Checking in. Still alive. Been in a self-indulgent trance for the last week or so. Not that different from being stuck in a book, but that would be easier to explain. It's more of a literary analysis of ancient legends and medieval lit that alluded to those legends. Trying to understand what that thing was in a story that seems so mysterious today but must have been common knowledge back then.
A year or 2 ago I was researching the story of Sir Percival (or Peredur) one of King Author's nights. The original story was never completed - being adapted by other writers centuries later. But it's where the Holy Grail legend got started. Before it was the Holy Grail it was just "a graal" and in a version before that it was a severed head.
The story, or the interesting part of it at least, goes that Percival is invited to stay the night at the castle of the rich fisher king. During dinner there's a procession of items. A bleeding lance is in every version. There's also the grail, a stone, and/or a severed head. Lot of speculation about what was being shown. Percival had been advised that it's bad manners to ask too many questions, so he doesn't say anything at all. The king looked disappointed and the rest of the castle may have been under a spell of silence or something because the next day everyone has disappeared. Later in the story, just before the story cuts off, an old lady "the accusive hag" tells Percival that if he had just asked 'Why does the lance bleed?' then the fisher king would have been heal and all would be right in the world. It's like whaaaat does that even mean?!
Well I finally came across a connection that the severed head might not have been a real head but a brazen head. A kind of magic 8-ball that answers truthfully whatever it's asked. Its made through alchemy with a spirit or demon inside. It's a story trope to the effect of missed opportunities. Missing the window of time to ask something, it breaks, or it reveals the answer "42" but nobody knows what the question was. That sort of thing.
So the idea is that everyone was mum's-the-word for some reason, so they show all these things to Percival with this talking head hoping he'll ask the obvious questions. But unfortunately he didn't.
The dimensions (size) of a photo is a big factor, it seems.
