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juergen_hubert

@juergen_hubert@kbin.social

I translate German folk tales.

I am also interested in tabletop role-playing games.

Mastodon: @juergen_hubert

juergen_hubert,
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It's one thing to read about legends and folk tales, and another to actually visiting the places where they (allegedly) took place. This image (please expand - it's a panorama image which doesn't show well in the preview) shows the Hübichenstein in the Harz mountains.

juergen_hubert,
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This time, it's okay to root for the Big Guy

juergen_hubert,
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Mass-blocking fascists with the Likers Blocker Chrome Extension was the only thing making Twitter even remotely bearable since the takeover, and even that became tricky due to the API changes.

All that I still use Twitter for is messaging a few people who still haven't moved elsewhere.

juergen_hubert,
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My hobby is studying old German folk tales.

And there is a widespread assumption that these tales were told to and for kids, while they were really entertainment for all ages (and some are downright X-rated).

I blame Disney... and the Brothers Grimm, who did their own part to "censor" folk tales.

Frau Gauden - Leader of the Wild Hunt (commons.wikimedia.org)

Modern media portrayals of the Wild Hunt have a fairly consistent portrayal - a huntsman on his steed, surrounded by his hounds. But when you actually start looking into European folk tales of "Wild Hunt"-type phenomena, you quickly notice that the portrayal is rather more diverse than you'd think. Here is one of my favorite...

/kbin - a few quick announcements

Good morning! :) Today I want to focus mainly on reviewing the pull requests you've submitted. There are many great things there that will help improve the kbin experience. That's amazing, thank you! I'm also in the final stages of sorting out the infrastructure-related formalities. Soon, the situation with the website's...

juergen_hubert,
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Since Ernest doesn't mention it himself, I would like to point out that he has a BuyMeACoffee account where you can donate to him to support him for all his hard work.

Religious denominations for pantheistic worship? (en.wikipedia.org)

So, religions in Dungeons & Dragons fantasy settings usually have some weird "Greek-style pantheism as viewed through the lens of Christian monotheism" thing, with worship of particular deities being fairly "standardized" and big religious conflicts occurring between the worshipers of different gods within the same pantheon....

juergen_hubert,
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That works, though ideally the different interpretations should apply to the entire pantheon, or at least to large parts of it.

msmidlofty, to Travel

Just posting to try and get some traffic going here. If anyone's planning a trip to Italy and has questions about Florence (as well as other locales in Tuscany) and Venice in particular (especially history/art/culture) or even some more general questions, I'm happy to take a stab at it. Fair warning: I haven't been to Rome in a really long time, so I don't feel comfortable making recommendations there, and I'm not a nature/hiking/camping/relaxation person so unfortunately I can't really tell you much about the Amalfi Coast, Lake Como, the beaches of Puglia, etc. However, I have been regularly visiting Italy for over a decade and used to work for someone who designed tours and guided for colleges and private clients with a real interest in art and history.

juergen_hubert,
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@msmidlofty Are there any good museums or books about Venetian mining interests in the Alps and Germany?

This is relevant to a book on German folklore I plan on writing which focuses on "Venetians".

juergen_hubert,
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@msmidlofty Thanks! That helps.

Basically, while Venetians in late Renaissance Early Modern Europe did do some mining in Germany - mainly rare minerals for their glass production - and were fairly secretive about it (since the details of their glass production were a trade secret), Germans built a whole mythology around them - portraying them as secret mages who used magical methods to harvest gold, silver, gems and other riches from the German mountain ranges. They could also dream-travel back and forth to Venice (and take others with them) - and Venice itself took on the traits of some faerie Otherworlds.

These tales are among the trippiest of German folk tales, and that is saying something! I'm writing a series of books with English-language translations of German folk tales, and while a book about "legends about Venetians" is not the first on my To Do list, I am early looking forward to writing it.

juergen_hubert,
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"Could you please repeat that statement? While under oath and in court?"

juergen_hubert,
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I've enjoyed playing with the assorted WH40K RPGs as much as the next guy. But I can't say that this analysis is wrong.

juergen_hubert,
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Interesting! Germany doesn't really have blood-sucking monsters as such apart from the Slavic minority regions. It does have some murderous revenants, but these kill via other methods.

juergen_hubert,
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"Snack pirate" is a perfectly valid way of playing this, and I, for one, am looking forward to the YouTube channel.

TIL of "Deutsche Bauzeitung", a long-running German architecture and civil engineering magazine that was first published in 1867 (archive.org)

People today underestimate just how much stuff was published in the 19th century - there were numerous journals and magazines dedicated to all sorts of topics. This magazine is definitely among the more interesting - it has lots of drawings, floorplans, and sketches of fantastic old buildings. I'll be sure to spend a lot of time...

When building your world, did you start micro or macro?

I did a bit of both. Got a continent name and the name of some regions. Then a few city names and important places in them. Working on the big stuff is fun, making countries, histories, that kind of thing. But the thing I like best is getting into the small details. What do the streets look like? Are there any vendors on the...

juergen_hubert,
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With my own setting, I started with the "high concept" - what makes the world unique. After that, I'd zoom around between the different "layers" of the setting, since the "micro" level can shape and inspire the "macro" level and vice versa.

juergen_hubert,
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Welcome aboard! I don't have any relevant academic background in this field myself, but that doesn't stop me. And we need more people translating folk tales from their native languages (I am trying to do my part for German tales).

Are there any particularly noteworthy themes and tropes in the folklore books you are reading?

juergen_hubert,
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Reminds me of Mastodon.social after the Twitter takeover last year. There were frequent outages as the admins desperately tried to increase their server space to deal with all the new users.

juergen_hubert,
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If you want to read some folk tales from your region, you can check the links list under the "Mark Brandenburg" section of this Wikisource page..

I can also recommend Gisela Griepentrog's "Havelsagen", which is fairly comprehensive.

juergen_hubert,
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Thanks! It wouldn't quite work for my campaign because it extends beyond a single city, and because the elevation map is pretty important, too. But this might be useful for mixing and matching street layouts for fictional cities.

juergen_hubert,
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As a GM, I would appreciate the opportunity for a good, lengthy villain monologue/rant in a situation like this.

Just so that I could show off all the plot threads.

US's Blinken says no to any Ukraine peace deal that doesn't include total Russian withdrawal (apnews.com)

“We believe the prerequisite for meaningful diplomacy and real peace is a stronger Ukraine, capable of deterring and defending against any future aggression,” Blinken said in a speech in Finland, which recently became NATO’s newest member and shares a long border with Russia.

juergen_hubert,
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Imperialism is bad even when it's not the USA doing it.

Ukraine absolutely deserves our support in this war.

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