Transcribed from the main Lords of Misrule page, which has a shiny new lick
of paint, so do check it out if you wish.
It’s that time of year again, isn’t it? When the days shrink and night begins to rule. A time for
staying wrapped up inside with a cup of hot chocolate for some. But for us, dear readers — we know
better by now, don’t we? The time approaches for merriment, mænadism, and of course… misrule.
Io Saturnalia, friends.
This is our fourth annual Satyrs’ Forest Lords of Misrule, where in the spirit of the season, i
put you — yes, you — in charge of the site. If you write or put together anything, absolutely,
positively anything, and email it to
misrule@satyrs.eu, come Saturnalia (that’s December the 17th through the
23rd, for those who aren’t up to date on their Roman calendar) i’ll put it on the site,
etched in stone for all to see. Temporary defacements of pages are also quite welcome.
I kindly ask the same things of you as years past: no political polemics, and nothing that would get me
in legal trouble, please. Other than that, anything goes. A video essay on the occult implications of
Gremlins 2. A rant about how birch trees used to be better back in the old days before Big Nature
made them cringe. Whatever you, my lords of misrule, want.
Submissions are open from now until the 15th of December, 2024. Have fun, be merry, and don’t
be afraid to get weird with it!
Added some stuff on the historical evolution of pronouns to
Są̂qʌk.
The Panpipes now have a “top 10” section for my favourite songs of all time.
Some more rejigging on the list of favourite films — every movie now has a nice
video clip, and The Hudsucker Proxy, Little Shop of Horrors, and
True Stories have made their way onto the list proper.
Came up with some better “favourite heroines” for Proust’s Questionnaire, and
decided i hated Le Corbusier and David Cameron enough to consider them among my “most disliked”
historical characters.
Realised somehow, somewhere, i’d flipped a switch and broken the
comments system, which should now be working again. Apologies for the
interruption.
2024 July 14
The index page has been given a fresh coat of paint and i’m quite pleased with how
it’s come out.
Updated the about page, since it hadn’t been modified for nearly a year, and
made a little fake passport in the most audacious bit of CSS trickery
i’ve ever done.
This also entailed spinning out the Proust’s questionnaire digression into its own
new page!
New map of a future Mars in the Cartothèque, possibly my favourite i’ve ever
done.
The biggest update to the linkroll in æons, with twenty (count ’em) sites
bringing us up over the 100 mark for the first time.
Shuffled around my picks for favourite films, adding Poor Things,
Some Like It Hot, and Gremlins 2 — plus i finally wrote up my galaxy-brained theory
about Synecdoche, New York.
It’s been a long year. That’s the traditional thing to say, but honestly, it’s been quite a
short year for me, and autumn has crept up without me even noticing. That can only mean one
thing…
Io Saturnalia!
It’s time, once again, for our third annual Satyrs’ Forest Lords of Misrule, where in the spirit of the season, i put you (yes, you) in charge of the site.
If you write or put togeher something — absolutely anything* — and email it to
misrule@satyrs.eu, come Saturnalia (December 17 to 23, for
those who aren’t up to date on their Roman calendar) i’ll put it up on the site, on the blog and on its
own dedicated permanent subpage, etched in stone for all to see.
As in years past, i ask only that you refrain from political polemics and anything that would get this
noble forest in legal trouble. Other than that, the sky is the limit. A video essay on the occult
implications of Gremlins 2? A rant about that new skyscraper that blots out the view of your
favourite billboard? Anything goes. Whatever you — my lords of misrule — want.
You can submit your entries from today until the 16th of December, 2023. Have fun, and don’t
be afraid to get weird with it!
— Xanthe
2023 November 12
I somehow neglected to inform the Log of Changes™ of perhaps the most significant change to the site in
quite some time — let’s fix that. This site is now, after a prolonged hiatus, self-hosted on my
very own computer-matic 9000! So much has changed that i don’t think i could even remember enough to
list it all, but here’s the biggest additions:
New page!Looking at the Big Sky, a home for a sci-fi paracosm that’s been in my head for ages.
Whooh! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Apologies for the wait — it was one of those things where i kept
putting it off until i finished this, and that, and this other thing and… you get the idea.
Comments sections have been rolled out to more and more pages. Coming
soon to a random obscure back page near you!
New page! Introducing the EqualA, the last basemap anyone will ever
need.
New page! I’m going to try and put more of the endless worldbuilding stuff that
exists entirely within my brain on the site, and the first to make the jump is the (currently quite
rudimentary) tales of the Cult of Phanes, a time-travelling group of hippy
satyrs.
This all stemmed from “The Saturnine Rites”, a brief… thing that
i bashed out in the middle of the night out of delirium and originally put on the blog.
Tangentially related is Marcy the satyr, an auxilliary fursona
of mine. (Apologies for the blatant self-insertion.)
This part of the post is copied over from the main page for Lords of
Misrule.
The cycle of a year is a wonderful thing. Trees grow and wilt, rivers ebb and flow, and every winter,
Gæa blankets Herself in a snowy coat. All across Europe, people gather
together, huddling around, exchanging gifts. Most would call it Christmas.
For us? Well… Io Saturnalia!
It’s time for the second annual Satyrs’ Forest Lords of Misrule! In the spirit of the
topsy-turvy season, i’m putting you in charge of the site.
If you write or put together something — absolutely anything — and email it to
misrule@satyrs.eu, come Saturnalia (that’s December 17 to 23, for those who aren’t up to
date with their ancient festivals) i’ll put it up on the site, both on the blog and on its own
dedicated, permanent subpage, etched in stone for all to see.
Like last year, i would ask that you refrain from political polemics or anything that would get this
noble forest in legal trouble. Apart from that, anything goes. Your gran’s chocolate cake recipe? An
impassioned defence of Freddy Got Fingered as an ironic masterpiece? Hell, i’ll even let you
vandalise one of the permanent pages for a bit if you ask me to. Whatever you — my lords of misrule —
want.
You can submit your entries from today until the 16th of December, 2021. Have fun, and don’t be afraid
to get weird with it!
The front page has been redesigned with a sleeker, less boring page index.
I’ve begun the process of getting rid of Goatcounter in
favour of my hosting provider’s good-enough analytics — figure it’s one less privacy risk for my
dear devilishly handsome readers.
You may have noticed some gradual swapping out of names in corners of the site — it’s not a trans
thing or anything, just trying to anonymise a bit and build up a fictional persona for myself. :-)
That
new album from The 1975
is the greatest album ever made and you should go listen it right now. I’m not going to show you the
updates until you do it. Start to finish. I’m watching you.
I leave the new page update late one time and then the Queen dies. Never again. (My apologies
for the slowdown in additions — there’s been a whole menagerie of things for me to deal with in
meatspace.)
The music page has been fully revamped, and rechristened The Panpipes — give it
a whirl!
Basa de Dunya has its first substantial translation, that being
the Lord’s Prayer. (I haven’t suddenly become some sort of feckless
Galilean ruffian — it’s just an easily available, widely translated text with a good balance of
length and substance versus common words.)
Touched up the HTML template with a fresh lick
of paint and some general updates to how i structure pages these days.
New dream, as you do. Not sure why i’d ever take a trip to Malawi, but my
oneiroself seemed to quite enjoy it.
I’m also slowly working on a revitalised version of the music page — same general æsthetic, but as
for the layout — well, have you ever seen a
Nokia N-Gage?
2022 June 08
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? As such, i can’t promise this is a complete list of updates, but
it should be of use regardless:
Five new sites have been added to the linkroll, bringing the total up to 85.
A whole bunch of new Wikipedia pages of note, including but not limited to
fragile paintings, pickle-selling white sultans, baby Jesus theft, and a big pile of holy shit.
Slowly but surely adding new stuff to Basa de Dunya, now on its own page.
There’s a little dingus at the top of the index page to celebrate International
Rainbow Tat Month.
2022 April 19
Ah, crumbs — i accidentally set the date a year early on the last post, so most of you probably
missed the fact that i now have a new domain name at
satyrs.eu. Shan’t be happening again. In other news…
I rescued a post about our Christmas tradition from the ashes of the
deleted blog archive and spruced (heh) it up with its own proper formatting. Merry Christmeaster,
everyone.
I’ve saved the best for last — we now have comments on the main site! Yes, really —
just have a look at this very post. I’ll be gradually adding them
across more pages, so keep an eye out!
satyrs.eu
Do not adjust your television set! I bought a .eu domain on a whim, and i figured i
might as well take it for a spin. The way i see it, either it’s only four quid down the drain and i end
up going back to the old domain, or i keep it and wipe any trace that anyone by my name was ever
involved in the making of this site. ;)
Anyway, erm, here’s the usual change roundup:
I am — slowly — working on transcribing the original Greek of
Sallustius’ “On the Gods and the World”. The copy i’m using is a
little fuzzy, and i don’t speak Ancient Greek. This is only going to go so well…
Some funky new Wikipedia pages of interest: a petty interstate fight, some
really old sourdough, Hitler’s bollocks, and a man who turned himself into a cat.
“This’ll be on my videotape” has been completely overhauled, with a #fresh
new design and a dozen or so new videos.
Added a bunch of new features to Rumpelstiltskin, including a
Dutch version. The only reason i made this was because it annoyed me
that all the existing Dutch Wordle knockoffs treated IJ as one letter, so
finally getting it done was quite satisfying.
Added the Museum of Old and New Art and the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art, and
National History to the bucket list.
As an aside… did you know that the term ‘bucket list’
did not exist
until the movie The Bucket List came out in 2007? No, really! I didn’t believe it
either.
2022 January 23
I’ve done the Discord funny moments page up as a pastiche of Windows
XP. It’s what Bill Gates would have wanted.
Approximately three seconds after hitting “save” on the last update, i realised that i had neglected
to include any updates to the blog. Whoops! For posterity’s sake, here’s all the updates to
The Garden that i missed:
I’ve been working on a post which has turned out to be rather lengthier than i had expected and may
not be out for some time. A preview image to tide you over:
2022 January 16
New site name! Welcome to The Satyrs’ Forest. I always found just calling it
satyrs.eu to be terribly, terribly generic.
A visual refresh was in order for the quotes page, and with it comes the magic
of video!
Two links added to the linkroll, alongside two new tags (‘Americana’ and
‘Fledglings’).
The about page now contains a helpful map to assist in geographical
orientation.
A Christmas Carol has been added to the
Codex, partially just to test how a full book would work in the format, but
mostly because it’s a lovely little read at any time of year.
“What i believe” now has a brief digression on what i would like done to my
corporeal body after i die.
Updated the vinyl collection databank with Speaking in Tongues — “This
Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” is surely up there as one of the greatest songs ever written.
I may give in to the epicene urge to redesign my music page again at some point. Not saying i will,
but…
The style guide has been outfitted with a brief statement of “general
content guidelines”.
There are enough miserable, cynical louts on the internet, and you mustn’t let yourself join
them. It’s a beautiful wide world out there, and you’re going to spend it kvetching on your
website about what someone said online? No thank you!
Added thirteen new links to the ’roll, plus a random button for when it’s
all a bit much.
Gave the “what i believe” page a total refresh, with updated apologia and an
illuminated visual design.
The vinyl record collection now has details on which constituent country
British acts hail from, as well as artists and bands’ gender composition.
Some general futzery-aboutery with the about page: renumbered sidenotes, more
detail about my gender expression, updating my responses for the fun part, that sort of thing.
The front page now has some tantalising previews of pages yet to come.
“Iō Saturnalia!” So went the cry that marked the start of the eponymous
classical holiday. For one glorious week, Roman society was turned on its head: slaves became masters;
togas were out and ostentatious displays of colour were in; gag gifts were given; and one lucky person
was elected the local King of Saturnalia. Whatever orders the King barked
had to be followed, no matter how ridiculous. This tradition clung on even into the Christian middle
ages as the English “lord of misrule” — a lone pagan vestige in a monotheistic world.
So, in the spirit of those winter holidays, to lighten up this frosty time of year, i thought it would
be fun to let you play that rule for my website. Welcome, one and all, to the first annual
satyrs.eu Lords of Misrule!
If you write or put together something — absolutely anything — and email it to
misrule@satyrs.eu, come Saturnalia (that’s December 17 to 23, for those who understandably
aren’t up to date with ancient festival customs) i’ll put it up on the site, both on the blog and on its
own dedicated, permanent subpage, etched in stone for all to see.
I would ask that you don’t submit any political polemics (we’ve had quite enough of those) or anything
that would get me in legal trouble, but apart from that, anything goes. Your gran’s chocolate cake
recipe? An impassioned defence of Freddy Got Fingered as an ironic masterpiece? A rant about how
keyboards aren’t what they used to be? Whatever you — my lords of misrule — want.
You can submit your entries from today until the 16th of December, 2021. Have fun, and don’t be afraid
to get weird with it!
— Xanthe
2021 November 16
Gave the heraldry page a lick of new paint, added a bunch of sidenotes,
added a ton of people to the roll of arms, and generally spruced it up to 2021/700·1 standards.
Similarly, the compendium of curious words has been redesigned to be more
visually interesting, and three new words have been added (Pythoness, tsundoku,
ululate).
The linkroll is one of the more popular pages that people get linked to, so
i’ve added a small link out to the main site in the header to try and nudge people to visit the rest
of the site… 😉
New page, sort of! The Garden has been moved to a new
URL, at satyrs.eu/garden. This new version is now
powered by WordPress, letting me post more easily and letting you comment more easily. Huzzah! The
first two posts:
Nicæa, my directory of religious websites on Neocities, has been deprecated and taken off of the
index page. It only makes sense now that i’m not using it anymore.
2021 May 09
A “dark mode” of ſorts has been added to the ſhrine pages. If one clicks on
the ſun in the top right corner, the lights will go dark, with only portraits of the relevant God in
light. The picture frames on my real life ſhrine have a tendency to break, ſo until i can get my
hands on ſome ſtatuettes, this will have to do…
A language is a dialect with an army and a navy. (אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט)
The style guide now has clarification on when to capitalise the word
Pagan and a list of Americanisms that tend to catch me out.
2021 April 27
We’ve moved! This webste is now hosted by the fine people at
Krystal, a UK-based web host powered
by 100% renewables. Neocities has been fun, and i’ll try to keep in touch — but if you have any
stray Neocities links laying around, now’s the time to change them over.
The heraldry page now has a fancied-up list of fellow internet armigers,
alongside some coats of arms i designed for online communities i take part in.
One loan word per language: Added seven new languages: Akkadian,
Albanian, Amharic, Arabana, Xhosa, Yagara, and Yoruba.
The 404 page will now automatically try to redirect you to the right
place.
2021 April 12
Deprecated the Holocene calendar (the thing where i would write 2021 instead of 2021). We’re free!
Added the following new pages to the
list of interesting Wikipedia articles: Ball lightning, Burnt house
horizon, Cagot, Chabad messianism, Rodney Marks
Joyous April — this tied into an April Fool’s joke
where all my site’s text was set in Comic Sans with rainbow colours for the day
The linkroll has had some improvements made for those of you on mobile:
sites which don’t play nice with mobile phones are now clearly marked, and phone users will now see
screenshots made on a phone instead of on a desktop computer.
The words iktsuarpok and galeänthropy have been removed from the
Compendium of Good Words, as i suspect they’re the sort of word that are used
more often in compilations of
Top 10 Shocking And Rare Words That Will Amaze Your Balls Off!!! than in actual use as words
The style guide has been updated with a new section about the proper usage
of apostrophes, ʻokinas, quote marks, &c.
Turns out my domain name providers (💜 Gandi) have a free 10-day trial of their web hosting
services, including WordPress — i think i’m going to muck about with that to see if i can get a
theme in order that looks somewhat like The Garden, in case i ever move to a “real” hosting
provider.
Added eight new words to the Compendium: cephalophore, endling,
graupel, kalends, malefit, skolion, sfumato, and thing.
All of these were taken from a
.txt-file list compiled by one Kartik Chandra
at Stanford University, so credit where credit’s due to him!
Move to a “real” host. I love Neocities with all my heart and know that if i moved away it’d
probably decimate (in the Roman sense) the number of people who come to visit this site, but it
is slowly killing me that The Garden is such a faff to update and can’t support comments
in any easy-to-use way without being dependent on some skeevy outside service or forcing
everyone to email them in like it’s 1995.
I’m experimenting with showing Dutch-language content on The Garden (or should that be
De Tuin), in my ongoing effort to make this site completely bilingual. On that
note, there are a number of new entries over there:
Added some more events to Holocene History, but i can’t help but feel
woefully unequipped to maintain a single page detailing all of human history — me thinks
it’s about time to lay it to rest at some point…
The style guide has been updated to specify the distinction between
Phoenix, the city, and phœnix, the bird.
Revamped the conlangs page to just be a bare-bones portal of links to
individual pages for each of my conlangs. Worry not, the old page is still accessible at
/conlangs/old.html…
On that note, some more details have been added to the documentation on
Basa de Dunya, especially its orthography.
Added a new Discord funny moment, but also removed a bunch that were too long
and rambly or which otherwise no longer amused me, necessitating an almost complete reshuffling of
pseudonyms. Got to keep that alphabetical order!
Jotted down a new dream (and moved the relevant page from
/log/dreams to /dreams).
2021 March 01
New page, in response to a reader request: s → ſ, a widget to
convert from short to long S-es.
The heraldry page has now been
translated into Dutch! Researching this was a royal pain in the bum
because, as you can imagine, there are no easily-accessible English→Dutch dictionaries pertaining to
heraldic jargon.
Added labels for mobile compatibility to the Nicæa directory.
2021 February 26
Well chuffed with this — the page on heximal counting now has a little widget
at the bottom that you can use to convert between hexadecimal/decimal numbers and heximal words!
You’ll have to forgive me if this is more disorganised than usual, because i blew the old index page
to kingdom come in a command-line accident the other day. It’s been reorganised now;
out with the neon purples, in with the green-and-pleasants! The old version was getting bloated
anyway.
imagine if we finally decipher linear a and
then all the inscriptions turn out to be really pedestrian. like. linguists spend centuries
figuring it out and it's all just “buy more goat’s milk” and “becky you unchivalrous harlot give
me back the kids”
I finally went and touched up some pages that hadn’t been touched in forever. Most every page should
now have the correct favicon — except the ſhrine pages; i’m planning on
making cuſtom favicons for thoſe — and analytics. (Oh, and links back to the home pages should now
be going to an unadorned link without any sort of index.html tomfoolery…)
2021 February 05
Added a list of armigerous fellow netizens to the heraldry page
I’m working on moving the documentation on Basa de Dunya — the current
iteration of Yedena, from my conlang page — to my website from its current
state as a loosely-organised Notepad file.
Also, i fixed a slip-up i made with the Attic dates on this changelog. Everything was one day ahead
of where it should have been by accident — whoops!
Basic analytics are now being collected on certain pages via
GoatCounter, a (reasonably) privacy-respecting,
open-source analytics service that doesn’t use your data for advertising. The only things i’m
tracking are which site referred people here (so i know where those traffic spikes i get are from)
and which country it was accessed from (because i’m just curious).
pisswitch.js, the script i use to swap out pronouns on pages, is now
pwitch.js. The name was always kind of awkward.
Updated the style guide to specify CE and
BCE over AD and
BC
Finally made the coat of arms, heximal, and
Toast3r pages mobile-compatible — that should be everything!
Redid the index page’s pride buttons
„Wat geloof ik?” now uses the long S— i suspect my
paranoia that using it in Dutch would make me look like a Nazi was overblown.
2021 January 17
Right, hello! After months of the only information of what’s changed being non-specific date numbers
on the front page, i’ve finally set up a proper changelog; i’ll try to keep this irregularly updated
with recent changes to the site. Might even add RSS at some point, if i
can be bothered to figure it out. Anyway, in recent news…
This website now has a functioning favicon. I’ll be rolling it out to pages as i edit them — there’s
a lot of pages to edit, you can’t rush this sort of thing!
I’m testing out designs for comments on The Garden on a
sandbox page. Comments will just work via you emailling them
and me manually adding them; it’s the easiest way to get around Neocities’ limitations as a static
site host.
