
In the Halls of the Mountain Kings - wormold
http://www.lapsuslima.com/in-the-halls-of-the-mountain-kings/
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BoppreH
Every few days this Tumblr post comes to my mind:
[https://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/post/185387711470/bunjywunjy-
ye...](https://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/post/185387711470/bunjywunjy-yesterday-
for-april-fools-my)

bunjywunjy:

> yesterday for April Fool’s my workplace had

> a short training article on recognizing computer-generated

> faces from real ones and one of the tricks mentioned was

> “count the teeth” and I just wanted to say that it’s both

> ironic and kind of horrifying how society has unwittingly

> cycled right back to IF YE MEET A MAN ON THE ROAD, COUNT

> HIS FINGERS LEST YE DEAL UNKNOWING WITH A FAE

If you keep the "fae = buggy AI" correspondence in mind and read the third
paragraph from the article, the description starts making perfect sense. All
the variation, all the odd behavior. For example, "meting out disproportionate
punishment for trivial offences" sounds a lot like automated bans.

Perhaps we should start re-appropriating mythical terms for new tech. It's
much easier to explain the dangers of AI-controlled weapons, for example, if
you word it as "hiring armed fae".

~~~
knolax
It would also make you an easy target for mockery by your opponents.

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benterris
This font really looks great ! I looked it up and it is Caslon [1], a typeface
created in England in the 18th century.

Overall this website's design is amazing, all of it is simple and elegant.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caslon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caslon)

~~~
casefields
Another great one is Bembo:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bembo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bembo)

I'm no expert but I've always loved my books set in them.

------
riffraff
the first theme exposed here (fairies/elves/fair folk are scary) is core to a
few Discworld novels, mainly "Lords and Ladies", which includes this wonderful
bit

> Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause
> marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous.
> They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves
> are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can
> twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind
> words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice.
> Elves are bad.

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PaulHoule
I dunno about ghosts being a Christian thing.

In anime you see ghosts and talk about ghosts all the time (telling ghost
stories around the fire, or somebody who got a house cheap because it was
thought to be haunted, or the giant robot cops who seem to help ghosts go to
rest as often as they put criminals behind bars)

The mythology and nature of the stories doesn't seem very different from
western ghost stories but the prevalence seems higher. It seems to me that
Buddhist mythology is as compatible with stray spirits sticking around just as
much as Christian mythology except that Christians see souls moving on a one-
way track on a 1000 year time scale where Bhuddists see them going across
multiple worlds, heavens and hells over more of a trillion+ year time scale.
Either way a few might be so attached to this world they get stuck for a few
tens of hundreds of years.

~~~
smogcutter
Agreed that ghosts being uniquely Christian isn’t a strong claim, but I think
it makes sense in the context of considering possible pre-Christian origins of
fairy stories. It could have been stated better, but I read it less as a claim
that only Christians have ghost stories but rather exploring why fairy stories
fit uneasily in Christian cosmology.

~~~
krapp
>exploring why fairy stories fit uneasily in Christian cosmology

Possibly because fairy stories come from primarily animist and polytheistic
cultures. In Christian cosmology, everything not human either explicitly
serves God or Satan - outside the material world, as either angel or demon,
black or white. But faeries can be good _and_ evil, like humans, and they
suggest a _third_ "grey" order of supernatural domain (that of nature itself.)
They can inhabit a world which is not our world, but also neither Heaven, nor
Hell. Christianity cosmology doesn't really have room for that kind of
ambiguity.

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Brakenshire
This reminds me of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, that’s the only book I’ve
read that treats fairies in the sense they are described here.

~~~
salgernon
+1E30 for this book; it was wonderful and I basically have the audiobook on
repeat. It’s fun and filled with countless delights. The TV adaptation was
great too (I saw it before reading the book, and as always The Book Was
Better.)

