Made in 1652 of felted wool and on display at the National Museum of Folklore in Gothenburg, Sweden.
NOT. (It’s AI.)
The next oldest is this child’s garment from 1740 which is in possession of the New York State Historical Society. NOT.
Worldbuilding Wednesday 12/25/24: Ghosts of Christmas Past
A blast from the past! Past years, that is, of random Christmas names for songs, scents, foods, and characters.
Randomgen Christmas names from years past
| Species of Santa
Christmas Traditions Around the World |
Passing Obsessions 12-24
The three out-of-this-world Wise Men from the Canadian TV special A Cosmic Christmas, 1977. Love that design!
This oddball Christmas special from the 1980s.
Many more oddball, lost, and forgotten Christmas specials from decades past.
All you ever wanted to know about old Christmas tree lights.
Let’s start drooling over the explosion of Betelgeuse when the supernova comes. It might be a new Star of Bethlehem!
Worldbuilding Wednesday 12/4/24: Tolkien’s Wizards
Olatos the Red, also known as “The Bean Counter.”
Lore states he was the administrator who kept all the other Wizards in line.
Since I just finished watching The Rings of Power on Amazon, and am also reading Tolkien’s compilation The Fall of Numenor, I’ve a mind to talk about Tolkien’s Wizards.
First off, there weren’t that many of them. There are only three as characters in the main trilogy: Gandalf the Grey, Saruman the White, and Radagast the Brown. In the appendices two Blue Wizards are mentioned who have gone into the far east of Middle Earth, but Tolkien explicitly states their deeds there are not known. In the Rings of Power series, which I’ll review later, it’s implied the Wizard of the Rhunic wastelands could be one. If so, it’s an interesting theory.
Personally, I don’t think the Wizards would be corrupted so easily. They were not human beings but Maiar, a kind of demigod who worked in conjunction with Tolkien’s pantheon of greater gods. Of course, Morgoth went bad and stole the Silmaril, so who knows.
In Tolkien’s ephemera the Blue Wizards are given names: Pallando and Alatar. They, along with the other Wizards, are known also by other names in the languages Tolkien created. For this post though I’m using only the common or vernacular ones.
The Forgotten Wizards of Middle Earth
| Albossar
Atnerom Dharmram the Green Esbror the Maiar Hilotho Ingrangtar Malarest Mudamther |
Olatos the Red
Osgreth Pathendi Rolamsar Sardash the Violet Tebrador Unéran the Gold Vesnandru |
AI Art Adventures: Using –sref for a Unique Style
As a Midjourney beginner trying to generate pictures with a certain “look” one of the most useful stylistic tricks is the –sref function. The reference pic can’t be any old image though. The more distinct and stylized it is, the better. The simpler and clearer it is, the better. This is where real art education has value for the user, and a very broad schooling in graphic design.
In my post on creating imaginary Velazquez paintings I touched on this, as well as in my beginning post of the series, Fiddler on the Ref. In that latter I used one image to riff on a series of six different subjects. In this post I’m going to hone in on choosing and altering a suitable style reference image.
As an example I’ll use this one.
It was most likely a throwaway illustration from the 1950s or early 1960s, created and printed in haste. The artist hadn’t bothered to refine it. But that’s what gives it is charm, IMO. It’s cheap and looks cheap. It’s also of a medium that is not being used today — the quick two-color printing press job, one of the two colors being that sickly Pthalo green. Using that image, I will generate a series of pics that looks like they came from the interior pages of one of those cheap, pulpy hardback books that used to be sold at mass market stores in 1960. The ones that are yellowing today because of all the wood pulp they used.
But my pic has that pesky lettering in it, so I’ll just Photoshop it away.
Two by Tolkien — Foreign Editions of The Hobbit
I recently came across two foreign editions of The Hobbit I haven’t seen before.
First, The Little Gnome.
Cover art by Antonio Quadros
I guess the translator didn’t think the made-up word “hobbit” was understandable to Portuguese audiences?
That said, I like the cover design. It’s whimsical if misleading — hobbits had nothing to do with mushrooms, except for eating them — but it does correctly show the hairy feet, pipe-smoking, and curly hair. The overall design reminds me of the 1960s graphic artist Saul Bass.
This French edition, in contrast, shows a very grown-up looking Bilbo, a hirsute Gallic one by his hairy feet and movie-star face with its Brylcreem ‘do. I have the feeling that if he took his striped shirt off, he’d reveal a very hairy chest as well. He squats before his hobbit hole which is undersized for his height while Gandalf gives him, or perhaps that dragon, some side-eye. Gandalf too is different from the usual depiction. His pointed hat has a truncated top and his robe is more of a cape worn over boots and trousers. His staff appears as a walking stick.
Smaug and Rivertown are depicted accurately as in the book.
If you’re interested, here’s another French edition here and a German one.
Dragonfeast
H A P P Y T H A N K S G I V I N G
Worldbuilding Wednesday 11/27/24: Haughty, Horrible, and Hilarious Hs
H, to me, is a letter with an old-fashioned vibe similar to E — a Victorian feel, honorable as well as haughty, but with touch of horror, like Charles Addams’ old New Yorker series of Addams family cartoons, the creepy family of which obviously came from old money. But H can also be hip and high, as well as hilarious and hefty. H can also have a happy, comforting feel: house, home, happiness.
Names beginning with H, however, tend to be fusty, archaic. Harold, Hortense, Herman, Hilary, Hazel, Henry, Hayley, Hilda, Helga — have Germanic or Medieval English connotations. Needless to say, many are currently back in the style. Some parents are intent on their kids sticking out.
Below, some H character names. As with the rest of this series, these are for fantasy..
Character names beginning with H
| Male
Habtur Hanbolt Halnant Hanyas Harach Hardua Hejiah Hirgam Hithras Hotham Hverus Hyden |
Female
Halverina Hamraia Hanafle Harysne Hassla Hazyra Hesper Hilfleida Hiltra Hilvina Hrysha Hylekka |
Surnames
Haach Hallanocht Hangemoon Hasloom Hatchleest Hauphilter Heldenzar Hessfields Hogenbraise Houndwhess Huskaskype Husulram |
Passing Obsessions 11-24
Former Korean actor now lives inside an amusement park he built himself. Sounds like an ideal life, myself!
The Rhunic language created for The Rings of Power on Amazon Prime (it’s a lot like Hungarian).
Author Diana Paxson pulled into the child sexual abuse reckoning taking place in the SCA, Berkeley, and Marion Zimmer Bradley writing circle.
How to make pita breads that are puffed up n’ proud.
3 cups flour
1 cup warm water
2 1/2 tsp yeast
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
The flour can be regular flour or bread flour. It can also be a mix of 1 cup whole wheat flour to two cups white flour. Bread flour gives a more elastic dough.
First, you make the “starter.” Put the warm water in a bowl with the yeast and sugar and stir around until mixed. Add 1/2 cup of the flour and mix again. Let sit until it is foamy and bubbly, about 15 minutes.
Meanwhile in a larger bowl, mix the rest of the flour with the salt (at this point you can also add some herb mix or other add-ins if you want.) Pour the foamy, yeasty mixture in and blend and knead with your hands. The ideal texture of the bread should be moist and firm like a baby’s bottom. If too dry, add a little water. If too wet, sprinkle some flour in. When the texture is ideal, cover with a towel or a pot lid and let rise in a warm place until double in size.
Meanwhile heat the oven to 400 degrees. On the bottom rack put in some metal baking pans or cast iron pans that the breads will cook on. It’s important that they be the same temperature as the oven.
When dough is doubled, pinch off little pieces that are the size of a bath bomb (about large enough to fit in your palm.) Roll out on a silicon baking sheet on which flour has been sprinkled. You want to get a roughly circular shape that is thin as possible. It doesn’t need to be perfect — I try for a diameter of 6 or 7 inches. Put the bread in the oven right on the hot baking pan. When it has solidified (a minute or two) use tongs to place it on the top rack where it will continue to bake and puff up. The more it cooks here, the crispier it gets. Before it gets too brown, remove it with tongs and let it cool on a towel.
You will be opening and closing the oven all the time to put in new breads, move them, and take them out. That’s OK. You will wind up with 16 – 20 breads depending on how much you pinch at the beginning.
These are guaranteed to puff.
The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon [Review]
The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon
by Moira Greyland
Castalia House, 2018
The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon is the book that grew out of the 2014 revelation that fantasy and science fiction and fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley abused her own children and knowingly protected and facilitated her husband Walter Breen’s pedophiliac activities. If you were reading SFF in the 1970s and 1980s it was a helluva blow. (Bradley, in case you don’t know, was also the author of the best-selling book The Mists of Avalon, a popular retelling of Arthurian myth from the viewpoint of its female characters, who were pagans as opposed to Arthur’s Christianity. In this post, I’ll call her MZB as she has been called in the SFF field.)
The book is an account from MZB’s daughter Moira Greyland of how she overcame her parents’ crimes and abuse; it also functions, in a rough way, as a biography of MZB, of whom no other published bios have been written. It’s also an indictment of the hippy-dippy atmosphere of Berkeley, California, where MZB came to eventually live and prosper. It also serves also as a larger indictment of SFF and Ren Fair culture and a much larger one of Baby Boomer sexual attitudes in general, though I think the last was unintended.
Greyland’s account is casually told and probably could have benefitted from more discipline and structure, though that was likely beyond her or her editor. It reads like an adapted set of transcriptions between Greyland and her therapist. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t readable, but it does lead to the question of Is this really true? from its readers, especially if they were fans during the decades in question. Greyland anticipates this with a set of transcripts from a civil lawsuit of MZB included at the end of the book – a lawsuit from the mother of one of the boys Walter Breen molested — and it’s chilling in how it illustrates MZB’s unconcern about her then-husband’s activities. Personally, I feel that all the evidence is pretty damning.