Satrap of Saturn

So what follows started one day in '22 when I was looking for images of the world-tree, the ash Yggdrasil, like you do. This beauty was engraved 1886 by Friedrich Wilhelm Heine. I looked through Heine's art on wikimedia commons and was struck by his powerful depictions of European towns shattered by combat. Instantly I assumed he became a war correspondent for the Great War, then actually looked at the dates: it was the Franco-Prussian war, one I know mostly for the effect on French and German politics: the Commune massacred, Prussia levels up to Reich, Napoleon III decides he's more a London kind of jerk, it all gets blamed on Dreyfus. But I know nothing of it as a war, of its death and weapons: I guess I don't take western European warfare seriously between Waterloo and the Marne. (Imperialist warfare is another matter.)   But my God, my Life, look at these fresh ruins: artillery is a machine beyond comprehension, it landscapes Earth into Hades, it makes the stone, st...

The question arose on the OSR discord , Are gnomes anti-Semitic?  I've encountered the idea before, specifically that the conical hat worn by garden gnomes descends from medieval Christian impositions of distinctive dress upon Jews. I don't much care about gnomes, whether the D&D illusionist variety, decorations in gardens, or early modern earth elementals, and I hadn't followed up before tonight. Gnomes, as we now think of them, are at the intersection of fairy folklore and dwarf folklore, and emerged as fictional beings with their own identity in the 17th century before becoming the kitsch critters we know in the 19th.  The best scholarship I found on the question focuses on that conical hat, toward the end veering into dwarfs, their magic, gold, fine craftsmanship, and their habits of wearing pointy hats and being distrusted by European Christians. Extract from Naomi Lubrich, " The Wandering Hat: Iterations of the Medieval Jewish Pointed Cap ", (Jewish Hist...

Ophelia Vi: Erin Fleetwood literally all of it. I just can't follow starting with the clown bs. I am a super literal person and the fact that it starts off all weird and fantastical vs reading like a very dry straight to the point book has got me totally spun. And then the 2nd part the words/terms are suddenly all crazy huge and literally every other word and I just can't make much of it. It all runs together and jumbles up and (besides not understanding some of the words) my brain really can't break it apart. I can't stand this type of writing its so INCONSISTENT !! (Basically I wish it was just a very dry, simple but smart breakdown vs all that "batshittery") Ophelia Vi i'll give it a shot  First is a story to make the Irish experience with British monarchy personal. Ireland is not a person, it is a nation full of people, but just as people have memories and traumatic experiences, a whole nation full of people experience many things together and share th...