Jonathan Dean
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hergrim.bsky.social
Jonathan Dean
@hergrim.bsky.social
2K followers 240 following 2K posts
Delivery driver and r/AskHistorians mod. Dabbler in medieval history, fantasy nerd, Australian.

He/Him; She/Her 🏳️‍🌈
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hergrim.bsky.social
I mean, come on! It's even appropriate, with each being a representative of their feuding on-again/off-again deities. The LN author really missed a trick, and every adaptation since has also missed it.
A white haired woman (Scarlett) with red flecked crystal earrings, blood splatter on her face and a red dress is on top of a pink haired woman (Terenezza) wearing a pink dress and a tiara, their noses almost touching. Scarlett has a wicked grin and is saying "I think, I had not punched you enough at the ball", while Terenezza grits her teeth in anger.
November 14, 2025 at 7:52 PM
hergrim.bsky.social
As suspected, I am below average, but not short enough to be smol.
A chart showing the curve a heights in Australia, with a red line at 173cm representing my height and a blue line just past 175cm showing the average for Australia. I am taller than 1/3rd of adult male Australians and shorter than 2/3rds.
October 28, 2025 at 5:48 AM
hergrim.bsky.social
Attempting to replicate the complex network of roads between villages and hamlets - not to mention trying to plonk them down in a way that doesn't seem artificial - is about as easy as you think. Not sure I nailed it, or the slope markings, but not bad for a second attempt.
A clumsy map entirely in ballpoint pen. A major river valley runs from right to left, the right side being at about a third of the way up the page, and the left side being a fifth of the page from the bottom. At about halfway across the map is a major town with a bridge, a heavily traced line indicating a major road leading to it from bottom left (starting a quarter of the page from the left hand edge) to the top right (about a quarter of the page from the right hand edge). Above the town are several valleys with small streams running into the river. Two are on the right, the rightmost one being the biggest, and a very small one is on the left. Between the left hand and central valleys is an almost fist shaped body of land, the "wrist" being the space between the two valleys. The top left of the map is a bunch of curly lines, denoting a forest, and several wooded areas are drawn in a similar fashion. The rest of the map is a mess of minor roads and small shapes indicating villages and hamlets of various sizes.
October 27, 2025 at 8:15 AM
hergrim.bsky.social
Prince Julius poke the bear hard enough that she's now ready to hit back. Even when (this time, seriously) proposing, he just cannot help but be a giant troll.

I look forward to seeing if Scarlet can land a punch on him.
A tall, gorgeous woman with white hair and he eyes is wearing a crown of roses and smiling as she pulls on fingerless leather gloves with studs on the knuckles specifically for punching people. She's wearing a red dress with some black lacing serving as corsetry and a black bow is on the right side of her collar. In the background is a rose arc, and her smile is joyful menace rather than a besotted adoring smile.
October 24, 2025 at 8:04 PM
hergrim.bsky.social
I was, surprisingly, entirely sober when I decided to make snagshi.

Next time I need to add more Worcestershire sauce and Vegemite.
A light blue cutting board on a grey benchtops. On it is the dreaded snagshi: a sushi roll made with a beef sausage from the supermarket. Instead of rice, the filling appears to be spaghetti, and two pieces of chopped onion indicate that it's present in the filling too. A clear photo of one end of a cut snagshi, clearly showing the sausage and chopped spaghetti. The other half of the snagshi, blue cutting board and icecream container filled with chopped spaghetti are in the blurry background, along with a cluttered benchtop.
October 15, 2025 at 7:56 AM
hergrim.bsky.social
There's a complete 14th century longbow from Brzegu, Poland, that was made in this vein, so the concept is entirely doable. The question is just whether or not it was done in 11th century Normandy.
In the top left hand corner of the image is a recurved bow terminal from the previous image. The right hand half of the image is a sketch of a long yew bow from Poland, close to two metres long, with a more detailed drawing of the top terminal. The design is much more advanced than that of the Charavines fragment, with the terminal of the Brzegu bow being identical with the siyah of a recurve bow in design, and the body of the bow having a hexagonal kind of cross section.
October 5, 2025 at 9:06 PM
hergrim.bsky.social
of stringing to the concept of recurve bows, but it also shows up in the Leiden Maccabees (eg: f.009r). Several terminals from the 11th century finds at Charavines were recurved, although they could belong to crossbows, so it's possible that simple yew bows were made in the style of composite bows.
An archaeological drawing crossbow prod and a collection of terminals from bows or possibly crossbows. The crossbow prod is entirely intact, approximately 980mm long and 35cm deep. It is slightly decurved, with a deep "D" cross section at the centre and an approximately round section in the middle of the limb. Two of the terminals show signs of being recurved, with a D or very deep D shape and two nocks (one presumably for a bastard string). Some of the limb remains, and shows a very flat ovoid cross-section. The remaining 5 terminals would have belonged to essentially straight bows, with four of the five have a D shape at the terminal and double nocks, but lacking enough of the rest of the stave to give a good idea of the limb cross section. The fifth fragment has a simple loop nock and is essentially a very broad and shallow oval for the entire length, including the terminal.
October 5, 2025 at 9:06 PM
hergrim.bsky.social
I promised @kristadb1.bsky.social some Green and Gold photos, and am now delivering. Unfortunately I missed the one spot I could pull over that would have given the best photo, and only one of my photos was any good. Maybe next fortnight I'll be able to remember to stop at the good spot.
The foreground, reaching right back almost to the horizon is a deep green sea of wheat, with a line of gum trees midway towards the horizon reaching up into the light grey clouds. A sliver of yellow canola runs from right to left, just below the horizon, becoming progressively slimmer. On the left fifth of the photo, just below the horizon and rising up into the sky, is a large hill, part of a ridge that runs behind the canola field and can barely be seen beyond this one hill.
August 28, 2025 at 8:23 AM
hergrim.bsky.social
Since I've fallen into some bad habits when it comes to lunch, I decided to cook something that would do me for the week.

I settled on a one-dish lentil pasta bake, slightly modified from this recipe: cookthestory.com/delicious-no.... It came out fantastic, and should keep me from temptation.
A clear Pyrex dish with handles at either end, sitting on top of a glass top stove, in portrait mode. Inside the dish is a pasta bake, with a small chunk in the top right corner already eaten. The cheese is mostly in the centre of the dish, with the area within 1 inch/25mm of the edge having little cheese present. The cheese itself is a 3 cheese blend, so not all of it has fully melted and some of it is orange.
August 3, 2025 at 3:46 AM
hergrim.bsky.social
If you see this, I implore you to post a pic from your device without context.
A red haired man with a purple and yellow cap wearing a purple tunic with white collar, cuffs and belt has a stupidly happy expression on his face and is pointing from middle left to front fight while yelling "I shall defeat you in mortal thought exercises". His opponent, positioned at the front right of the frame, is darker skinned, with thick eyebrows, black hair, a navy tunic and has a vicious smirk. In the rear middle of the frame is Prine Leopold, who has spiky brown hair that sticks up, a expression of concern, a sweat droplet running down the left hand side of his face, is wearing a gold and navy uniform and is hesitantly reaching out towards the purple wearing man on the left hand side of the frame. The image is from K.B. Spangler and Ale Presser's excellent webcomic, "Side Quested".
July 18, 2025 at 5:58 PM
hergrim.bsky.social
I spent way too long on this for what it's ended up being (and ran out of time, so I half-arsed the border).
A very angry red-haired woman with clenched fists is in the foreground, while a smug looking woman with white hair that has purple tips is in the background. The white haired woman is saying "Good news - tarrifs are back on the menu" in a white speech bubble. The red haired woman has a speech bubble that has a red to yellow gradient, top to bottom, and is saying "Everything shall burn!". Flecks of red surround her, and the border is a clumsy combination of yellow, orange and red (top to bottom) because the person making the edited image ran out of time to much around with GIMP. It is a panel from K.B. Spangler's "A Girl and Her Fed" - an excellent webcomic you should check out.
July 6, 2025 at 8:15 PM
hergrim.bsky.social
A confused looking kangaroo covered in snow with a speech bubble saying "WTF?". It's from the old animated short "The End of the World", a ridiculous (and hilarious) parody about nuclear war.
June 24, 2025 at 7:08 AM
hergrim.bsky.social
A very crude representation of a fully armoured man-at-arms (no major gaps in the plate from the front), assumed to be 180cm tall in armour and 60cm wide. With a 90cm spacing, arrows would still miss about 54% of the time, even when shot at fairly shallow angles.
A large blue rectangle with the crude figure of a man in armour. The arms and legs are in yellow, while the head and torso are in red.
May 15, 2025 at 12:05 AM
hergrim.bsky.social
Coming back to this, here are some mock ups of the spacing. The cavalry is assumed to occupy 60cmx244cm, with 30cm between files and 180cm between ranks. The infantry is assumed to occupy 60cmx30cm, with 30 cm between files and 60cm between ranks.
A long blue rectangle with four ranks of six red rectangles. The red rectangles are much close side-to-side than back to front. A large blue rectangle with a smaller red rectangle that starts in the bottom left corner, taking up about 40% of the total area. A blue background with red rectangles in four ranks of six each. These red rectangles are wider than they are deep, unlike those of the cavalry diagram. A large blue rectangle with a single smaller rectangle in the bottom left corner, taking up about 20% of the total area.
May 14, 2025 at 10:06 PM
hergrim.bsky.social
I decided to make myself a fancy salad today, so I could have some for lunch through the week.

I...may have overdone it a bit and will be eating it twice a day for the next four or five days.

Lesson learned!
A large blue bowl on a marble pattern placemat, filled with a salad consisting of quinoa, black beans, corn, red onion, red capsicum, tomato, coriander and cucumber.
April 20, 2025 at 2:17 AM
hergrim.bsky.social
Sam Farraway, the candidate for the Nationals, has released his "How to Vote" card. The actual guide to voting is probably meaningless - the Nationals are almost certainly going to be one of the Two Parties and their preferences are meaningless - but they do show how Far Right the Nats are.
The top third of the image is a solid green that transitions into a landscape about halfway down the image. On the left-hand side of the image is a photo of Sam Farraway, a balding man in his 40s dresses in a cheap white shirt. On the left of the image is a mock up of a ballot paper, with the suggested order of candidates numbered from 1 to 10, with Sam Farraway as number one. The solid green bar in the top third of the image contains the sentence "How to Vote for Sam Farraway", with the subtitle of "The Nationals for Calare". The suggested voting order of the candidates after Sam Farraway is 2) Jennifer Hughes 3) Ross Angus Hazelton 4) Vicki Elizabeth O'Leary 5) Jase Lesage 6) Kate Hook 7) Andrew Gee 8) Julie Cunningham 9) Sue Raye 10) Ben Parker
April 15, 2025 at 7:43 AM
hergrim.bsky.social
And, of course, the inevitable unblinking demon chook that stares into your soul.
The image is of a black chicken (or "chook", in proper Australian terminology), facing forward, with red corrugated iron behind it. Its eyes stare into your soul and it. Does. Not. Blink. It stands, almost as still as a statue, moving its head mere millimetres to track you. There is no sign of life, it does not seem to breathe, it just stares. The chook knows what you did. The chook is coming for you. Run!
March 29, 2025 at 6:46 AM
hergrim.bsky.social
Is there anything like a country show?

See if you can guess which lawnmower has been extensively reworked and which are stock models.
March 29, 2025 at 6:41 AM
hergrim.bsky.social
This is going to be me on waking up in like two months, isn't it?
A confused looking kangaroo covered in snow with a speech bubble saying "WTF?". It's from the old animated short "The End of the World", a ridiculous (and hilarious) parody about nuclear war.
March 5, 2025 at 6:41 PM
hergrim.bsky.social
Anyway, this was mostly an excuse to bury a photo of me being gender queer because, despite being fatigued and tipsy, I still struggle to admit to others that I'm queer.
A photo taken in a bathroom mirror of a moderately muscular, cis looking person with a balding head wearing clip on earrings, a skin tight light blue t-shirt and a black miniskirt. He has barely discernable breasts and is smiling.
December 19, 2024 at 9:03 AM
hergrim.bsky.social
Truly, it's a shame Chiko wasn't able to market the Chiko Roll to the Americans, because in my experience they could use some halfway decent servo food.
A Chiko roll in its paper bag. The paper bag is white, with the stylised Chiko logo - an orange oval with parallel sides and rounded ends , featuring "CHIKO" in red block letters. The Chiko roll itself is a tube of golden pastry containing a filling not unlike a spring roll.
December 8, 2024 at 3:31 AM
hergrim.bsky.social
Let's talk about the Mary Rose bows and their draw weights.

Most people, if they know anything about the MR bows, know that they had very heavy draw weights, and that they've been used to represent medieval longbows used for military purposes, commonly called "warbows" by many modern authors. /1
Two historiograms labelled "Minimum" and "Maximum", each showing calculated draw weights for the Mary Rose bow. Minimum Draw Weights: 80-90lbs: 1 90-100lbs: 6 100-110lbs: 18 110-120lbs: 23 120-130lbs: 24 130-140lbs: 22 140-150lbs: 15 150-160lbs: 7 160-170lbs: 4 170-180lbs: 1 Maximum Draw Weights 110-120lbs: 1 120-130lbs: 1 130-140lbs: 5 140-150lbs: 13 150-160lbs: 18 160-170lbs: 16 170-180lbs: 20 180-190lbs: 16 190-200lbs: 11 200-210lbs: 8 210-220lbs: 5 220-230lbs: 4 230-240lbs: 2 240-250lbs: 1
November 23, 2024 at 7:16 AM
hergrim.bsky.social
The calm Carribbean sea takes up the bottom two thirds of the photo. Where the sea and sky intersect, the sun is halfway below the horizon and partially obscured by clouds. The result is a deep orange glow that highlights the bands of clouds in the upper atmosphere and the column of cloud from lower in the atmosphere that partially hides the sun. Right at the top of the photo, whisps of cloud catch a small amount of this orange light.
November 17, 2024 at 3:12 AM
hergrim.bsky.social
Knight from the Great Window from Gloucester Cathedral, c.1350. Taken during my recent trip to the UK.
A stained glass window of a 14th century knight. His shield and surcoat feature the Cross of St George, and he stands with one hand holding a spear and his other on the hilt of his sword. Several panes, including those making up his right forearm and scabbard, are clear, having been replaced recently and left clear to indicate that they aren't part of the original window.
September 16, 2024 at 9:35 AM
hergrim.bsky.social
The original idea comes from a map from 1610, which features a location known as "AB. La baye demone". A later 17th century map has "Abbey des mond", which the Cassini map has "l'Abbaie d'Aimont" in the same location.

/2
A section of a map from 1610 with an abbey listed a "AB. Labaye demone" A section from a mid-17th century map with the same abbey listed as "Abb. des mond" The same abbey, this time from the Cassini map, named as "l'Abbaie d'Aimont"
November 3, 2023 at 10:04 PM