motherlarkspur

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that "OKAY SO" before someone u love starts infodumping........ most blessed feeling in the world

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This poor nobleman might have bitten off more than he can chew this time

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Real photo of when the party taught Bahram that there were different scripts (he is illiterate)

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New Bahram and Romeo Content for all my Bahram and Romeo heads

We finally got the face to come out right---no warping---and I hand stitched any color gaps.

We also made a silly meme in biology

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bring back tumblr ask culture let me. bother you with questions and statements

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like to charge, reblog to cast <3

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Tfw you can't draw bc your computer is in the repair shop 😔

Istg I always get motivation at the worst possible times 💔

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Tragic news. Terminally ill man who got the world to double the length of a year after being told he has one year left to live dies after 0.5 years

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Every day is one day closer to Bahram

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They hate to see a girl shitpost

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reading Herbert Mason's translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh, as you do!

I went with Mason's translation after I saw it quoted here and there and seemed pretty solidly written - but it isn't precisely right to call it a translation, more a retelling of the story as Mason understands it. so it's not a line by line translation, and some major parts of it are presumably interpolations or paraphrases.

i knew the broad outline of the story but it's fascinating to put it in context, and discover parts of the story i hadn't heard about. for example, i didn't realise the concept of droit du seigneur was part of this story - I'd thought that was basically a goofy myth about the medieval period, but here in the oldest surviving written story, it's just a thing the mythological king Gilgamesh does. though the exact translation seems a little contentious - Mason writes:

As king, Gilgamesh was a tyrant to his people.

He demanded, from an old birthright,

The privilege of sleeping with their brides

Before the husbands were permitted

But Wikipedia quotes a different translation by Stephen Mitchell which says:

He is king, he does whatever he wants... takes the girl from her mother and uses her, the warrior's daughter, the young man's bride.

The general thrust is similar in both cases, but the details of the custom are different. I don't have Mitchell's translation so I can't find how he describes the moment Enkidu arrives to interfere with Gilgamesh doing one of these kingly rapes (like let's not beat around the bush here, it's a different social context and whatever but you can't possibly say no to the demigod king).

Moving on...

Viewed with modern eyes, the transition between the first chapter and the second is kind of abrupt. We've got this great establishing story for Gilgamesh and Enkidu having a rather homoerotic fight and becoming best bros, but then we abruptly skip forward to Gilgamesh declaring that they're going to go fight a monster called Humbaba, and Enkidu is all like, no, that guy is way too high level, you'll die! Modern writing advice would hold that you'd want to spend some time building up Gilgamesh and Enkidu's relationship 'on screen' here, and perhaps foreshadow the existence of Humbaba a bit sooner to build up the threat a bit - but then I'm not carving this into stone tablets, I can afford to be a little bit roundabout, and who knows what's been lost? (scholars of the Epic probably have some idea lol)

The word used for Gilgamesh and Enkidu's relationship is 'friend'. This feels like it's probably a bit of a lossy translation to me - would lover/boyfriend be projecting too much? I obviously don't know the nuances of Sumerian that well, so maybe this is the best available word, but their relationship has a lot of physicality and a lot of affection.

The woman who goes to Enkidu in the wild and has a bunch of sex until he becomes civilised is described here as a 'prostitute'. My understanding was that she belongs to a religious role here, harimtu, that's usually translated as 'sacred prostitution' but apparently this identity is contested, and also she has a name, Shamhat? I don't know why Mason doesn't use her name. Shamhat has a pretty big role in changing Enkidu and convincing him to come meet Gilgamesh, but her own motivation isn't really explored.

Still, I don't want to come off as only complaining. Whether they originate in the Epic or with Mason, I'm enjoying a lot of the poetic turns of phrase in this version - the style is just the right level of minimal - simple appropriate words, but effective for that. Mason writes in verse, but doesn't rhyme - I'm not really familiar enough with meter to say more than that. There are a lot of fairly short, declarative sentences, mixed up with an occasional much longer metaphor across multiple lines. I think you could fairly easily delete the line breaks and just have prose, but having them makes it flow in an interesting way, like waves? Poetry is not my bailiwick so I'm probably describing some fairly basic facets of the medium, but it's interesting to observe.

I'll add more when I've read a bit more, I'll be in this train a while...

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The trouble with making the BBEG of your TTRPG campaign nuanced and compelling is then everyone wants to fuck the villain. Buddy, they won't even let me fuck the villain.

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Okay. Bahram color mockup? Finished. This actually could have been the final product if not for the fact that I pulled the fleece *too* taught, and it distorted. Not sure how I woll avoid that next time, but really hoping it will be easy.

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Okay, it's on scrap fabric, so apologies for that, but I got the color mockup done for an embroidered plushie face for my boy Bahram, and I am very happy with the turnout as of right now!

The fabric pinches a little more than I would like, but I did the mockup without a stabilizer (very smart), so hopefully that won't transfer onto the final fabric.

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I have a little, very specific question about your boy Bahram.

Which kind of wild cat suits him best.

Here my trusty list of all of them, because there is a lot

(https://www.thewildlifediaries.com/all-wild-cat-species-and-where-to-find-them/)

I would have to say lion! He leads his little pride of goblins with his lovely wives. Lions are also known to kill cubs when they are from another lion, and I feel like that pretty well sums up Bahram's fear of losing power (as well as how it makes him lash out).

All that said, his facial structure was actually originally based off of a Jaguar. That's changed a bit over time, though :)