Comments on: Obsidian and Blood setting, 1: the Valley of Mexico

By: Cuauhtli

Cuauhtli — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:11:09 +0000

Hey My names Cuauhtli and i’m Mexicatl (Aztec) my father is full blood and i know ALOT about our history and culture and i know that there is a very Euro-centric view of My people and that most htings taught today are wrong. The name for our people Mexica comes from one of our leaders His name was Mexihtli Witzilopochtli. Mexica translated is “The people of Mexihtli” also the word Mexico means “In the place of Mexihtli” Unless you can speak Nahuatl and can understand our Numeral system and Pictographs you will have alot of trouble understanding our history, culture and the way we lived. We did also have a much more vast area then Tenochtitlan, our people and language spread as far from Aztlan (Present day Utah) to Nikananawak (Present day Nicaragua) we occupied Amalpan (Belize) Atenantitech (Honduras) Cuauhtemalan (Guatemala) and Cuzcatlan (El Salvador) and came into contact and traded with alot of other Ixachilankah (Natives).

By: Aliette de Bodard » Blog Archive » Obsidian and Blood setting, 4: Acatl and death in Mexica religion

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:39:09 +0000

[...] a book trailer). You can find part 1 (the Valley of Mexico) here, part 2 (the city of Tenochtitlan) here, and part 3 (about the Sacred Precinct and religion) [...]

By: Servant of the Underworld « Angela Slatter

Servant of the Underworld « Angela Slatter — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:28:34 +0000

[...] Obsidian and Blood setting, 1: the Valley of Mexico [...]

By: Aliette de Bodard » Blog Archive » Obsidian and Blood setting, 3: The Sacred Precinct

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 11:14:05 +0000

[...] This is part 3 of a series of posts on the setting of my Aztec fantasy series Obsidian and Blood, as a leadup to the release of Book 1, Servant of the Underworld, published by Angry Robot/HarperCollins (more information here, including excerpts and a book trailer). You can find part 1 (the Valley of Mexico) here and part 2 (the city of Tenochtitlan) here. [...]

By: aliette

aliette — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:11:50 +0000

Silvia: I had no idea the mountains were that hard to cross. Wow. No wonder they preferred courier systems.
I’d heard something like that about the use of the name “Aztec”–sigh. Amazing how far the erroneous word spread in a century (and in every language, too).

Meg: thanks, glad you find it interesting! Archaelogy’s been a longtime fascination, even though I had to eventually make a choice between that and engineering…

By: Aliette de Bodard » Blog Archive » Obsidian and Blood setting, 2: Tenochtitlan

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:51:45 +0000

[...] the basin of Anahuac was a place of waters (see previous post), Tenochtitlan was the archetype of an island city. It’s been referred to as the Venice of [...]

By: meg

meg — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:46:09 +0000

This was really interesting. I’m a freshman Archaeology undergrad. I loved learning about Mesoamerica in my 101 class and I thought it would be a incredibly fascinating culture and setting for a novel, so I’m really excited to find out about your book and I’m looking forward to reading it.

By: Silvia

Silvia — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 04:12:41 +0000

Pretty much until the 19th century Aztecs were (correctly) called Mexica. I believe an American historian changed their name then to the inaccurate Aztec.

It’s pretty easy to understand a society without beasts of burden, btw, if you’ve lived there. Specially Tenochtitlan, which was a water-based city with the canals criss-crossing the entire metropolis.

In Baja California, where I am from, getting across some of deep mountain areas on a mule is difficult. A car is impossible and a cart would be the same thing: worthless.

I guess a llama would have been useful.

But you, know, Mexica couriers were very quick, so I guess they managed.

By: aliette

aliette — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:43:57 +0000

Spencer: aw, thanks! The one I have trouble getting my head around is the lack of beasts of burdens. Given the lie of the land, I can understand why carts wouldn’t be handy. A mule or a donkey, on the other hand… Guess they were just unlucky not to have those animals within reach).

By: aliette

aliette — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:42:50 +0000

Jeff: I’ve seen the city names in Civilization as well
I have three basic strategies for avoid name confusion: the first is shamelessly manipulating the narrative to make sure that no two similar names will end up too close to each other. The second is to translate when I can (my editor Marc Gascoigne was the one who originally suggested this for the names of the gods, and it’s quite handy: it’s much easier to parse “The Feathered Serpent” than Quetzalcoatl).
And the third is to fudge within reasonable limits: I can choose characters’ names to be short even though it’s not strictly historically accurate, limit the use of honorifics (which are tacked on as suffixes to the end of already kilometric names), and finally modify some of the names if they’re really too unwiedly. I haven’t done it yet, but I’m seriously tempted for the second book (I have one Nezahualpilli-tzin, which is a horrible mouthful to pronounce, and chopping a few syllables would help him reintegrate the realm of characters with names that can be memorised).