Fresh, nutritious reindeer heart. If it was Rudolph’s, it would glow.
Recipe here.
Reindeer Heart
Rogue Reindeer
Since it’s near Christmas, let’s look at the world of fantastical reindeer.
This caribou man, opposite, was included in an AD&D manual as a decorative illustration. He wasn’t listed as a monster with his own stats, which was too bad. (He’s definitely Quebecois because of the hairy chest.) A homebrew gamer did decide to go ahead and tackle Rudolph, however.
Rudolph the Red by Pikeyfaux
I’m not sure why Rudolph’s alignment would vary so, unless he was up against opponents who didn’t believe in the spirit of Christmas, like Mr. Scrooge or The Grinch.
Is Santa on a crusade against evil here… or on a campaign to foment evil? It’s hard to say. Refer to his official AD&D entry.
Mostly, though, reindeer-human hybrids represent a more pagan Yuletide.
Reindeer Princess, by Artgerm
Shamen Shapeshifter, by Stephanie Lostimolo
Now, on to reindeer centaurs.
In Greek myth centaurs were horses with the torso of a man from the waist up situated where the horse’s neck and head would be. But fantasy artists have been playing with them for ages using different animals. Reindeer have taken their turn.
Combine this idea with Santa Claus, and you’ve got a winner.
The most sinister winter monster of all, however, is the Wendigo, which many artists represent as a skeletal being with the skull of a reindeer, or some other cervine, as its head. In some Native American cultures it’s a symbol of madness and cannibilism. It’s the dark side of the cheery sleigh-puller as Krampus is the dark side of Santa, and it celebrated as such.
The closely related ijiraq is a similar creature from Inuit lore that kidnaps children.
Reindeer by Tobiee
A peryton is a legendary creature depicted as a deer with the wings, feathers, and tail of a bird. It’s also a fake legendary creature. It was invented in 1957 by author Jorge Luis Borges in his Book of Imaginary Beings, supposedly from a long-lost Medieval manuscript. References to it have never turned up elsewhere. To make things more confusing, other beings mentioned in the book, like the kraken and phoenix, are “real.”
Since then, perytons have slowly eased their way into fantasy media, including the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons where they’re the least threatening monster ever, despite their penchant for eating human hearts.
This version of a peryton uses a reindeer and a bat instead of stag and bird.
A mer-reindeer, anyone?
Illustration by Margot Rogers
Or would you prefer a reindeer gryphon?
Ardea rangifer, by Kuroi-kisin on DeviantArt
Or a dragon reindeer?
Reindeer Monster, by Drawfluent
As terrible and powerful as all these reindeer creatures are, rest assured they are still below humans in the food chain.
Worldbuilding Wednesday 12/16/20: Christmas Characters
Cold Miser and Heat Miser
Santa, and Father Christmas and Sinter Klaas before him, is the penultimate character representing Christmas spirit, but he has many helpers.
In Germany, there’s his evil counterpart Krampus, and since 1823 (when A Visit from St. Nicholas — better known as The Night Before Christmas — was first published) his reindeer. In the twentieth century Santa accrued Mrs. Claus, his elven helpers, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, who shot to fame with a 1964 stop-motion animated TV special. You can read about the character’s genesis here; it’s a fascinating tale. In fact, it’s hard to remember a time without Rudolph.
The same decade brought us Frosty the Snowman and the 1970s a slew of other TV specials that tried to replicate Rudolph’s popularity: The Little Drummer Boy, Rudolph’s Shiny New Year, Nestor the Long-Earred Donkey, and The Year Without a Santa Claus, from which the above screenshot was taken. First aired in 1974, it should have been a worthy successor to Rudolph with its characters of Heat Miser and Cold Miser, but it took decades, at a slow simmer, for it to reach cult status. And that could be attributed to Heatmiser, a grunge band that took its moniker from the hot-headed puppet who melted thermometers in his bare hand.
In the four decades since there have been other contenders for Christmas icon status, among them The Elf on the Shelf and Olive, the other reindeer, who unfortunately had her heyday the Christmas after the 9/11 attacks. It was so sad to wander through Macy’s, whose holiday decorations were Olive-themed that year, under that black cloud. Olive the little fox terrier deserved better.
In some other universe, perhaps there were Christmas characters like these with their own animated specials.
Christmas Characters Deserving Their Own TV Special
| Humbug the Selfish Witch
Sissy the Blue-Nosed Sheep Greta the Buck-Toothed Shepherd Girl Mistletoe, the Cold-Hearted Wolf Noel the Sky Penguin Snickers the Three-Humped Camel Norbit the Chanukkha Hamster Olive the Bow-Legged Penguin Jingle Jangle the Dimwitted Fairy Cookie the One-Earred Otter Blizzard, the North Pole Squid Aloyisius the Littlest Owl |
Fairy Queen
Sarrazine, by Olivier Ledroit
French comic artist Olivier Ledroit’s fairies have a wicked, wide-eyed, kinky look even as they verge into disappearing into their own ornamentation. Like Louis Wain’s schizophrenic cats, they’re hypnotic.
Worldbuilding Wednesday 12/9/20: Healing Herbs
Page from a 16th century German book on herblore depicting a plant with an animal-like root
It’s common in fantasy books for characters to be wounded, and commoner still for said characters to experience miraculous cures from native plants. Sometimes these are authentic, like those in the Brother Cadfael series of historical mysteries. Others are fictional. Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant series had hurtloam, Tolkien had athelas, Narnia had the juice of the berries of the sun, held in Lucy’s diamond vial. There are more, I’m sure.
What a writer doesn’t want to do is mix up fictional ingredients with a real-world setting, as John Boyne did in his novel A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom. In a passage about dyeing a dress, a historical character uses ingredients from the video game Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: the tail of the red lizalfos and four Hylian shrooms. Luckily, the author was a good egg about it and promised to change it in the next edition.
If you’re looking for something that sounds impressive, but has nothing to do with Hyrule or any other video game, here’s some randomgenned suggestions.
Herbal Remedies
| Balm of Curly-leaf Frogstongue, stirred fifty times with a wooden spoon
Essence of Sweethazel picked at midnight Brew of Ostrichwort, left to ferment for 20 days Oil of Harespike and Purse-of-Cream Tincture of Mouselip root Tea of Everblooming Earthenlung (may cause hallucinations) Hairy Owlfoot tea, an expectorate Distillation of Marshbane and Monkeyglove Sunclub blossoms, reduces fever and promotes a deep sleep Infusion of Evening Marswhoot, acts as a stimulant and increases appetite Kittencap pollen, soothes a burn Oil of Monksthorn A strong brew of Mammaw and Moonpimple Oil of Buttershoe mashed with Pink Proudberry stems Fragrant Toadwill stems and flowers, calms nerves and promotes virility Odious extraction of Flytouch Infusion of Foxnettle Bark Balm of Devil’s Cream Solution of Cat’s Butter prepared with a wizard’s whisk Distillation of crushed Sparrow’s Toe Tisane of purple Kis-willow buds blessed by a holy man |
The Poisonwood Bible [Reading Challenge 2020]
The Poisonwood Bible
by Barbara Kingsolver
Harper Collins, 1998
[Challenge # 18 : A book taking place in Africa.]
I switched my African read from The Fate of Africa because I came upon this book in one of the local Little Free Libraries and started reading it while in line to drop off some junk at the Goodwill. The line was very long in these COVID times, and by the time, 40 minutes later, I was driving home, the author had me hooked.
This book has gotten a lot of praise — it was featured in Oprah’s Book Club — and there are even study guides devoted to it. It was a big deal when it first came out. Some aspects of the praise were warranted, but more than twenty years later, I don’t think the story has held up well. I can’t see it becoming a classic. It’s just too one-note and mean-spirited.
The Poisonwood Bible is about a fire-and-brimstone minister, Nathan Price, who uproots his family from the American South of 1959 and heads to the Belgian Congo, which is soon to become an independent country. His long-suffering wife, Orleanna, and their four daughters Rachel, Leah and Adah (twins) and Ruth May come with him. The story is about their culture shock as they live in a hut without electricity or running water as their father preaches salvation to the natives, who remain unimpressed. The narration alternates between the first-person voices of the female characters, sometimes jumping ahead to the future after they have left Africa, or to the past when they were younger. Kingsolver has said she intended the book to be a study of a family in crisis, but it comes across more as an exercise in snark.
Right away this very white-bread family is set up so readers can laugh at them in their ignorance. Everything they do, is a failure. Mom has a tear-filled breakdown when the boxed cake mixes she has smuggled in for birthdays get ruined in the Congan humidity; Dad’s garden he plants with American seeds is repeatedly flooded and then fails for lack of appropriate pollination. I enjoyed it up to the middle, then thought, enough. I wanted to see plot progression and feel some emotional weight. Everything felt too anecdotal, like any chapter of it could have appeared in The New Yorker magazine as a short story. It was too overwritten for a novel. The writing was enjoyable, mind you, but got to be too much.
The girls’ narration tired me as well. When the story begins, Rachel, the oldest, is 15 going on 16; the twins are 14, and Ruth May is 5. But they come across as too cerebral, even the youngest. They didn’t seem authentic. I think the author was trying for a William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury approach, crossed with some Holden Caulfield, but I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief.
I gave up halfway in. In light of the current times and current issues of 2020, I was just not comfortable with the mocking tone of it. The Congolese are mocked through the eyes of the narrators, and the narrators, with their 1950s religious fundamentalist mindsets, are set up to the mocked by the readers, or by the author. This may be the fault of the time in which it was published, when it was standard to mock the 1950s through the more “enlightened” filter of the 90s (take the successful movie Pleasantville, for example… ) but the author wasn’t adding anything new to the mix, IMO.
I guess I wanted the characters and their problems handled with more respect, if that makes sense.
Heavy Hearted
Heavy Hearted, by Caitlin Hackett
Innocent, disturbing, whimsical, and exact, all at once.
Revolting Reindeer
Reindeer are the only cervines (members of the deer family) to be domesticated by humans. As such, they enjoy a cozy, familiar status like chicken, ducks, pigs, and domestic pets do. But, like Santa whose sled they haul each December, they have a darker side despite their cheer and competence.
Let’s take these odd toys dating from the 1950s and 60s, when it was common for a children’s plush toy to have a disturbingly humanoid face molded in rubber.
His or her little donkey sidekick is… disturbing.
Perky? No.
Rudolph is rolling his eyes in fright!
Even more awful, the bodies of these toys often got tattered and soiled while the faces stayed pristine. These examples are the ones in good condition.
Here’s another kind of stuffed reindeer. Actually, it’s a regular deer, hauled from place to place as a photo prop for Santa pics of a Christmas long past. The 1910s, by the size of the girl’s hair bow.
Real-life reindeer can look awful and deformed as well, particularly after their antlers have reached full size, and they start scraping the velvet (skin covering) off to expose the bone. Even more awful, the special groups of cells, called pedicles, that grow the antlers are a kind of benign bone cancer.
Say what?
You’re looking at RAW BONE here, folks… RAW BONE. The reddish color later fades of off-white.
Injuries to the head can disturb these groups of cells, which lie all over the skull and not just the crown, leading to antlers growing in places where they shouldn’t, like into this deer’s eye and mouth, so he couldn’t see and couldn’t eat.
There are likely equally gruesome anomalies in reindeer antlers, which vary according to subspecies. The taller ones can also serve as Christmas tree substitutes.
Robotic reindeer don’t have these problems. But they can be creepy as well, especially when being serviced.
But Rudolph & Co. being what they are — cuddly epitomes of Christmas spirit — plenty of artists have subverted them, turning them into aliens, zombies, and demons.
Santa’s Reindeer, by Velvetcat
Randolph the Undead Reindeer
Doberman reindeer?
Dark Christmas
Worldbuilding Wednesday 12/2/20: States of Confusion (Gulf Coast)
States may not be able to change their names without a lot of legislature, but it’s possible to change their flag.
Mississippi was just fine with this state flag for 126 years, even though it featured the Confederate flag that in recent years has gone from being a symbol of rebel pride to racist tyranny. This year legislature was pushed through in the state capitol to change it, in favor of his design.
There’s a lot to be happy about here, design wise. It’s clean, modern, and bold, highlighting the magnolia as a symbol of hope and hospitality while the stars reference Mississippi’s order in being admitted as a state (#20) to the union. The gold star at top represents the native tribes of the area. The states bordering the Gulf of Mexico — Alabama, Lousiana, Mississippi, Florida (I’ll reserve Texas for another region) — have always had a backward rep in the US, which is too bad, but perhaps this new design will lead to a rebirth and rebranding.
Flags for the other Gulf states remain the same. Alabama’s is very simple, a plain white field with a red cross, while Lousiana has one of the most strange, a blue field with a white pelican sitting on a nest, tearing open her breastfeathers to feed her nestlings on blood. This has absolutely no basis in nature and is based on depictions of the animal from Medieval bestiaries, and we know how wacky they were. I think Lousiana may be the next candidate for a redesign, spreading false zoology like that.
Florida’s flag depicts its state seal, but it also boasts the “micro-nation” of the Conch Republic, which encompasses the Florida Keys. I think its flag is neater and more distinctive than its parent state’s. There’s a blazing sun, a shell, and depictions of both the Northern and Southern cross, both of which are visible at its latitude.
Despite it being tongue-in-cheek, people in Florida take the Conch Republic very seriously.
In some other reality, these states may have had names like these.
Alternate Names for the Gulf States
| Mississippi
Mannijoppo Yischinotta Micheskippi Misgracilli Nisbellaggi Missvaulti Modcatrissi Misstillippi |
Alabama
Anabami Ajamba Elamba Echibobo Aloubule Esubassa Alebame Olabesa |
| Lousiana
Loidonia Louriane Lysianna Chatougha Luthiana Jolorbainu Lesirotho Troutiana |
Florida
Floanada Fireju Flochida Flomiza Florschau Flosida Fonongo Fassonida |
Mexipulp Man-Eating Plant
Illustration for a Mexican pulp magazine of the 1970s. Sensational, amateurish, colorful, and likely quick to execute in gouache or poster paint. I like the paint-by-numbers quality of it.