Moving

Ever since I got back from DC/VA, I've been chin-deep in boxes, so blogging has been slow and will be slow for a while. Also, no gaming. While I'll be keeping a residence in North Texas, I'm heading to the Hill Country. I'm curious to see how the Mythopoeic culture down there will compare!

Good Joss Tomeful Tuesday

Lovely cover art by Rowena Morrill

After my good fú trip to Hole in the Wall Books, I started The Devil Wives of Li Fong (1979) by E. Hoffman Price, one of the pulp writers, who later in life combined his fictioneering skills with his study of Chinese religion and culture (he became known as Tao Fa in San Francisco's Chinatown) to produce this fun novel based on the Legend of the White Snake.  I finished Devil Wives this morning, and it exceeded my already good expectations. Magic, strong female characters, action, religious reflection, and intrigue are served up in this Szechuan hotpot.  I think this is worth a chance even if you are not particularly into Asian fantasy, and a necessary part of any Asian fantasy lover's collection.  While it's not perfectly written and perhaps a little predictable, overall it earns high marks and does a good job of conveying the fantasy reader into the ancient Chinese imagination.  I found it a quick and entertaining read as well.
Grade: A-


Travel Map for The Devil Wives of Li Fong

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A Great Little Hole in the Wall in Falls Church

 

I haven't had a lot of free time during my DC trip -- there's been lots of in-laws, extended family members from out-of-the-country, appointments, and command performances.  I didn't really get to spend the time (or the money!) that I would have liked to at The Compleat Strategist (I think the Falls Church location is one of the smaller ones, but the guys there were friendly and it's definitely worth a visit), but between Mass and my next commitment, I stopped off at Hole in the Wall Books.  This comic shop and used bookstore takes up all of one-story blue house on Broad St.  It has an RPG selection, but I saw nothing I was particularly interested in.  From what I can tell, it is a must stop for comics and fantasy/science fiction readers.  In just the brief time I had to orient myself and scrounge around for the first time, I found two hard-to-find volumes I've been looking for (pictured above).  Committed bibliophiles should add this to their DC area itinerary, unless they suffer from claustrophobia.  I know this will be a part of my DC routine from now on.  

Advice: if you have allergies, take your medicine in plenty of time before you go.  They've been in business for thirty-four years, and many of their books have been in business even longer.  Also, wear clothes that you don't mind crawling around on the floor in.  The more time you have to sort through the house's packed contents, the more you are likely to find in its tome-filled,  labyrinthine corridors.

EDIT:  Zenopus sent me a nice list of places to check out during my visit.  I filed it away, thinking, "I have no extra time (or money) this visit and will try to plan for next time," and lo and behold, Hole in the Wall was not only very close to my brother-&-sister's-in-law place, it was also number 2 on Zenopus' list, which makes for a good endorsement.  Thanks for the email, Zenopus!

Chinese Dragon

Ai Weiwei's dragon from his Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads at the Hirshhorn.

The Mythic Game of America

I'm in DC visiting my wife's family, and taking in a Nats game while I'm here. Not the usual kind of gaming around MR, but baseball certainly has a mythic quality here in the US.

Plastic Toy Jackpot

 

I've been crazy busy the past month.  In addition to wrapping up my classes this semester, I've been preparing for my move and helping my dad finish up things at the house he shared with my mom.  I was surprised by the amount of toys still in the house.  My mom had kept toys at her house for my daughter, and some of my own toys somehow managed to survive various purges and intermingle with them to be joined over the years with new toys for my nephews.  I went through several boxes of toys before my dad donated them, and I am now an advocate of going through boxes of old toys, no matter how big of a pain it is to do so if you ever use miniatures in your tabletop gaming.  I found many little plastic goodies that I might use as miniatures, as you can see in the picture above.  (And, if you know what you're looking at, some of you will see some real gems and know where they came from.)

The cream of the collection is the pictured below.

That's right!  Of the many rust monsters and bulettes/landsharks that I had acquired as a little kid before I had ever heard the name "Gygax," one of the bulettes survived.  I had hoped to find more, but even one is a minor miracle.  The original inspiration for the umber hulk also somehow made it. 

So, I hope everyone had a great Mother's day.  Me, I have lots of great memories and a rich inheritance.  Not in money, mind you, but it just so happened to include some little plastic gems that will enrich future games for me and my players.  Thanks for everything, Mom!

So Much Art

Female Pan Queen by Marta Nael

Fantasy art is really thriving today all over the world.  With all the crap art that has flown under the avant-garde flim-flam flag of Art that us poor middlebrow orangutans can't get, we can exult that we live in the days of Donato Giancola, Alan Lee, John Howe, Todd Lockwood, Dan Dos Santos, Luis Royo, Victoria Frances, Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, and Eva Widermann.

But in addition to all the names you know are many artists you have never heard of, though perhaps you have seen their work without learning or remembering their name.  They are doing wonderful work -- whether for products, patrons, or just their own enjoyment.  It's appalling how young and talented some of them are and it's astounding the amount of work they are producing on a regular basis.

I have been swimming in art lately, thanks to my discovery of the blog Art is the Weapon and my insane urge to view every page and track down every artist I like.   They send you to places like Deviant Art and CGHub and you go crawling around amongst a visual feast, shoveling rich chocolate cake in your mouth for breakfast and then again after you brush your teeth and for every meal.  I have to take breaks.

I'm going to cue you in to some artist websites that I like, and also just plunk some names down for Googling.  In both cases, they follow no particular order.

WEBSITES
Jean-Baptiste Monge
Tim Mcburnie
Kyoung Hwan Kim
Takashi Okada


GOOGLE THESE NAMES
Jana Schirmer
Marta Nael
Wei Chen (Lorland Chain)
Melanie Delon
Viktor Titov
Jasmin Darnell
Tom Bagshaw


Finally, there are artists you know and, as I intimated, forget about for awhile and then rediscover how awesome they are.  Benita Winckler was a recent example for me -- if you don't  know her, add her name to your web-crawling.

Of course, for many of us, artists give us new perspectives on things we have already been exposed to and so their work mainly feeds the imagination or challenge our perspectives.  But the more widely you view art, the more you will discover new things, as well.  Case in point: Reynardine.  I had never heard of werefoxes (for lack of a better word) in British folklore -- I always associated them with Chinese and Japanese folk stories.  Ulafish's illustration alerted me to the presence of at least one in a British folk song, named Reynardine.

How have  you benefited from the work of fantasy artists?  What favorites would you share?  I hope that these will enrich the visual smorgasbord that you spread before yourself when you feed your mythopoeic appetite something other than text.

Keeping Mythopoeic Monday at Bay

Finals week is hitting at the same time as preparation for my move and for teaching summer school.  Did I mention that I also have an out-of-town family reunion this month and that I had to take my car in for servicing?  Aarrgh!

In the interests of my sanity, let me point you at some cool things to distract you from noticing that I do not really have an article for this Mythopoeic Monday.

STEVEN BRUST.  You know I recently finished the first three books of the Vlad Taltos series (collected as The Book of Jhereg) and I mentioned there were rumors of something involving.  That something ended up being an interview of Brust by Rone and Ed on a special episode of Atomic Array.  You will want to get over there and give it a listen, then check back because Brust is posting in the comments section!  Very cool.

In podcast land, when I haven't been listening to AA, I've been catching up StarShipSofa.  There's a new feature in the series by David Raiklen on cinematic music that I highly recommend.  In the same vein, I caught something on TV about Thomas Golubic that looked interesting, but Google insists that his site is harmful.  Does anyone know how one can hear or see his work rescoring film soundtracks other than living in LA and going to a performance?

And man oh man, the reviewers are being harsh to The Raven.  I think this is a case where they are being overly harsh.  Critics might talk me into lowering my review to a B-, but I still had fun.  Yes, we could have wished for more imaginative drawing on Poe's oeuvre, yes the author-solving-crimes-he's-inspired-trick has been used before, no, Cusak is not the best actor money could have bought for this project, but I still think it has some things going for it, as I noted yesterday.  They'll probably tell me that I'm being a sucker for a period piece, but I stand by saying it's worth seeing and given a fair chance.

Quoth the Raven: "Reynolds"

This weekend, I took Mrs. Obscure to see The Raven.  I was more entertained than she, who did not like the ending.  Since this is a piece of fiction reinterpreting radically a few facts from Poe's life and disregarding others, but allowing Poe's life to end the same way, she really could not have expected a happy ending.  Not to mention the fact that, well, this is a film about Edgar Allan Poe, even if it is a fictional Poe.  Happiness was not exactly one of this themes.

Hollywood continues to do decent by period pieces: the film captures a grimy 18th century, and I enjoyed the costuming and sets.  John Cusak looks good as Poe and does a bit of scenery chewing that seems fitting for the popular figure, if not the historical one -- but even then, there would seem to be at least some historical basis for the popular notions.

If you can accept creative license in the fictionalization of a historical figure, then you may enjoy this somewhat gory thriller/mystery/period piece.  I did.  I'm planning on grading movies from now on as if they were academic assignments: A+ to F.  I'd give The Raven a B.  If you enjoy Gothic imagery, I recommend it.  Also, the mystery has the benefit of not being overly obvious, as many film mysteries are.

Z is for ZOOMORPHIC ANGELS II

Well, here we are at the end of April 2012's A-Z blogging challenge.  Last year's final post, Z is for Zoomorphic Angels, is my second most popular post of all time, so, I'm revisiting the subject this year.  If you missed it, I recommend going back and reading that one first (linked above) and then coming back for this year's.

Unlike the anthropomorphic ("human-shaped") angels that dominate the occasions of hierophanies or angelic visitations to humans in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, there are two species or classes of angels that are definitely zoomorphic.  These monstrous angels are the cherubim and seraphim (note the plural forms in Hebrew end in -im).  While we do not have Hebrew images of these creatures, we know do have the Phoenician images that were made for Egyptian and Assyrian markets, and the images made with a visual imagination dominated by Egyptian and Assyrian conceptions seem to have been the same images that were sold in Israel by Phoenicians. 

The cherubim get a lot more references than the seraphim, which I believe are only clearly and explicitly referenced in Isaiah.  The image at the bottom of the page, found in nearby Syria, has the requisite six wings and holds a serpent in each hand (check biblical references below).  In addition to the images in the archaeological record and the rather idiosyncratic descriptions in Ezekiel,  we can tell that the cherub is like a winged bull, sphinx, or griffin because YHWH is pictured as using one as a mount in the book of Psalms.  Celestial creatures of this type were popular in Mesopotamia and called karibu/kuribu, "intercessor."  King Hiram of Byblos had cherubim flanking his throne and incense altars have been found in Taanach and Meggido flanked by them.  It is not surprising them that they are said to have flanked God's throne and the Ark of the Covenant.  The parallelism of Psalm 18 may suggest that they were associated with the winds.  It is clear that both cherubim and seraphim were "angels of the presence," but they do not seem to have the messenger function of anthropomorphic angels.  I can't help but feel that the Bible does not make full use of the potential of these monstrous angels.  Why don't we ever seem them tearing into the enemies of God's people?  Maybe the God of Israel really does not have as bloody tastes as others of us do.  Certainly, in mythopoesis that was inspired by scripture, that's how I see myself using zoomorphic angels.  Maybe their occurrences in liturgical and mystical contexts instead of smiting contexts should be telling us something that I have yet to pick up on.



Scripture References

Genesis 3:24
Exodus 25:18-20; 37:6-9
Numbers 7:89
I Samuel 4:4
II Samuel 22:11
I Kings 6:23-28; 8:6-7
Psalms 18:10; 80:1
Isaiah 6:2-6; 30:6 (cf. Num. 21:6-8; Deut. 8:15)
Ezekiel 1:4-28; 10:3-22; 28:14,16

Syrian Figure from Tell Halaf

Taijitu, Yinyang, and D&D Alignment

It's always fun when your readers are interested in something you are interested in, and perhaps even more fun when it's a reader that you know.  Perspicacious comments are pleasing!  So I was happy to see Paris' comments on Y is for YINYANG, yesterday.  Initially, he notes that the principles of motion and interactive arising would make it "challenging to equate Yang to Law and Yin to Chaos without describing a cosmology in which the one eventually changes to form the other."  He then goes on to reflect on an aspect of Pathfinder's Golarion setting to do just that.  There are a few responses I'd like to make vis-a-vis Paris' comments that I hope might develop what I have in mind and perhaps shed further light on my understanding of Yin-and-Yang and the Great Dao.

First, Yin and Yang are not opposing forces (I note, Paris, you said "supposedly").  They are complementary opposites, and so can only be in opposition of a very special kind.  This fits with a Neutral view of a threefold alignment universe.  The proponents of Law and of Chaos each take their side to be the the rightful whole, and the other side its destruction, which itself needs to be destroyed (in ways keeping with its alignment).  Neutrality would view all things as arising from the interaction between Law and Chaos, with both being necessary.  Balance would not be a stasis between them, but needful disintegration of order and ordering of chaos.  While forces and individuals who side with one against the other would resist every instance of this, those who understood its necessity would work for the best outcomes and overall balance.  So a cosmology in which Law and Chaos were constantly in motion, rising and falling, would be a feature of what I was envisioning.  I take it that Law and Chaos do give rise to one another, and that like any of the pairs of complementary opposites in my example chart below, if one were to dominate   it would be detrimental.  Like the perspectives of Confucianism and Daoism themselves, one might argue that Chinese civilization flourished when the two were in harmony.

YIN	YANG
Low Wet Female Soft Cold Dark Unseen Negative	High Dry Male Hard Hot Light Seen Positive

I have some passages from the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) in mind as I write this.  Sadly, my two translations were destroyed last year and this semester I taught out of the class anthology without replacing them, therefore this post does not have the quotations I would have liked to use.  Let me finally note that, for such a system to work from my point-of-view, Good and Evil in their moral or ultimate senses could not be sorted as Yang-Yin.  I believe that philosophical Daoism agrees with me here, as well.  Maybe I will revisit this topic at some future date and include some quotations.  I also noted that at least one other A-Z blogger this year shared my interest.  Yay!

Those lucky South Koreans and their awesome flag...

Y is for YINYANG

Posting unexpectedly from out-of-town. It helps one discover how much one hates the iPhone blogger app.

Yinyang, or yin and yang as we tend to say it in English, is the theoretical complementarity of opposites in Chinese tradition such as Daosim and Confucianism. It is famously recognized (though hardly ever correctly named) in the taijitu (great power diagram) symbol.

The symbol has been used in mythopoesis by author Robert Jordan. The symbol could be used by gamers who play with a three alignment system, especially one where they do not equate Law and Chaos with Good and Evil. Law as Yang and Chaos as Yin would make the taijitu the perfect symbol for Neutral alignment. I've been playing around a little for how I might use this in my Ygg setting. More to come on that, soon.

X is for XENOPUS LAEVIS

Xenopus laevis.  A biologist immediately knows the importance of that name, but perhaps many mythopoets do not, as I did not.  However, our fellow rambler and Holmes expert is happy to help you, as he did me, here.

W is for WONDER

Tarantulla Nebula from the Hubble Spacescope, Courtesy of NASA.

One of the basic human responses is wonder.  It's an inner state, a mood or attitude, that seems to have an accompanying emotion that can be very intense.  There are also certain thoughts that go along with it.  The external universe elicits these thoughts with its size, beauty, complexity, and simplicity.  But just as we know from our own internal experience that the seen has unseen behind it, so we suspect that the external universe hides even as it expresses mystery.  I'm not sure if WOW! is a thought or not, but the inner state produces questions, so we often use it as a verb and say, "I wonder what/if/etc."

Why is there something rather than nothing?  Why are these the somethings that are and not some others?  Wonder is a crucial part of religion, philosophy, art -- and especially fantastical fiction.  We express our sense of wonder in science, in worship, and in the sub-creation of worlds that have the inner consistency of reality.  What other animal wonders?

Here's wishing you all the wonder you want, and then a bit more to surprise you at just the right moments.

J is for PSEUDODRAGON

Just checking to see if everybody is awake!  The W  entry will be coming later, but I wanted to share that I am enjoying finally getting around to read what Steven Brust is famous for, instead of what I appreciated him for.  In any event, after giving in to all the recommendations of this series and having finished the first two, I've come to like it more than I thought I would.  But I think there are more little hints that this started as a D&D game than just that a supporting character is a Jhereg.  Which is, by the way, a better name for a little dragon than pseudodragon, which has always bugged me as an adult.  Any other Brust recommendations out there?  I hear a rumor that he's going to be getting some attention in exalted realms soon...more to come when I can talk about it.