Follow this link for the monthly digest.
Losing the first comic strip
The Bayeux Tapestry was a piece of monarchical propaganda produced by the Normans after 1066 to explain to their side of the conflict to illiterates. It was made in England somewhere: although precisely where is not clear. We know this because structurally it is not a tapestry at all: it’s an embroidery, and the techniques…
Read More
M. R. James : Lost Hearts
One of the earliest of MR James’s stories. This is interesting as an apprentice story, or as a plot hook about a Bonisagus who keeps losing apprentices. I’ll be spoiling this story on the way through with plot ideas. It was, as far as I can ascertain, in September of the year 1811 that a postchaise…
Read More
Hermetic targeting and Bertrand Russell
I was listening to Rusty Quill Gaming, and a character they have, Sir Bertram MacGuffin, reminded me of Bertrand Russell. I have no idea why, but let’s charge on…Russell said some interesting things about the meaning of sentences, which may have effects in the spoken component of spellcasting. So, Russell starts off being big on…
Read More
Dunsany: The Watch-tower
This short story by Lord Dunsany is a character study of a ghost. It demonstrates the tragedy of that type of undeath in Mythic Europe. Ghosts do not learn, and that means that sometimes their task cannot be completed. They linger on pointlessly: senselessly suffering. Imagine your covenant has a similar sort of ghost. Should…
Read MoreOh, my! It’s the GFF May 2018 transcripts!
The Magical Realm is Meinong’s Jungle
If I were to say “Unicorns have wings.” you might reply “No, Timothy: that’s Pegasus. Unicorns have horns.” A third person, listening in would agree with you. Unicorns have horns. Pegasus has wings. The problem is: there are no unicorns: so how can that statement “Unicorns have horns” be more true than the statement that…
Read More
M.R. James: Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book
There’s a little Dunsany left to do, from his short story collection called 51 Tales, but that will wait for a post-a-day challenge. To replace him, it’s time for a new author. M.R. James James wrote about one ghost story a year, to tell to his friends in a circle around a fire, as part…
Read MoreThere are good reasons why pyramids seem like entry points to regiones in Mythic Europe
For my higher math nerds, please see this https://youtu.be/KYaCtHPCARc It’s a Youtube video from Infinite Series, in which they demonstrate that if you take a hypercube, and cut a hpyerplane across it, the three-dimensional object created is always either a tetrahedron or an octohedron. There are other, higher dimension objects, but each of these, if divided…
Read More
Cornwall: The Sword of Tristram
I was listening to a novel from the St Mary’s Chronicles, and a plot hook linked to Cornwall emerged. Let’s harvest it for the gazetteer. Curtana, the sword of Tristram, Prince of Lyonesse, was in the English royal treasury until 1215 when it was lost, along with most of the portable wealth of King John,…
Read More
Games From Folktales 