Recent content by Dioltach

Aha, ceci n'est pas un writing desk.

Last year, when I wanted to cancel my SPOT subscription because it had gone up by 50% within the space of a few years, I learned that they have a non-advertised option of paying a small flat rate per year, plus a monthly fee if and when you're actively using your device. It's saved me about 200...

Is it me, or does it look a bit Hobbit-sized?

"If you tangle up, just tango on." (Scent of a Woman)

Not a play, but Xenophon's account of the actual march of the Ten Thousand that he was on.

Have you ever read Lachamon's Brut? He goes on for 16,000 lines about "the Britons", and King Arthur, and in the very last line all of as sudden it's "And one day Arthur will return to save the English." Not the Britons - the Anglo-Saxons, the downtrodden after the Norman Conquest.

I was referring to the emergence of the trope in D&D. As in, it wasn't drawing on historical or literary sources, but on actual contemporary practices.

Isn't the whole idea much simpler? Bars and taverns have traditionally been places where people gather for food, drink and company. My experience with American bars is limited, but enough to know that there's a very low threshold for someone going up to a complete stranger and interacting with...

It says it travelled through space to arrive on Earth. Sure, it's only flavour, but isn't that the point? As ancient as Earth's history is by that time in Conan's timeline - Atlantis has already fallen, for instance - this alien species is older and stranger.

"The Tower of the Elephant". A sorcerer has captured the alien and uses its power to fuel his sorcery. There's actually a Tower of the Elephant in Cagliari in Sardinia, which is a bit of a disappointment if you're expecting anything like in the story.

Also: The Sword of Shannara (1977) is explicitly a fantasy world built on an ancient high-science world, with a high-tech monster even making an appearance. And even though modern readers sneer at Shannara for being derivative of LotR, at the time it was a massive bestseller. Anyone remotely...

Guards! Guards! has a bit about wanting a king again instead of the Patrician, because of the old glory days. That idea gets pretty short shrift. As for other fantasy books that don't glorify the past: Shannara (where the past is truly grim), the Gentlemen Bastards (where there's not much...

Does Conan the Barbarian/Conan the Destroyer/Red Sonja count?

Blackadder II, Blackadder the Third, Blackadder Goes Forth.

Ged, Gandalf, Raistlin and Dallben.