Linkfest

Linkfest 2022-01-14: Muppet Christmas

I had originally intended this linkfest to come out at the end of 2021, but things have been busy around here!

GQ: Michael Caine Loves The Muppet Christmas Carol as Much as You Do

The family watched The Muppet Christmas Carol this week[3 weeks ago now], and Michael Caine’s absolutely deadpan performance inspired a search for the article above, which allowed me to learn that Caine played Scrooge in order to be in a movie his then seven-year-old daughter could watch.

Save versus Total Party Kill: Philotomy’s Musings

Philotomy’s Musings is perhaps one of the greatest results of the OSR movement. I’ve referenced it several times over the years, most particularly for its articulation of the concept of the dungeon as mythic underworld. This link is to a hypertext version. PDFs are also available.

Brainleakage: Down into that Unnatural Dark: The Archetype of the Cleric in D&D

This is a piece from last year that aligns pretty closely with my own thinking on the subject of the literary archetypes behind the cleric class. And of course, it talks about the mythic underworld.

Grey Elf

A resource for classic D&D play. An absolute gold mine of this sort of thing.

With Both Hands: Dracula Book Review

How can we talk about the literary roots of the cleric class without talking about Abraham Van Helsing?

Boot Hill and the Fear of Dice

A session report of Boot Hill, the gunslinger adaption of D&D. Boot Hill doesn’t get a lot of love, but this does it justice.

The Grey Goose Chronicles: Mid-winter Melancholia

A great read, worth it for just these two paragraphs alone:

I believe it’s correct when the comparison is made with the American imagination and their love for space. The frontier, the road trip, the plains and vistas, huge forests and corn fields. The source of their vitality comes from this horizon, endlessly stretching out before them. By contrast the English have no space. We have no wilderness and no empty frontier. What we have instead is the other dimension - time.

The depth of time is the fuel of the English aesthetic. Aeon laid over aeon. Accretions of Roman, Saxon, Viking, Medieval, all bound together and softly whispering over one another. The lowest walls of the building may have foundations of sandstone, with medieval timbers like old bones resting on Edwardian supports. The energetic vitalism of the Victorians pulses through most English cities in the rebuilt walls, neo-Gothic railings and red brick archways. This, I fear, will always draw the Anglo back into himself. Caught in a sticky web of the past, every narrow corridor housing old ghosts, now with little blue placards, freezing everything in place like a wasting disease.