#beowulf grendel

[doodleferp]

More Grendel sketches, this time featuring my OC! I’ve been going wild with this boy between fixing up the Hell on Earth announcement and going nuts for Creature Commandos and Osmosis Jones, so I figure it’s time I threw him up again! I’ve also got some fanfic excerpts that I’m looking to throw up as well, if it pleases the court.

[prismatica-the-strange]

@daincrediblegg when they see 1 (one) picture of Jared Harris:

[avpol]

beowulf wrestles grendel

[medievalandfantasymelee]

THE HOT MEDIEVAL & FANTASY MEN MELEE

SECOND ROUND: 5th Tilt

Beowulf, Beowulf & Grendel (2005) VS. Darkness, Legend (1985)

Propaganda

Beowulf, Beowulf & Grendel (2005) Portrayed by: Gerard Butler Defeated Opponents: - King Henry V [Kenneth Branagh], Henry V (1989) - King Arthur [Richard Harris], Camelot (1967)

“I mean I don’t even know what to say? A classic hero. He's got humour, insight, valour, mercy, kindness, and Gerard Butler's flawless fucking face. King shit. Husband material.”

Darkness, Legend (1985) Portrayed by: Tim Curry Defeated Opponents: - Zbyszko z Bogdanca [Mieczyslaw Kalenik], Knights of the Teutonic Order (1960) - Uglúk [Nathaniel Lees], The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)

“The confidence. The swagger. The HORNS. The YEARNING and obsession. That Iconic entrance through the mirror. How can this creature of fantasy and nightmare not have a place in this tourney?”

Additional Propaganda Under the Cut

Additional Propaganda

For Beowulf:

For Darkness:

"Look, generally speaking, I'm not really a monsterfucker. But even I have to say that gifs alone do not do Darkness justice. There is a presence in his voice (I mean, obviously, he's played by Tim Curry) that cannot be communicated without seeing him in action. Seduction is very much a large part of this character."

“If you don't find it hot to have Tim Curry's sexy voice coming out of the wickedly smirking face of a huge demon with a perfectly sculpted powerful red body that is glistening in the firelight, then I don't know what to tell you. This character is sin personified. The best kind of sin.”

“I would kill 1000 unicorns for him.”

[lovelandfrogman]

been having thoughts

[emohorseboy]

absolutely obsessed with grendel’s mother by the mountain goats right now (and rereading beowulf as a consequence)

i don’t even know what to say about it other than that i love it and it’s beautiful and it makes me so emotional both about the story and about stories and how people have been experimenting that story for centuries, in different ways and different languages and different mediums and i just think telling each other stories is one of the greatest things people do

[maniculum]

When Grendel decides to steal Christmas from all the Whos down in Heorot... who else comes to save them but Cindy-Lou Who? Join us for our Christmas special as we do a unique retelling of Beowulf, and how Grendel and the Grinch may be more alike than you think.

Read along here!

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Citations & References:

Read Beowulf online here

Follow along with Mac's version on our blog!

Magennis, Hugh. Anglo-Saxon Appetites: Food and Drink and Their Consumption in Old English and Related Literature. Four Courts Press, 1999.

Schichler, Robert L. "Understanding the Outsider: Grendel, Geisel, and the Grinch." Popular Culture Review, vol. 11, no. 1, 2000, pp. 99-105.

[bedpolls]

Grendel’s mother from Beowulf

Please reblog for a larger sample size.

An illustration of Grendel's mother by J. R. Skelton from the 1908 Stories of Beowulf.

[pomp-quio]

I had to read this on the bus home so you have to as well.

I'm...still thinking

(from The Structural Unity of Beowulf: The Problem of Grendel's Mother by Jane Chance)

[apollo-elias]

Hi all! My final project for college was this labor of love I spent about a year on. It's inspired by The Ninth Hour (https://www.ninthhourmusical.com/) which is criminally underrated.

Basically, it's a four minute long animated storyboard following Grendel post his final fight with Beowulf. I put a lot of work into it, and so please enjoy!

(Vocal performance by Shayfer James, lyrics by Shayfer James and Kate Douglas)

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

But underlying all these interpretations is an evaluation of the importance of the monsters which presupposes a binary opposition between Beowulf and the creatures he fights. Such an opposition works well for the relationships between Beowulf and the dragon and between Beowulf and Grendel's mother, but it is inadequate to describe his relationship with Grendel himself. The assumption of a simple opposition between Beowulf and Grendel has obscured an important aspect of the poet's treatment of Beowulf's struggle with Grendel: his fascination with and probing of the limits of the human. Whatever else Beowulf may be about, it explores and celebrates man's humanity

--Beowulf, Lines 702b-836: Transformations and the Limits of the Human by Katherine O'Brian O'Keefe

[doodleferp]

Grendel sketches!! I am in agony figuring out his color scheme and I’m sure that I’ll be tweaking it once more puppet pictures are released. I need them. God, I need them

These are all direct quotes from the book, by the way. Man’s such a sassy little c-word.

[kchasm]

Ryu Number: Hrothgar

So: Those Anglo-Saxons, hella-time past— Regarding writing—made some bigguns. No question some tales've made it down. Like Beowulf (of unclear source, Unclear date, written Germanic-style; Bruiser of translators), which starts with A Danish king having a real bad time, Tormented by a monster—word gets spread, And from the Geats (a northerly-tribe; Modern-day Sweden), comes this guy To help out (That'd be Beowulf).

...Okay, I'm going to stop that now. I can't keep that up. Not that I was managing "up" in the first place—the joke just needed some passing structural resemblance to work. Actual enjoyers of Old English poetry don't hurt me please.

The story of Beowulf goes thus: The Danish king Hrothgar builds a banqueting hall, but the constant raucous partying there irritates Grendel (understandable), who is moved to nightly murder (slightly less understandable). News spreads re: the Grendel ish, and Beowulf and his company come down from southern Sweden to help out. There's a fight at the hall, which ends with Grendel down an arm and staggering off to die. This makes Grendel's mother Very Angry (understandable), and she starts killing folks herself; Beowulf then has to set out to kill her, which he does, and when he comes back Hrothgar thanks him, and then Hrothgar tells him to Be A Decent Dude, except with much, much more words.

More stuff happens after that, but that's about the last that Hrothgar shows up, so it's not important to this post.

A CGI film adaptation of Beowulf came out in 2007 which of course took Departures From The Text—but very interesting Departures, as you might expect with them being Departures co-written by tumblr's own™ Neil Gaiman. And more importantly to the dude looking for Ryu Numbers (i.e. me; possibly also you), it had a Terrible Obligatory Video Game Adaptation.

In short, Hrothgar has a Ryu Number of at most 2.

...You'd think between Beowulf and Grendel, the former would be the one assured of an official Minecraft skin first, but apparently not. (Note: Call it arbitrary, but I only count Minecraft DLC if it comes from the Champagne region of France—I mean, if it's released through the official Minecraft creator page. Otherwise, it's just sparkling user-created content.) Anyway, dude's in the Norse Mythology Mash-up.

[catsconflictscopicsandchamomile]

It’s not been a good summer to be a Beowulf scholar, let alone one focusing on Grendel’s Mother

Mariah Dahvana Headley’s “feminist” translation, and later full retelling of, Beowulf are at their best consistently cringeworthy (“Cheugy” being an extremely accurate term here) and at their worst stroll all-too-comfortably into racialized narratives that a white woman (or in at least one especially egregious case, any decent person) should not be writing at all. However, she brought progress to the field, centering the narrative on feminist voices. I myself am white, and having seen BIPOC reviewers adore her books, I previously felt able, if not obliged, to put my personal misgivings aside and appreciate imperfect progress.

Headley, who also published several other successful “feminist re-interpretations” of classical works, has worked closely with Neil Gaiman often over the past year, including co-leading writing classes with him and having him as the lead voice in a mid-quarantine celebrity performance of her Beowulf translation.

She has been silent.

Comic artist and amateur-yet-devoted Beowulf Scholar Zach Weinersmith (he taught his then eight year old daughter to read the original text in Old English) wrote Bea Wolf, a take on Beowulf that was re-imagined for and about modern children, replacing 5th c. mead hall culture with tree houses and nerf battles, Grendel with an angry, rule-obsessed adult neighbor, and most interestingly, death with the inevitable transition out of childhood. In addition, Weinersmith took advantage of the (obviously) non-exact and non-culturally-accurate translation to perfectly preserve the original Old English poetic meter present in the piece. Bea Wolf is a masterclass in creative adaptation, that I recommend to friends and fellow academics alike. At some point within the next year, Weinersmith will publish Bea Wolf’s next installment, continuing the adaptation to cover the conflict with Grendel’s Mother.

Weinersmith also works in speculative sci-fi and futurism. A vocal proponent for the (at the very least) cautious acceptance of AI “as a creative tool”, this summer he shared on social media that he was using AI to “help him” write Bea Wolf pt. 2 - generating lists of alliterations and synonyms when adapting a certain passage of Old English was “too hard”. “To speed things up”, he said. I don’t mean to self-promo here but I gladly would have dropped everything to help. I’m confident in my abilities there. He showed a sample passage that AI “helped” with. It’s bad.

Beowulf studies is a small field. Grendel studies is smaller. Grendel’s Mother studies is, without Headley, virtually nonexistent in terms of published, easily accessible media. Losing two authors, to hypocrisy of values and hypocrisy of art, is devastating. I genuinely do not want to be the only person willing to get creative with this story without bowing to AI, problematic stereotypes and Creepy Old White Men In Power. I know these authors made their own choices, and those choices weren’t good. But this field is too small, too closed-off and non diverse, and too hemmed in by lack of historical context on one side and the alt-right on the other, to afford “bad choices”. This field is starving for young, creative minds, new approaches and diversity of experience. What these authors have done will only isolate us further.

What I feel from this is grief.

[medievalandfantasymelee]

THE HOT MEDIEVAL & FANTASY MEN MELEE

FIRST ROUND: 22nd Tilt

Beowulf, Beowulf & Grendel (2005) VS. King Arthur Pendragon, Camelot (1967)

Propaganda

Beowulf, Beowulf & Grendel (2005) Portrayed by: Gerard Butler Defeated Opponents: - King Henry V [Kenneth Branagh], Henry V (1989)

“I mean I don’t even know what to say? A classic hero. He's got humour, insight, valour, mercy, kindness, and Gerard Butler's flawless fucking face. King shit. Husband material.”

King Arthur Pendragon, Camelot (1967) Portrayed by: Richard Harris Defeated Opponents: - Ulrich von Jungingen [Stanislaw Jasiukiewicz], Knights of the Teutonic Order (1960)

“This portrayal of King Arthur is the kindest, saddest, most compassionate version I have ever seen. I saw this movie as a kid and was head over heels in love with King Arthur. He cares so much for everyone, including both Lancelot and Guinevere— even after they betray him.”

Additional Propaganda Under the Cut

Additional Propaganda

For Beowulf:

For King Arthur:

[timurs-things]

Difficult obstacle on the way