My favorite Twittersnip magic items of the 2023. 2023 Magic Items (Best of) Basket of Adoration: Whatever is put into this large woven basket elicits oohs and aahhs of admiration from viewers, and if it is a living being, the desire to nurture and protect it… no matter what sort of creature it is. …
My favorite Twittersnip spells of the year. 2023 Spells Aflen’s Loosen Whale: Makes a whale void its bowels in the middle of the ocean, releasing any ambergris (or other items) it might have held. Astrological Negation: Nullifies, for a set period of time, the bad aspects of the recipient’s horoscope reading. (If …
It’s not really Christmas unless you eat or bake some sort of traditional German cookie! Like Lebkuchen, better known to the English-speaking world as gingerbread. Pfeffernusses are also popular as well as Spritzgeback, those cookies you pipe through a cookie press to form decorative swirls. In the US they are called Spritzen or simply …
Santa Claus is a European invention, and the idea of Santa wearing a red suit with white trim, black boots, and a stocking cap, an American one. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola company which costumed him such to match the red in their company logo, which was for an ad campaign. But even so, the same …
Curse tablets were a cottage industry in ancient Greece. Spells embodying the caster’s desires were written on plaques of stone, clay, papyrus, wax, even thin sheets of gold. Then, to reach the gods, they were thrown into wells or buried with the dead (often without permission from the dead one’s next of kin.) It’s likely …
Greek myths were chock-full of magic items, most of them made by the gods; and with a few exceptions, most of the humans who meddled with them came to a bad end. Take the tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece. It’s a very long and involved one, but the gist goes like this. Disinherited …
Pretty much all fantasy writers are familiar with Greek myths, or they should be: they’re one of the unfailing constants of Western Culture. The Iliad, which told of the fall of Troy (and the Trojan horse.) The Odyssey, about the hero Odysseus’s epic journey to find his way home. Theseus and the Minotaur, Icarus who …
I dream about a certain bookstore/library sometimes. It’s not one I’ve seen in real life, but a combination of all the ones I’ve ever known. It always has the kind of books I am interested in: fantasy and science fiction, art and design, sociology and science and history and all the weird ways these intersect. …
The phrase “Venus and Mars” is a potent one. Not only does it bring to mind Venus, the goddess of beauty and love, and Mars, the god of war and brutality, in all their opposition, but also nights of stargazing, self-help books on relations between the sexes, astrology columns, and (as above) anthemical rock albums. …
The many, many incarnations of Ultraman over the decades gave fans a decorative Rogue’s Gallery of foes, most of whom were out to destroy Earth or conquer it. The show’s writers were careful to give them all distinctive names, which, oddly, the attack teams somehow always knew despite never seeing that monster before. Most sounded …