Orthodox Christians should write and paint and sing and dance. We should make
movies and television shows. We should make clothes and produce textiles as art
as well (the fullness of culture is itself too large to describe in a sentence,
a paragraph or even a book). And in all these activities, they will be
expressive of the fullness of our humanity without having to stick an icon on
everything to prove its Orthodoxy.
-- Father Stephen in Glory to God for All Things
This is a picture of Lionel, my Useless Blob.
He's really here, jumping up and down. To adopt your own Useless Blob, click on him.
![[christian fandom]](http://www.valdyas.org/~irina/blog/graphics/page/cf125x125.gif)
2008-07-30
It felt very strange to be back in Valdyas, even though Sarabal is full of Síthi. It didn’t help that we were in Turenay rather earlier (in real time) than I’d expected and I had to take over almost unprepared.
Note: I don’t have much in the way of notes of this part; some of the facts may be inaccurate. If you were there and know better, don’t hesitate to tell me!
Athal’s last entry —well, the first part of it, because it’s another long one and I know that at least three people are waiting to read it— because we’re back in Valdyas and I’ve taken over the campaign again. I’m unlikely to stop posting roleplaying writeups, my own and others’, but this story arc is finished.
2008-07-28
Note: this is the other Raisse, the one in Turenay who is the queen’s sort-of-godmother.
Raisse started out angry (and I typed the whole thing with angry keystrokes) but the writing made her mood change, I think very true to character.
(or: what’s up with all those letters?)
We, that is my other half and I, are running a one-on-one side campaign following the adventures of Khora, to supplement the campaign with Athal and Raisse.
The first writeup of this branch happened to be
Khora’s first letter, and it sort of grew from that. Now
suddenly everybody and their dog is writing letters and
not even we ourselves can keep track of who all those people are
and who is related to whom, especially as the stock of names in Valdyas
is small so every other person seems to be called Raisse or Jeran.
Note that King Athal has disbanded the House Eraday; everyone formerly of that house who is loyal to him does not have the house-name any more but is still counted noble. Athal has more or less promised to come back from Iss-Peran with another name for the house, but frankly he can’t think of anything.
I don’t pretend to be exhaustive, but only try to give a reference guide. Also, this is not a catalogue of people appearing in the actual campaign writeups; perhaps I’ll do that later.
On a sidenote: once again I wonder whether to start a separate blog for roleplaying writeups, but the last time I mentioned that I got a (small) deluge of (mostly non-roleplaying) readers urging me to keep everything here, so I’ll stop contemplating it now.
2008-07-27
All this (i.e. the side campaign with Khora, causing all these letters) is giving me lots of ideas for the next campaign arc. Radan doesn’t actually know much about the situation in Iss-Peran (at least not until Athal and Raisse arrive in Turenay), but he does have the right ideas.
For those readers who don’t lead part of their virtual lives in Valdyas, and for those who do as well, I’m working on a short “Who’s Who in Turenay and Elsewhere”.
2008-07-26
Next time Khora writes a letter (and it’s likely that she will) I’ll start adding “previous” and “next” links. Radan isn’t forthcoming —we haven’t seen him much, after all— but Arin astin Hayan is writing a letter to his father.
This young man is serious. Nicely different voice from Aidan’s!
Note: Khora spells ‘Kheti’ and Aidan spells ‘Cora’, but Arin’s spellings are actually correct (or, at least, most true to the original). ‘Albetire’ and ‘Albatire’ are valid variants.
2008-07-23
It’s contagious! Perhaps even Radan will write his letter in public.
2008-07-20
Poor girl, afflicted with a grievous case of culture shock. If the people dealing with her read this letter, they’d probably be in danger of dying from culture shock too.
(Athal informs me that embarrassment is like seasickness in that you don’t actually die of it, you just wish you would)
2008-07-18
And her style is exquisite. Thanks, Boudewijn!
2008-07-16
This threw me a bit at the supermarket. It should look like this:
and not like this:
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I don’t know why the company, or the supermarket, now has the export packaging; has the domestic market become too small? Or had they underestimated the domestic market and run out? (which is the other side of the same problem?) I don’t think they mean ‘Holland’ as in ‘North and South Holland’ as opposed to ‘Overijssel’; it says ‘Pays-Bas’ on the French side.
Anyway, it’s nice to know that it’s “Kosher for Passover and all year use”, even though that doesn’t concern us.
But fortunately, the contents were the same, or I’d have sent the company Very Angry Mail.
If I hadn’t seen them do it, I wouldn’t have known what had caused this.
This is part of the gate of our old house, where wasps have pared some of the weathered top layer of the wood away to make their paper nest. It makes an intriguing small scratchy noise when you actually happen to be there while they’re doing it.
Here’s a detail at full resolution:
It’s interesting that they do it only vertically; the rest of the fence is of the same wood, equally weathered, but with horizontal slats, and it doesn’t show any evidence of wasp-paring at all.
Time for another roundup of search terms.
(apropos of nothing, I seem to have about 30 regular readers)
2008-07-15
… that ‘dragon’ is the Dutch word for tarragon. But still.
2008-07-14
Raisse is right that the title of baron isn’t hereditary: barons are appointed by the Crown. However, if a baron has an heir who seems to be suitable, that heir is appointed to the barony more often than not when the old baron dies or retires.
2008-07-12
We keep the church open every Saturday from the end of June until the end of August for the benefit of whoever wants to come in and have a look. Two volunteers per Saturday, and today it was my turn. Our “CHURCH OPEN” sign couldn’t face both sides that people were likely to come from at once, so I ran upstairs and printed a “CHURCH OPEN, Welcome!” sign to tape to the open door on the other side. Still, about half the people who came in asked “may I come in? may I have a look around?”
2008-07-09
The birds all came looking when I leant over the rail of the bridge with my camera, thinking I had food. When that wasn’t forthcoming they swam away. There were three grey cygnets and an off-white one, but I didn’t manage to get all of them in the viewer together.
Here’s Athal catching himself thinking like an Iss-Peranian, more than once. Fortunately, it’s likely that he’ll be on the next <shudder> ship home, and only because it wasn’t feasible to catch the one that was just leaving.
She is so right about the tax revenues. And it turned out in the next session that it’s likely to actually work out that way, at least partially.
2008-07-07
I find myself rethinking scenes, seeing images from the films in my mind; even looking half-heartedly for widescreen wallpaper of any scene that appeals. But perhaps I’ll just have to get some pictures of random New Zealand landscape and make up my own stories in it.
Looking for other people’s experiences I came across The Purist, who seems to have seen exactly the same films that I have. The reviews are spot on, the parody summaries hilarious. And here is The NitPicker’s Guide to The Lord of the Rings, detailing changes between book and film. Especially the mail the NitPicker got, reproduced at the end, is instructive.
Here is a wiki article about a Purist Edit of The Two Towers: all Peter Jackson’s changes undone again. I may want to watch it some time, though I’m not such a purist; I appreciate that film is a very different medium from print, but I do question some of Peter Jackson’s choices. The rest of that wiki is worth perusing too.
Finally, here is a full synopsis, chapter by chapter of the book. Useful, especially if you’re trying to find a reference and know what the context was but not where in the book to search, as happened to me this morning.
2008-07-06
Too many flashbacks. Too much cutting from one piece of action to another and back (I’m clearly not of the zap generation). Too much crawling up and sliding down mountains. Too much Gollum. Too much simpering by Arwen and, come to think of it, Éowyn. Too much Slow == Important. Interminable battles, interminable whitespace between events (people standing or sitting around and occasionally saying something), interminable horror scenes, interminable farewells. And still the head-to-one-side cuteness of Aragorn when he’s already been crowned king.
Yes, this is The Return of the King, of course. I watched it a few years ago on my own when I was ill, fast-forwarding most of the Gollum stretches and all of Shelob, joined by Secunda (who was also running a fever) for the coronation, and remembered mostly the good bits.
2008-07-05
I stayed up writing this last night but the network didn’t see the laptop and I didn’t feel like fixing that at 2:15 in the morning; ah well, gives me the chance to add a few things I came up with while in bed and in the shower.
We watched the Lord of the Rings films again— the first two in one evening as a school-holiday movie marathon; we have the third in the house as well but the other two are so long that The Two Towers ended well after midnight, and everybody was just plain too tired to face another one even if it does have the happy ending that the others so sadly lack.
