This is a wizard blog now

Danny Kaye vs Basil Rathbone

The defeat of the wizard who made people choose how they’d be to be executed

The woman who raised the changeling alongside her biological child

Cinderella finding Araura (and falling in love)

The God of Arepo (graphic novel 1 / 2 / 3) (ebook)

The Monster of Sentan

The Witch’s Cat

Raise Both Children

Stabby the Roomba (honorable mention)

Cinderella Marries the Prince (comic)

My Arch Nemesis Cynthia

Pirates and Mermaid

Eindred and the Witch

The Demon King

The Cornerwitch

Grandmother Beetroot

Apocalypse Daycare Worker

Grandmother Accidentally Summons a Demon

New Year Saga

A Story About Changelings

Ranger in the King’s Forest

The Difference Between a Hare and a Rabbit

These illustrations are from a Fechtbuch (fight manual) by Paulus Hector Mair, published in Augsburg, Germany ca. 1540s.

The text accompanying each drawing is about the move being performed. None of them make any comment about who’s performing the moves, only about how to perform them correctly and the consequences of error.

This statue of St Maurice in Magdeburg Cathedral Germany dates to about 1250, and was clearly carved by someone who knew what Black Africans looked like or had one modelling for him.

This reconstruction shows what the statue probably looked like when new; the spear was a separate accessory, the sword and even shield (as can be seen from its broken remnant in the photos of the original statue) was part of the carving.

Regarding that shield and the details it would have concealed, there’s a story from the construction of the National Cathedral in Washington DC about an artisan carving similar never-to-be-seen detail; he was asked: “Why bother, who’ll know whether you did it or not?” and replied: “God will, and so will I.”

(@dduane​ mentions it here.)

These are later paintings of St Maurice, the first in the Metropolitan Museum New York USA by Lucas Cranach the Elder (~1520-25):

…and by Matthias Grünewald (~1520-24) in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany, both wearing Maximilian-style armour:

This armorial panel from 1521 shows Eva von Schönau, first wife of Jacob von Reinach-Steinbrunn (a wealthy landowner who later became Governor of Montbéliard in France), and is in the Historisches Museum, Basel, Switzerland.

They were both armigerous (arms-bearing) families: his is the lion, hers are the rings.

These drawings by Albrecht Durer were done in 1508 and 1521.

It’s probably fair to say that away from trading ports and major centres of commerce, people of colour whether African, Middle Eastern or Asian were an unfamiliar sight in most of Medieval and Renaissance Europe.

However “unfamiliar” isn’t the same as “unknown”, and in addition, the high-status clothing of the Fechtbuch models, and Eva von Schönau’s family coat of arms, shows they weren’t always just servants or slaves.

RADISHN’T: Prithee, which one of you had planned to tell

Of diff'rent flavours gained by simple act

Of brewing tea with water hot, not cold?

MOTHMAN: Egad! you poured the water cold? Wherefore?!

FROG: An answer from you, Radish, I must beg.

RADISHN’T: Indeed I did, dear friends - why does this shock?

Without the guide of others I assumed

That heat was merely added for the sake

Of expediting this solution’s brewing!

Half a decade I have spent, or more,

Not questioning this worldview I had made.

In fact, I am myself a bit surprised

That you might think that I, your dearest friend,

Might have a patience of sufficient stock

To wait until a pot of water boils.

FROG: Three minutes overtaxes patience so?

The microwave will beep when it is done!

CATS'N: My friend, this answer vexes me the more!

Can it be true that thou dost boil by nuke?!

FROG: Are you in turn, my friend, so shocked to know

That I have not the patience, like our Root,

To boil upon the stove our favour’d drink?

CATS'N: It takes less than a minute!

FROG: On what plate?

Perhaps your dinner cooks atop the sun?

CATS'N: How long can take your stove to fill the task

Of boiling but a single cup alone?

FROG: In minutes?

CATS'N: Yes!

FROG: I counted seven, once.

CATS'N: Perhaps you ought to have your timepiece checked!

If on a middle heat you place the cup

You soon will have the scalding drink you crave.

Two minutes, in a mug upon the plate

Or even less, if you should have a pot.

FROG: You cause me tears - is this how thou dost live?

You place upon the iron stove a mug?

A mug, ceramic, filled with water cold?

How do these flames, though medium in height,

Not shatter like a glass this fragile thing?

Surely, then, your kitchen is bewitched

With magicks far beyond the mortal ken!

(The FOUR realise they have wandered into the THRONE ROOM. The ROYAL COURT watches with fascination.)

These illustrations are from a Fechtbuch (fight manual) by Paulus Hector Mair, published in Augsburg, Germany ca. 1540s.

The text accompanying each drawing is about the move being performed. None of them make any comment about who’s performing the moves, only about how to perform them correctly and the consequences of error.

This statue of St Maurice in Magdeburg Cathedral Germany dates to about 1250, and was clearly carved by someone who knew what Black Africans looked like or had one modelling for him.

This reconstruction shows what the statue probably looked like when new; the spear was a separate accessory, the sword and even shield (as can be seen from its broken remnant in the photos of the original statue) was part of the carving.

Regarding that shield and the details it would have concealed, there’s a story from the construction of the National Cathedral in Washington DC about an artisan carving similar never-to-be-seen detail; he was asked: “Why bother, who’ll know whether you did it or not?” and replied: “God will, and so will I.”

(@dduane​ mentions it here.)

These are later paintings of St Maurice, the first in the Metropolitan Museum New York USA by Lucas Cranach the Elder (~1520-25):

…and by Matthias Grünewald (~1520-24) in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany, both wearing Maximilian-style armour:

This armorial panel from 1521 shows Eva von Schönau, first wife of Jacob von Reinach-Steinbrunn (a wealthy landowner who later became Governor of Montbéliard in France), and is in the Historisches Museum, Basel, Switzerland.

They were both armigerous (arms-bearing) families: his is the lion, hers are the rings.

These drawings by Albrecht Durer were done in 1508 and 1521.

It’s probably fair to say that away from trading ports and major centres of commerce, people of colour whether African, Middle Eastern or Asian were an unfamiliar sight in most of Medieval and Renaissance Europe.

However “unfamiliar” isn’t the same as “unknown”, and in addition, the high-status clothing of the Fechtbuch models, and Eva von Schönau’s family coat of arms, shows they weren’t always just servants or slaves.

I am gay. a lesbian, if you want to be specific. queer if you’re referring to me as part of an Umbrella Term Group. homosexual if you want to get clinical. in 150 years, there may be some other label for whose adherents my lived experiences resonate, in some way

but I will never be part of that group here and now, in my life and my cultural context. whatever it means to self-identify as [label] in that world is not necessarily how I understand myself

(and re: gender, what it means to be a woman and fully identify with womanhood and use she/her pronouns might change, but that will always be how I understood myself within my own world. the future will not change my life in its past)

would I deny those future People We’d Now Call Queer Women™ the resonance they might find in my experiences? of course not. that reaching back to the past for ancestors and community is a beautiful, achingly human thing. I would never want to impede it

but I would want them to allow me my context, complexities, and nuance. I would want them to let me drive the bus, so to speak, in terms of defining my identity. I would want them to come back to my words and my world first and foremost in making a Historical Figure out of a messy once-living person

that is why I introduce queer historical figures with “though they wouldn’t have used this term, we’d probably now call them X” before I go on and just call them X for the rest of the tour. or why I might say something like “some of Louisa May Alcott’s experiences resonate with queer women and transmasc people” rather than “Louisa May Alcott was definitely gay/trans/whatever”