It’s been a whole year since Narniaworld, the theme park and resort based on C. S. Lewis’ famous book series, was introduced to the public on this blog. Let’s see what new features and activities are planned for this summer. Previous Narniaworld posts are here. Narniaworld, Part 1 (Food) Narniaworld, Part 2 (Rides) Narniaworld, Part …
A few more for the adventurers’ library. More Unusual Magic Books Arven’s Guide to Quick Calculation: Written for merchants, bankers, traders, and anyone else working with cash. Reading this magic book once will allow the character to forever eschew the use of an abacus or other calculating instrument, for they can now do simple …
The more I got into last week’s Worldbuilding Wednesday post the more I realized how convoluted the history of Harley Quinn really is. For one thing, she wasn’t the Joker’s first female sidekick. That honor belongs to Duela Dent, who originated in 1976. She claimed to be the Joker’s daughter and wanted to join the …
In this post I’m going to do something I’ve wanted to do for a while: analyze Batman villain names. Batman has been all over the place for the past three decades, and plenty of folks have seen the shows, the movies, the parodies, the comics (which comprise only a small part of the franchise now), …
“To a know a dinosaur, you must first know a chicken.” These common farmyard birds, developed from Asian junglefowl around 8,000 years ago, show many of the same characteristics of the prehistoric creatures they are descended from. They strut about on two legs, have plumage, scaled, robust clawed feet, are warm-blooded, and lay eggs, They …
In the AD&D universe one of the most prized treasure items a magic-user character could discover was a book of magic, because it gained access to a range of spells and not just the one or two that the player gained with each level. That’s the way it started out, anyway. Things might have changed. …
Continuing on with this series. Tolkien says in several places that Hobbits are more akin to Men than either Elves or Dwarves. If so, they share Men’s mortality in that they do not go to Valinor after death, but somewhere else (even though Frodo and Sam did.) However, their lifespans are longer than that of …
After all the different hobbits on the covers of Russian and Slavic translations, surely there must have been more types in Middle-earth than just the ones in The Shire? After all, it’s a big place with plenty of room. In his other notes, Tolkien stated that Hobbits came into The Shire in the middle of …
As I mentioned in Part 1, Tolkien described orcs in racially stereotyped terms, in fact, he even admitted to it: ” squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.” The above illustration by Tim Kirk, then a fan artist, adheres …
From hobbits my mind has drifted off to orcs. Or orks, uruks, orchs, as known in some of Middle-Earth’s other languages. Tolkien never described the orcs too deeply and when he did, unfortunately, it was with language one would use for non-white humans: broad noses, sallow complexions, slanted eyes. I could go into this more …