Masterlist of Resources and Things
The results of our resource sharing post compiled into one handy-dandy list. If you weren't around for it, or didn't participate, or find something that would totally help a bunch of people on the comm, comment here with your stuff! Consider the implied internet statute of limitations for commenting on things completely nonexistent for this post.
Since this post is public, dear passers-by: this list reflects the needs and projects of our members, and so it gets a little... specific, at times. I hope it's useful!
Aria, can we have a "masterlist" tag?
Book Recommendations
Rather than amazon.com links--because some of us are .ca or .co.uk--I've given ISBNs for faster searching, no matter what engine you're using. This is a ridiculous hodgepodge, but hey.
You're on Your Own, Dude
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
978-1400032051
20,000 Years of Fashion The History of Costume and Personal Adornment by Francois Boucher
978-0810916937
"good for general huff-huffing. The bulk of its focus is on European fashion, but it traces trends and industry developments over centuries and provides lots of photographic and artistic reference. Every time I come home I briefly consider stealing our copy away, and that sucker would weigh my suitcase down something fierce."
50s Fashion: Vintage Fashion and Beauty Ads ed. Jim Heimann
978-3822849330
Art and China's revolution by Melissa Chiu and Zheng Shengtian
978-0300140644
The Art of Dress by Jane Ashelford
978-1905400799
"which - being a companion to the National Trust's clothing collection - is sadly low on the pretty pictures, but BIG on the social and cultural influences on fashion choices and fashion changes (From a British perspective)."
The Balkans: Nationalism, War & the Great Powers, 1804-1999 by Misha Glenny
978-0140233773
"It might not be immediately relevant to anyone else's projects, but it did give me a lot of dirt on pre-WWI European Great Power relations from some angles I hadn't really seen covered before. Also you can learn about King Zog's paranoid escapades and how Carol II of Romania fucked anything that moved, you know, if that's your thing."
The Book of Gods & Goddesses: A Visual Directory of Ancient and Modern Deities by Eric Chaline
978-0060732561
A Brief History of How the Industrial Revolution Changed the World& A Brief History of the Age of Steam by Thomas Crump
978-1845298975 & 978-1845295530
"more anthropological, but also a much clunkier read. And of course, when he says 'The World' he really means 'The Western and Westernising World', but c'est la vie."
Costume 1066 to the Present: A Complete Guide to English Costume Design and History by John Peacock
978-0500286029
The Element Encyclopedia of Ghosts & Hauntings & The Element Encyclopedia of the Psychic World by Theresa Cheung
978-0007211487 & 978-0007299065
The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures by John Matthews and Caitlin Matthews
978-1402735431
The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies and Hidden History: The Ultimate A-Z of Ancient Mysteries, Lost Civilizations and Forgotten Wisdom by John Michael Greer
978-0007220687
The Encyclopedia of Art Deco by Alistair Duncan
978-1577150466
Heroic with Grace: Legendary Women of Japan, ed. Chieko Irie Mulhern
978-0873325523
"which is an awesome, awesome book about kick ass Japanese women, and just generally good background reading for writing awesome women period because it talks a lot about how and why these women heroes work and are still culturally famous."
A History of Japan by R. H. P. Mason and J. G. Caiger
978-0804820974
"goes from pre-history to American Occupation in under four hundred pages without getting stupidly bogged down in particular periods, throwing about a ton of obscure terminology, or delving too deep into complex politics and/or economics. It's my favourite. It's also a bitch to get hold of, how about that."
The Industrial Revolution Explained: Steam, Sparks and Massive Wheels by Stan Yorke
978-1853069352
"slim volume from an engineer's perspective, for when I have my techie hat on"
The Pictorial History of Steam Power by J.T. Van Riemsdijk and Kenneth Brown
978-0861368525
"so, so hideously nerdy and 80's I don't even know why it's here but it has diagrams~
Picture this : World War I posters and visual culture ed. Pearl James
978-0803226104
Please to the Table by Anya Von Bremzen
978-0894808456
"This book has come highly recommended, and a few of the reviews mention that the food would have been reasonably authentic around the era of revolution--always a concern of mine, because so many Russian cookbooks are full of the legacy of the Soviet era."
Posters of the Cold War by David Crowley
978-1851775453
Posters, propaganda, and persuasion in election campaigns around the world and through history by Steven A. Seidman
978-0820486178
Press professionalization and propaganda : the rise of journalistic double-mindedness, 1917-1941 by Burton St. John
978-1604977066
Ottoman propaganda and Turkish identity : literature in Turkey during World War I by Erol Koroglu
978-1845114909
Seduction or instruction? : First World War posters in Britain and Europe by Jim Aulich and John Hewitt
978-0719075902
Soviet posters : the Sergo Grigorian collection ed. Maria Lafont
978-3791337524
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones
978-0142407226
Unmaking the West: "What-If?" Scenarios That Rewrite World History ed. Philip Tetlock et. al.
978-0472031436
"a totally useful book if you have no idea what you're doing with counterfactual history. Some of the chapters were useless for me? But them's the breaks."
War, media, and propaganda: a global perspective by Yahya R. Kamalipour and Nancy Snow
978-0742535633
Stuff You Can Download or Read Online
Small places with large consequences: the importance of small towns in England, 1000-1540
Science and Medicine in Imperial China: The State of the Field
Ideologies of Aztec Song
The Aztec Flowery War: a Geopolitical Explanation
Artillery through the Ages
Alexander Benitskii and the "Vostochnaia Povest" in the Reign of Alexander I
"...good, short resource for thinking through how Russia would have been reading and writing 'the Orient' during the early nineteenth century."
Story Resources
The Fantastic
Limyaael's Fantasy Rants (or here)
Essays on just about everything that's likely to crop up in a fantasy story, and how fantasy authors Do It Wrong most of the time. Note: if you go by the LJ post, LJ has changed the way it does tags, so you have to take out the + signs between words to display the page of tagged entries.
Science and Science Fiction
PDF of a list of resources for science fiction writers, with a slight emphasis on chemistry.
Patricia Wrede's Worldbuilding Questions
30 Days of Worldbuilding
Steampunk Emporium
Beyond Victoriana
A multicultural perspective on steampunk.
TV Tropes
Specifically the "How-To" pages (e.g., How to Invade an Alien Planet, How to Survive a War Movie, How to Be the Captain).
The Realistic
Sins of a Solar Spymaster
Er, a little background: EVE Online is a massively multiplayer game where more than a hundred thousand people play on a single server, join corporations and fleets, and compete over galactic resources. The Mittani is the spymaster of one of the largest and most powerful factions in EVE, and when he isn't talking about the actual mechanics of the game, he provides an incisive and fascinating analysis of the realities of spying, and the psychological forces in play when attempting sabotage, espionage, or triggering a meltdown or regime change in an enemy faction. I'd recommend it for anyone with large-scale intelligence efforts in their stories, or anyone who just has some characters who are purely manipulative clever bastards who pull a lot of strings. - pyrrhiccomedy
Dream A Little Bigger, Darling - the Inception Fic Writer's Guide to Firearms
Series of four post on how to realistically portray guns.
A User's Guide to PTSD
Posts on how to do PTSD right.
Dear (Not Just Urban Fantasy) Author
How the following things work, among other things: characters who have lived on the streets, characters on the fringes of society, what goes on in these people's heads, what goes on in their heads when they're back in society, actual street fighting, people who have been abused and/or victimized (hyper-vigilance, guys!). If you're thinking that you might need to read this, you probably do, because you probably don't know as much as you think you do.
Search Engines, Databases, Tools, and Lists of Things
Behind the Name
Name search.
Myth Encyclopedia
Good for quick myth searching.
Online Medieval Bestiary
We got your weird shit right here.
Project Gutenberg
Internet Archive
Has some things that Project Gutenberg doesn't!
Wikibooks
Edit Minion, Phrase Frequency Counter, download of the Write or Die desktop application.
The Historical and Cultural
Russian names, and here, and here, and here, and even here.
British History Online
Does what it says on the tin. Lots of primary sources, so specific fact finding missions tend to take a while.
British and American Terms
A comprehensive catalog of the differences between American and British terms.
Popular Science and Godey's Lady's Book on Google Books
Turn of the Century
Voice of America Pronunciation Guide
Searchable by name or country of origin. Primarily for historical figures or people who've turned up on the news, but it can provide given- or surname ideas that Behind The Name might lack, and having the pronunciation to listen to is often helpful.
Medievalists.net Articles
Visual Resources
Assorted Drawing Reference
Courtesy of odifen! WHATTA CHAMP.
Figure and Gesture Drawing Training Tool
Posemaniacs
Photo References - Hand Study
Alexds1's Drawing Tutorials
Cedarseed's Drawing Tutorials
Free Screentone Website
Dafont (general free fonts), Blambot (comic book fonts), Retro fonts
Every Single Solitary Online Museum/Art Gallery Catalogue You Could Possibly Want
Mostly courtesy of brsis! WHATTA GUY.
The Bath Fashion Museum ('Who are also complete dolls if you have cunning questions and email them out of the blue. Also if you phone them up all like "Hey guys, mind if I come down and take ten billion pictures and measurements and a pattern from one of the most expensive items in your collection?" the response is usually "Sure, what size do you take in cotton gloves?"')
Boston Museum of Fine Art
Deutsches Historisches Museum (in German)
The Kyoto Costume Institute
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Museo del Tessuto (in Italian)
Musei Civici Venezia (in Italian)
The Museum of Online Museums
The Museum of the History of Science
The Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Pitt Rivers Museum of Anthropology
Russian Art Gallery
The Svetlana Tomekovic Database of Byzantine Art
The Symington Collection ("Underwear, everywhere")
Textile Museum of Canada
The Victoria and Albert Museum
Stuff that Doesn't Fit Anywhere Else, Crap
Asia Historical Maps
OMG That Dress
Steampunk Exhibition 2K9 (142 pictures)
Offers of Research Help
brsis
Costume history? (Like anyone didn't see that one coming)
More specifically Western European costume history 1500-ish to present with a focus on Britain and France and Japanese costume history of the last two thousand years. I can also do most other European or Far East Asian countries and/or the Americas, and older time periods, but my knowledge gets a bit patchy at this point so you may hit one of my secret special research projects or you might hit dead space. However, if I don't know it I can normally tell you where I think you might find it.
I can also do Japanese history, as above only more so (If you want me to talk you through the establishment of the Kamakura Bakufu, with diagrams, pull up a chair. If you want, I dunno, religious development in the Ashikaga, I... might have to get back to you on that one) and more generally Japanese language, culture, etc.
Also Film, and also British... things.
gileonnen
Eighteenth century, man. Particularly eighteenth-century British history, theatre, and literature.
lindensphinx
I have access, both electronic and usually through scans of print material, to just about any academic article you want. If you find a citation and you can't get your hands on it, please do ask me -- I will see if I can get my hands on it. (Grad school = useful for some things!)
Byzantine history (what I do for a living!); Mongols and Chinggisid successors (so, Timurids, Golden Horde -- basically, anything Central Asia between 1000 and 1500 AD, I'm your girl); medieval religious history across the board, including Islam and some Buddhism; early Christianity, both theological and socio/historical; uh, the American academic system, from an insider POV; the classical music scene in North America (particularly chamber/orchestral -- talk to Mith for vocal), also from an insider POV; I can do a general overview and a 'where to go next' for modern Latin American religion, especially syncretic traditions; and I can do history of physics for the 20th century, emphasis on America and Los Alamos/the Manhattan Project.
mithrigil
If you need someone for music nerdery of any kind--theory, historical, song-choice, diegesis, dance styles, means of literary conveyance, and of course terminology--I am probably your girl.
odifen
Well, Art in general I guess! Apart from drawing, I've done a lot of contemporary art history, and I know a lot about different mechanics of creation.
Also, I'm in the process of getting my History degree right now. My areas of interest are contemporary Russia and China, so those are the two subjects I have a TON of resources on. On the side I'm also big on Canadian history, general British Empire Legal history, very general Latin American history, general Irish history from 1500 onwards, and contemporary African history! I have a ton of sources left in my class folders from this year so don't hesitate to ask me for sources.
(For all of this besides the legal history part, I have a metric fuckton of visual sources from all these areas as well. Because cool dudes use visual primary sources like bosses!!!)
And finally, ask me about propaganda. It is my thing.
vivi314
I am not a very culture-versed person, but I have good bases of geography and science. I'm pretty sure I can help out on making some of the more physical aspects of world building more realistic?