It is Friday, and that means blog. It has been a month since my first research roundup, and that means I’m long overdue for the second. Since there’s quite a number of links, I’m putting them under headings. Enjoy today’s research journey.
On the subject of New York
The Rikers Island wiki page I might just have to favourite somewhere, because I went there at least three times this month. On the plus side, I also branched out into other famous places, like Bellevue and its history slash myths. Honestly that research was a little disappointing, mostly because the reality wasn’t what I wanted it to be for my purposes, but I suppose you can’t win them all.
Also did some revisiting of NYC’s sewers and water pipes. Somehow it always comes down to the plumbing with me, though at least one of those wasn’t what I was looking for. And there was this mosey around looking for unique NYC traits, for … Reasons.
Oh, yeah, and some random page I found which gives me some idea of NYC speech quirks; but also, I’ve gotta ask: What’s with this ‘grocery with a sh sound’ business?!
Names, titles and thematic appropriateness
This is by far the largest category this month, which is a little surprising — I thought NYC might beat it out, but then I needed to have a mosey through for character names. This one is sort-of split into two sections; there’s the looking at random names to see which fits a given character (or group of characters), and then there’s the researching around titles, themes or otherwise trying to find a specific kind of name for a specific character.
On the subject of the former, I went to my trusty name randomiser (twice in this span of time, actually), and ran through both forms of Vera, Isaiah, Gunne, Oscar, and Alexander. Also the surname Mould, for reasons I cannot now remember but probably has to do with disbelief (fun fact, the surname Mould did not originate where you probably think it did!) Some of those names probably didn’t come so much from the randomiser as the need to revisit meanings.
On the subject of the latter, I had a couple of idle title meanderings (trying to figure out whether I needed or wanted a character to be a legal-eagle and thus what titles some might have, which admittedly got a bit off-topic).
More importantly, I was pursuing some thematic/meaning paths relating to Vijaya, for … Reasons. But it involved his name, his namesake’s name, and revisiting his surname. There’s also another character who needed something appropriate, which led down a rabbit-hole of name histories … starting with New York, New York, New York again, and then several important locations in New York and their Dutch roots. (Just trying to figure out whether ‘Dutch’ was the right word to use took me from Amsterdam, because I couldn’t remember the correct name of the country, to the Netherlands, which didn’t give me a demonym that sounded right, to the Dutch people, which also didn’t sound right, to the Danish language, which kind of maybe sounded right?
At which point I gave up, googled ‘Danish vs Dutch’, and finally got my answer (which showed my instinctive reaction was utterly wrong, may one of my besties forgive me).
History and culture, oh my
Heading on this one is a bit wibbly, mostly because it’s a short one but all of the links are too specific to plonk in Miscellaneous. And I was, indeed, looking for specific things.
For instance, if one wants to make a character a medically-discharged veteran, one should make sure there were era-appropriate wars going on in which they can be injured (coming from a previous, unpublished story where I had some veterans … during a period where there were no wars their country participated in. Oops.)
And then there’s that thematic value again, this time with regards to … Reasons. Also chapter titles.
Intrepid miscellany
And then there’s the subheading where nothing really fits into its own category beyond ‘random shit I had to look up for one reason or another’. Say, if one of your characters is a cook. Or you’re contemplating food-related logistics. Or someone’s favourite song is relevant to the chapter at hand (and can do double-time as a chapter title).
And that is that for today. I wonder how many circles of research hell I must’ve clocked this month?
Aurichalcum Publishing 