I suppose I am a member of a certain genus, a certain sad fraternity scattered across the world, who are never quite comfortable, wherever we are. We can manage to feel like outsiders even in the company of old frends; we consider the notion of making new friends a fanciful prospect, better undertaken by those who possess the youthful optimism or naïveté that suits such foolish ventures. How did we manage to acquire any friends in the first place? It happened somewhere in the distant past…
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Adventure Time: “James” vs. 2001: A Space Odyssey
I recently saw the Adventure Time episode “James” (season 5, episode 42) for the first time, and I got all excited about the ways in which it quoted 2001: A Space Odyssey. But so far as I’ve been able to tell, nobody on the internet has pointed out this influence yet.
2023 Year in Review
Here is my 2020 Year in Review and here is my 2021 Year in Review and here is 2022.
In 2023, having mostly recovered from moving to a new country, I did: a bunch of stuff.
Such as… ->2022 Year in Review
Here is my 2020 Year in Review and here is my 2021 Year in Review.
In 2022 I had some big life changes, so I didn’t get to do as much creative work as I might otherwise have done.
but maybe I did SOMETHING ->2021 Year in Review
I love making things. I feel I am my best self when I am creating something. Do you feel the same way? How interesting.
But if you used this blog to keep up with all the things I make, you would get the impression that I never make anything (and may in fact be dead). Let’s correct that. Let us, in the middle of 2024, do my 2021 Year in Review.
My 2020 Year in Review is here.
And my 2021 Year in Review is HERE.A Facebook post from 2011
Just thought I should put this somewhere more accessible.
Came across something interesting my my research…
It appears that famous murderer Lizzie Borden actually killed many more people than popular wisdom suggests. In fact, after “giving her father forty-one whacks,” she went on to murder her sister, Emma Borden—the deed evidently requiring forty-two blows from the very same axe. Then, in the same evening (really the early hours of the next morning), Lizzie accosted the family maid, Bridget Sullivan, hacking her forty-three times before jumping into her four-poster bed and falling asleep, her clothes still covered in blood.
Lizzie, now the sole inheritor of the Borden estate, was arrested and jailed on August 11, 1892. Before she could be tried for the quadruple homicide, however, her case was taken up by Thomas Embling, a psychiatrist who had gained fame for his involvement in a Parliamentary inquiry at the Yarra Bend Asylum. Embling managed to have Lizzie released under his supervision.
Just as Embling had predicted, Lizzie’s first act after her “escape” was to murder another maid, striking her with an axe forty-four times. Embling continued to observe this depraved behavior for several months before he was “whacked” himself, fifty-six times, by the object of his unseemly research. Embling’s experiment thus concluded, Lizzie was finally apprehended and returned to the custody of the Crown.
Embling was, thankfully, the last to fall to Lizzie’s axe, but it is interesting to note that if the waif were allowed to continue her string of murders, by today (July 8, 2011), she would have slain her 552,898,543rd victim, striking him or her 552,898,582 times.
You can read more about Thomas Embling in the Wikipedia article about him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Embling
Paths of Pain and Torment: A Diachronic Survey of the Rest of Castle Ravenloft
A through J: A Diachronic Survey of Other Places in Barovia
I have analyzed Location K84, the infamous Catacombs of Castle Ravenloft, in its several incarnations. It occurred to me that I would like to do a similar reading of the other parts of the castle. (Here that is.) But, as I started doing that, I started doing a similar reading of the whole adventure leading up to the castle. Which is probably not as exciting as the castle itself.
WHOOPS!Some Etymologies in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
A sentence on Zelda Wiki posits that “Sahasrahla may be named after the seventh chakra of Hinduism, Sahasrara.” Sahasrahla, it goes without saying, is the wise old man who guides your quest in the early sections of A Link to the Past. His name, it goes without saying, is weird.
When we see sentences like these, it is wise to be skeptical. There’s no obvious reason for Sahasrahla to be named after a chakra, and the author of the sentence offers no support for the supposition. But it is not wise to conclude on this basis that the theory is incorrect. It is not wise to dismiss an idea out of hand just because at face value it seems goofy. Wise people are aware that the objective world, the world of facts, is extremely goofy.
Continue readingK84: A Diachronic Survey of Ravenloft’s Catacombs
In this post we will look at the crypts in Castle Ravenloft and see how they changed from edition to edition.
Here’s a different post about locations in Barovia outside the castle. Here’s a third post about the castle itself.
Unnecessary Abstract Introduction (JUST SKIP THIS SECTION PLEASE)
Perhaps you have heard somewhere the idea that all stories—sitcoms, epic poems, video games, This American Life vignettes—are fundamentally retellings of older stories. Perhaps you have even heard the idea itself multiple times. In some contexts, the proposition refers to deep underlying structures to which storytellers inevitably return. This is a rich subject for analysis—but the big money is in abandoning all but the merest pretense of originality and casting the same characters in the same conflicts in the same settings that the audience remembers from 30 or 10 years ago. And this might be a good subject for analysis too. I hope.
This practice of story-rehashing is especially salient in the stories of Dungeons & Dragons, many of which are embodied in physical locations with detailed maps. The most successful D&D settings and stories are reprinted decade after decade, edition after edition, so that new players can enjoy the same adventures so beloved by their forebears, and old players can whine about the things that got changed.
I believe the paradigm example of this is Castle Ravenloft, depicted in the modules I6 Ravenloft (1983), RM4 House of Strahd (1993), Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (2006), and Curse of Strahd (2016). All four of these books tell basically the same story: “Go to this spooky castle and kill this evil vampire.” The vampire is always menacing the same young women; the aged fortune-teller always helps you find the same artifacts that will help you slay him. And in all four books, the floor plan of Castle Ravenloft is presented in basically the same form. This is fascinating, but not surprising: Nerds, who are humans, naturally hate change. Also, the original dungeon is very good. Why would you change it? Why indeed.
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