin and a demon! She describes the story as personal and triggery.

Pat asked if the oiran were still around, but to our knowledge they are not - the geisha and the maiko remain, however.

I asked if she had a particular world she preferred to work in, but her preference is for discovering new things, and writing in our own world, which feels quite natural. We discussed how difficult it is to write about people whose experience is not the same as ours. She feels nervous, she says, not writing about Filipinos. "I'm going to mess up this American..."

She mentioned the critical question that many writers face, where they can't travel everywhere in the world and wonder if that should stop them from writing about something. She says it shouldn't, but that one must make sure to be careful and do research. She is comfortable working in Japanese settings because she consumed a lot of Japanese media growing up, and studied Japanese starting in the 6th grade. She also spent 3 months studying abroad in Tokyo, which gave her an interesting perspective on the relation between the narratives featured in media and the reality. In the case of shojo manga, she says, it's remarkably close.

She urges us all to check out Filipino Speculative Fiction, which is a strong anthology series, and also The SEA is ours.

Isabel is currently working on a project called The Hurricane Heals series, taking the story of 5 magical girls, but instead of setting them at the typical age for maho shojo stories, they are 25 and dealing with the reality of adult lives in the US. Apparently one of the stories features a monster showing up at a strip club in the middle of a bachelorette party. She wanted to work with the magical girls trope, but make it more realistic.

We briefly discussed how authors consider different kinds of things "realistic." Isabel told us about looking at things like Power Rangers and asking "but how would that actually work?" When does it hurt? When is it tiring? Pat added, "Who gets to wash out all the bloodstains?" These works (like Power Rangers) have a narrative format so familiar it becomes invisible. It is interesting to ask what happens when those elements become visible.

Isabel says, "I do have a perverse love of the painful stuff."

Another thing she is working on features two handsome young men (bishonen) in space. She also is working on a secondary world fantasy that draws on Filipino myth, complete with some interesting gender flipping.

Isabel, thanks so much for joining us and talking about your work! We'll be looking out for it. I hope you will all enjoy the video below. Join us next Wednesday at 10am to talk about Inheritance!

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Announcement of change: this week's guest is Isabel Yap!

This week, on Thursday, January 14th at 8pm Pacific (that's pretty late for East Coast folks, sorry), awesome author Isabel Yap will be joining us to talk about her writing and her worldbuilding. She is the author of Milagroso and The Oiran's Song, and I'm really looking forward to learning more about her worlds.

Make a note of it, and join us on Google Hangouts!

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Hospitality - a Dive into Worldbuilding Hangout Summary

We had a great time discussing hospitality, which has a lot more consequences in a great many more stories and experiences than it might appear at first glance!

Hospitality, of course, is that thing where you invite people into your home - or welcome people to a place you control, as when you find people entering airline "hospitality suites." Hospitality can be voluntary and involuntary. When British Royalty are coming to your house,  you don't have any choice but to be a host.

Cliff noted that Hospitality drives many sections of Tolkien's The Hobbit, as in the opening when the dwarves arrive and Bilbo is forced to deal with them. Also, in Game of Thrones, many events are set in motion when the king's court shows up at Winterfell. A large portion of Nicola Griffith's Hild is driven by the fact that the king and his court must move from place to place, eating the hosts out of house and home as they go. Hospitality is also a key issue for Shakespeare, as in King Lear. It's also critical to many plot points of Wagner's Ring Cycle, and in Dante's Inferno there's a special area of Hell dedicated to people who have been traitors to their guests.

People who fail as hosts are often marked permanently as evil people. When hospitality fails, bad times are coming.

There are hospitality holidays. These include Halloween, where you are supposed to prepare for strangers to come to your door and demand candy, and Passover, where you are supposed to invite people to come in and join you for your meal. There are hints that Christmas also used to have a strong hospitality element associated with caroling, as in "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" where the carolers demand to be taken in and fed.

Hospitality rules have changed in modern life, but they are still critical. The Syrian refugee crisis is about hospitality.

In general, the more isolated and dangerous the location, the stronger the rules that say you have to help one another, and take people into your care.

The Christmas story is about a failure of hospitality that landed Mary and Joseph out in the stable. The Bible and the Torah are filled with hospitality-based stories. In the Torah you can encounter angels who disguise themselves as guest. Even older traditions have similar stories, as when Odin (Wotan) travels in the form of an old man to test people's hospitality.

Such a test of hospitality is essentially a test of the host's moral character. As such, you as an author could do a lot with hospitality to indicate the characteristics (good or bad) of your protagonist. After all the dwarves have arrived and been taken care of, we end up feeling quite strongly that Bilbo is a good guy.

Morgan mentioned international student exchanges as a good example of a hospitality-based activity. Adoption is also a form of hospitality.

In Star Wars, Lando is a bad host and has to make up for it.

There are also stories about dishonest guests. Vampires must be invited into the home, but once there, don't carry out the traditional duties of guests! They are predators taking advantage of hospitality rules.

Morgan noted that in cities, it can be risky to take people in. This leads to culture clashes where people coming in from desert (or forest) environments expect hospitality but can get none. There are circumstances in cities where people end up sitting in dangerous or unsafe circumstances because asking for aid might be worse.

Conflict can also come from different cultural expectations surrounding the roles of host and guest. In the Netherlands, the host is supposed to serve food until the guest stops eating; in Japan, the guest is supposed to eat until the host stops serving. This could make a Japanese guest in a Dutch home rather uncomfortable!

Hitchhiking is a form of hospitality. There are stories about ghost hitchhikers, and predatory supernatural hitchhikers.

Rules surrounding the host's role vary based on circumstance. When guests from far away come to visit, do they stay at your home? They most often do at ours. When we have gone to Europe, friends have often hosted us in their homes. However, when we go to Japan, we typically get help from our hosts finding an inn not from the house, because the houses are too small to accommodate extra residents.

In Japanese history, there was another twist on hospitality, where the Shogun required his vassals to live with him for half the year. This kept local leaders from consolidating their power in their places of origin and from conspiring with each other against him.

In English history, feudal lords would gather in London to play politics and display wealth. As in the Japanese example, this expenditure for travel and showing off was good for the king, and bad for their own power.

We also talked about fostering. When children were fostered, they could be hostages or brainwashed (conditioned?) by the hosts as well as being welcomed. There are instances of this in Game of Thrones, and also in Anne McCaffrey's Pern books. The Pern example was particularly interesting because of its association with craft guilds. Fostering served to keep skills from dying out in the isolated locations where they were practiced.

An Irish king called Niall of the Nine Hostages kept women of his subject kingdoms hostage in his court, and also used them to spread his DNA through the population. This would mean that rape was involved, as a breach of hospitality.

Some stories have featured travelers expected to sleep/have sex with a host's female relatives.

In Beaumarchais' The Marriage of Figaro, much of the plot revolves around the lord's attempts to have sex with Figaro's fiancée before they can get married. We talked about whether Droit du Seigneur was a real thing, or just a rumor.

Slave traders can pose as hosts who then drug and chain up their guests and sell them.

Morgan brought up the question of the purposes of hospitality, and its limits. Passover hospitality is for a meal, not for an indefinite period. There is also that expression "guests are like fish - they smell after three days."

We discussed the question of children moving back in with their parents, how college was expected to help kids (in America at least) transition out of the home, and how children moving back in encounter the tricky situation of not quite being a household member, not quite being a guest.

Boarders are often called "paying guests" so they lie close to the borderline as well.

Bed & Breakfast places are sometimes hotel-like, but sometimes are also instances where people invite you into their homes.

There are a lot of potential plot and conflict ideas that can grow out of the expectations surrounding hospitality. I hope you have found this discussion interesting!

Thank you to everyone who attended. I hope you enjoy the video.

#SFWApro