"The Whole World becomes a Wilderness"

- An analysis of "The Wanderer" and the Elegiac Mood in Old English poetry - Every literary tradition contains certain pieces of writing that transcend the bounds of their time to become immortal; that is, they speak so concisely to a certain aspect(s) of the human experience, they escape the limits of their time and transcending into the boundless present of cultural consciousness.

Relics of the past:
This is a simple CD-R burn of Siamese Dream by the Smashing Pumpkins. My first real girlfriend gave me this when we were in 8th grade, in the early 2000's.

It may seem trite now, but this artifact carries a lot of weight with me.

Little 🧵in reflection I am well into the stage of my life where discovering boxes of things from childhood is a genuinely curious exercise.

Enough time and life has passed that things have sincerely become 'old', relative to memory and physicality.

On Pre-Jackson Tolkien / Middle Earth Aesthetica

This will not be an exhaustive art post,
but rather, a meditation on how pre-Jackson LOTR aesthetics help maintain the mystery of Middle Earth for me as I grow older.

Let us seek lost lands:🧵 There is little that has gone unsaid about the Jackson films; the art direction for the LOTR trilogy altered the tectonics of the fantasy landscape for the foreseeable future.

But what existed before the monolithic trilogy, and how did we experience those landscapes?

"Wulf" Pt. II
Translations and further analysis

We've already talked about the poem's context and narrative. Let's finish "Wulf" with an analysis of it's particular problem of translation

https://twitter.com/Ancient_Daze/status/1501308602711216131

Translation efforts of "Wulf" are plagued with fundamental issues; opaque grammar, obscure context, etc.

It is very hard to draw conclusions about "Wulf"

This attribute makes the poem uniquely susceptible to disingenuous, weird, and outright bad translations.

"Wulf" is a great enigma of Old English literature.

This poem is famous for it's female speaker and as a tale of love, exile, and loss.

But what story does it really tell?
What is the nature of the world that produced it?

Let us read "Wulf" The textual circumstance of "Wulf" must first be considered. "Wulf" is found in the Exeter Book (10th century), which is the prime surviving codex for Old English literature. It is housed with crucial poems like "Juliana", "Christ", "The Wanderer" amongst others.

Harald Hardrada - The last viking king of the North

In this final thread of the Hardrada series begun by @Varangian_Tagma, we examine Hardrada's final days after the Battle of the Nissa to his fateful meeting with Harold Godwinson, King of England, at Stamford Bridge. Following the brutal victory over Svein Ulfsson on the Nissa river, Harald busied himself with taking spoils and captives, and tending to his wounded. He revels in the knowledge of Svein's death; his long quest to defeat his rival and reclaim Denmark had finally been achieved.

Away from Books, Reflecting on ancient days of 2003.

GAMER THREAD

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance:
A defense of the sequel
and lessons from childhood's end. I won't spend time highlighting Final Fantasy as a series; its prolific nature (aesthetics, gameplay, narrative beats, etc) are synonymous with the RPG genre, and gaming itself.

Instead, I will discuss Tactics Adv; an oft maligned sequel to its mighty predecessor (Tactics 97').