Tag: games

biweekly links 3-22-2017

Hazy Cosmic Jive: Bowie and the Starmen, Part One, Part Two, Part Three: Intriguing series about the influences of UFOs and Captain Marvel on the creation of Ziggy Stardust and other Bowie personas. I knew Bowie was into UFOs, but didn’t know about the comic book angle. Huh. Well timed as I found this just after finishing Simon Reynolds’ Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and its Legacy.

David Bowie made up like an alien with bald head and yellow cat eyes
David Bowie in “The Man Who Fell To Earth”, courtesy Zimbio. I maintain: Bowie didn’t die, he just went back to his home planet of svelte androgynous people.

Henry VIII’s ‘small country’ Tudor palace for sale: so if you’ve got £3 million lying around you’ll want to jump right on that. Seriously though, some nice interior/exterior photos at the link if Tudor architecture is your thing.

The Tudor guide to colonising the world: in case “Bluff King Hal”‘s old digs aren’t big enough for you, read about Richard Hakluyt’s sixteenth century travel guides of the New World. Mind, he never actually left Europe, so take with a grain of salt.

The Game Developers Who Are Also Witches: not a gamer myself but games are a powerful storytelling medium and it sounds like these games to celebrate and empower traditionally maligned populations.

Pop culture roundup

Whenever I tell people I’m writing about John Dee and Edward Kelley, they tend to say:

“Who?”

I’m surprised how often I hear this – they’re “B-list” historical figures but I’m not the first to fictionalize them. A friend suggested I whip ’round the Web to see if they ever showed up in the more accessible worlds of tv/movies/video games and I found a few examples:

Dee may be the inspiration behind white-bearded wizards Gandalf and Dumbledore but seems to be more of a niche/”alternative” character on his own. Director Derek Jarman and author Alan Moore were/are fans; it cracks me up that Richard O’Brien played Dee in Jarman’s punk film “Jubilee”.

Richard O'Brien as John Dee in Derek Jarman's "Jubilee"
Yes, that’s “Rocky Horror”‘s Riff Raff, courtesy johncoulthart.com

Edward Kelley was harder to find; he’s better known in the Czech Republic than in the English-speaking world due to his gold transmuting feats (“feats?”) in Prague. Still, he turned up in the (now defunct) Facebook game Assassin’s Creed: Project Legacy. The designers clearly did their homework: they included Kelley’s stepdaughter Elizabeth Jane Weston and together with Dee they do alchemy and look at mysterious books.

Man shows little girl a handful of magic red dust
Edward Kelley showing Elizabeth Jane Weston the magic red dust. Image found at assassinscreed.wikia.com

And of course, “Supernatural” introduced the Enochian angel language to a wide tv audience.

productimage-picture-it-s-funnier-in-enochian-7212-480x300
T-shirt design found at HideYourArms.Com

I found other brief references: Dee in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age“; an Edward Kelley costume for rent (but only in the Czech Republic). There’s more at their respective Wikipedia pages, but most of the references are literary.

Feel free to include other examples in the comments!