gothwalk | Recent Entries

An analysis of Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth in the context of Catholicism and the TV series The Young Pope/The New Pope. This article contains spoilers. Gideon the Ninth and its headwrecking sequel, Harrow the Ninth, are some of the finest books I've read in years.

A multi-period excavation in Cork reveals stuff from the Neolithic to the Early Modern. Thanks to

avenueyew for pointing me at it - there's some fascinating stuff in there, including emmer and spelt grains from very early on, and flints, which had to have been imported from the South of England or from Antrim, because as far as I know, there are none locally.

And A history of the Pumpkin Spice Latte.

Apparently, Ireland almost had a famine in 1925. I didn't know about this until I tripped over a reference to it today, and it seems that it was kept quiet by the government of the day.

But here's a quote from the Irish Times of May 27, 1925, in an article on taxation on donations: "Some months ago, when the West of Ireland was in the grip of incipient famine, a large firm in England offered to send a ton of chocolate to Connaught to help to keep the children from hunger. We understand, however, that this offer was withdrawn promptly when the firm in question was informed that duty must be paid on the chocolate. This kind of red tape is merely irritating, and steps ought to be take in Committee to put an end to it."

The past is not actually as weird as the present, but it can still be pretty weird.

Current Mood: cynical
Current Location: Maynooth

I've recently watched the final episodes of The Magicians and Agents of SHIELD. And I am thinking about the endings of narratives; novels and TV series. And film series, too. I have, I think, about 13 points to make on this.

( No actual spoilers... )

Weather: Dull, damp, cool. We have a yellow rain warning, but we're on the outer edge of it, so I dont expect a lot to happen.
Breakfast: Hash browns, bacon, eggs, toast coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, black tshirt. Standard issue Tesco socks.
Things done yesterday: ... I 'unno, time is weird. I know I cooked, and I took the dog for a walk, and I did sleep in, and I set up a new Discord server for the shire, but that doesn't seem like a whole day.
Things to do today: Several job applications and the acquisition of some stuff from Lidl already done. I have the final episode of the final season of Agents of SHIELD on hand, and will watch that at some stage. And later, dog walking and cooking.
Still planned writing: Commonplace issue about stuff from the vIMC, assuming I can get my brain in gear.

Current Mood: contemplative

The Lost Forest Gardens of Europe - an excellent essay on mesolithic and neolithic food production; not quite farming and not quite just gathering, and the way in which this evolved into complex mixed agriculture/arboriculture in some areas, which just about survive in the face of capitalism now.

The Nut Age - an excellent paper about mesolithic and neolithic tree use, and the concept that hazelnuts were a staple food for early post-glacial settlers in Europe. It also mentions the use of crushed dogwood stones for oil extraction. I'm not familiar with dogwoods as a species, and that they have fruits is news to me. I think I've seen them in Finland and Sweden, though.

The Rot at the Root - an analysis of the messages in Captain Planet and FernGully (the latter a film I have never heard of before).

Networked Up - vanlife and digital nomadicism in North America. Not a strong recommendation, it has to said.

Found: A Mysterious, Recipe-Filled Diary From 1968 - I adore this stuff. I used to go through old desks and cabinets in auction houses when I was in my teens, looking for things like this, but I never found anything better than an account book for a motor-parts dealer.

Once Upon A Time, There Was Cottagecore - I don't know that I'd call this analysis of cotagecore, but it's definitely commentary. Invokes Taylor Swift, the non-binary-ness of cottagecore, and also doesn't appear to quite grok it.

Aaaaaand Defining the 90s music canon by seeing what bits of it other generations recognise.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: Maynooth

Weather: Dull, slightly warm. Supposed to get up to 24C, which means I may need to nap through that bit.
Breakfast: Avocado toast with ham and eggs, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, STRAIGHT OUTTA CONTEXT tshirt. Barefoot.
Things done yesterday: Call with a recruiter, and some actual physical work wheelbarrowing soil from where a guy with serious skills was digging post holes for a Viking House recreation. See his website for more.
Things to do today: Food planning, shopping, probably some more sleeping to avoid the heat.
Still planned writing: Commonplace issue about stuff from the vIMC, and trying to shake down Tinyletter to get GD out of newsletter jail. I was already thinking about moving to Substack; this makes it a lot more likely.
Discovery of the day yesterday: Marvel exists in the DC universe (a character in The Flash referenced Spider-man)

Current Mood: hot
Current Location: Maynooth

Weather: Dull, cool.
Breakfast: Bacon, eggs toast, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, red-hamsa-on-green tshirt. Standard issue Tesco socks.
Things done yesterday: Several job applications, lengthy dog-walk, cooking, and finished out the latest Gentle Decline - which promptly got stuck in some sort of filter at tinyletter, and is waiting for manual release there.
Things to do today: Call with a recruiter, and all going to plan, some actual physical work digging post holes for a Viking House recreation.
Still planned writing: Commonplace issue about stuff from the vIMC.
Level of annoyance with renewed half-hearted-but-inconvenient pseudo-lockdown: pretty high, actually.

I need some writing muscles stretched, so this quiz, stolen from Tumblr, would seem to be suitable.

Lantern - how did you meet your best friend? What were your first impressions of each other? This assumes that everyone has a definitive best friend, and I can't say that I do. Close friends are more like family to me, and I've a fairly large family in that context. But I've met them in all kinds of ways, and I don't remember the first time meeting most of them. The few people with whom I've had very distinctive, very definite first impressions have mostly drifted off. This probably says something meaningful.

Frost - if you could give some advice to your younger self, what would you say? "Patience is your best tool for most things."

Maple - is there a hobby / skill that you’ve always wanted to try but never did? Dry-stone walling. Mind you, I fully intend to learn it yet.

Harvest - what fictional character do you most identify with? Why? Antryg Windrose, from Barbara Hambly's books and short stories, because he was one of the first characters I read whose reasoning made sense to me.

Fireside - if you had your dream wardrobe, what would it look like? A wide variety of colours of jeans, tshirts, shirts, ties, sweater-vests, tweed jackets, hats and boots. Parsonpunk. I probably need to include shorts and things as summers get warmer, but I don't like like them.

Cider - a food that you disliked as a child but now enjoy? Sour tastes in general. Licorice. But to be honest, the foods that I encountered as a child in rural Ireland were so limited compared to the food available now that I've no real idea.

Amber - share an unpopular opinion that you may have. The climate crisis is already past the point of no return. We can and should slow it down, but at this point, we're just along for the ride.

Fog - how well do you think you’d do in a zombie apocalypse scenario? I would do just fine. I have a solid post-apocalyptic skill set, good aim, and I'm a lot fitter than I look.

Jack-o-lantern - if you could look like any celebrity, who would you choose? I'm comfortable enough with my own looks, to be honest. When I was younger, I'd have liked to be taller and more cheek-bone enabled, but the latter would be hard to see under the beard, and tall people hit their heads on things.

Spice - have you ever encountered a house that you believed to be haunted? Absolutely. Several places I've been completely certain there was something else about, mind, but only one in the purest negative, evil sense of haunting. That was Loftus Hall, on the Hook Peninsula, which I visited on a school tour when I was maybe 13 or 14. I could not get out of that building fast enough, and even three decades later, I get a slight cold shudder thinking about it. I've been to the Hook since, and passed within sight of it, and that's plenty; I am definitely not setting foot in there again.

Orchard - share one thing that you’d like to happen this autumn. I would like the sense of living in historical times to deflate to the level of 1995 or so.

Crow - which school subject do you wish you had an aptitude for? Music. I mean, I studied it to the Leaving Cert, and got an Honours C, which is not nothing. But I am also tone deaf, absolutely can't sing, and don't have a great sense of rhythm.

Bonfire - describe your dream house. Extensive, though not necessarily large. Many rooms. Rambling might be a better word. Rural, or at least a good way out from a town centre. Surrounded by trees, covered in ivy and/or wisteria, possessed of a kitchen garden, an orchard, and various outbuildings. Internally, fireplaces, stairs in odd places, a good kitchen, a library and also plenty of bookshelves in other rooms. Room for a couple of dozen people, when desirable or necessary.

Cinnamon - if you had to live in a time period different than the present, which would you choose and where? Because I am a literate white guy, I'd probably do ok in many periods. But I am also short-sighted, which means that any time before the mid-19th century would be uncomfortable. I might have a go at the Edwardian era.

Cobweb - (if you’ve graduated) do you miss high school? So much no. There must be a better way of educating people than confining them with a few hundred other hormonally-charged proto-people for 8 months a year.

Cranberry - what’s one physical feature that you get complimented on? My forearms and my beard. The latter mostly by men, the former mostly by women. When I had long hair, that, from both.

Maize - share the weirdest encounter you’ve had with a stranger on the street. I could write a book of weird encounters I've had with strangers, on streets, in railway stations, and on buses. Trying to pick just one is hard. But I did have a brief conversation with a denim-clad, multiply-pierced punk girl on a train from Dun Laoghaire, who was apparently instantaneously replaced by a very respectable old lady when I glanced away. She grinned at me as she got off the train, taking her Ramones-branded backpack with her.

Quilt - how do you take your tea (or coffee)? Tea, with milk. Coffee, black, as the gods intended it.

Pumpkin - do you think that humans are inherently good or bad? Neither. Humans are inherently stupid. As a species, they're just smart enough to survive by beating up other species, and they think that makes them actually intelligent. I stopped identifying as human a long time ago, and I do my friends the courtesy of assuming they're not, either.

Moonlit - are you a neat or messy person? Is your room / house orderly? I am, at present, vastly messy on a physical level, and very tidy and organised in my notes and writing. I am beginning to see signs that I might be tidier in real life if I could work from home or write for a living.

Cocoa - if you could have any type of hair, what colour and cut would you have? In my youth, straight black hair, worn long. Now, I kind of wish it'd just stop at the 1.5mm length I like.

Ghost - is there someone that you miss having in your life? My mother, I think. I've had a few images of late in dreams and meditations of what she'd be like now. I don't think she'd entirely approve of many aspects of my life, but in the dreams and such, she's amusedly tolerant.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Maynooth

Weather: Sunny, cool.
Breakfast: Yogurt, blueberries, strawberries, cherries, muesli, coffee. It always takes me about four tries to spell 'muesli', and I'm never quite sure if it's right.
Wearing: Black jeans, another black tshirt. Standard issue Tesco socks.
Things done yesterday: Various housekeeping, some repairs and garden maintenance, food planning, shopping. Also received one of the books on my acquisition list from

bastun, for which my thanks!
Things to do today: Writing, later on some cooking. Walking the dog.
Still planned writing: Commonplace issue about stuff from the vIMC; Gentle Decline fiction breakdown (under way)
Bits still sore from the weekend: 2; both calves are like rock this morning. Sore rocks.

Current Location: Maynooth
Current Music: Sweet: The Ballroom Blitz

Weather: Rainy, cool. Clearing later. I think there was a lot of rain overnight.
Breakfast: Bacon, black pudding, eggs, toast, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, black tshirt. Standard issue Tesco socks.
Things done yesterday: Hiking; Crone Woods and the Maulin summit loop. Mostly rather dull sitka forestry, but some nicer parts as well, and loads of heather on the open summit and some lower slopes. Very pleasant walk, though quite tiring.
Things to do today: Various housekeeping, some repairs and garden maintenance, food planning, shopping.
Still planned writing: Commonplace issue about stuff from the vIMC.
Bits still sore from yesterday: 3; outer tendon, right knee, left heel, and a sort of indeterminate occasional ache in the lower back. The difference between my normal walking in utterly-flat Maynooth and the climb to the more than 550m top of Maulin is very evident.

Weird sea creatures

Yanjingzhen City in China is built in a canyon, pretty much. Google Maps.

The Garden of Forking Memes - an essay about time and memory and what the internet is doing to both.

The Historic Environment Viewer - every single bit of archaeological anything in Ireland.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Maynooth

I've done a fair bit of work with social media over the last decade. Literal paid-for work, experimental work, some artistic/project work, and a great deal of pushing content into social media. I live a lot of my life on broadcast, and have since the very earliest days of being online in the late 90s.

Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher and media critic. He died in 1980, so he never really saw the internet, but he did see the effects of radio and TV on the societies he lived in. There's a lot of his work I don't get - I've tried - but there's one maxim he had that makes sense to me; "the medium is the message". There are a lot of ways to unpack that, but one of the effects is that media, even when they have very small differences in technical terms, can have very big differences in how they're understood and used.

I'm thinking here not in terms of The Internet as a medium, but Facebook, Twitter, Livejournal, Dreamwidth, Twitter, Tumblr, Tiktok, and so on. Someone posted a thing about Tumblr a little while ago:

Yahoo bought the sex gifs aggregator "Tumblr," banned all the sex gifs, then sold it for a billion dollar loss, in so doing dumping a bunch of extremely unwell 17 year old sorcerers on us. This in economics is called "externalities"
— Goatstein (@MandelaFace) July 19, 2020

(Personally, I think the 17 year old sorcerers are some of the most balanced, self-aware, sensible people I've encountered, but never mind that.)

It's pretty clear to everyone that different networks have different characteristics. After much thought, I've found that the best way to represent these is as high-school cliques and stereotypes.

The US has much better archetypes here, and they're more widely recognised, so I'm rolling with that.

Facebook is the homeroom, the core class, or whatever your school called it; the central identity from which it's hard to get away. Anyone who declares they're not using it looks a bit like they're homeschooling or unschooling; people can see the merits, but still think it's a bit weird.

Instagram is made up of the popular kids; the ones who rule the social life of the school. There's not a lot of depth to what they do here, though.

Twitter are the smart, sometimes rather mean kids; the ones who can deploy enough sarcasm and wit to get away with stuff, but who aren't popular as such. The activists are here too (my year group had none, as far as I know, or else I was it, and I wasn't much).

Pinterest is where the carefully curated kids live. The ones who are conscious of social positioning, aware they're not at the top, and maintain their carefully curated images so as not to draw attention, unless it's to very socially acceptable achievements. Because teenage girls are sensitive to this stuff, and boys kind of aren't, there's a gender bias.

Tumblr is definitely weird kid central. The baby witches, the goblin kid, the harder-core gamers, and the guy who you're pretty sure has taxidermy as his main hobby are all in here.

Reddit is where the jocks and future frat bros live. /r/AskHistorians is like the guy who, for completely incomprehensible reasons, hangs out with the jocks while effortlessly acing every exam he goes near.

Voat and 4Chan and the like are where the hardcore bullies are, because Reddit doesn't let them be quite unpleasant enough.

Livejournal, as was, and Dreamwidth now to some degree, as well as people who maintain blogs, are the school newspaper and yearbook kids. They know a lot of stuff, and write a lot of stuff, and very little of it gets seen by anyone else, but sometimes something really explodes.

Email newsletters are the poets. There's one or two in every year group; they can be seen scribbling furiously in notebooks, writing letters, and almost certainly wearing black.

Tiktok are the class clowns. YouTube is the theatre group. Soundcloud is the unofficial school band (there's one in every school, sometimes more, mostly rock in my era).

Discord and Slack are the out-of-school friend groups; the ones that have people from different schools. Not everyone has them, but the ones that do tend to consider them a lot more important than the in-school cliques.

I have relatively recently discovered that I (probably) have a condition called “hyperlexia”. This goes along with many other characteristics which taken together mean I should seek a diagnosis for being somewhere on the ASD spectrum. At the moment, I’m not too bothered about diagnosis; if I have some variety of neuroatypicality, it doesn’t impact my life at all negatively.

But anyway; hyperlexia. The textbook definition seems to be “the presence of advanced ability to read compared to the ability to understand spoken language”, It’s mostly diagnosed in children, and people “grow out” of it as their spoken language catches up. But there are a few knock-on effects which last, the main one being a prodigious vocabulary, and thereby a tendency to use exactly the right word for the intended meaning, even if that word has not been deployed in any serious way in decades or centuries or possibly in the language being spoken.

Obviously enough to anyone who knows me, I have that. But in my case, it also manifests as a “text first” view of the world. When someone talks to me, I “see” their speech as text. The “written” sentence will hang around in my mental field of vision for a bit, during which time it’s parsed, a few most likely intentions are worked out, the most likely one settled on, and a few notes written off about word choices. If I can’t settle on a likely intention - and I actually care enough to follow up, which isn’t always - I might ask someone to say something a different way, or tell them I can’t parse what they said. This is a little unfair, because often when I’m asked to rephrase, I can’t; I’ve already used the most exact phrasing I had available. When I’m really concentrating (reading difficult academic texts, and driving) I see “subtitles” overlaid on objects in my field of view: “chair”, “mug”, “ash tree”, “approaching car, correct lane”, and so forth.

I knew not everyone had the text first view, and definitely not the overlays. But the way one’s own mind works is the way we assume other people’s do, and while that’s in no way reliable, it’s a hard habit to break. I’ve read recently of people who don’t have an internal monologue (or dialogue, for that matter), and of people who can’t see things “in the mind’s eye”, a condition called aphantasia, and I still can’t get my head around either. Likewise, at some level, I have always assumed that text was important to other people in some way, if not to the same degree, as it is to me. In particular, if someone gives me a book, or sends me a link, or otherwise provides me with text, I will read it. I read virtually all the email that arrives in my inbox - it takes a while to get to it sometimes, and the same applies to books, particularly physical ones - but I will get there. This, it appears, isn’t true for other people.

I’ve had to do a lot of adjusting within my own head as to how other people think, and this is (as far as I can make out) a core part of the neuroatypical experience. But the notion that people not reading books I give them or links I send them is not some combination of failure on my part to understand them or deliberate rejection is one that has taken decades to settle in, and it’s only with the discovery of the concept of hyperlexia that I really have a model for it.

Weather: Clear, cool. Really quite nice. Set to bucket rain later, of course.
Breakfast: Bacon, eggs, toast, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, Pride 2017 tshirt. Standard issue Tesco socks.
Things done yesterday: Inbox zero, yo. Also an issue of Gentle Decline out.
Things to do today: Edits on That Job App, and sending it in.
Still planned writing: Finished the GD issue, so onward to Commonplace and the other bits.
Hours of continuous sleep last night: 7.5. I usually wake up every hour and a half or three hours - not fully, or anything like it, just briefly surface - so getting five full sleep cycles without waking is really unusual.

Weather: Rainy, cool.
Breakfast: Bacon, eggs, black & white pudding, mushrooms, toast, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, Green Hand tshirt. Barefoot.
Things done yesterday: Job apps, writing, various housekeeping, having the Elder Cat sit on me.
Things to do today: More job apps, writing, and more email clearing
Still planned writing: See yesterday, and last week, etc.
Filtered Inbox this morning: 707. Ugh.

Weather: Rainy, cool.
Breakfast: Bacon, eggs, toast, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, Drachenwald tshirt. Standard issue Tesco socks.
Things done yesterday: More job app, more writing, harvested potatoes before dog/chickens got them all, dog walked... I'm sure there was something else too.
Things to do today: More writing, housekeeping.
Still planned writing: See yesterday, and last week, etc.
Number of cats asleep in the laundry I was trying to put away: 2

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Stick and Poke: Teeth on a String

Weather: Sunny, cool. Quite nice weather right now; getting up to 20C later, which is still ok.
Breakfast: Fried eggs, ham, lentils, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, STRAIGHT OUTTA CONTEXT tshirt. Standard issue Tesco socks.
Things done yesterday: First draft of the public service job app. Food planned, shopped, replanted a courgette plant from

evaelisabeth, and played some very satisfying Wurm.
Things to do today: More of that job app, and some others, and trying to get some piece of writing finished.
Still planned writing: See yesterday, and last week, etc.
Books recently completed: Jo Walton's Or What You Will, which is about books and writing and death and progress and is very definitely narrated by a narrator, and also by a writer, who aren't the same person. Like anything of Walton's, you should read it. And I re-read Peace Talks a second time.
Currently reading: Diverting off into the first in a YA series I hadn't caught up to before, Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. There's a growing set of books out there which stem from Harry Potter, but are in various ways better. Riordan's stuff here uses Greek mythology as its baseline, and thus far, halfway through, does it very well. Amusingly, I became aware of this because I saw "Daughter of Apollo" Aesthetic Mood Boards on Tumblr, and had to work out what they were about. Kids these days have better toys.

Weather: Sunny, cool. It got down to 7.9C last night, and sleeping was excellent.
Breakfast: Leftover meats in toasted sandwiches, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, Celtic tree-of-life tshirt. Standard issue Tesco socks.
Things done yesterday: Various housekeeping, writing, job applications, and making pizzas for fighters.
Things to do today: I am writing a job app for a public service job which requires a key achievements form. I am a decent writer, but I still hate writing this kind of stuff, the more so when it seems to want me to list "achievements" that are as far as I'm concerned just doing the job. There's also a shopping trip this evening, and I need to plan food and make a list.
Still planned writing: Gentle Decline future-fiction piece (now under way); Commonplace on food-related stuff from the vIMC. Possibly also a piece on the different patterns of interaction and personality of Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Current Location: Maynooth
Current Music: Eagle-Eye Cherry: Save Tonight

I've been doing seasonal playlists for a few months now. The latest, for late summer, is now available for your streaming interest on Spotify:

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: Maynooth
Current Music: Los Lobos: La Bamba

Weather: Grey, cool-ish, rainy. Forecast says clearer later. Yesterday was not clearer later.
Breakfast: Bagels, cream cheese, smoked salmon, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, green tshirt. Barefoot.
Things done yesterday: Some odds and ends of shopping, cookery, some writing, dog-walking, house-keeping.
Things to do today: More house-keeping.
Still planned writing: Gentle Decline future-fiction piece (now under way); Commonplace on food-related stuff from the vIMC. Possibly also a piece on the different patterns of interaction and personality of Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram.
New aesthetic discovery: Dark Cottagecore. The crossover of rural and gothic without being all melodramatic. It is something like catnip for my brain at the moment.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Maynooth

Weather: Grey, cool. Forecast says clearer later. Yesterday got up to 24.5C and sunny. I survived.
Breakfast: Pancakes, ham, cheese, Nutella, maple syrup, raspberries from the garden, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, Korpiklaani tshirt. Standard issue Tesco socks.
Things done yesterday: Retrieval of stuff from town (including about a 100 euros worth of books for 15), dog-walking, cooking, two episodes of Fringe.
Things to do today: More house-keeping, picking up the cat's prescription, working on a long job app, ideally some writing.
Still planned writing: Gentle Decline future-fiction piece; Commonplace on food-related stuff from the vIMC. Possibly also a piece on the different patterns of interaction and personality of Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram.
Notes on the forest sculpture thing on Tumblr: 116, which makes it far and away the most popular thing I've posted there. Tumblr is a slower medium than FB or Twitter, which means stuff will keep accumulating interactions for weeks or even months after posting.

Weather: Sunny, getting toward warm. Within operational limits
Breakfast: Hash browns, scrambled eggs, frankfurters, bacon, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, Pride 2017 tshirt. Standard issue Tesco socks.
Things done yesterday:

Things done today: Trip into town, coffee, books, Lush stuff acquired.
Planned writing soon: Notebook system for a post here; Gentle Decline future-fiction piece; Commonplace on food-related stuff from the vIMC.

I like notebooks. For years, I would occasionally with ceremony start a new notebook for a specific project, stall on the project or finish it more quickly than expected, and then not feel able to use the notebook for something else. I have found ways around this, and also ways to use the Very Good Notebooks. I have a System.

First, I have a Scratch notebook. Very nearly anything I need to write down goes in this: game notes, partial shopping lists, conference notes, partial recipes, commentary on same, research stuff, email addresses, everything. It is one notebook, so it's less likely to get left aside with a specific project, and because it is literally intended for everything, I don't feel shy about using it. The Scratch notebook has just hit Volume 2, and I am in the process of covering Vol 1 in stickers to demonstrate that it is no longer the active book, and stop me from grabbing it out of habit. Theoretically, it can live on a shelf now, but we're still in a transition period.

Then there's Miscellany, which is for chunks of text I want to preserve. These get copied out with a citation of some kind. Some of them are copied over from the Scratch notebook. It's literally a book of quotes. This is, I feel, a good use for a fancy notebook, although mine is quite plain.

And then the Commonplace. John Locke proposed a way to index a commonplace book, and I have used that. I quote myself from a few years ago to explain:

You take a blank notebook. On a convenient page near the front, you write down a list of letters and vowels: AA, AE, AI, AO, AU, BA, BE, BI, and so on. You only put in QU for reasons that should be obvious, and I shoved all of XYZ in one block. Your index is now ready for construction, which is continuous until very near the end of the notebook's lifetime.

Let's say you're adding a note about Onions. You have nothing else in the notebook, so you turn to the first blank two-page spread, and at the bottom of the left page, you put the number 1, and at the bottom of the right page, you put the number 2. At the top of the left page, write 'ONIONS' in caps, and write your note after that. I set mine out so that the title of each entry is in the left margin, and the entry to the right, but there's no need for that. Now, turn back to your index, and beside the OI entry, write '1'. OI, because O is the first letter on Onion, and I because I the first following vowel. Next, you might write an entry on Cucumbers. You write it on page 3, numbering pages 3 and 4, and add '3' to the index entry for CU. ANd you continue to add pages in that manner until you want to add, say, Onigilly (Japanese rice balls). There's already a page for OI, so you go to page 1, and under the entry for ONIONS, you add ONIGILLY. And you continue thus. If you run out of room on a double spread, you go to the next free page, write 'Continued from page X', continue there, and at the end of the original two-page set, write 'Continued on Page X'. If you run out of notebook, this becomes 'Continued on Vol 2, Page X'. And Vol 2 gets its own index, which also has, at the beginning of any two-page spread, 'Continued from Vol 1, Page X'.

This has two magical effects. First, it allows you to find entries without flipping pages madly, trying to remember if you wrote about DUMPLINGS before you wrote that long bit about NOODLES, or after. Second, on the way to finding the entry you want, you see lots of other entries, some semi-related because they're similar words, others thoroughly unrelated, but they all fire new thinking and new connections in the style of a printed encyclopedia.

Every so often, I sit down and go over the Scratch book and find stuff that should be copied into the indexed Commonplace for easier finding. The Miscellany and Scratch notebooks flow into subsequent volumes pretty smoothly, and the Commonplace should be read as one long piece. So far, though, only the Scratch has gone anywhere near a second notebook. I do have second and possibly third volumes waiting, though.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: Maynooth

Weather: Grey, cool. Rain forecast for later.
Breakfast: Museli, yogurt, raspberries from the garden, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, blue tshirt. Standard issue Tesco socks.
Things done yesterday: Some intensive kitchen cleaning and general housekeeping, cooking, food shopping (twice), and dog-walking.
Things to do today: More house-keeping, job applications, writing, cooking.
Planned writing maybe happening today since it didn't yesterday: Notebook system for a post here; Gentle Decline future-fiction piece; Commonplace on food-related stuff from the vIMC.
Time already spent after midnight reading Peace Talks: About half an hour.

Weather: Rainy, grey, cool. I'm ok with that.
Breakfast: Fried egg, ham, toast, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, "Straight Outta Context" tshirt. Standard issue Tesco socks.
Things done yesterday: Hanging out with household, travel home, takeaway. Then some late night reading and a few episodes of The Magicians
Things to do today: Food planning, food shopping, housekeeping. A week of my not being in the house followed by a week of my being only physically present has left a backlog.
Planned writing today or tomorrow: Notebook system for a post here; Gentle Decline future-fiction piece; Commonplace on food-related stuff from the vIMC.

Current Mood: determined
Current Location: Maynooth

A new land contract - thinking on how land is "owned" and by whom.

Sentiers: Digital Gardens - thinking on processing and retaining and using information. I have thoughts about this.

The Commune and the Virus - thinking on COVID and Coronavirus from a rural point of view.

Cozy Games - a thinktank report. This one courtesy of

devi

Tags:

links

Weather: Sunny and cool. I approve.
Breakfast: Pancakes with ham, cheese, golden syrup and raspberries from the garden, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, Pride 2017 tshirt. Standard issue Tesco socks.
vIMC Sessions attended yesterday: 2. Discussion post just before this; they were excellent.
Things done yesterday: vIMC, shopping, cooking. Finished out S4 of The Magicians and watched this week's Agents of SHIELD, which was... very 80s. VERY 80s.
Things to do today: vIMC.
Notebooks finally filled out yesterday: 1. I should write up my notebook system here; I don't know that I've ever done so completely.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Maynooth
Current Music: Ṿ Ʌ Ẏ U & Vonnboyd: Neophobia

Yesterday also had some excellent stuff. I did skip the morning sessions, since there wasn't much for me there, and it was necessary to go do some food shopping.

In the afternoon:

The Medieval Environment

Lydia Allué Andrés spoke about the effects of the Little Ice Age in the Communidad de Aldeas, and about the villages that were abandoned there during that time because the altitude limit on where settlement could be reduced considerably. Crops were lost to hail every year from 1413 to 1428 in one village (Almohaja) and there are frequent mentions of frost and snow. There was a site between two rivers, which was great during optimal climate periods, but pretty unpleasant when there were frequent floods. And there's evidence that cereal fields were converted to pasture, and vineyards just plain abandoned.

Todd Preston presented on salmon and pike in Early Medieval English literature and ecology. This included, of course, mention of the Anglo-Saxon Fish Event Horizon, which is one of my very favourite things in history. There's the interesting detail that salmon occur more in texts than pike, but pike appear more in the historical record (like cows and pigs in Ireland). Pike bones are liable to last longer, and salmon - which can be caught at sea, or at least in nets as they swim into estuaries - coincide with the greater number of documents after the FEH, so there's some calculation and guesswork involved in which was actually eaten more. Also the interesting datum that both fish were ABSOLUTELY FECKING ENORMOUS in period, growing to well over 2m in length. I do not fancy trying to convert a 2m pike from angry river monster to dinner.

New Perspectives on Daily Life and Material Culture

Jane Holmstrom presented a study of diet of elites in Saint Jean de Todon, France, via stable isotope analysis. I did not know that millet stands out in this analysis; apparently it has a different form of carbon in it than most other plants. She was trying to see if the elite burials in the graveyard there - reckoned as being closer to the church and/or having grave markers - had a different diet. There wasn't enough material for conclusions before COVID stopped stuff, but there will be soon. There was mention of one chap who apparently had a post-mortem status change, being exhumed and reburied closer to the church - indeed, right at the door. And there was also the note that while the isotope analysis can pick up animal protein very well, it can't distinguish between meat and dairy consumption.

Chris Woolgar spoke about gifts, exchange and particularly inheritance of silver plate (cups and platters) in England, 1200-1500. There are apparently about 45,000 extant medieval wills in England, which give a lot of insight into material culture. There's very little of it left, it having been mostly melted down since. Cups, it turns out, are really important in memorial culture in this era, to the degree that some cups, inherited over multiple generations and associated with specific original owners, became "secular relics", clearly recognisable to anyone in or near the family. Some of these - and other plate - were eventually donated to parish churches to become chalices and the like; turning secular relics into sacred ones.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Maynooth

I should post some of the stuff I've read in passing here too. I'll collect up some more, but for a start, have:

An article on tor.com about She-Ra as Queer Narrative.

Current Location: Maynooth

Tags:

links

Yesterday was a day of good stuff.

Town and Hinterland

Anna Mayzlish spoke about social and communitary boundaries in Ypres in the 13th to 16th centuries. This was worked out via the medium of monopolies and exceptions from them in the craft of drapery, and I don't think I really understood what was going on. I did note that once one power has granted a monopoly, another power can then grant exceptions to the monopoly, which seem kind of like second-order financial instruments.

Another chap, who I'll avoid naming here in case he's searching for his own name, was so incredibly dull I couldn't listen to him. It was something about vineyards near Alexandria, but he monotoned so hard I think I might have zoned out entirely for his presentation.

Martina Bernardi spoke about the 'incastellamento' fortified-village/castles around the 10th century in Italy, specifically in Monti Lucretili. These were apparently a consequence of conflict between neighbouring powers, and were notable because they weren't royal or even noble residences, but merely the villagers fortifying their own places to live in a bit more safely. Some had strategic value, others were just where they were because of nearby resources. They faded from use after the Black Death and an earthquake in 1349. They looked _really_ interesting, and I'd like to see more about social structures in those villages.

Social Boundaries in a Medieval Town: Setting and Retention

This sesssion was moderated by a Russian woman, and all three presenters were also Russian women.

The first, Irina Mastayaeva, spoke in French, and while apparently I can follow Russian accented French perfectly well, I can't take notes while I do so. She was talking about the concepts of 'master' and 'school' in 12th century France, and it's the first time I've seen the what-we-talk-about-we-talk-about title in French: De quoi parle-t-on quand on parle de "l'école" et du "maître" dans la France du XII-eme siècle (le problème des limites terminologiques)?

Galina Popova presented about social boundaries on the borders between Toldeo and the Dar al-Islam in the 12th and 13th century, and the issues of legal jurisdiction over citizens of differing religions in different places.

Anna Anismova talked about the borders of medieval English towns, and again about jurisdiction of townspeople in charter towns and seigneurial towns. She also pointed out the difficulties of working with this stuff when we don't know where the actual boundaries of the towns were, only where the walls were - which is not necessarily the same thing.

Food History in England and the Leeds Symposium

This was a fringe session, mostly an introduction to food history, which included a basic book list for English food history. I own four of the six books; I'm working on acquiring the other two. I am amused that several of the recommended books are not in print.

Borders, Boundaries, Authorities, and Identities

I had ferocious difficulty with this session; no sound for much of it, and since chat was disabled to prevent trolling, no way to query it, and since re-entering the session wasn't allowed, not much point in restarting the machine. So I didn't really get to do this one.

Patrons and Elites

This session was excellent; really good topics and speakers.

Lesley Fraser spoke about English medieval tapicers (new word), and the contrast between their work and that of more expensive Netherlandish (new word) craftsmen, and how English gentry could commission hallings (new word: the set of tapestries necessary for a hall; wallhangings, bench covers and cushions) from English workers at reasonable enough sounding prices. There was a lot of excellent discussion of trade and tax pressures, comparative prices, class-based access to tapestry, and furnishings. Also noted that designs for tapestries were often done by painters, and then sent to the tapicers to be implemented.

Lisa Reilly spoke about stained glass patronage in the late Middle Ages - just before the Reformation - and specifically the windows in the Church of St Michael-le-Belfrey. There was some really good stuff in here on the emergent effects of the concept of purgatory, one of which was the support of sizable guilds of craftspeople dedicated to making church furnishings on which patrons could have their names and requests to pray for them. This included an effect whereby having one's name in a parish church, where it could stand out, was probably better than having it in a cathedral where it would blend in among many others.

Csilla Virág presented on the concepts of minstrels and class boundaries in Renaissance England. Muchof this made me think about how cooks and butchers were treated in the Middle Ages - people whose services were necessary, but who weren't quite trusted. Minstrels were supposed to have the power to corrupt entire communities, and were also able to blend in at any level of society. Some of the contemporary discussion reminded me of people wailing about the corrosive effects of TV or social media, which illustrates the lack of new things under the sun, etc. Also, the speaker looked worryingly like one of the ladies in Thamesreach, such that I actually thought it was her to begin, and was puzzled.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Maynooth

Weather: Dull. No rain to be seen; still feels damp out there. It rained pretty much all day after I posted yesterday.
Breakfast: Fried eggs, pastrami, toast, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, dark green tshirt. Standard issue Tesco socks.
vIMC Sessions attended yesterday: 4. Discussion post to follow.
Things done yesterday: vIMC, cooking. Couple of episodes of The Magicians in the gaps and when the Elder Cat wanted sits.
Things to do today: Shop run (actually already done now), vIMC.
Pandemic stat of the day: I saw a thing going by on Twitter that said that Arizona, with a comparable population to the island of Ireland, had 30,000 new COVID infections in one week, compared to Ireland's 100. I had to go check up on that, because it looked insane. It's apparently true. Man.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Maynooth

Weather: Dull. No rain to be seen; still feels damp out there.
Breakfast: Muesli, yogurt, blueberries, gooseberries and raspberries from the garden, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, Korpiklaani tshirt. Standard issue Tesco socks.
vIMC Sessions attended yesterday: 5. See post just before this.
Things done yesterday: vIMC, cooking. Couple of episodes of The Magicians in the gaps and when the Elder Cat wanted sits, and I also thinned the apples in the hope of getting fewer larger apples this year. And set up the new tumblr account, because despite being 42, I still apparently have the brain and neophilia of someone half my age.
Things to do today: vIMC.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Maynooth

A more varied day.

Change and Transformation

There was some excellent stuff in here. Hervin Fernándex-Aceles presented on 'External Influences and Transformation in the Early Charters of Medieval Sardinia', which was a really interesting set of stuff - there's no written history for Sardinia from before the 11th century, and then nothing but monastic and church charters for some time, so it's a peculiarly narrative-free history. And yet within that, there are vernacular texts - in both Roman and Greek scripts - from very nearly the beginning of the charters.

Manuel Fialho Silva did a piece on the medieval expansion of Lisbon over the period from 1147-1325, passing from being part of Dar al-Islam to a more European/Christian control. I've a lot of interesting notes here on the change from Islamic courtyard houses (I remember seeing these in Delhi) to the long narrow lots with facades more typical of Europe, and also on the appearance of segregated religious areas in the city under European rule, as opposed to the more integrated population of Islamic rule.

And then Sean Ó Hoireabhárd gave a really, really interesting presentation on pre-Invasion territorial changes in Ireland, including concepts like the donation of 'sword land' to the Church both as piety and as a way of anchoring newly conquered land into the conqueror's territory, and the Viking towns - there being no native Irish ones - as capitals of Irish kingdoms. There's also evidence of some of the annals being copied and altered around this time so that some kings could lay claim to larger areas when they were representing themselves to the Norman invaders; Tiarnan of Breifne seems to have been trying stuff on this way to claim chunks of Meath.

Collaging / Mindmapping / Zine Making with Your Research: A Presentation and Demonstration

This was a fringe piece, nothing new in it in terms of techniques per se, but I was fascinated by the application of zine-making - which I associate with the punk and sf communities - being applied to academic presentation.

Fantastic Beasts, II

Kyrie Miranda spoke about the origins of accounts of mythological beasts in the Physiologus and then traced their occurence through other texts, including a fascinating process whereby the moral/metaphorical meanings in the original text get stripped away, and then new ones are applied - often quite different.

Lucia Simona talked about examples of 'wonders' from a Persian point of view, particularly from al-Qazwini's Book of Wonders of the Age, which was, she reckons, specifically written to evoke wonder and awe, and not necessarily as a factual account - but was then taken as factual. Some of it has the same weirdness-increases-with-distance-from-the-writer thing as was noted the previous day by Robert Cutrer in Yngvar's Saga.

And then Bernadette McCooey spoke about pre-Modern Icelandic farming. I have very few notes because I was glued to the screen, but I did download her PhD for later reading. It's a magnificently cross-disciplinary work, coming from "a range of written sources, including literature, legal texts and the máldagar (church-charters), as well as archaeological disciplines and environmental sciences", and I suspect that's my reading for next week sorted.

The Carolingian World

I tried to pay attention, I really did. But the Carolingians, it turns out, bore me only slightly less than Late Rome, and I could not tell you one thing from this, except that there were some nice pictures of coins.

Medieval Food in a Remote Learning Environment: Pedagogy and Resources

This was another fringe piece, presented by a group called 'Mens et Mensa', who specialise in teaching food history. I don't teach much - not formally, anyway - but I was fascinated by the fact that almost all (possibly actually all; I don't recall hearing a male voice at any point) the people talking about teaching experiences in classrooms and online were women. Also, the teaching seems to be very hands-on, from herb samples being passed around in classrooms to field trips and cooking sessions. There's a formal membership for the group, and I might sign up when I'm employed again.

Current Location: Maynooth

You take your eye off it for one moment...

Inbox: Back at 425

And the newsletters folder, where I usually read everything the day it arrives, is at 33. Well, something to do between sessions tomorrow, I suppose.

I have now updated the profile page on this thing to the point where I'm mostly happy with it. I have links to my playlists, to my brand-new tumblr account at #arcanehobo (for the aesthetics, like the cool kids), to my updated-in-bursts magic-and-images blot installation, and to Twitter and Pinterest. And I've listed off a bucketload of interests that I feel represent me reasonably well.

Next, more icons; I'm using 6 of the 150 or so I could have.

Also, that term for a personal aesthetic: #arcanehobo (

korpikuusi's suggestion, from an overheard bit in a D&D game)

Yesterday was the first day of the vIMC. I attended three sessions, of variable actual interest. There were some tech snafus, and everybody's first words were 'can you hear me?', but by and large, things were made to work.

Writing Identity in Liminal Spaces, I: Crafting Religious Identities

The first talk had two excellent speakers, one (Emma Knowles) dealing with the concept of the wilderness (weste/westen) in Old English scriptural texts, specifically dealing with Hagar. She talked about the tension between the wilderness as the place in which one finds the divine, in early texts, and the wilderness as the place of exile from God, in later texts and church approaches, and it was fascinating.

The second speaker was Robert Cutrer, who was looking at Yngvars saga víðförla, and pointing out that it's essentially Icelandic propanganda, resetting Iceland and Sweden as barbarous places on the edge of the world to central, Christian places, by way of recasting the south and east as a land of monsters and hostile magic. Both papers worked together very well.

Borders in Tolkien's Medievalism, I

There's always Tolkien in medieval conferences. It's more medievalism than medieval, but that'll do. Andrzej Wicher talked about categories of fey in Tolkien and Lewis, and their relation to something called The Model, which is apparently some sort of framework for where entities fit in the world. Andoni Cossio spoke about the connections between the myth/legend of Sir Orfeo and Mirkwood in Tolkien. I wasn't so interested in the concepts here, but there were some absolutely great bits of information floating through, with interesting bits and pieces of refererences.

Fantasies of the Medieval

This drifted off into lit crit for the most part, which is fine in its own context, but not what I was looking for. Before that, though, there was mention by Judy Kendall of a novel called The Wake, which is written in an invented pseudo-medieval form of English in order not to have 11th century characters speaking in 21st century words. That's something I'll have to look into.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Maynooth

Weather: Rain. Occasional brief not-rain, but it's hard to tell.
Breakfast: Leftover rice, golden syrup, raspberries from the garden, coffee.
Wearing: Black jeans, dark blue tshirt. Standard issue Tesco socks.
vIMC Sessions attended yesterday: 3. I'll do a separate post on them.
Things done yesterday: vIMC and a little shopping and cooking. Also picked up again on The Magicians, which I'd last seen in late Season 3, and have plenty to catch up on.
Things to do today: vIMC.

Current Location: Maynooth

( Well ackshually I was at the Leeds IMC in twenty mumble )

Current Location: Maynooth

The virtual International Medieval Congress starts tomorrow and runs until Friday. There's a slightly terrible interface through which one is to participate in it. In theory, it lets you set up your agenda of panels and other stuff to attend. It is sloooow already, so I've taken the precaution of setting my own agenda tonight.

At present, it looks like this:

6-7-2020
11:15 - 12:45 Writing Identity in Liminal Spaces, I: Crafting Religious Identities
14:15 - 15:45 Borders in Tolkien's Medievalism, I
16:30 - 18:00 Fantasies of the Medieval

7-7-2020
09:00 - 10:30 Change and Transformation
13:00 - 14:00 Collaging / Mindmapping / Zine Making with Your Research: A Presentation and Demonstration
14:15 - 15:45 Fantastic Beasts, II
16:30 - 18:00 The Carolingian World
18:30 - 19:30 Medieval Food in a Remote Learning Environment: Pedagogy and Resources

8-7-2020
09:00 - 10:30 Town and Hinterland
11:15 - 12:45 Social Boundaries in a Medieval Town: Setting and Retention
13:00 - 13:30 Food History in England and the Leeds Symposium
14:15 - 15:45 Borders, Boundaries, Authorities, and Identities
16:30 - 18:00 Patrons and Elites

9-7-2020
09:00 - 10:30 English Government and Administration: Crown, Courts, and Customs, I
11:15 - 12:45 English Government and Administration: Crown, Courts, and Customs, II
14:15 - 15:45 The Medieval Environment
16:30 - 18:00 New Perspectives on Daily Life and Material Culture

10-7-2020
09:00 - 10:30 Landscapes and their Borders
11:15 - 12:45 Medieval Landscapes / Seascapes: New Perspectives on Borders
14:15 - 15:45 Kings, Bards, and Borders in the Celtic World
16:30 - 18:00 Climate and Catastrophe

I really, really enjoyed when I attended it in Leeds a couple of years ago, and while the virtual version won't be the same, I feel it should still be pretty good.

Current Location: Maynooth

Watching: I am completely up-to-date on Agents of SHIELD, including the six-episode web-mini-series that sits between seasons 3 and 4. Except for the episode which aired last night in the US, which I'll see later today. The next thing I want to catch up on is The Magicians; I think I got to the end of Season 3, but I couldn't swear to it.

Reading: I finished out The Root, and found it good; the two separate plotlines don't quite connect, which feels strange, but I assume they'll do so in the second book, which I'll acquire soon. I suppose this is a thing now, in the wake of GRRM.

I ran through Jools Sinclair's Girl on the Ghost Train in about an hour, which was mildly entertaining, but mostly just a bit odd, in all of writing style, world-building and characters. I keep thinking that if things like that can get published, I should have no problem, but I'd also need to finish some of my fiction to make that argument.

Currently on Zen Cho's The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water (another confirmation of my prediction that long titles like those of Becky Chambers would be in in 2020), and finding it good. There's a very fine lingual detail there of using the words "brother" and "sister" as pronouns, which I'll need to look up and see if it's a real thing.

Being brought up non-Catholic in a Catholic country, and going to a convent school gave me a fascination with the details of the religion. Not the by-the-book form of how it should be per Rome, but as it's practised by people who believe in it, or act like they believe in it, or observe the rites without believing, or bring in entirely non-Roman-Catholic practices and don't see any issue with it while believing.

In particular, there's the veneration of saints and the practice of pilgrimage. These don't happen in the branches of Protestant Christianity I'm familiar with, and while they absolutely do in paganism, albeit in different forms, they're very conscious, deliberate things there.

Yesterday, I saw some stuff in this context I hadn't before. There's a site at Lemanaghan in Co. Offaly which has been a monastery since at least the 10th century, and had an ecclesiastical presence of some kind from at least the 7th century.

avenueyew wrote up her previous visit here, and you can read that for the historical background. I really liked the causeway ("togher") and the cell/oratory, but it was the holy well, and even more specifically the things people had left there that really fascinated me.

We've a long, long history of devotional gifts or sacrifices on this island. We know of swords and tools that were rendered unusable before being thrown in bogs at the borders of territories going way back. We know of bog bodies, many of whom may have been sacrifices in some way. Even bog butter may have been a sacrifice. There are pious gifts of land to the Church, and the leaving out of milk for the Good Neighbours. There are the Faerie Trees at Tara, hawthorns with hundreds of ribbons and bells and bits of tinsel and all kinds of other stuff tied to them, and others at different sites across the country.

These offerings are in the crook of an elderly, slightly hollow ash tree beside the well. There's a plastic bottle on a chain by the well itself, so you can extract some of the water, should you want, and there are coins in the well.

There are rosary beads - some probably quite expensive - small bits of cloth, ribbon and string, two action figures, a Peppermint Aero, various devotional/mass cards, other bits of jewellery, coins, shoelaces, crucifixes, artificial and real candles, and a variety of medals dedicated to a wide variety of saints. I've never seen anything like it, and it feels more like voodoo than Christianity (not that voodoo doesn't have aspects of Christianity, of course).

And everything put there was put with a specific purpose in mind. The person placing it might have known of the "proper" approach, which involves walking three times around the well with the offering before placing it, or they might have just put it there, but it was for something in particular, and that offering made sense to them.

The morning post is probably here for the next while even if, like this one, it actually lands in early afternoon.

( What's that, Skip? The Prime Minister of Australia is down a well? GOOD JOB! )

Experiment. I'll most likely kill it in the morning.

( Sumer is icumen in )

I have unlocked the functionality to rename animals in Wurm. Which is to say, I have a branding iron.

We therefore now have first-generation cows Abbatissa, Acorsa, Acfrida, Acleberta, Aclehilde, Adalfrida, Agintrude, Adalinde, and Aizivella, and bulls Abbo, Aclehard, and Adberg. Since they're wild-caught cattle, they don't have identifiable parents.

Then in the second generation we have Bertha, daughter of Aizivella, Benna the Keen, daughter of Abbatissa and Adberg, Blithe the Tough, daughter of Adalfrida and Adberg, Bethangaria, daughter of Acorsa and Abbo, Benneda, daughter of Adalinde and Adberg, Bertagilde, daughter of Acleberta and Adberg, Beauregarda, daughter of Acleberta and Aclehardand, Bathsheba, daughter of Aclehilde and Adberg. Baldwin is the assigned second-generation bull, but he's wild-caught as well.

Among the first-generation sheep, we have Zacharia, Zwybolda, Zwerda, Zinistra, Zephrya, Zinnabar, Zipporah, Zerolia, and Zenuflexa, and rams Zumboldt and Zebedon.

The second-generation sheep are Witta, daughter of Zerolia and Zumboldt, Wipple, daughter of Zerolia and Zebedon, Wilhelmina, daughter of Zenuflexa and Zebedon, Wenta the Fierce, daughter of Zipporah and Zebedon, Winsy, daughter of Zenuflexa, Wisterhild, daughter of Zenuflexa and Zebedon, Wirra the Lightning, daughter of Zephyra and Zumboldt, Winifreda, daughter of Zacharia and Zumboldt, Wintermina, also daughter of Zacharia and Zumboldt, Walla, daughter of Zinistra and Zebedon, and the wild-caught rams Wiggo and Winebalder.

I find this immensely entertaining. I shall keep you updated on these important affairs as more animals arrive.

Experiment. I'll most likely kill it in the morning.

( Swarte-smeked smethes, smattered with smoke )

Experiment. I'll most likely kill it in the morning.

( Unless you count raccoons / and opossums who do not use lawn furniture? )

I'm currently playing in a D&D campaign, run via Roll20 on Saturday mornings. The guy running the game, Mike, is an Elder Gamer in Ireland, and most of the players have been in gaming for a long time too - I think between us, we probably have more than a century of experience. Mine, however, has almost all been from the other side of the screen.

I'm not saying I've never played -

dualpurpose ran a couple of not-really-system-mostly-narrative games some years back, and a friend growing up ran single-shot games fairly frequently, before our attention drifted onto something else, which usually took hours rather than days. But I have never played D&D, specifically, for more than two sessions with the same character, nor have I ever before levelled up a character of my own. In 30-some years of playing, that's kind of weird.

It's a very different experience from the player side. Mostly, it's a huge amount less effort - you turn up at the game, you remember what happened in the last game, and you play, and that's it.

The GM, on the other hand, has to keep weeks, months, or years of continuity in mind, understand the rules, write down (or at least read over in advance for published modules) roughly what should happen in this session, balance encounters, make sure all the players are as involved as they can be, and manage the complete unpredictability of people confronted with a plot. That's in addition to things like making handouts, or writing the setting. I reckon games I'm running occupy my time for about 3 hours for every hour of actual active game, and that's without the time spent just thinking about what to do, or reading various supplements, gaming forums, and other GM-related stuff.

And for some reason, I have never really copped this before. I have always vaguely assumed that players spent some proportion of as much time thinking about the game as I did; clearly not as much, but still some. Some time reading forums, say, or looking at relevant rulebooks, or working on background, or thinking about what their characters can do about X or Y problem in the game setting. And it's absolutely possible for a player to do so, but it's not necessary in the same way. It's kind of eye-opening.

Game tomorrow. Haven't done a thing since last week for it. It'll be great.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Maynooth
Current Music: Tomkillsjerry: Goodnight and Good Luck

Experiment. I'll most likely kill it in the morning.

( With their own hands quarried from hard words / A figure in which secret things confide )

So I've covered where a whole load of my basic concepts of fantasy and SF and narrative came from, and more or less closed out where I came across Terry Pratchett and Raymond E. Feist for the first time.

At some point in the summer of 1987, with my nine-year-old brain fired up from reading Lord of the Rings, I pretty much invented for myself the idea of LARP. I'm guessing I must have seen a bit of a documentary or read something somewhere, because the concept that I had was pretty close to what's now the Scandinavian form, albeit I was going for full-contact combat with boffer style weapons. I remember explaining this concept at length to my parents, who listened patiently and explained that taking over areas of forestry and building stuff there wasn't going to be allowed. I am retrospectively amused that that was the point on which they reckoned the project would fail, rather than anything else. I was less than a year out from finding out TTRPGs existed, via an article in a computer magazine, mostly likely Your Sinclair.

Pratchett and Feist were in 1988 or 1989, and I think it was in 1988 that I got hold, in a bookshop in Enniscorthy, of a book called The Riddling Reaver. That was a followup, technically, to Fighting Fantasy - The Introductory Role-playing Game, but because as far as I can make out, nobody in bookshops understood sequels in the 1980s, the first book wasn't there. Nevertheless, it was enough to be getting on with, and over the next year, I located the first book, and then the Advanced Fighting Fantasy books. As RPGs went, this was primitive, but it was available in paperback, sold through the same distributors as novels and choose-your-own-adventure books, and thereby available in rural Ireland. I must have scoured every bookshop in Leinster, plus some in Belfast, Galway and gods only know where else.

FF and its variations gave me a way to try to translate the stuff I was seeing in novels - and in late 1988 and into 1989, I was acquiring and reading fantasy novels at the rate of about two a week, which considering where I lived and my access to books was somewhat staggering in hindsight. Vartry Books in Ashford, across the road from my cousin Brian's house, was responsible for about 80% of that, I think. Because I could sell books back to them for half the price, I could turn £20 into about £37.50 worth of books and at prices like £1.50 to £1.80, that was a lot. This does mean that there is a period of about seven years - 10 to 17, say - where I don't know what book some concepts came from, because I read them once and sold them back. I know I got the concepts of animated statues from one of these books, and I'm pretty sure I had the notion of colonisation through time travel from Julian May around this point.

Oddly, I don't remember where I first got hold of an issue of Dragon magazine. I have a clear memory of acquiring one particular issue - 1991, issue #175, bought in Easons in The Square shopping centre in Tallaght, where I was on a school trip, but that was at least two years later, and maybe more. Dragon was my fundamental reader in fantasy and gaming, which probably gave me an odd perspective overall. I didn't acquire any of the actual D&D rulebooks until 1992, at earliest, and it might even have been later, although I had acquired Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, WHFRP, a bit before; universally referred to as "wuffrup".

For most of my teens, TV was not very much present. My father was never keen on the device, and used to put it in the attic during the summer, and on three different occasions, gave it away instead, reckoning on getting a new one for the winter, and sometimes even doing so. I wasn't much into it anyway; we could get three stations, and there was rarely much of interest on any of them. The X-Files appeared around 1994 or 1995, and I know I saw most of Twin Peaks earlier, although some of that was at the houses of friends. Most friends, where there was cable or satellite, had TVs permanently tuned to MTV anyway.

There were a few tropes of my teenage games and writing where I'm unsure of the origin, which all go together in my head: the infinite building (and the infinite library, specifically); the Multiverse; portals; personification of concepts; magical universities. All of these are widespread in fantasy, for sure, I'm just unsure where I first came across them.

And I'm still slightly surprised that there are no big successful fantasy series set at magical colleges or universities - The Magicians starts out at Brakebills, but doesn't really stay there, and it's the only example I can think of. There are a few single books - Pamela Dean's superb Tam Lin, Caroline Stevermeyer's A College of Magics, which even has a couple of sequels I need to track down, and which might prove the exception to the rule - but no big series. There are, of course, several bajillion Harry Potter clones set at boarding schools, many crossing over with the paranormal romance area. But third level just seems ignored, and secondary world universities unexamined.

The peculiar stuff about the teenage material, though, is that there isn't all that much that has had the lasting impact of the material I read as a kid, or of the material I read after I left home. I'll try to pick through some of that in the next such post.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Maynooth
Current Music: KAVERN: Prophets

Experiment. I'll most likely kill it in the morning.

( How about a pair of pink sidewinders / And a bright orange pair of pants? )

Current Location: Maynooth
Current Music: Kareful: I Loved A Witch Once

We did it all for the Glory of Love

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