This just shows how difficult it is to make solid world building and just how tricky writing in general is, even more so when you want to vehicle a specific theme or message like here. Kudos.👏🏻
I really like how you took ACTUAL HISTORY AND SCIENCE into account and made reasonable adjustments so your world was inherently logical and sounds really great!
I have so many questions about a Female warrior culture. How do you account for the physical strength difference between men and women? In dueling a woman can be fast and agile think Arya Stark. But in the shield wall or maniple the strength and mass of men plays a huge part. Even archery some of the long bows on the Mary Rose had a pull of 160 pounds with no let off! I assume when I read your books I'll find the answers but that could be over a year! as i just found you through book goblin and i have a long list.
That's a hard one. I've wanted to write a historical fantasy about the Amazons with very little magic for a while now and it turns out I'm still banging my head against the wall on that one. Between the absolute brutal realities of childbearing and infant mortality in ancient days it's really difficult to make it work from a mostly historical, non-magical setting.
Okay, about the two thirds in pre-industrial Europe. What if I told you that in XVIIth century New France, nobles had higher infant mortality than commoners, and that in metropolitan France at the same time period, Jewish and protestant merchants, as well as other weathy parias, had a lower infant mortality than any other demographic, including royalty. It leads me to believe that infant mortality was very much linked to parental investment, as much as it did have to do with diseases.
Interesting. I think it's likely that we do not have the same view of either feminism or a society that might be more open to women in fighting roles, whether as "cannon fodder" or in command. Also, the sources available for historical comparison have changed rapidly from when I was 20-something and personally served in the US military. More and more burials (bronze-age to medieval) assumed to be male because of size or the weapons included in the burial, have turned out (with advances in DNA technology) to be female. Naturally this does not mean a culture of all-female warriors...far more likely is a mix--at ratios we don't yet know--of women serving with men in a combat role. As with many other activities, patriarchal societies have buried the existence of women who did not conform to the stated limits...there simply are no records of them, or the records were ignored by scholars writing about the history of "male" activities such as science, mathematics, medicine, and law, and these coverups continued throughout the 20th c and into the 21st. (Consider the book and film "Hidden Figures" about the Black women "computers" who were actually crucial to the success of the Apollo project. They likely were not the first. Before the advent of serious medical examinations prior to enlistment, multiple women--not a few--"went for a soldier" and some even rose through the ranks, only to be found out when they were wounded or dead. This is the face of official determination to exclude women from fighting. When I was writing my first full books of women in war fiction (back in the 1980s) I considered the "outlier" cases as likely representative of more participation than previously thought. All the women I trained with in the US military, in the midst of an unpopular war (there were many more during WWII) were volunteers, of course. None of us were trained for combat; we were all intended for support roles. But being in that milieu at all led to the chance to find out more about how women had been involved previously--WWI and WWII--and realize how much of women's history in war had always been ignored/concealed, both by the patriarchy and by women themselves. Females flying combat missions, female operating other war machinery, threatened the view that women were naturally less aggressive, less dangerous, incapable of handling the stress of battle. It would be interesting someday to discuss some of this with you, in light of writing fantasy and science fiction, and how our approach to these topics differ. History was my first degree ('68), with anthropology as my B-elective; I went heavily into ancient and medieval history, already fascinated by military stuff (completely inappropriate for a girl of my era.) Then joined up and gained access to sources not available in my university. You will have had access to sources I may not have seen, and I have had some direct experience you may not have had. Do you ever go to SFF conventions in Texas? I used to hit all of them, but health stituations limit my travel now. However, we might meet up at one if you have a fave. Married, one adult son, husband's also a veteran,
Interesting, I'm curious how you would move forward with some of the set up that you've made. Assuming you did not take the lazy and easy way out that is making men weaker and the child bearer, how did you solve the problem of warlike culture now that the value of a woman or human in general is way higher ? How does the lack of human resources affect cultures and the environment surroundings ?
I like this. So the men raise the children while the women go to war? That doesn't sound bad, sounds more like "why didn't we think of this before" but she listed why. Now I wonder how pregnancy looks like in the Sandsea
I love this pragmatic approach to human reproduction. Wouldn't be possible in our reality though. Alas, there's a reason men are so eager to rape and women are vulnerable to forced impregnation all year round. Sadly it's biology. You remove gene randomisation, you get sickly infants, humankind ceases to exist. Could babies be more resilient and prepared to live independently, like most other mammals? Again, sadly human biology can't allow infants to stay in the womb long enough to form a relatively strong baby (about twice as long as normal human pregnancy). Such a baby would have a head too big for female hips. Could we have wider hips? No, that would make it impossible for women to walk fast, hunt or run away from predators. And don't get me started about hidden ovulation that, unlike other mammals, occurs all year round. Apparently, it doesn't limit human sex life to annual spring sessions and helps the female to get more resources from the male to ensure the survival of that prematurely born baby. A kitten is able to hunt in a few months, a little giraffe can walk pretty much right away. A human infant can't properly sleep or shit for a year... I mean you start thinking how to fix all this mess and you don't know where to begin. Either way it wouldn't be human race as we know it.
This just shows how difficult it is to make solid world building and just how tricky writing in general is, even more so when you want to vehicle a specific theme or message like here. Kudos.👏🏻
I love how you show passion and pride when talking about your work, you did some impressive research there, thanks for sharing it with us
Thank you for giving us this insight! Your book world sounds really interesting. I've put them on my wishlist :)
I really like how you took ACTUAL HISTORY AND SCIENCE into account and made reasonable adjustments so your world was inherently logical and sounds really great!
In Sparta, though we never think about it, women were very powerful. If you can outlive two or three husbands, you can become quite wealthy.
I have so many questions about a Female warrior culture. How do you account for the physical strength difference between men and women? In dueling a woman can be fast and agile think Arya Stark. But in the shield wall or maniple the strength and mass of men plays a huge part. Even archery some of the long bows on the Mary Rose had a pull of 160 pounds with no let off! I assume when I read your books I'll find the answers but that could be over a year! as i just found you through book goblin and i have a long list.
That's a hard one. I've wanted to write a historical fantasy about the Amazons with very little magic for a while now and it turns out I'm still banging my head against the wall on that one. Between the absolute brutal realities of childbearing and infant mortality in ancient days it's really difficult to make it work from a mostly historical, non-magical setting.
This was fantastic work and very helpful. I was thinking of building a similar society in my story and this helped me a lot. Thanks for sharing.
Watching this gave me an idea, but I don’t know if I’d ever do anything with it.
Okay, about the two thirds in pre-industrial Europe. What if I told you that in XVIIth century New France, nobles had higher infant mortality than commoners, and that in metropolitan France at the same time period, Jewish and protestant merchants, as well as other weathy parias, had a lower infant mortality than any other demographic, including royalty.
It leads me to believe that infant mortality was very much linked to parental investment, as much as it did have to do with diseases.
A thoughtful prehension; thank you!
Thanks so much!
Interesting. I think it's likely that we do not have the same view of either feminism or a society that might be more open to women in fighting roles, whether as "cannon fodder" or in command. Also, the sources available for historical comparison have changed rapidly from when I was 20-something and personally served in the US military. More and more burials (bronze-age to medieval) assumed to be male because of size or the weapons included in the burial, have turned out (with advances in DNA technology) to be female. Naturally this does not mean a culture of all-female warriors...far more likely is a mix--at ratios we don't yet know--of women serving with men in a combat role. As with many other activities, patriarchal societies have buried the existence of women who did not conform to the stated limits...there simply are no records of them, or the records were ignored by scholars writing about the history of "male" activities such as science, mathematics, medicine, and law, and these coverups continued throughout the 20th c and into the 21st. (Consider the book and film "Hidden Figures" about the Black women "computers" who were actually crucial to the success of the Apollo project. They likely were not the first. Before the advent of serious medical examinations prior to enlistment, multiple women--not a few--"went for a soldier" and some even rose through the ranks, only to be found out when they were wounded or dead. This is the face of official determination to exclude women from fighting. When I was writing my first full books of women in war fiction (back in the 1980s) I considered the "outlier" cases as likely representative of more participation than previously thought. All the women I trained with in the US military, in the midst of an unpopular war (there were many more during WWII) were volunteers, of course. None of us were trained for combat; we were all intended for support roles. But being in that milieu at all led to the chance to find out more about how women had been involved previously--WWI and WWII--and realize how much of women's history in war had always been ignored/concealed, both by the patriarchy and by women themselves. Females flying combat missions, female operating other war machinery, threatened the view that women were naturally less aggressive, less dangerous, incapable of handling the stress of battle.
It would be interesting someday to discuss some of this with you, in light of writing fantasy and science fiction, and how our approach to these topics differ. History was my first degree ('68), with anthropology as my B-elective; I went heavily into ancient and medieval history, already fascinated by military stuff (completely inappropriate for a girl of my era.) Then joined up and gained access to sources not available in my university. You will have had access to sources I may not have seen, and I have had some direct experience you may not have had. Do you ever go to SFF conventions in Texas? I used to hit all of them, but health stituations limit my travel now. However, we might meet up at one if you have a fave. Married, one adult son, husband's also a veteran,
Interesting, I'm curious how you would move forward with some of the set up that you've made. Assuming you did not take the lazy and easy way out that is making men weaker and the child bearer, how did you solve the problem of warlike culture now that the value of a woman or human in general is way higher ? How does the lack of human resources affect cultures and the environment surroundings ?
I like this. So the men raise the children while the women go to war? That doesn't sound bad, sounds more like "why didn't we think of this before" but she listed why. Now I wonder how pregnancy looks like in the Sandsea
Look at Minoans,Mosuomaybe Atlantis adicionally bonobos
I love this pragmatic approach to human reproduction. Wouldn't be possible in our reality though. Alas, there's a reason men are so eager to rape and women are vulnerable to forced impregnation all year round. Sadly it's biology. You remove gene randomisation, you get sickly infants, humankind ceases to exist. Could babies be more resilient and prepared to live independently, like most other mammals? Again, sadly human biology can't allow infants to stay in the womb long enough to form a relatively strong baby (about twice as long as normal human pregnancy). Such a baby would have a head too big for female hips. Could we have wider hips? No, that would make it impossible for women to walk fast, hunt or run away from predators. And don't get me started about hidden ovulation that, unlike other mammals, occurs all year round. Apparently, it doesn't limit human sex life to annual spring sessions and helps the female to get more resources from the male to ensure the survival of that prematurely born baby. A kitten is able to hunt in a few months, a little giraffe can walk pretty much right away. A human infant can't properly sleep or shit for a year... I mean you start thinking how to fix all this mess and you don't know where to begin. Either way it wouldn't be human race as we know it.
Why oh why can't we have a nest and sit on eggs. Think of the great handbags we could have for our nests.