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maverick-werewolf · 2 years

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I posted 142 times in 2022

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#make sure the story has some other kind of proof or was told by several different people in variants or was mentioned by one or more experts

This is a LONG-ASS year in review so I hid the rest under the cut, omg, lol. You peeps really loved my long werewolf facts and I am so happy you did, they were labors of love!

Here's to 2023! I've got a lot cooking (read all about it here)!

My Top Posts in 2022:

Usually when referring to werewolves people tackle them in a pretty broad scope. Referring to Le Lobizon, the loup-garou, King lycaon, etc…but what is the mythology surrounding the werwulf or werewolf specifically? Like the German middle age definition of a werewolf?

That's a very complicated question - but it’s also not. If that makes any sense at all. Let me elaborate...

What we call “werewolves” has almost become retroactive. We can’t really say that “werewolf” is a uniquely German term, despite being Germanic in nature, because our first recorded use of a variant of “werewolf” wasn’t even recorded in Germany. “Werewolf” never appeared very much in medieval writings, despite originating during the medieval period (more on that in a minute). Yes, you can find people using the term “werewolf” (and its assorted variations), but sadly, it often becomes a matter of asking: is this a real source, or is this something someone is falsifying?

This is a woodcut from 1722 in Germany of a werewolf. It’s one of the few instances we do have that is directly referred to as a “werewolf,” so we can be sure their werewolf legends in the 1700s, at least, weren’t too far off the mark from the kind of thing we have today.

You can find lots of “werewolf legends” in Germany from the 1800s and around that general time period that supposedly throw around the term “werewolf” (again, and its variations), but having read many of these myself and researched their sources and origins, I can tell you that the overwhelming majority of these things are just... nonsense. They weren’t legends. They were basically short stories, fake local tales, and generally untrue “folklore,” for whatever reason people had to be producing it. (What’s one way you can spot these? Several of them mention silver) There is a glut of utterly fake “German werewolf folklore” out there from the 1800s especially.

At any rate, as for the Middle Ages in Germany and what they considered to be werewolves, we have to look at Germanic folklore and mythology for that. In the pre-Middle Ages, early Middle Ages, and even into the mid Middle Ages, much of the Germanic regions of Europe were dominated by the old Germanic concepts - namely berserkers (which, again, were not bear warriors) and related legends.

It wasn’t really until after the Middle Ages that the word “werewolf” became used often across multiple regions. Much of what we call “werewolves” today is a retroactive label or translation.

What may have been the first use of the word “werewolf” appeared in the early 1000s. To quote my book, The Werewolf: Past and Future...

Much like what happened with the Vikings, as the medieval world converted to Christianity, werewolves were cast in a steadily more negative light. The king of England from 1016-1035, King Cnut, issued the Ecclesiastical Ordinances XXVI, in which he specifically mentions the werewolf in relation to the Devil, saying, “[be watchful, that] the madly audacious were-wolf do not too widely devastate, nor bite too many of the spiritual flock.”[1] This passage marks one of the earliest instances in which the term “werewolf” is virtually equated to the Devil or demons in general in Christianity, which becomes common in later medieval writings – and it also marks the first recorded use of the word “werewolf.” Instead of the wolf being a brother and wolf transformations being desirable, or at least not worthy of condemnation, Christianity altered the view of werewolves, turning them into demonic creatures associated with evil and witchcraft, who romp across the countryside leaving death and destruction in their wake. As stated by Beresford, “[T]he use of the werewolf as a religious scapegoat by the Church throughout the Middle Ages is intrinsic to the development of the myth of the modern beast. What was once … a highly revered and worshipped beast, emerges in the medieval period as a savage creature, poisonous, destructive and wholly evil; a beast to be feared and not imitated.”[2]

[1]Beresford 80, quoting Ecclesiastical Ordinances XXVI by King Cnut of England [2]Beresford 88. However, in this passage, he does not seem to wholly take into account just how many medieval werewolf legends existed, and how some of them were not necessarily demonic – these were, however, more often than not, unrelated to the Church (except for a few cases, which Beresford himself also cites in his book), so his point largely still stands.

Another direct use of the word “werewolf” appears in assorted medieval lays about werewolf knights, such as Marie de France’s Bisclavret, Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur, written in 1470, etc. So, in many ways, you could even say the proper medieval concept of a werewolf was a noble knight, as they were actually directly called “werewolves!”

It’s all but impossible, in folklore and myth, to nail down certain legends about certain creatures. This is because folklore and myth are very indirect, as compared to the kind of things people create today in pop culture. A true “werewolf legend” spans tons of legends - and simultaneously almost none at all. Scholars have often dictated what is and isn’t a werewolf legend, and their decisions about it frequently don’t even make any sense (especially if you ask me). This applies to so many creatures, including both werewolves and vampires, and that’s why when someone asks me “what were dragons like in folklore?” I can’t give a direct answer. I have to almost write a book on it, because all monsters and creatures in folklore have very complicated backgrounds, many different names, often didn’t go by the names we put on them today at all, etc.

I hope this helped! Sorry I couldn’t give a more direct answer. Some other useful werewolf facts for this topic:

What Is a Werewolf

What Is and Isn’t A Werewolf Legend

Peter Stubbe and how he wasn’t a werewolf at all and was never, ever referred to as one

79 notes - Posted January 24, 2022

Werewolf Fact #66 - The Legend of King Lycaon of Arcadia

Continuing the series of close looks into specific werewolf legends, let’s examine what’s generally considered one of the most important werewolf legends in history: the story of King Lykaon (Λυκᾱ́ων - or Lycaon, a more Anglicized spelling) of ancient Greece.

Although I did a smaller post on Lycaon quite a while ago, this one will be more in-depth. Despite there being a lot of other legends and werewolf legends surrounding Lycaon and different regions of Greece - some of which are discussed in this post of mine - I’m not going to go into those again this time. This post is exclusively about the legend of Lycaon himself (I will be referring to him as Lykaon from here on out).

A quick summary before we go into more detail: Lykaon was a king of Arcadia in ancient Greece. As the legend goes, Lykaon decided to test the divine omniscience of Zeus by killing one of his own sons, Nyctimus, and cooking him into food to serve to Zeus. Naturally, Zeus realized what Lykaon had done, so he turned Lykaon into a wolf as punishment, killing his other children and bringing Nyctimus back to life.

However, Lykaon wasn’t remembered too negatively despite his actions or his fate. He did plenty of other good deeds, like founding cities and creating a cult dedicated to Zeus, as well as hosting a series of games called the Lykaean Games, among other things. He also had a lot of kids. And, please note, there were a lot of “Lykaon”s in Greek myth. This is merely one of them.

But what I’m going to focus on is the legend of how Zeus turned Lykaon into a wolf and the details thereof - and what impact it’s had on werewolf studies and werewolves in culture forever afterward.

Perhaps the earliest version of Lykaon’s myth was told by Hesiod. However, there are many different versions by an assortment of authors. Several of them recount the tale differently, with various aspects changed, and some even claim Lykaon was never turned into a wolf at all and was instead killed instantly by Zeus’s lightning, among other alterations.

Perhaps the most well-known version of the tale is the one I’ll be quoting from, however: not a Greek author but a Roman one, Ovid, in his Metamorphoses. Ovid, too, alters the story from Hesiod’s “original,” though he retains the most important aspect from the perspective of werewolf studies: Lykaon’s transformation into a wolf and “transformation scene” of sorts.

The edition of Metamorphoses from which I will be quoting is as follows:

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Trans. A. D. Melville. New York, NY: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

(Please note for the sake of this post I’m not using perfect MLA citation for each quote. You can find those in my published academic works, but not these posts. But the citations here will be readable, just not totally up to nitpicky academic standards.)

It all began for Lykaon when Zeus - or, in the case of Ovid’s version, in Metamorphoses, Jupiter, generally the Roman equivalent of Zeus - arrives in Acradia. Unlike everyone else, Lykaon had his doubts about the god...

he [Lykaon] / Scoffed at their worship. “A clear test”, he said, / “Shall prove if this be god or mortal man / And certify the truth”, and he planned for me, / At dead of night, when I was sunk in sleep, / Death unforseen--so would he test the truth. (page 7)

Unlike Hesiod’s version, in Metamorphoses, Lykaon kills a “hostage sent / Far from Epirus, slitting his throat, and boiled / Part of the flesh, scarce dead, and roasted part” (7) instead of doing that to one of his own sons. Either way, with that done, he had Jupiter join him for a meal, telling him to eat the flesh of this person he’d just cooked.

Unfortunately for Lykaon, Jupiter was in fact Jupiter the omniscient, and the moment he was offered the flesh...

At once my avenging flame / Whelmed in just ruin that guilty house and him. (7-8)

And now the most important part - Lykaon’s transformation scene! Yes, werewolves have been having transformation scenes since time immemorial. And Lykaon’s is one of the best. It’s very... vivid, moreso than one may expect:

He [Lykaon] fled in fear and reached the silent fields / And howled his heart out, trying in vain to speak. / With rabid* mouth he turned his lust for slaughter / Against the flocks, delighting still in blood. / His clothes changed to coarse hair, his arms to legs-- / He was a wolf, yet kept some human trace, / The same grey hair, the same fierce face, the same / Wild eyes, the same image of savagery. (8)

[*: Given that “rabid” literally means “infected with rabies,” which doesn’t really make any sense here, I feel the need to point out that the word “rabies” means “rage” or “madness” in Latin. That’s where we get the name of the disease. This doesn’t mean that Lykaon suddenly was infected with the disease known as rabies - he was filled with rage and madness.]

How fantastic! What a scene, what an image! I love the specificity of the description. That’s classic werewolf material right there. A wolf, a beast, but maintaining some semblance of his humanity. Truly this is one of the foundational legends of how we think of werewolves today.

So the purpose of the legend, obviously, is to punish Lykaon for his actions by turning him into a beast. Whether the Roman Ovid retelling or one of the original Greek versions, the end result is the same, if the wolf form is involved: it’s a form of punishment. Thing is, it actually wasn’t always seen as that bad a thing. As mentioned, there are many werewolf legends in ancient Greece and also Rome, some of which split directly from the legend of Lykaon. One such version included Arcadians who willingly undergo a transformation into a wolf that lasts years, in order to test their humanity (they must not eat human flesh while in their wolf form, or it become permanent), and it was almost a rite of passage of sorts, among many other legends.

Nor were they, by the way, always associated with cannibalism/eating people. Sometimes they were, sometimes they weren’t. Sometimes what separated werewolves from “evil beasts” were that they had the willpower to resist eating people. Even Lykaon himself wasn’t actually a cannibal, he just committed horrible atrocities by testing Zeus using the flesh of one of his own kids! That’s not too bad!... Yeah, it’s beyond terrible.

Anyway, it shouldn’t be assumed from the legend of Lykaon alone that wolves and werewolves were always portrayed negatively in ancient Greece or in Rome. They certainly weren’t. Those are, of course, legends I will detail in other posts, but for the sake of clarity, I want to have the reminder that not all wolves or werewolves were “evil” just because of this legend... like many scholars wrongfully assume.

Today, the myth of King Lykaon is often branded the “first werewolf legend.” That’s a big assumption and kind of a misnomer. If we want to get technical, then maybe it’s the earliest complete legend we have of a werewolf - as in, the full, surviving tale in writing. As I discuss on pages 8-9 in my own book, The Werewolf: Past and Future - Lycanthropy’s Lost History and Modern Devolution...

Werewolf legends were told by many societies throughout time, even before recorded history; indeed, scholars argue over what represents the “first werewolf,” in part because there is no real way of knowing the age of the werewolf legend – particularly since, like many legends, a great deal of werewolf stories were only retold orally. Ranging from the earliest humans and even pre-humans to the Greeks and Romans, the werewolf in ancient times takes many shapes across multiple cultures, spanning, essentially, the entire world, and certainly the entire historical range of wolves. Among perhaps the most important of all werewolf legends, and some of the earliest to be recorded, were the ones told by the ancient Greeks. The belief in werewolves was, naturally, then carried over into ancient Rome, but the werewolf also independently arose in other cultures around the world, including but not limited to Europe, North America, and Asia. However, the belief in werewolves may have existed as early as the Paleolithic Age, around 45,000 BP.

[1] Beresford 19; the year is given by Beresford as BP (Before Present), due to the carbon dating process of prehistoric artifacts.

Likewise, in the same book, I address the fact that some scholars like to claim the “first” werewolf legend was told in the Epic of Gilgamesh, written around 2750 BC, when Ishtar turns a shepherd into a wolf so that he is attacked by his own dogs. I refute this as the “first werewolf legend” as opposed to just a legend where a person is turned into a wolf on page 13 in footnote 16 of The Werewolf: Past and Future...

However, counting this instance from the Epic of Gilgamesh as “the first werewolf” is an odd statement. Yes, the shepherd is turned into a wolf, which is the same as many other werewolf legends (even Lycaon’s), but the choice of turning him into a wolf seems insignificant in terms of meaning. The fact that Lycaon’s transformation was intended as meaningful lends more power to the idea that King Lycaon may be the earliest recorded instance of a werewolf legend, since his actions led him to be specifically turned into a wolf, rather than into some other creature. The shepherd in Gilgamesh is only turned into a wolf so that his dogs will attack him, and other animals are substituted in later tales of this exact same type (such as Artemis turning a mortal into a deer so his dogs will rip him apart in a later Greek myth), making the choice of a wolf in the Epic of Gilgamesh feel arbitrary enough that it seems almost unfair to give it such importance in the history of werewolf mythology.

Naturally, given Lykaon is such an important figure in werewolf studies, there’s plenty of discourse about him and his legend across the various werewolf scholars. But, since this post is already insanely long, you can read more about the scholarly discourse and bigger picture of Lykaon’s tale in my first werewolf scholarly publication that I published in 2021, which discusses Lykaon and his scholarly discourse considerably already! And of course you’ll be hearing more about him and his place in werewolf mythology in my future publications, as well.

Back to Lykaon himself: I hope to someday translate my own editions of some of these primary sources, such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses - or at least the passages relevant to werewolf studies, in particular - but we’ll see if I ever get around to doing that. Do keep an eye out for future werewolf studies works from me, however, as you will definitely be seeing a lot of those over the coming years.

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106 notes - Posted April 27, 2022

Werewolf Fact #65 - "The Werewolf of Bedburg," Peter Stubbe

I love werewolves so much, you guys. I can’t even convey it to you. Really, I can’t. I’ve fallen into a feverish mood of just how much I love werewolves working on this post and how badly it rends my soul that they are portrayed so poorly across almost all media - and how the legends of them are all but forgotten and the ones everyone remembers are massively misinterpreted.

This really is my calling in life.

So let’s go. This is the longest werewolf fact to date, because this is a big deal to me and I want to get all these facts straight, so try not to get intimidated!

The Howling, the #1 movie that helped a generation think werewolves are similar to the legend of Peter Stubbe

I was preparing a poll for my patrons to decide the topic of the next werewolf fact, since my patrons have now decided that werewolf facts from here on (at least until the upcoming werewolf fact book, Werewolf Facts: A Guidebook to Folklore vs Pop Culture, is compiled and published!) will be deep-dives into specific werewolf legends.

However, while preparing this poll, I figured... why not google the most famous werewolf legends, to see what people would know the best and thus recognize and be interested in hearing more about?

As someone with two options in the poll already - those options being “Bisclavret” and “Peter Stubbe (and how his tale is not a werewolf legend)” - I was... very frustrated by the search results.

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109 notes - Posted February 23, 2022

Werewolf Fact #67 - The Lai of the Werewolf, “Bisclavret”

The time has come to discuss in depth my very favorite werewolf story! Yes, my favorite werewolf story doesn't come from modern pop culture. Instead, it comes from medieval literature.

So let's dive right into "Bisclavret," one of the best werewolf stories ever told.

Please note that this post will contain the entirety of “Bisclavret,” in direct quotes, with my discussions interspersed throughout. So if you’ve never read the story, you can find the whole thing here!

The Van Helsing werewolf never fails to bring in some attention, so here he is again in spite of irrelevance. But hey, he's a werewolf, so... it works! Right?

Moving right along--

For this in-depth look at "Bisclavret," I will be using A Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture by Charlotte F. Otten, one of my very favorite werewolf sourcebooks. It's a wonderful collection of primary historical sources - and some stories that aren't folklore but were always considered fictional - and some very good introductions to and discussions of said works by Otten herself.

In fact, in her introduction to the section that includes "Bisclavret," Otten imparts some very wise words on werewolf legends as a whole...

On the moral level, the werewolf myth is a realistic assessment of the range of choices available to human beings. Humans who become werewolves in the myths and legends, or who cause others to become werewolves, are involved in moral metamorphosis: a process that recognizes the exhilaration that comes with engaging in degrading lycanthropic acts but also reveals the degradation that comes to those who deliberately choose to exhibit bestiality [bestial nature]. The werewolf myth, then, is a profound insight into human life. ... Regarded as a moral myth, the presence in the human spirit of werewolves can direct the culture, the society, the individual human being to sources of healing. If it does so, it is a myth not of despair but of hope. (Otten 223)

I would personally add, also in relation to “Bisclavret,” that it isn’t only those who become werewolves and behave as beasts or those who turn others into werewolves - it’s also extremely important in many werewolf myths how the werewolves themselves are treated by the human characters. How one treats a werewolf, with that person still being human but in the guise of a beast, is an important moral plot point in multiple werewolf legends, such as the werewolves of Ossory and - of course - Bisclavret. One is amoral if they assume a werewolf is evil solely because of their appearance, without judging their character first and appearance second. It’s not necessarily always a test of the werewolf character, it’s also a test of everyone around them. If the werewolf is virtuous and behaving like a human, isn’t it just as important to treat the werewolf like you would anyone else - even if it is a werewolf?

Now let's get to Bisclavret...

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112 notes - Posted June 22, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Werewolf Fact #68 - The Importance of The Wolf Man (1941)

For Halloween this year, and in celebration of almost 70 werewolf facts, let’s take an extra deep dive yet again and review something everyone who likes werewolves should know...

It is virtually impossible to overstate the sheer importance of one single piece of media on the general perception of werewolves today.

This piece of media came from a time when going to the theater was a riveting experience, when movies chilled you, when you watched in awe and wonder, captivated by the practical effects that, to you, as you were fully engrossed in this storytelling experience, were reality. With no famous literature about werewolves having created a foothold of concepts, as Dracula by Bram Stoker did with vampires, and with only forgotten films and stories too strange to resonate with the common people about werewolves before it, this movie alone was allowed set the bar and establish all expectations for all werewolf media to come...

I’m talking about one of the classic Universal Monsters pictures - I’m talking about The Wolf Man (1941).

Other than it’s very fun filmmaking and great use of many different oldshool film tricks and, of course, practical effects, as well as its original Universal Monsters film charm, The Wolf Man is a timeless classic for another reason: without it, modern day werewolf media wouldn’t even be half the same.

Sure, there were other films that came before (though very few) that may have or certainly did influenced it, like Werewolf of London from 1935, but that doesn’t change that Curt Siodmak’s work with his original screenplay for The Wolf Man solidified almost all of our baseline modern werewolf concepts in popular culture. So just how influenced by folklore was he, anyway?

He was certainly influenced somewhat, in many obvious ways, but you may be surprised to learn just how much of our modern werewolves we see during Halloween and all around Hollywood and even, today, in many popular books, games, and other media, have The Wolf Man to thank for more than one major element - or at least derivatives of those major elements.

As a DISCLAIMER I first want to say that I absolutely adore The Wolf Man and almost (but not quite) everything it did for werewolves in media. My favorite werewolves will always be the ones that run close to what Curt Siodmak came up with, because I just love it. It’s a great story full of drama and sympathy and horror and tragedy. I personally prefer my werewolf hero to be different, and to end up different, but that’s an aside.

I just want to make a point here that I am NOT saying “not folkloric = bad,” and I don’t ever mean to infer that in every single situation. I love a lot of Hollywood werewolf concepts and I use many of them, myself, because they’re my favorites. I am merely pointing out what is and isn’t folkloric or original about the film (while probably lavishing praise upon its concepts because, again, gosh, I just love these concepts if they’re actually handled well, they make for such a great story!).

Let’s get into the film (you can find a link to watch this film legally and for free on the Internet Archive at the end of this post, by the way!)...

Even as early as the first shot in the film, after the opening credits, we are treated to some of Curt Siodmak’s original werewolf concepts. This is found not only in the description of the lycanthropy around one Talbot Castle, but also in the addition at the bottom of the fictional encyclopedia entry on lycanthropy that says “the sign of the Werewolf is a five-pointed star, a pentagram.” This is patently untrue in folklore, of course, and that’s just another thing Siodmak made up for the movie.

Sidenote: I appreciate the lines “Oh, another dog.” “No, that’s a wolf.” Wolves aren’t dogs, kids. Although Gwen isn’t exactly right about Red Riding Hood being a werewolf story... Anyway, details.

We come next to the poem. The one that Gwen first recites to Larry in the shop, and we hear it throughout the film, as it becomes extremely important...

Even a man who is pure at heart And says his prayers by night May become a wolf with the wolfsbane blooms And the autumn moon is bright

This poem was entirely made up by Siodmak. As was, as you might imagine, this business relating to pentagrams being the werewolf’s symbol and one he sees in the palm of his next victim’s hand.

By the way, whatever you do, please don’t go picking wolfsbane like they claim to do in the movie. Just saying.

Next up we have the fact that Larry’s bite heals overnight. This is certainly folkloric in nature, to a degree (more on that later in my overview/rundown), but it’s just as feasible that Siodmak hadn’t heard those legends and just wanted to make his werewolf scary and powerful - and because the healing wounds relates to the silver concept that he himself made up. By the way, I absolutely adore the rapidly healing wounds.

Another aside: this movie is such a joy to watch. I hadn’t seen it in years until I started writing this post. Many, many years, despite knowing it like the back of my hand and studying it all my life. It’s so incredible to watch all the classic werewolf elements we know and love unfold on the screen in their original form. It helps that I’m a massive cinephile movie nerd weirdo anyway and movies are my favorite form of entertainment by an extremely wide margin, despite enjoying many kinds of entertainment.

Anyway, next up for werewolf lore, we have Frank’s dog barking at Larry - because the dog knows he’s a monster. It’s not uncommon in many stories for animals to sense things people can’t, but this is also something else we often see highlighted in werewolf media to follow.

Something to note about silver in this film is that Larry is obviously still carrying his silver cane around even after he’s been bitten by the werewolf. It obviously isn’t burning or harming him even after he’s been bitten and his wound healed, unlike a lot of werewolf media today (admittedly, including my own works), in which silver can cause a werewolf pain just to the touch, even in human form.

Next up we hear about whoever is bitten by the werewolf becomes a werewolf. This, I want you to know, is speculated to have been started sometime in French werewolf legends - some scholars hold to that. But even if it wasn’t originated by this movie (I honestly kind of think that it was originated by this movie), it was certainly popularized by this movie and sticks in the modern psyche thanks to this film alone. Yes, there was a time when lycanthropy may have been associated with rabies, and that may even be where Siodmak got the idea, but no matter what, that concept is timelessly popular solely because of this film.

Next up we have the buildup to the single most important moment in any werewolf movie... the transformation scene.

This film, as you might expect, also established the importance of the transformation scene. Really, such a scene has been important in werewolf media and highlighted even since Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but this movie really emphasizes the horror behind a man becoming a monster. And it’s so right to do so.

After all, what is most unique about werewolves and why do they stick with us so strongly? It’s the transformation. The idea that a man can become a monster and then return to a human form - and be cursed to live out a life turning back and forth. That’s really the heart of any werewolf story. That’s how it all begins. That’s the backbone.

So anyway, the transformation scene in The Wolf Man is of course excellent. We see Larry undergoing all the stages of the werewolf transformation as all werewolf media will follow after it - he freaks out, he runs home, tries to find seclusion, he looks at himself, looks in a mirror, tries to notice any changes... because he at once doesn’t think it’s real but also is certainly starting to believe it, with everyone freaking out so badly around him, especially the gypsies.

Larry’s first transformation begins and ends in his feet, as they don’t want to show us the werewolf himself yet - they build up to it, and we first see him in the dark forest. The werewolf feet are of course famous as a result of being our first glimpse of the famous wolf man.

Larry goes to a graveyard - a favorite haunt of werewolves and many other folkloric monsters - and kills a guy, biting his throat out. It’s noteworthy, of course, that Larry doesn’t leave humanoid wolf prints. He leaves wolf prints, to the point that everyone assumes it is a wolf, not some kind of monster.

Larry then finds a pentagram on his chest, about where the werewolf bit him or so. He realizes he left a trail and starts covering it up, only to discover the detective is tracking him. Again, the pentagram thing is not in werewolf folklore at all.

The rundown of lycanthropy that Larry’s father gives to him is actually a pretty good one. He isn’t wrong about finding werewolf legends almost everywhere, and it did become recognized as a clinical disease in much later years, around or after the Renaissance. He’s also right about it being Greek, in a way, given the assorted Greek werewolf legends, though we can never really know where it “originated,” per se, as werewolves are a universal legend. And, fittingly, he of course thinks it’s all in the mind - when it very much isn’t, not in this film. Silly practical fellow.

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133 notes - Posted October 19, 2022

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mirimiramiri · 1 year

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🎶 Shuffle Tag! 🎶

Hola de Barcelona!

I think this is the third time I have been tagged to reveal my music… but I will do it a bit differently.

What is music? Emotions, memories, fantasies or simply the urge to get low and shake it like a polaroid picture. Therefore I will post the ten songs/artists I listened the most during the last weeks and how they made me feel.

1. Karliene - Atlantis, because it lets me feel the weightlessness of diving and shudder before the deep dark beautiful mystery we call ocean

2. Every song from Blackmore’s Night, can’t believe I only discovered them now. Each songs tells a different little story about love, adventure and magic in medieval worlds full of kings, dragons, fortune tellers, knights and roses.

3. Visions of Atlantis - Master the hurricane, because with pirate metal every little thing you do (ride a bike, do dishes, work, sleep) feels epic and dangerous and brave!

4. Walk the moon - Shut up and dance, because this song always makes me smile and dance around. Looks especially funny at work.

5. Faun and Eluveitie - Gwydion, this song simply reminds me a lot of Fanelia. It starts with crystal clear mystical singing about the magic of the forests and ends in a powerful battle cry which makes me see strong heroes swinging swords ⚔️

6. Delain - Queen of Shadow, I always liked that band. It has slightly cheesy lyrics but reminds me of my Goth Phase as a teen… which never really ended 🤔 except for the massiv overuse of black eyeliner.

7. Katy Perry - E.T but the version without the stupid male rap part, who needs that anyway? A song for the romantic Science Fiction heart! And a bit dirty too! Hehe 😉

8. ASP - De profundis, a creepy masterpiece which reminds me of sirens luring sailors into their watery grave or even more sinister dark things.

9. Every song from Beast in Black, because I can go jogging to their beat and it feels like a fun, colourful and heroic battle in the One Piece universe! Go Luffy!

10. Battle Beast - Eden, idk it’s just such a feel good power metal song which makes me imagine flying on wings I created myself ☺️

Not included are Nightwish, In Flames, Metallica, the Carmina Burana, Heaven shall burn, Two steps from hell, Volbeat and the Escaflowne OST.

Songs and artists I am too ashamed to list here, but found their way into my playlist: BTS (blush), Justin Bieber (blushes even more), Dua Lipa, (bright pink blush), Britney Spears (dark red blush), Daddy Yankee and Rihanna (gets a slap from her 15-years old self though space and time for being untrue to metal and bringing shame to her name 🤪)… oh no why did I write that, so uncool… 😬 you made me do it @eireanness @silphine and @ruinsoftime

#whatshallItag?#music

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The Ultimate Medieval Irish Guide To In Loco Parentis

aka: all the medieval Irish references and sources, explained, for the benefit of those who want to know more about the texts I'm working with, and to justify my characterisation and plot choices to those who know enough about the texts to doubt me on that front. This post is going to be long, so I'm putting all the detail below a read-more to save your dashes.

There will be uncharacteristic use of capital letters throughout to make it easier to read (and for the benefit of those only familiar with my fic-writing habits and not my post-writing habits). There will also be spoilers, so if you have not finished reading In Loco Parentis, you may wish to do that first, or only read as far as you've got, or whatever.

It should be borne in mind that I began this fic three and a quarter years ago and therefore it is entirely possible there are some additional layers and references that I have forgotten about and which never came to fruition enough for me to recognise them when I read it back from the beginning to make this post.

OKAY HERE WE GO

Chapter 1

Láeg and Cú Chulainn as odd flatmates. In the Ulster Cycle, Láeg is Cú Chulainn's charioteer. This doesn't only entail driving him around, but also looking after his weapons, giving him advice, sometimes preparing food, negotiating on his behalf, etc. You'll see him do all these things in Táin Bó Cúailnge (TBC), where the two live together in the wilderness for months at a time. In Oideadh Con Culainn (OCC), Emer implies that she, Cú Chulainn, and Láeg all live together, so the idea of them sharing a house has textual support. Yay! We don't actually know how they met, or at what age, because the texts don't seem to think that's important (there's one text, which @finnlongman has edited, which shows them being raised together from infancy, but otherwise Láeg's past is entirely obscure), so I had a pretty free rein on that front.

Láeg's other flatmates all bailed on him -- this thread will be explained a little later, because it's one of the major ways I integrated one of TBC's remscéla (fore-tales)

Cú Chulainn is 17. This is the age that he is in TBC, so it seemed the obvious place to start the story.

Lug and Súaltaim are Cú Chulainn's gay dads. Ah yes. This is a reference to Compert Con Culainn, which tells of how Cú Chulainn was conceived three times. Technically speaking, only the third child survives, and this becomes Cú Chulainn -- this is the child fathered by Súaltaim. However, this triple conception seems to mean something, and in one version of TBC, Lug is referred to as Cú Chulainn's father from the otherworld, despite the fact he's always known as "mac Súaltaim" (son of Súaltaim). The idea of them as co-parents amused me and was actually the origin point of this fic.

Cú Chulainn is small. I've talked about this before on this blog but basically, everyone who meets Cú Chulainn in TBC is like "why are you so small" and he describes himself as a "little creature" at one point (he is just a litel creacher... he cannot help this). So, canon support for that too.

Chapter 2

Emer dares/blackmails Cú Chulainn into joining the ballet soc. This is a reference to Tochmarc Emire, when Cú Chulainn goes to woo Emer and, in the course of this, is obliged to travel to train with Scáthach and develop his fighting skills (and then fight Emer's family for her).

Cú Chulainn is trans. See again: everyone in TBC asking Cú Chulainn why he's so small and why he doesn't have a beard. BIG TRANS MOOD. @finnlongman has done actual academic research on trans readings of Cú Chulainn.

Cú Chulainn is studying theology. Historically there has been a lot of dodgy scholarship on medieval Irish material, including uncritically considering all the characters to be gods and everything vaguely mythological to be an unadulterated pagan survival. This is patently untrue but we still had to put up with people calling Cú Chulainn a sun god for a while. So, our starting point for his academic experiences is with theology, but it doesn't suit him.

Cormac has a bad relationship with his dad. Again, this will be explained soon. Ditto Fergus's absence, since that's all part of the same ongoing reference.

Chapter 3

Violence against alarm clocks. There is a scene in the Macgnímartha (Boyhood Deeds) portion of TBC in which Cú Chulainn brains the person who is trying to wake him and after that it is declared that he should just be left to sleep and he'll wake up when he's good and ready. I relate to this. I am also not a morning person.

Annoying older brother Láeg. In the version of Compert Con Culainn that I mentioned above, where Láeg and Cú Chulainn are raised together from infancy, it's implied that Láeg is slightly order and that he becomes Cú's foster-brother as a result of this arrangement. Also, he gives off brotherly vibes in general in other texts too.

Chapter 4

Naoise has WiFi; by extension, Naoise isn't dead. So. Fergus and Naoise are absent because this is a reference to Longes mac nUislenn (LmU), one of the remscéla to TBC, and this is also why Cormac has a bad relationship with his dad. More on that below.

The ballet teacher is scary and Scottish. The ballet teacher is Scáthach, as we will later learn. According to Tochmarc Emire (TE) and Oileamhain/Foghlaim Con Culainn (FCC) (a later text deriving from TE), she's based at Dúnscaith. This may be on Skye, or may be in Scythia, or may be in the Otherworld. The most popular interpretation is Skye and there is a place there named Dunsgaith. That's the interpretation in this fic.

Ferdia. Ferdia, or Fer Diad, is Cú Chulainn's foster brother. We know him primarily from TBC, where they fight each other in single combat and it's extremely tragic and then Cú Chulainn recounts extensive and somewhat homoerotic mourning verses over his dead body. They also kiss a bit. He's also mentioned in TE and FCCand a couple of other late texts, though nothing extensive.

Chapter 5

Lug has two MAs. Lug is a multi-talented member of the Túatha Dé Danann whose main claim to fame is that he's good at everything: see Cath Maige Tuired. Alfred Nutt, a 19th century Celticist who believed him to be a sun god and is also possibly responsible for coining the idea of Cú Chulainn as 'the Irish Achilles' (some of his contributions were more useful than others), described him one time as a "Master of Arts". I thought this was funny.

Lug is a polytheist. The TDD are often interpreted as gods and Lug is one of the few characters with fairly convincing archaeological and historical evidence to prove that he was, indeed, worshipped as a god at some points in various places, especially if you see him as a reflex of Lugus on the continent. This is therefore a nod to that. All of our medieval Irish texts are written by Christian authors within a Christian worldview, and they have some interesting (and sometimes heretical) takes as they attempt to rationalise the TDD into something that fits into that paradigm -- such as considering them 'half-fallen angels', unfallen humans, or straight-up demons. One imagines that a modern Lug would probably not get on well with evangelicals, hence that remark, too.

Chapter 6

Cú Chulainn and Láeg's loud, obnoxious neighbours. When I began this fic, I intended for it to be a more straightforward retelling of TBC than it ended up being, so this was the start of a thread that would lead to them going to 'war' with their neighbours. I didn't end up developing this as much as planned.

Conall is visiting Naoise. Conall is often a traveller in medieval Irish texts, and of all the cousins to seek out a surviving Naoise, it would be him. This is also a reference in part to Getting The Dee, the NSFW spinoff from this fic that I have not updated in like, three years, due to being a coward.

Cú Chulainn and Cormac are cousins. Cormac is the son of Conchobar mac Nessa. Cú Chulainn's mother Dechtire (here referred to as his aunt, having acted as a surrogate for his gay dads) is the sister - or daughter - of Conchobar, according to Compert Con Culainn. I chose the sister interpretation, as more manuscripts do, but a few say daughter, just to confuse things. Anyway, Dechtire and Conchobar as siblings makes Cú Chulainn and Cormac cousins.

Sétanta is Cú Chulainn's original name (in the "baby Láeg" version of Compert Con Culainn, it's Sédana, but that's an outlier adn should not have been counted). He gains the name Cú Chulainn after he kills the hound of Culann and takes its place as protector of the livestock. In one version of TBC, he welcomes the new name; in the other, he says he prefers Sétanta. I've gone for the former here, treating Sétanta as a deadname, but that's a very modern take.

Fergus was Cú Chulainn's tutor. Fosterage is a big thing in medieval Irish lit and primarily has an educative purpose, i.e. you are fostered by someone in order to learn things from them. The more foster-parents a character has, the higher status they're supposed to be. Cú Chulainn was fostered by most of the Ulaid, and Fergus was among them. In TBC, Fergus as Cú Chulainn's foster father is the reason they don't end up fighting each other. Here, I've translated that relationship to tutor.

Chapter 7

Cú Chulainn considers switching to history. After recklessly interpreting everything as gods and pagan survivals for a few decades, academia changed tacks and decided that TBC and other texts were "windows on the Iron Age", providing clues about a genuine historical past -- at least materially, if not in terms of events. This is also not true. Anyway, after moving on from theology, Cú Chulainn follows the path that Celtic scholarship took, and considers history.

Chapter 8

Naoise is a folk singer and martial artist. In LmU, the three sons of Uisliu are not only skilled fighters, but they also seem to have magical gifts of some sort, so that when they sing, the cattle of the province give more milk and so on.

Chapter 9

Láeg offers Cú Chulainn a lift to his date. Láeg is his charioteer, so driving him to assignations is more or less his entire job.

Cú Chulainn considers switching to English or comparative literature. Having realised that medieval texts are not in fact accurate historical records, Celtic scholarship finally started considering their value as literature, and looking at the ways they were consciously constructed using literary motifs and details from Classical and Biblical sources. While they reflect aspects of history or even theology, the general contemporary consensus is that the texts as we have them are primarily literary works and should be treated as such. From theology, to history, to literature, Cú Chulainn's journey mirrors that of Celtic scholarship over the past century-ish. No, this was not a reference I expected anyone outside of academia to pick up on.

Chapter 10

Conall suggests murder. Most people in medieval Irish texts try to solve their problems by killing people, so Conall isn't unique in this regard. However, he is the "avenger" figure of the Ulster Cycle, lopping off heads in response to other people's deaths (including Cú Chulainn's; in one version he beheads 3,000 people and brings all the heads to Emer). He is always DTM (down to murder).

Láeg's car is fast. He's a charioteer. That's his job.

Conall has a motorbike. This is a reference to Conall's horse in OCC and the earlier medieval version of the death tale, Brislech Mór Maige Muirthemni (BMMM). The horse is big, red, and it bites people. It may have a dog's head. It is certainly not a normal horse. The motorbike-horse is described in more detail in Getting The Dee.

No new references in Chapter Eleven, so let's move on to Chapter Twelve

The Great Politics Department Schism. This is our most detailed glimpse at LmU as transformed for the purposes of this fic. In LmU, Deirdre is prophesied before birth to be very beautiful but to bring great trouble to Ulster. Conchobar, being a freak, decides the solution is to have her raised away from society so that she can one day be his wife (SHE'S A BABY), ignoring that she is an omen of doom. She runs off with Naoise instead. When they return, Conchobar has Naoise and his brothers murdered, a betrayal that causes Fergus to go into exile, hence he is still there in TBC, along with Cormac. I decided my version would have less death, but Conchobar being a lecherous creep survived.

Chapter 13

Láeg studies sociology. There are a lot of subjects I could have had Láeg study, but one of the functions of the charioteer is to be a messenger, mediator, and go-between, negotiating on behalf of his master and generally preventing Cú Chulainn from telling people to their face to fuck off. He would need to know a lot about people to do this effectively, so sociology seemed plausible. It also places him adjacent to the Politics-studying Ulaid: he isn't part of the aristocratic circle that Cú Chulainn and his cousins belong to, but he crosses paths with them.

Cormac the conflicted semi-exile. In TBC, Cormac is in exile in Connacht with Fergus, but he's not happy about fighting against his dad. In one version of the story, he swiches sides before the final battle, and goes back to fight for Ulster.

Chapter 14

@sorrowscream. Dee's Instagram handle is a reference to the prophecy before her birth in LmU: a scream is heard from her mother's womb, and the druid interprets her future as bringing sorrow.

@nishmacish. Naoise's Instagram handle is a semi-phonetic short form of his name, Naoise mac Uisneach. Nish as a shortform for Naoise recurs a few times in the fic. The medieval spelling of his name is Noisiu mac Uisliu, which is pronounced slightly differently. I used the late spelling because I like it better.

Chapter 15

Aunt Dechtire. I already mentioned above that Dechtire is Cormac's aunt. Here she is biologically Cú Chulainn's mother, as she is in canon, but he calls her Aunt because in this fic, she isn't legally parenting him; he's been adopted by Lug & Súaltaim.

Lug's family tree. As one of the Túatha Dé Danann, Lug's family tree is horrendous and contradictory, with different texts making completely different claims about who is related to who and how. I decided leaning into the confusion was funnier than attempting to rationalise it.

Hedgehog with a helmet. This is not a reference to medieval literature but to the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge, who have mugs and t-shirts with this symbol on. How Cormac obtained this t-shirt, I do not know. Perhaps he has an ASNaC friend. Several ASNaC friends contributed in various ways to this fic and my writing of it, so this is a hat-tip to them.

Chapter 16

Fergus the walking innuendo. Fergus's dick is, unfortunately, a matter of some preoccupation for medieval authors. In TBC, there is a scene in which his sword is replaced with one of wood while he's fucking Medb. Later, Láeg comments on the length of the sword in its scabbard and Cú Chulainn is like "it might be long, but it's only made of wood" -- aka, size doesn't matter if it doesn't actually work. It's an impotence joke. He later gets his (very long) sword back. It's as big as a rainbow and may or may not be a lightsaber. There are other texts, like the early modern version of Táin Bó Flidaise, where Fergus's sexual prowess and genitalia becomes a central theme. All in all it seemed appropriate to have him be the one making the dirty jokes.

No new references in Chapter 17, nor in Chapter 18, although...

Cormac plans to steal back his own car. This is not intended to reference any specific medieval Irish text, but, it has some parallels with the tale Táin Bó Fráich in which the eponymous cattle raid is about retrieving the character's own cattle.

Chapter 19

Cú Chulainn steals a car. Again, this is not supposed to directly reference any particularly text, but it does have parallels with an episode in the Macgnímrada where he goes for a joyride in Conchobar's chariot, with Conchobar's charioteer Ibar driving.

Chapter 20

Scáthach's children. In canon, Scáthach has three children: her daughter Úathach, and two sons, Cat and Cuar. Here, we learn that Úathach is also a member of a dance company, suggesting she's following in her mother's footsteps, in the same way that canon Úathach is also a fighter.

Chapter 21 has no new references, and nor does Chapter 22, except

Dee and Naoise, the depraved sex fiends. This is a reference to Getting The Dee, the spin-off fic, which in turn takes its origins from LmU. After Deirdre is sequestered away so that she can grow up as Conchobar's child bride, we learn that one of her only human interactions is with Leborcham, a female satirist who couldn't be kept away. Satirists are often seen as a bit dodgy, often make ribald jokes, and generally occupy a somewhat marginal position. I joked that Dee got all her sex ed from Leborcham and there was no way that would have been vanilla. Hence, that fic. Conall, on the other hand, is never really sexualised in canon despite having several different partners -- certainly not portrayed as Sexy the way Fergus is -- so we headcanon him as quite tame in terms of sexual escapades.

Chapter 23

Ballet. Throughout this fic, ballet is used to take the place of fighting and heroic behaviour. In particular, the various tricks and fancy moves that the characters do is supposed to represent the heroic 'feats' that Scáthach teaches Cú Chulainn in TE/FCC and which he uses against his enemies in TBC. I've always thought the 'salmon leap' sounded like some of the jumps that ballet dancers do, for example, and there are various other 'feats' that involve jumping and balancing in implausible ways, which seem easier to represent through dance or gymnastics than other activities.

Chapter 24

Training with Scáthach again. Generally, anything with Scáthach is drawing on TE/FCC or Cú Chulainn and Ferdia's reminisces about it in TBC.

Chapter 25

Fergus is Medb's side chick. In TBC, Fergus is sleeping with Medb, queen of Connacht. Ailill, Medb's husband, is aware of this, but doesn't interfere, saying that Medb is just doing it to keep Fergus loyal.

Chapter 26

Ferdia is jealous of Cú Chulainn's talent and believes he'll always come second. This detail, which recurs a few times in the fic, comes from FCC: Ferdia makes some exclamation about how none of Scáthach's pupils will ever win glory if they're competing with Cú Chulainn, because he'll always be the best.

Aoife. Aoife (medieval spelling Aífe) is another warrior woman who is referenced in TE (I think?) and Aided Óenfhir Aífe. She is sometimes portrayed as Scáthach's sister as well as her rival. Cú Chulainn fights her on Scáthach's behalf, wins by tricking her, and ends up fathering her son, Connla, whom he later kills. I avoided that whole part of the story for obvious reasons but the fact that head of the showcase board is called Aoife is a reference to this sister/rival relationship with Scáthach. I don't imagine her as Scáthach's sister here, but you can if you want, it doesn't change anything.

Chapter 27

Láeg fetches groceries. Another task that wouldn't be outside his remit as charioteer, though would probably involve more hunting and fewer trips to Tesco in a medieval text.

Ferdia has a brother. Ferdia's brother, Fer Det, is mentioned briefly in TBC and I think also shows up in FCC, or maybe TE? Certainly there's some mention of him somewhere else, but without the texts to hand, I couldn't tell you. We know nothing about him other than his name and I don't remember ever seeing them interact, hence, they're not close.

Chapter 28

Fergus's love life. As mentioned, Fergus is sleeping with Medb in TBC and Ailill doesn't seem to care; who's to say they weren't all fucking? In other texts, Ailill is considerably Less Chill about this arrangement, hence the idea that the threesome fun won't last, but right now, it's going okay.

Ferdia's connection to Medb. Ferdia is from Connacht, so Medb in TBC is his queen and he owes her his loyalty -- hence how he ends up opposing Cú Chulainn. There may be a more direct family connection between them too, but here they're just flatmates (i.e. live in the same place, i.e. from the same province).

Finnabair and Medb. In TBC, Finnabair is Medb's daughter. Honestly, Medb's kind of a shit mum, and generally uses her daughter only as a bargaining piece, offering her to every warrior to try and make them fight Cú Chulainn. At one point, Finnabair dies, and then she shows up later in the text as if nothing happened. There is definitely a similar continuity error with her presence in this fic as I think she's referred to as a fresher here but in one of the spin-off fics, it's implied that she was there the previous year. This feels appropriate. She is not here related to Medb, at least not as closely.

Chapter 29

Cú Chulainn's grandfather is a poet / cryptic pain in the arse. Cú Chulainn's grandfather via Dechtire is Cathbad, a druid. Druids are known for making deeply unclear prophecies, and indeed, extremely clear ones that everybody relevant nonetheless ignores.

Chapter 30

Cú Chulainn will not go to the flat opposite, but Láeg will. In TBC, Cú Chulainn is unable to visit the Connacht camp himself, so he sends Láeg to take messages to his allies there and find out who is going to be sent to fight him next. Láeg, as a charioteer, is able to mediate and go to the places where Cú Chulainn himself can't.

No new references in Chapter 31, so onto Chapter 32

A short, glorious career over a long, undistinguished one. In the Macgnímrada, a prophecy is made that the child who takes up arms on a particular day will win great glory, but live a short life. In one version, Cú Chulainn hears the whole prophecy and doesn't care; in the other, he only hears the first part, and when he's later told about the 'short life' caveat, he's like 'eh, seems worth the trade'. This is an echo of Achilles making the same trade and is probably a deliberate/direct Classical allusion by the authors of the Táin.

Chapter 33

Empty nest Láeg / travelling to study. Láeg isn't mentioned in the earliest version of TE, but in the later ones, he's the one who drives Cú Chulainn to his encounters with Emer. He doesn't, however, accompany Cú Chulainn across the sea to train with Scáthach, so what is he doing all this time? If they did grow up together, how does he cope with that absence?

Chapter 34

Cú Chulainn and Ferdia competing against each other. This is, of course, a reference to the Comrac Fir Diad episode of TBC, as well as to Ferdia's jealousy in FCC, which I already mentioned.

Chapter 35

Derbforgaill. This whole episode is inspired by Aided Derbforgaill, a violent story in which a pissing contest between the women of Ulster turns nasty when Derbforgaill out-pees them all and they attack and mutilate her because they think she'll steal their men. Cú Chulainn avenges her by killing the women, while her husband Lugaid (CC's foster son) dies of grief. It's a tale about outsiders, bodies, and being seen as biologically abherrant for the way you pee -- kind of prescient in the transphobic context of our present day. I omitted Lugaid from the story and made CC's solidarity-vengeance about shared identity rather than a kinship connection as it is in canon. It's a story where a trans reading would be fascinating but has yet to be done in an academic context, and I am hoping @finnlongman will do one since they said they would. On this blog we write fics, not conference papers.

Chapter 36

Cú Chulainn beats up the local camogie team as a child. In the Macgnímrada, when Cú Chulainn first comes to Emain Macha as a six-year-old or thereabouts, he joins the boy troop playing hurling. They don't want to let him play, so he beats them all up. Camogie is like hurling, but typically played by girls; this would be pre-transition Cú Chulainn.

Chapter 37

Cú Chulainn, rage, bodies, and ballet. The way Cú Chulainn describes his anger in this chapter, as being something that seems to turn him inside out, is a reference to the ríastrad. This transformation comes on him in various texts, particularly TBC. Some people have likened it to the Incredible Hulk: when he gets really angry, his body contorts, twists, turns inside out, and he rips people apart. My group chat and I think Venom is a better parallel because it's a lot more Abstract Body Horror than just Getting Big. His knees go backwards, his organs show, his eyes pop out etc.

Chapter 38

Conall is fifteen minutes late with Starbucks. Conall has a way of missing a lot of the Big Events of the Ulster Cycle, but it's BMMM/OCC where this is most obvious. He shows up only once Cú Chulainn has already died, and then avenges him.

Láeg answers messages about Cú Chulainn. As mentioned, the charioteer is often called upon to mediate and function as a go-between, and people will often ask him things about Cú Chulainn.

Chapter 39

Pointe shoes. Here, pointe is the one ballet technique / heroic feat that Cú Chulainn has which Ferdia does not have. In that regard, they're kind of fulfilling the function that the gae bolga fulfils in TBC: a weapon that will give CC the edge. However they're also a reference to the way that Cú Chulainn's ambiguous masculinity causes his opponents to underestimate him -- while they're questioning his beardlessness and his size, he's running rings around them with fighting ability. He's utilising his gender nonconformity to attain heroic/balletic prowess that others trapped in more rigid binary norms can't.

Conall the babysitter. In some texts -- either TE or FCC, I think -- Conall seems responsible for picking Cú Chulainn up from training with Scáthach and giving him a lift back to Ireland, because as mentioned, he's the traveller of the Ulster Cycle. As Cú Chulainn's avenger in BMMM/OCC he also sits in that 'protective' niche that would make him a good babysitter. Finally, he's one of Cú Chulainn'a foster brothers from infancy, very similar to Láeg -- this is referenced in TE.

Chapter 40

Red, white, black. The recurring motif of these three colours in this chapter is a reference to LmU, where Deirdre says that she could love a man with those three colours. Naoise has hair as black as a raven, skin white as snow, cheeks red as blood.

Chapter 41

Cú Chulainn doesn't run from anything. In TBC, the only time Cú Chulainn runs away from a fight is when Fergus negotiates with him to do so, so that the two don't have to fight each other. Cú Chulainn is initially reluctant as he's terrified of looking like a coward, but Fergus says he'll later run away from Cú Chulainn at a pivotal moment and turn the tide of battle. This is what ends up happening.

'When he let himself feel his emotions, people got hurt.' Another reference to the ríastrad, and what happens when Cú Chulainn is unrestrained.

Chapter 42

The Morrígan, and Cú Chulainn's rejection of her. As I mentioned in the chapter notes, there's no text in which the Morrígan and Cú Chulainn seem to have a pedagogical relationship. However, she approaches him in TBC and tries to seduce him. He turns her down -- rudely -- saying that he isn't in this for "women's arses". She promises to cause him trouble. In Táin Bó Regamna, they similarly have a challenging/antagonistic relationship. Elsewhere, however, she seems to be helping him. She interferes with his life at various points and may prophesy his death.

The Morrígan taught in a tiny church hall a little way outside Armagh. Armagh is associated with / close to Emain Macha, home of Conchobar and the Ulaid.

Cú Chulainn (and Ferdia) having to prove themselves over and over again, with the judgment as to their skills not being accepted. This is a reference to Fled Bricrenn, in which Cú Chulainn's worthiness to receive the champion's portion is repeatedly challenged by the two others competing for it, and the three are forced to take on increasingly difficult challenges to prove their worthiness. Cú Chulainn excels all three times, and is ultimately awarded the prize.

Scáthach has her sources. Scáthach seems to be a semi-Otherworldly figure, and has the gift of prophecy. Verba Scathaige is a very early text in which she prophesies some of the events of the Táin (telling us a version of the story existed much earlier than any of our surviving copies!).

Chapter 43

Láeg likes driving. Well. He's a charioteer. Not much to this one.

The Morrígan's mysterious contacts / ability to make things go viral. She's one of the Túatha Dé Danann, and a shapeshifter; she can do all sorts of things, and knows all sorts of people. She's also compared to the Furies in TBC -- with Allecto, specifically -- and inflames the passions of the fighters so that they turn on each other. She'd probably be really great at Twitter.

Morrígan's student who pulled out of the showcase. I had a vague sense like this was Lóch from TBC, who fights Cú Chulainn; the Morrígan helps him by turning into various animals and causing Cú Chulainn a lot of trouble, but CC still ultimately triumphs. I didn't really develop this thread further, but that was my thinking there.

The Morrígan's regret that Cú Chulainn walked away from her. She's pretty pissed when he rejects her in TBC, so that's the main thread there.

Chapter 44 has no new references to explain, just ballet. Chapter 45

Lug is impressed with Cú Chulainn. When Lug comes to Cú Chulainn during TBC, to heal him, he tells him he's done well to fight alone.

"I shouldn't have to be fighting this fight alone, you know? I shouldn't be the one trying to fix things by myself. I'm seventeen, for fuck's sake." TBC is the story of Cú Chulainn's single-handed defense of the Ulaid as a seventeen-year-old, and at one point he speaks a loud lament / complaint that he is being obliged to do so, because it's killing him and he's sick and tired of waiting for backup.

Insecure Cú Chulainn doesn't believe compliments. Although this may seem out of character to many readers, this is actually a direct reference to Fled Bricrenn, where Cú Chulainn refuses to believe that people are cheering for him, instead thinking they're laughing at him. It drives him to fight harder, but it's a sign that he's actually deeply insecure about his position as champion, because he doesn't think others recognise him as such. Jeremy Lowe makes some good comments about this in his article 'Kicking Over The Traces: The Instability of Cú Chulainn'. I find insecure Cú Chulainn fascinating to read and write about since most people assume he is confident.

Is Fergus related to Cú Chulainn? This is a good question. In some versions of Compert Con Culainn, Súaltaim is referred to as 'Súaltaim mac Róich'. This would make him Fergus's brother, making Fergus Cú Chulainn's uncle. However, this relationship is never emphasised in canon and their fosterage bond is more important.

Cú Chulainn's rich uncle. Via Lug and his convoluted family tree, Cú Chulainn is related to most of the Túatha Dé Danann -- you'd probably want Cath Maige Tuired or Lebor Gabala Érinn for details on that front. His rich uncle is one of them, but I couldn't decide what the funniest option was, so I left it unconfirmed.

Chapter 46

Ferdia suggests going abroad. This one's niche, but there's a suuuper late text called Eachtra na gCuradh where I believe Ferdia is part of a group travelling with Cú Chulainn on various international adventures. It doesn't have an English translation, so I haven't got very far with reading it yet. I'm pretty sure Ferdia's in it, though.

Chapter 47

Idh mac Riangabra. Láeg comes from a family of charioteers. In Fled Bricrenn, Idh mac Riangabra is Conall Cernach's charioteer. In the Stowe version of TBC, he's Ferdia's charioteer, and he and Láeg end up fighting each other in an attempt to protect their respective masters. I didn't go for either of these, but I had it so that he's encountered Conall in the past, as a reference to their connection, and the two brothers are at odds with each other, as a nod to Stowe.

Idh studies in Galway, while Láeg went north. As Ferdia's charioteer in TBC-Stowe, Idh would be connected to Connacht; Láeg, as Cú Chulainn's, would be connected to Ulster. This causes tension.

Conall's wanderlust. As mentioned, Conall is a traveller, and stories have him going as far away as Jerusalem in his various wanderings. He rarely seems to settle down in any one place.

Chapter 48

Láeg has Ulster Irish. Irish has three main dialect groupings: Ulster, Connacht, and Munster Irish. (Leinster Irish is extinct.) Láeg greets Idh by asking 'Caidé mar atá tú?', a greeting you'd only really hear in Ulster (versus 'Conas atá tú?' or 'Conas tann tú?' etc in other dialects); Idh responds by asking him if he has Ulster Irish now (not sure non-Irish speakers would have picked up on why he asked that). This is another reference to TBC-Stowe, where the pair of them are on opposite sides of the provincial divide.

Sedlang mac Riangabra. This brother also shows up in Fled Bricrenn, as Loegaire Búadach's charioteer.

Idh did geography. This would be a good subject for a charioteer, as they're expected to be able to navigate and interpret the world around them, explaining it to their masters.

Idh is a taxi driver. Again, this is obvious: he's a charioteer in canon.

Sedlang is a chauffeur. Likewise.

Chapter 49 has no new references. Chapter 50

Fighty Emer. In Fled Bricrenn, Emer is 100% down to cut a bitch to assert her supremacy as the pre-eminent wife among the Ulaid, and to support Cú Chulainn's claim to the champion's portion. In Serglige Con Culainn, she's also totally ready to fight to win back Cú Chulainn after he goes off with Fand.

Pro-riot Morrígan. The Morrígan is a war goddess and therefore would be 100% down for riots and fighting of all sorts, in most cases. She goes looking for trouble and if she doesn't find it, she creates it.

Chapter 51

Ferdia's barre work is not Scáthach's. Prior to their fight in TBC, Cú Chulainn watches Ferdia practising his feats and sees that he has moved on from those they learned together and is now improvising, coming up with new moves that he'll use to fight Cú Chulainn -- making Cú Chulainn briefly doubt whether he can beat him.

Cú Chulainn once again doesn't believe people's compliments. Back to Fled Bricrenn.

Láeg's motivational insults. In TBC, Cú Chulainn asks Láeg to insult him if it looks like he's losing a fight, so that it'll motivate him to fight harder. He does, and it works.

Láeg as the personal driver who gets Cú Chulainn out of trouble. This is basically just the charioteer's entire job description.

Láeg as his big brother. Again, we covered this -- it's always the vibe between them, but there's a version of Compert Con Culainn that makes it literal.

Chapter 52

Láeg has a close-up view of Cú Chulainn and Ferdia's duet. He and Idh (or Ferdia's unnamed charioteer in the non-Stowe versions) are watching their fight in TBC; the rest of the army is further away, like the audience here.

Cú Chulainn jumps into Ferdia's arms and Ferdia 'throws' him. This is a direct reference to their fight in TBC, where Cú Chulainn jumps onto Ferdia's shield and is thrown backwards over the ford, multiple times.

Idh's partner Áed is completely made up and not a reference to anything, but worth explaining that they are wearing a gold fáinne, which is a pin badge to indicate Irish fluency/willingness to speak Irish, hence why Láeg attempts to speak to them in Irish. Láeg assumes this means they met Idh via Gaeilgeoir circles, and is probably correct.

Chapter 53

Cú Chulainn is worried about his reputation. This is a reference to literally every text ever, because medieval Irish literature operates on a shame/honour continuum where reputation is everything. In particular, it references Fled Bricrenn and TBC, as this whole section does, but it's also just Cú Chulainn's entire character.

Ferdia is nervous. In one version of TBC, Ferdia has a sleepless night before his fight with Cú Chulainn and expresses serious nerves and reservations.

They'd pick ballet over each other. As TBC proves, some loyalties go deeper than affection.

The cash prize and the glory can only go to one. Of course, I couldn't let us get away without actually having a Comrac Fir Diad episode -- in keeping with TBC, they have to compete against each other. The Morrígan's part in egging this on is in keeping with her war goddess function in TBC, too.

Chapter 54

Cú Chulainn and Ferdia embracing. In TBC, during their fight, they kiss each night after calling off their bouts for the day -- for the first two nights, at least. Eventually the mood sours, but in the meantime, we have these sad goodbye kisses that kil me every time.

Cú Chulainn wins. Of course he does. In TBC he kills Ferdia. In Fled Bricrenn he is awarded the champion's portion. There's no other way this could have ended. (BUT they won't be separated and nobody will die, because this is a happy fic, even if it has its moments of angst.)

Chapter 55 / Epilogue

There aren't really any new references here, but I thought it was important to show Láeg having a reason to move back in with Cú Chulainn again and throw in a few callbacks to chapter 1 (the shitty toaster, for example). Cú Chulainn is 'only using him for his driving license', i.e. treating Láeg as his charioteer. Láeg is insulting him, because that's his job.

'technically i'm from Connacht'. Not the fucking time, Ferdia.

And that is, I think, everything! I might have missed some things. If there is anything I haven't explained that you thought was a reference, please feel free to ask and I will attempt to explain it. Other than that... enjoy. I hope this has been educational.

One final note is that I did all of this from memory without referring to the texts in question, so if you spot any errors (e.g. I've said something is in one text but you know it's in another), lmk. Would be VERY excited to know which of these references youse spotted and which were news, so if you've made it to the end of this almost-7,000-word post, please slide into my inbox and tell me.

FINALLY if you have not read In Loco Parentis but this post made you want to, I would be delighted if you would do that. Please leave me comments. Thanks.

#it's a shitty college au of the tain and i love it #in loco parentis #medieval irish #ulster cycle #tain bo cuailnge #fled bricrenn #longes mac nuislenn #compert con culainn #aided derbforgaill #now with fewer typos and no accidental misgendering of áed #sorry áed

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qqueenofhades · 3 years

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Any particularly ignorant or irritating students you’ve ever been stuck with in your classes? Blatantly fishing for stories because you tell them so well!

Aha, for the most part, I have been fairly lucky, and haven't had any loudmouth white supremacists or similar. Though there was one student in my very first year of teaching where I couldn't figure out how they even got into the university (which is one of the top-10 schools in the UK, and thus not a place where you can coast in). They did not appear to have ever heard of page breaks, citations, paragraphs, structured arguments, or even remotely comprehensible writing, and since I was unsure if I, as rookie junior faculty, could outright fail them, I just gave them the lowest grade possible. Then they did a final exam that.... uh, was not an exam, and I had to be like "nope sorry this is trash, you have to redo it." (As I recall, they did pass the resit, so maybe this wasn't entirely wasted?)

I'm not sure if that person was going through some things or what, but that's probably the worst. Though I did tend to get student emails like "help I don't know where to find this!" and the answer would be "....please look on page 3 of the syllabus. Again."

I would also get the expected clangers in student essays, where they made the most amazing broad-scale (and obviously totally untrue) claims and I would just sit there like... where does this come from? Is there some of communal Bad Medieval Osmosis in the ether? (I mean yes, there is, but the specificity was sometimes jaw-dropping.) Were you personally there? Did you observe this? Ah, to have the confidence of a first-year undergrad firmly proclaiming that all medieval people were coerced and brainwashed by the all-powerful Catholic church (to name one that popped up frequently). Truly.

#erynalasse #ask #history

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oakensherwood · 3 years

Text

Okay, let’s talk about Maid Marian. Let’s really talk about Marian. So often I see her character disparaged as a damsel in distress without agency of her own, but that is honestly so far from the truth. In fact, Maid Marian is considered to be one of the earliest examples of the “strong, independent woman” character archetype. Not only is it untrue to call her a damsel in distress, it’s also unfair.

As with many stories, Robin Hood is a story filled with men. I love it, but there’s no denying it’s a story filled with men. As the only prominent female character in a story that has been retold for close to 1000 years, centuries of ideas about femininity have been funneled into this singular character. Among the array of male characters, we see many ways to be masculine: smart, witty, artistic, strong, brave, charitable, loyal, both fighters and lovers. All of the characters have been adapted through the years, but Marian can still be distinguished as the only canonically present female character in the main cast.

Other women we traditionally see include Alan’s bride, the Prioress of Kirklees Abbey who murders Robin, Marian’s serving woman, and a few queens. Various contemporary novels, films, and TV representations have added women to the cast to even it out, but Marian is still the only primary female cast member. As such, centuries of what it can mean to be a woman have been reflected through her.

Let’s take a look at what exactly that has looked like through the years.

One of the things I love best about Robin Hood as a legend is that it is constantly evolving and changing for the needs of the audience. Across centuries and decades it has been changed to suit the ideas of the day. Even the oldest extant documentation of Robin Hood is not considered the “original version” because there is no way of really knowing when or how these stories started, or how long it took for them to be written down.

So, just as there isn’t a standardized Robin Hood, there isn’t a standardized Maid Marian. We know that she was added later in the Robin Hood tradition, during the 15th century as part of May Day celebrations, and quickly became a common character in future iterations of the Robin Hood story. Her origins are still murky at best, and it’s impossible to pinpoint the very first time she was introduced.

Her many origins include a shepherdess named Clorinda from Child Ballad 149, an unrelated Marian character in 15th century May Day games who happens to also have a lover named Robin, and a historically based woman named Matilda Fitzwalter appears in Anthony Munday’s “Huntingdon” plays from the 15th century. Furthest from our understanding of Marian is a play titled Robin Hood and the Friar, very merry and full of pastime, proper to be played in May Games. In this play we find Marian as a “trull” a.k.a. prostitute, employed by Friar Tuck. A far cry from how we know both Marian and Friar Tuck today. So far, she’s a working woman, a noblewoman, a romantic interest, and a prostitute.

The best known and most enduring of these early variations is Child Ballad 150 (you can read it in full here). In this ballad, we see Marian dress as a boy, and go into the forest fully armed, to seek out her lover, Robin Hood. When she finds him and does not recognize him, they begin to fight and Marian handily beats him in their sword fight. Robin immediately asks her to join the Merry Men, they recognize each other, and return to camp for feasting and a “happily ever after” full of adventures.

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- Child Ballad 150

“With quiver and bow, sword, buckler and all,

Thus armed was Marian most bold.”

This ballad is reminiscent of introductory stories of the Merry Men -- Robin meets a stranger, they fight, the stranger wins, and Robin offers them a place in his band.

We can clearly see in Child Ballad 150 that Marian was considered Robin’s equal and a regular member of the group from early on her individual tradition. Other parts of her early tradition survive as well -- she’s a romantic partner for Robin, and a noblewoman.

As we progress forward in Robin Hood traditions, we continue to see the story change. Notable changes occur during the Victorian period, when general interest in Robin Hood stories was revived thanks to the publication of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819) and Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883). Marian does not appear in Ivanhoe and is mentioned only once in Pyle’s book, and is effectively written out of the story entirely.

Despite this, we see other novels and stories released as Robin Hood grows in popularity, and here is where we begin to see the idea of a damsel in distress begin to gain traction. As is true in every retelling of Robin Hood, the story changed to suit its audience and to suit the ideas of contemporary society and intended audience.

Victorian literature is full of interesting and lesser known works of Robin Hood, as a result of a Victorian obsession with medievalism and with Robin Hood. Maid Marian and Robin Hood: A Romance of Old Sherwood (1892) by J.E. Muddock features a very distressed Marian who does need rescued and has very little agency. Other Victorian works take a similar tone and cast Marian as a damsel, but this is not the narrative that ultimately survives this period of Robin Hood resurgence.

Thomas Love Peacock published a novella simply titled Maid Marian (1822). Interesting to note, because Robin only appears briefly as a supporting character in Ivanhoe, this is actually the first true Robin Hood novel as a story by itself. Here we see an active, and independent Marian, evocative of Child Ballad 150.

‘Well, father,’ added Matilda, ‘I must go into the woods.’

‘Must you?’ said the Baron, ‘I say you must not.’

‘But I am going,’ said Matilda.

‘But I will have up the drawbridge,’ said the baron.

‘But I will swim the moat,’ said Matilda.

‘But I will secure the gates,’ said the baron.

‘But I will leap from the battlement,’ said Matilda.

‘But I will lock you in an upper chamber,’ said the baron.

‘But I will shred the tapestry,’ said Matilda, ‘and let myself down.’

- Thomas Love Peacock, Maid Marian (1822)

Matilda does indeed go to the woods, takes on the name Maid Marian, and rules the forest with Robin Hood. Other Victorian works take a similar approach to Marian and show her as involved and capable including Maid Marian, or the Forest Queen (1849) by Joaquim Stocqueler, which follows a more traditional Robin Hood storyline filled with adventures and danger.

Later classic works include an active Marian as a member of the outlaw band, as well. Roger Lancelyn Green (1956), Charles E. Vivian (1927), and Paul Creswick (1917) all write a Marian who speaks for herself and works with the outlaws, often dressed as a man.

Hollywood enters the scene of Robin Hood retellings as early as 1908, but the oldest surviving Robin Hood film is Douglas Fairbanks’ Robin Hood (1922). This silent movie, groundbreaking in budget and sets, features Marian (played by Enid Bennet) as a strong character who holds her own throughout the film. After this, we see another groundbreaking film, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. This film is widely thought to be the gold standard of Robin Hood films, and I am definitely in that camp. Marian has more agency in this movie, and the lovely Olivia plays a rather coy noblewoman. While we don’t see her taking up a sword in this film, we see her developing the plan that ultimately rescues Robin from the hangman’s noose, successfully warning Robin and his men of Prince John’s plans, and standing her ground while on trial and defending her ideals. Yes, she is rescued from prison in the climax of the movie, but she also plays a vital role in rescuing Robin earlier in the story.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) begins with a woman of action, but at the end sees Marian rather helplessly forced into a marriage and moments away from being sexually assaulted when Robin literally catapults himself through the window to save her. 20 years later in Robin Hood (2010) Cate Blanchett’s Marian is fully capable in combat and is shown to be a responsible and dedicated lady of Loxley, working the fields and caring for her home.

Meanwhile in a contemporary TV adaptation, Marian is depicted as a Robin Hood figure herself, known as the Nightwatchman. (2006, BBC’s Robin Hood) Although the writers later did a disservice by (unpopularly) killing her character as a season finale, Marian was still depicted as competent and in charge of her own choices and actions, and in fact rescues herself from an unwanted marriage.

Contemporary Robin Hood literature also features an active Marian. Jennifer Roberson’s Lady of the Forest (1995) and Lady of Sherwood (1999) present Marian as a noblewoman who, over the course of the text, takes control of her own story in her capacity as a member of gentry, Lauren Johnson’s The Arrow of Sherwood (2013) sees an incredibly historically inclined retelling of the Robin Hood story, and includes a dedicated and politically savvy Marian. She doesn’t run into the forest, but makes a real difference through her smart decisions and political manipulation. Robin McKinely’s The Outlaws of Sherwood features Marian as an excellent archer, better than Robin, and she easily slips in and out of the outlaw camp as needed, is skilled in woodscraft, and is a valued and substantial member of the outlaw group. Honestly, I think it would be difficult to find a literary retelling that doesn’t include an active Marian character.

So where do our ideas of Marian as a damsel in distress ultimately come from? I have a few theories.

First, we see the archetype of damsels in distress throughout other fairy tales and folklore, so it’s tempting to assume that Marian is the same and portray her as such, and there are examples of her character playing that role either in whole, or for part of the narrative.

There are unfair assumptions made about medieval women in general, that ignore the powerful positions women could hold, and the amazing things that women did during this period. When people picture medieval women, they are often embroidering tapestries, being forced into unwanted marriages, being beaten by their husbands, and dying in childbirth. There is truth in stereotypes, but there’s also room for deeper understanding of the historical context, and a wider story to be told that includes women standing up for themselves and exercising their own strength and skills. (It’s not good feminism to overwrite real women’s history.)

We see this stereotype most often in movies and TV adaptations, which are highly visible and memorable, cementing ideas about the Robin Hood legend (and Marian) in the general psyche.

Children’s picture books, perhaps one of the first introductions a person might have to Robin Hood, tend to play out the story like a traditional fairy tale and Marian is again likely found in an upper tower, calling for help.

Some find it demeaning for Marian to ever require saving, or to be saved by anyone other than herself. I feel differently about this. People rely on other people, and it’s not inherently weak to ask for support from someone, especially from a romantic partner. The story of Robin Hood is good fun, but it’s also full of danger and peril. It’s not surprising that various characters need to be rescued by friends and lovers throughout various tales. Robin Hood, Little John, Will Stutely, Sir Richard of the Lea, Alan A Dale’s bride, and yes, Maid Marian. All of these characters have stories where they require smart and daring rescues, and they’re exciting stories! Because Alan’s bride and Marian are women, this does not exempt them from the support of their male friends. They deserve to have someone watching their back. I am not offended by Marian needing help; it’s not only human, it’s a staple for a multitude of characters in Robin Hood lore.

As with much of media, Marian is the single female in what’s otherwise mostly a boys’ club. She has been the single point of reference in this story for women for centuries. I find that incredible. She was my favorite character as a child because she was the only woman, the only person I could potentially see myself in. With a global story such as Robin Hood, that’s not an insignificant role. No matter what her part may be in any given retelling, there are pieces of women from centuries long past and not so distant. I find that fascinating, worth respecting, and that’s why she’s my favorite character to this day.

tldr: Drink your respect Maid Marian juice.

#maid marian #robin hood #long post #my gang to me 2021

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guiltridden · 3 years

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𝙒𝙃𝙔 𝙏𝙃𝙀 '𝙇𝙀𝘼𝙑𝙀' 𝙀𝙉𝘿𝙄𝙉𝙂 𝙄𝙎 𝘾𝘼𝙉𝙊𝙉 𝙏𝙊 𝙈𝙀. * * * SPOILERS AHEAD * * * Silent Hill 2 is designed to have a result determined by the player / audience — So why do many, myself included, canonize LEAVE and why is it mainverse for this blog? We all know James is suicidal; and after uncovering the truth about what he did to Mary, the IN WATER ending does align with that & his mental state. But I find that to be very inconsistent in his conversation with Pyramid Head(s) during his final encounter with him ( as well as confessing to Angela he wouldn’t kill himself despite how severe his suicidal thoughts are ) — He understands the purpose of Pyramid Head now, and claims that it’s “ time to end this ” meaning James wants to be free of this living nightmare and SHED HIS GUILT; He sounds very determined which to me, is not the energy of someone about to end their lives. THOUGH, this is understandably interpreted by some as James giving up & giving in to his suicidal Depression. But in my last post about James’ story, I mentioned that I feel Alessa brought James to Silent Hill because with them both dealing with heavy trauma, she would have extended compassion and a tough sense of mercy to him, wanting him to ‘wake up’ and have a chance to pursue redemption. A lot of people take Frank ( James’ dad ) saying James & Mary ‘ disappeared ’ at face value, meaning death, but ‘ disappeared ’ does not mean they died; James committed murder, meaning he would have had to live off the grid, and would not return to Ashfield — Or perhaps he did, but much like the events with Rose & Sharon in the 2006 Silent Hill movie, he & Laura are in some sort of purgatory haven created by Alessa.

𝙒𝙃𝙔 𝙋𝙔𝙍𝘼𝙈𝙄𝘿 𝙃𝙀𝘼𝘿 𝙄𝙎 𝙉𝙊𝙏 𝘼 𝙎𝙀𝙓𝙐𝘼𝙇 𝙎𝙔𝙈𝘽𝙊𝙇. Both James & Pyramid Head alike are widely misinterpreted as being sexual deviants — This stems from the stigma surrounding libido. NOWHERE in canon does James convey any type of sexual deviant behavior; In fact he proves himself to be the opposite. His sexual frustration is because he can no longer show his love to Mary, due to her illness and poor physical state. Keep in mind James is still healthy and would still have his libido as it was before save for his Depression. He is angry, scared, and longing for his wife. 𝘽𝙐𝙏 𝙃𝙀 𝙄𝙎 𝙇𝙊𝙔𝘼𝙇 𝙏𝙊 𝙃𝙀𝙍 and doesn’t stray. He makes this abundantly clear. As for Pyramid Head . . . Ito himself has said that Pyramid Head does NOT represent anything sexual nor is he r*ping any of the monsters. Ito is frustrated at the misunderstanding & misuse of the Red Pyramid, and has also confirmed that he is relevant & canon ONLY TO JAMES and to see him anywhere else ( in popular / canon media, not fanmade content or writing ) is very untrue to PH’s character and purpose. I can’t help but agree — Pyramid Head is part of James. They co - exist because of each other. Pyramid Head’s existence is as a judge to punish James and to open his eyes and this is further proven by the purpose of PH’s appearance; it represents the Judas Cradle, a notorious medieval torture device . . . a symbol of pain & punishment. Maria and her seductive appearance ( as well as the nurses in Brookhaven ) are the only sex symbols, designed by Silent Hill to lure James, to give into his sexual frustration and his loneliness by being with Maria whose sole purpose, against her own knowledge, is to keep James there with her to fall deeper in delusion. James’ sex drive is a small part of his guilt and mental instability; It does not rule him, neither does it rule Pyramid Head, as it is largely misinterpreted.

#𝙩𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙝𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩 ╱ headcanon.#𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙜 ╱ queue.#I tried to find the tweet to link it as a source for ito's statements #but I couldn't find em anywhere #too long ago probably

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dhwty-writes · 4 years

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What are some historical misconceptions, that really annoy you?

Oh man... You know, I’m really curious what caused you to send this message to me (and whatever it was, do it more often). Saddle up, nonny, you’re in for a ride

The short answer is: basically, everything that has to do with the middle ages (I’m a middle ages nerd, this is My Thing). I don’t know how, but somehow people manage to make it more horrible than it was, while simultaneously romanticizing it.

The long answer? Glad you asked! This got kinda long, so I put it under a read more.

So, basically everything that promotes the idea of “dark middle ages” you can cross out as bullshit that scholars from the 16th and 17th century try to sell to you. They are those who first introduced the term Middle Ages, as literal “middling” period between the antiquity they idolised and the enlightened modernity they saw themselves as part of.

So, here’s two things to remember about the middle ages:

1) It was better and worse than you think.

And 2) you’re not thinking of the middle ages, you’re thinking of the Renaissance.

Here, let me show you:

Medieval people were unwashed and dirty. Wrong. There were plenty of bathhouses in the cities and people in the countryside (so, most of them) bathed in rivers. No, they didn’t bathe as often as we do, but they did do so between several times a week-several times a month. Also, if they didn’t have a full bath, they wiped themselves down with a cloth. They also kept their faces and hands clean. The aversion to water began in the 16th century.

Witch hunts. Nope. The large ones are 16th century stuff.

Persecution of Jews. Well, yes. There were a few smaller-scale pogroms. The large ones you’re looking for is the Inquisition. 16th century again.

Knights wore full-body plate armour. Wrong. The full-body armour began emerging in the late 14th century. In the nine centuries before they wore a lot of mail and leather. Plate was worn until the end of the 15th century and even longer in the Americas.

Dainty women had no idea what sex was. That’s so wrong I don’t even know where to begin. First of all, please be aware that those dainty women (AKA members of the high nobility) belonged to the upper 0.1-3% of the populace. 90% of the people were rural peasants, the rest lived in cities. But even in the cities, even in a castle you are constantly surrounded by people or even animals having sex. And most people regardless of their sex, had had sex before marriage, if they didn’t belong to those 0.1-3%, even the women.

Everyone died when they were like 20. No. Just no. The average is mid-forties. In a society with up to 1 in 3 children dying before the age of 7 that average seems high, doesn’t it? We also know that people were considered adolescents well into their twenties. So, basically what that means is: if you made it to 15, you had good chances of making it to 50 as well.

Children were just considered tiny adults. That’s actually something I found not so long ago to be false and I was so happy! Basically, this can be disproven by various facts: first of all, there were laws about when you could marry and get betrothed (7 years for a betrothal and 12 and 14 for marriage for girls and boys respectively). This shows us that there was some sense of “oh, they’re too young to be considered adults”. And the second thing is very obvious: we have toys. So many toys that were obviously played with. You wouldn’t have that if children were just tiny adults.

Last point: Girls were married off repeatedly to men old enough to be their grandfathers. I am so glad that I can say that that is very untrue. I had already mentioned these ages, but still, that’s awfully young. So, let me talk a bit more about this. If you look at the documents you can see that the common people usually married in their late teens/early twenties (when they had finished their apprenticeships). As for the nobility, of course there were exceptions. There are examples when boys and girls would be married even earlier or just on the cusp of reaching the age requirements. But if that was the case, the bride and the groom were usually of the relative same age. And it was customary for brides to live with their own family until they were fourteen at least. If you’re thinking of Margaret Beaufort (who was 13 or 14 at the point of Henry VII’s birth), please consider that that was a) heavily frowned upon and b) during the Renaissance (again).

Next is something that really annoys me on this site, which is the refusal to believe historians and instead choosing to believe some post on the internet, mostly without sources.

Yes, it’s true that there is sexism/racism/homophobia in academia and especially in history. It’s true that there are a lot of untold stories. And of course I’d prefer the stories about queer people/PoC/women in positions of power to be true. A lot of them even are.

But. BUT. History is part of academia and like with sciences there are a few ground rules. The most important of those is that if you have a thought you need to prove it. And if someone else talked about that topic first, you need to disprove that first.

So, many of these posts floating around that claim that historians are actually hiding the truth from us, should learn to interact with sources. Because so often there might be sources to suggest such things, but they are not unambiguous, or simply not numerous enough to act as proof!

Thanks for this ask, nonny, I had a blast!

Sources:

Classen, Albrecht. Handbook of Medieval Culture. De Gruyter, 2015. 3 vols.

Cybulskie, Danièle. Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction. Pen and Sword Books, 2019.

Spieß, Karl-Heinz. Familie und Verwandtschaft im deutschen Hochadel des Spätmittelalters. 2nd ed., Franz Steiner Verlag, 2015.

#history #fabi's foolishness #did I spent 1 hour on this instead of doing homework?#absolutely #thanks for the question nonny!#Anonymous #look i've got an ask

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theradioghost · 4 years

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Can you talk more about the history of the language and storytelling techniques/conventions of audio dramas? That's an incredibly intriguing concept but I wouldn't have the first idea where to look for more info about it. It reminds me a lot of the idea of video game literacy and how a lot of games aren't accessible to people who are brand new to video games because there are so many established conventions that aren't explained to new players

It has taken me nearly a month to reply to this, which I know is in reply to this post, and I am sorry for that! But also, yes!!!!! Hell yes, yes, I see exactly what you mean about the video game stuff.

Unfortunately I think there’s not much out there already written about the developing conventions of the new wave of audio drama. In large part, I think, because coverage of new audio fiction from outside the community has been so notoriously poor. But maybe also partly because there seems to be a strangely negative take on classic radio drama from a lot of the US sector within that community? Which I think really comes down to exactly the things I was talking about -- Old radio drama feels wrong to a lot of people now, because its storytelling language just doesn’t exist in our culture the way it once did; and even fewer people are familiar with late-20th-century American audio fiction like ZBS that might feel more comfortable or closer to other present-day mass media storytelling techniques. I see it claimed sometimes that there’s something inherently unsophisticated about old time radio storytelling, which is just flat out untrue, and I would highly encourage anyone who’s wondering to check out something like the “Home Surgery” episode of Gunsmoke or “The Thing on the Fourble Board” from Quiet, Please to see just how effective and well-done a lot of those old shows were.

(Leaving the UK out of this, because audio fiction stayed way more prominent there and I do not think the same problems exist, and leaving everywhere else out because unfortunately I just don’t know enough about how the medium fared elsewhere, or how it’s doing now. Alas.)

I’ve been thinking lately about parallels to this in other media that I have been able to study and read other people’s writing on, and I think a good comparison is possibly novels? The western “novel” as we think of it is really something that didn’t exist at all until about the 18th century (there are earlier works that have been kind of retroactively labeled ‘novels,’ some of them centuries earlier, but even if they have the characteristics of what we now call a novel, they’re very much disconnected from the evolution of the novel as something we have a name and a definition for). There are no novels from the medieval period, from the Renaissance. There are books as long as novels, but they’re not novels.

The thing is, when you read 18th and even 19th century novels, it shows, because the techniques for telling a story in that form hadn’t been really figured out yet. What you get is a lot of meandering, episodic doorstoppers, some of which have hundreds of pages before the main characters even enter the picture. A lot of writers at the time, and into the 19th century, actually hated the whole concept of novels. I think it’s a bit like going back and watching Monsters, Inc. and then watching Monsters University. The first one was revolutionary, yeah, and it’s a good movie still, but it’s not hard to see the visual difference between the two just in terms of the tools that the people making them had available to them. Before you can write a story or animate hundreds of thousands of individual hairs on one character, you have to figure out how.

One of the big, obvious things about novels from that period, though, is that many of them are first-person, and many are epistolary. It’s hard to find one that isn’t supposedly a memoir or a journal or a set of letters. The third-person perspective in long-form prose was something that had to be figured out; it didn’t just exist in the void, automatically summoned into existence the moment we started writing novels, which I think is really fascinating. There’s a lot of work in those early novels that’s being put into explaining why, and how, and to whom the story is being told. Because otherwise, how does it make sense that the book exists? It’s not a poem, or a play; it’s not taking the form of a traditional story or myth, not attempting to be an epic. Those early novels were about contemporary, real-seeming people, so the writers and audiences wanted an explanation for how the story had been recorded that relied on other existing forms of writing -- letters, journals, memoirs, sometimes claiming to be older texts that had been “found” (gothic novelists seemed to like this one). Sometimes the narrative voice is just the author using first person to actively tell you the story. They hadn’t yet bought into the presumption that we take for granted now, that a novel can have a voice that knows everything, without being the voice of any character in it.

And I think that it’s fascinating how similar that is to the heavy use of recording media as frame narrative in modern audio drama. It’s worth noting: classic radio drama doesn’t do this like we do now. By far, the standard for OTR is the same as the third-person omniscient perspective, the film camera; the storytelling presumes that you’re not going to need an explanation for how you’re hearing this. The audiences those shows were made for were used to fiction told solely in audio, in a way that a lot of modern audiences are not, and so that narrative leap of faith was kind of inherently presumed.

There’s also a way more common use of omniscient or internal narration in old radio drama that I feel like I mostly see now only in shows that are deliberately calling back to old styles and genres. A good example is The Penumbra; we hear Juno’s internal thoughts, just like so many of the noir-style detectives from the 40s and 50s I grew up listening to, and we never really ask why or how. (Except, of course, when the show pokes fun at this affectation, which I think really only works because it feels more like lampshading the stock character tropes of noir, as opposed to the actual audio storytelling technique it facilitates.) To take it further, there are some old radio shows like the sitcom Our Miss Brooks which go so far as to use an actual omniscient narrator to facilitate a lot of the scene transitions, but do so in a much more confident and comfortable way than modern shows like Bubble, where the narration reeks of “we’re making this audio drama in the hopes we can finally make the TV show, and we actually hate this medium and don’t know how to work in it, so rather than learning how to make what’s happening clear with just audio, we’re going to tell you what’s happening and then reference that we’re just telling you what’s happening.”

Bubble’s narration doesn’t work, because it’s actively pushing against the show, telling you things that sound design could have told you just as easily, sometimes actively acknowledging that the narration feels wrong instead of just not using narration. Our Miss Brooks is admittedly not one of my favorite old radio shows, but its use of narration is much smoother, because it’s written with a confidence that it’s only being used to clarify the the things that would be the absolute hardest to show with audio alone; confidence that they know how to tell everything else with sound. Internal narration from the likes of Juno Steel or Jack St. James or my favorite classic detective Johnny Dollar works because noir as a genre is inherently tied to the expressionist movement, where the (highly idiosyncratic) personality and worldview of the characters literally shapes how the world around them appears to the audience; it works to hear their thoughts, because we’re seeing the world through their eyes. We don’t have to know how they’re saying this to us, they just are.

None of which is at all to say that there’s anything inherently wrong with using framing devices! Actually the opposite, kind of. First of all, because I genuinely do think that it’s a sign that we are actively, at this moment learning how to tell these stories, and how to listen to them, which is just so, so exciting I don’t even have words to express it. And secondly, because as a person who loves thinking about stories and storytelling enough to write this kind of ridiculous essay, I am obsessed with metafiction. I’m a sucker for the likes of Archive 81, The Magnus Archives, Welcome to Night Vale, Station to Station, Greater Boston, Within the Wires. They’re stories that take the questions that framing devices are used to answer for writers and audiences who don’t feel comfortable not asking them -- Why is this story being told? Who is telling it? Who is it being told to? -- and use those questions to the full advantage of the story, exploring character, creating beautifully effective horror, creating a bond with the listener. (Hell, one of the admittedly many things that Midnight Radio was about for me was exploring how much value and comfort I have found in listening to stories that acknowledged I was listening to them.) I think, though, that not all stories necessarily are their best selves when they feel like they have to address those questions, and as fiction podcasts become a bit more mainstream I’m really hoping that writers will feel more comfortable in trusting the audience to suspend that disbelief, and that audiences will feel more comfortable doing it, and that framing devices will be less unjustly maligned.

Of course, all of that is focused on writing techniques, and I think that’s because I’m a writer who has studied writing! I know very little concretely about the part of audio storytelling that relies on sound design, so while I have a definite feeling that classic and modern audio fiction is using different sound design languages, or that the audio language of British audio drama (where there’s much more continuity in the history of the medium) is different from audio fiction from elsewhere, that’s a lot harder for me to put into words like this. It’s something I would desperately love to see explored by someone who did know that field intimately, though.

#there also ARE books out there about (mainly classic) audio fiction and I really need to read some of them #anyway! here's today's ridiculous ramble about The Medium #hope this was maybe enjoyable and/or interesting rather than just self indulgent lmao #stories and media tag #geekeryisafoot #asks #my posts

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zpetlovesglitter · 4 years

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The Wicked Powers Theories

The Wicked Powers has recently been getting me excited WAY too much - which says a lot about how weird I am since Cassie hasn’t even started on it yet (LOL).

aND, so, I kind of thought it’d be nice to jot down some predictions and theories on how the series might go and maybe some thoughts on THE SHIPS (that really do be the real TEA).

So.Here we go.And do let me know about any thoughts you have on this topic as well - I read anything about TWP like a crazed creature these days istg.

1)The POV has already been envisioned to be from Ty, Dru and Kit. I absolutely love this settlement since they are all very intriguing characters. Ty is an interesting person and his actions are always unpredictable, so we might enjoy this one. And,I believe he is at The Scholomance while the story progresses, followed by Livvy (Ghost Livvy, I mean).It’s still unclear what Livvy’s situation is, so I can’t wait to know more about that - it’s bound to be something unexpected. And, as for Dru, it’s kinda obvious. We all know that WE HAVE A LOVE TRIANGLE COMING UP. But, other than that, we also know she attends The Academy and finally starts to makes some friends and even has that really close Italian (..or was it Spanish???) Shadowhunter friend who’s her age and Cassie also revealed that the two are really tight indeed. And I will be honing in on the Love Triangle soon - I told you I’ll be trying to spill whatever tea I’m guessing at. And, as for the last character WE HAVE KIT! OMFG YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE OLDER BROTHER KIT.LIKE GOSH DARN IT HE IS SO ADORABLE AND MINA IS SO EFFING CUTE I CAN’T EVEN- AND KIT’S TRAINING WITH JEM AND HE IS GOING TO BE A WELL-TRAINED SHADOWHUNTER IN TWP, SO YAYYYY!! And, I absolutely CANNOT wait for MinaXKit interactions, they are the cutest siblings ever and I absolutely know that Mina grows up to be sarcastic. I can’t wait for the possible sarcastic arguments between Kit and 4-year old Mina. YOU THINK I FORGOT ABOUT KITxTY? NOPE.THE REAL SHET’S COMING UP.

2)Now,we know that the storyline is going to have something to do with that Faerie Heirloom that was from the Rosales Family. And, Cassie also said it was going to be kind of an Arthurian Legend-ish story. If you don’t know the Arthurian Legend, I suggest you read on it. I’m not sure if Cassie meant the characters and LOVE Aspect of it or the LEGEND aspect of it as in the stuff about Excalibur and all. But, for now we’ll view it in both and examine it, shall we?

King Arthur's reign ends after his wife and best knight have an affair.

This is the drama in the legend.But, there are no relationships with the MCs yet. So idk. I’m clueless. Like, maybe Dru has a relationship?? Okay I’m clutching at practically nothingness so don’t judge me. :/

So,it’s obviously something to do with the LEGEND.

I am afraid I cannot say too much about it, since I have never read too deeply about it. But, here’s some of the basics:

-He managed to pull out Excalibur from the rock it was stuck in.

-He wielded Excalibur for the people and not for his own self-interest.

-He gets help from a wizard named Merlin.

-The peeps go on a quest.

And I have this reference from a website..I’ll hit u with the link as well, if you’d like to read more on it like I did

Arthurian legend, the body of stories and medieval romances, known as the matter of Britain, centring on the legendary king Arthur. Medieval writers, especially the French, variously treated stories of Arthur’s birth, the adventures of his knights, and the adulterous love between his knight Sir Lancelot and his queen, Guinevere. This last situation and the quest for the Holy Grail (the vessel used by Christ at the Last Supper and given to Joseph of Arimathea) brought about the dissolution of the knightly fellowship, the death of Arthur, and the destruction of his kingdom.

(I’ve linked it with the text above.)

So,now I thought this was interesting- the destruction part. After all, it’s something I’m expecting about the Shadowhunters. Will the Clave maybe be destroyed? Or maybe Faerie will be destroyed? So,there were three things that brought on this uh Destruction.FIRST, his wife and his best buddy were going behind his back and doing them lovey-dovey stuff. And they all go on some quest to retrieve something important to them. So, this sounds like something plausible to be the plot of TWP. Maybe the Heirloom’s missing? And who goes on the quest though? Maybe they venture through Faerie? BLAH MY HEAD HURTS SOME THINGS ARE BETTER TO BE SURPRISED WITH ;)

-----I kinda scrolled back up while writing about Janus down there and remembered CLARY MIGHT BE TAKEN HOSTAGE LIKE YESS AND THEY GO FIND HER MAYBE?

3)We will defo see Christina, Mark and Kieran at some point- no worries, Emma and Julian too. Happy Couples! XD

4)So,then we can look forward to Dru and Jaime’s interactions. I am absolutely excited for this the most, as a shipper of the two. If you remember, we saw Jaime ignoring her for a while back there at the end of QOAAD and then he says “See ya at the Academy soon ig”. I really do hope they meet and hang out as friends, at least. I am excited to see what kind of trope it’s gonna be tho. Like, do they ignore each other and remain awkward until they start the adventure stuff in the book where they eventually have to talk to each other after years or smth. Or, maybe they’re really good friends rn. But, what I’ll warn y’all shippers is that they might not end up together, and could wind up as brother-sister-ish kind of best buddies. Which is equally cute a relationship imo. It’s a really sweet thing to be, really. I lowkey hope Cassie spins something beautiful for their relationship like a sibling-like best friends kind of thing. But, I feel like they might have feelings for each other in secret. Or maybe they date. Or maybe they suppress their secret-feelings for the sake of friendship later on in the book and end up having that really sweet friendship I was talking about.There are SO many options and that is precisely why I am so freaking excited.

5)JAIME ROCIO ROSALES. Like, I have this gut feeling that he might end up being my fave male protagonist character in TSC. He’s got it ALL. Like, the sense of humour, the looks, the bubbly yet brooding personality, the quirks and OFC THE FRICKING NAME ITSELF IS CUTE AF LIKE BRUH I CANNOT WAIT TO READ ABOUT HIM.I have so much to say about Jaime but I’d rather we let ourselves simply wait for the crumbs Cassie might give us or maybe reread all his parts in TDA like I do everyday or just wait for the book to come out rather than simp for someone we know nothing about yet....

6)Ash Morgenstern. He’s a cute lil bean. That was random and untrue lmao. He’s not a ‘lil bean’. He’s totally badass with dem wings and all, but we know he’s soft inside for Janus and ofc Dru, I believe. I find him the most intriguing character, honestly. I would love to know what goes through his head. He’s actually, like, the one character in TSC that I don’t have all figured out. He gon surprise us all for sure tho. He is awesome. That’s all I have to say for now. And he looks up to Janus which is SO GODDAMN SWEET AHHHH. And THE WINGS I CANNOT WAIT TO READ MORE ABOUT THE WINGS IT SOUNDED SO BADASS ISTG I LITERALLY CANNOT WAIT GOSH DARN IT. But he really do be a cute lil bean lowkey tho.

7)Kit and Ty LOL. I have no words really. But lemme tell you how it might go. There is definitely going to be some kind of reunion. AND THEN THAT’S WHERE IT GETS CUTE. They could either be awkward and we know what tension that gets us-perhaps some whisperings of My Watson...(? ;) and maybe they go all sad and brooding with dem looks later OR, they could be the sweetie-pies they were before and be happy and all HIII BUDDDYYYY MISSED YAAA LESS GO BE DETECTIVES YAY BURN IT UP MAH BUDDY!! Either way it’s going to be cute af and we know it . TRUST IN CASSIE Y’ALL.I trust Cassie to let this ship sail the seven seas and seven more like it deserves.

8)Ash and Dru So, Ash has a strange lil fixation on Dru and I believe he even thought she was ‘pretty’ or something. It was definitely a good adjective, but I think he said ‘pretty’. idk but we know he likes her. and I can imagine a nice relationship. I can picture them with her hair flying in the wind and they meet for the first time or smth. IHNI WHAT IM SAYING. But, there will be DRAMA. They are going to be real cute with each other YOU CAN BET ON THAT.And, by cute I do not necessarily mean ‘Oh, you have the loveliest eyes’ or some shet like that. I have a feeling it’s going to be a case of ‘Well,that’s not weird or anything YOU WEIRDO - NO U - NO U - NO U’ However this relationship is going to go, I know that it’ll be a sweet one.And, for all you shippers of these two, I have no assurances that HE IS THE ONE or anything but he is definitely a candidate. Jaime is going to be some competition I can tell. So, idk. It depends on the Jaime x Dru ship to decide things for Ash x Dru ship imo, since it might be a no-brainer if the two have feelings for each other- I mean,Jaime is an actually perfect love interest in TSC, while Ash is strong potential Best-Friend material, so it’s ONLY if Jaime and Dru don’t like each other that way that Ash could make it as a love interest. So, if y’all wanna find out what’s in it for you guys, ask Cassie maybe about how the Jaime x Dru ship might go, the next time u wanna ask her ;)

9)Tavvy and maybe the kid Helen and Aline might have had We were getting hints of another baby, so HERE WE GO.Tavvy might have a playmate. :D. YAYYYYYYYYYY

10)Janus I’m honestly worried about him. He is a worrisome character. I hate empathising with the antagonist, personally. AAAAHHHH . I hope we see some character development in him. I really don’t want to see him as an antagonist in the story. He’s sweet and feels cheated, but he should realise that it ain’t Jace’s fault but SEBASTIAN’S fault. I would like for him to make amends with Jace :( And, also, he might get the story started in TWP tho idk. But, seriously tho, when he went home in that short story and Ash asked, “I thought you were gone forever?” or something of that sort and he shook his head sadly and Ash went soft for him. Like, that fricking broke my heart. I love this relationship tho. And, i hope Clary and him can be good friends. But, I feel like he might end up dying to save her or smth and make us all cry . T_T

11)WHAT TF IS GOING ON WITH THE SHADOWHUNTER POLITICS RN THO?HOW AND WHERE ARE THEY ALL SURVIVING TOGETHER WHAT IS THEIR SYSTEM AND STUFF THIS IS NOT A POINT WITH POTENTIAL THEORIES COZ HONESTLY I WANT TO BE SURPRISED BUT I THINK THEY MIGHT ALL JUST BE IN HIDING AND THEN IN TWP THEY MIGHT HAVE TO COME OUT FOR A QUEST OR SMTH AND WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE SHADOWHUNTERS AT THE CLIMAX OF THIS WHOLE SERIES??? IT IS THE END OF TSC SO IM SCARED AND KINDA SAD TOO :(((((((

12)Thule We might learn more about the Thule world and maybe they restore it or maybe the Quest is in Thule. idk. we don’t know much, but Thule will most probably be explored a lot. Cassie wouldn’t have opened up Thule for no reason.

13)Zara and Emma Showdown? Befriend e/o ? What’s in store for these two? If it’s a showdown we get to see CORTANA YAY I AM OBSESSED WITH CORTANA NOW BECAUSE OF CORDELIA AND HER OBSESSION GOSH DARN IT WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME

14)BIG WAR I see a huge war coming I just know it. It’s a climax so there MUST be a big war and so I cannot wait! Feel like there’s gonna be some deaths as well. Lowkey feel like Jia might die. I can feel it. :(

15)The best-friend shadowhunter of Dru is a nice thing to look forward to! I can’t wait to read about the two! And I love the fact that Dru is finally exposed to new people. And, for anyone who’s confused as to how she goes to the Academy, in QOAAD she only said she’ll have some maturity done AFTER some years . Those years are over and she at the Academy now hecc yeah I BELIEVE THE BFF IS CALLED THAI AND SHE’S FROM THE SPANISH INSTITUTE CORRECT ME IF IM WRONG???

16)Magnus Bane He is literally everywhere. He gon be here too. No worries for all the Magnus Bane stans. He’ll make it here without a doubt! Good for you :). and the entire community of shadowhunters they literally always need him 17)THE MAIN MAIN PLOT THE SHADOWHUNTERS SHOWDOWN IS OBVIOUSLY GOING TO ALSO BE RELATED TO THE PRINCES OF HELL COMING TOGETHER AND I AM TOO SCARED TO LOOK TOO INTO IT BUT WE KNOW SHIZ COMING GNJODIFPEDWEFHUGBJ VM

18)THIS IS KINDA RANDOM BUT I CAN’T WAIT FOR THE SELF-ESTEEM GROWTH IN DRU LIKE PLEASE SHE QUEEN MWAH

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tuscanwalker · 3 years

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September 3, 2021 - The First Cut is The Deepest

18+ km, 760 (~2,500 ft) gross climb

It seems that the first day of every walk is the worst (Fingers crossed). Out of Florence, Kim and I mistakenly shared a litre of wine at lunch and paid for it the rest of the day. Out of Paris our directions placed our first hotel in the centre of a small lake miles off the route. Out of Lisbon it was in the mid to high 30s and we had to climb over a mountain (or it seemed like one to us) to get to our hotel.

Today I learned what walking in the Rhine Gorge is like. Essentially, it involves climbing straight out of the Gorge on switchbacks, endless staircases or near vertical slopes, walking for a long time on the rolling plateau and then dropping (and I do mean dropping) back to the river for lunch. Then you do whole thing over again in the afternoon.

My day started late in Bingen (breakfast at 7:30) where I caught the train to Niederheimbach and started walking straight up the side of the gorge. After about 45 minutes I came to the medieval ruins Furstenberg Castle. This is one of the ubiquitous toll castles built every few kilometres along the Rhine to extract wealth from the trade on the river. I made a short detour to see it, not realizing the trail went right by above it further on.

As I proceeded along, I noted that many of the hillside vineyards were at least at a 45 degree angle if not more. I often shook my head wondering what fools cut the weeds, trimmed the vines and harvested these vineyards. I soon got my answer. I passed a farmer running his tractor by remote control while he rode on a small trailer behind. He would line up the trailer between rows and suddenly go flying down the hill in a small ride-on mower attached to a winch on the trailer. He would then be quickly hauled back up onto the trailer and moved on to the next row. Unfortunately, I got so distracted by all this that I missed a turn and had to climb up one of the rows myself.

An hour later I reached the 12th century Stahleck Castle another very profitable river toll booth overlooking Bacharach. I did a quick detour to visit the castle. It was used during the war as a “Re-education Camp for Young People”; in fact a training camp for young Luxembourg conscripts who were then sent to the Russian Front. Ironically, it is now a youth hostel.

Just below the castle were the gothic ruins of the Werner Chapel, built in 1287 and destroyed when Castle blew up in 1689. The Chapel was built to commemorate the alleged murder of a young boy by Jews. This has since proved to be untrue but the resulting pogrom killed about 40 Jews and the story has been used to justify persecution in the region for centuries.

A quick lunch of bratwurst and frites on Bacharach and I started the long climb back out of the gorge. This time it was a series of long wooden, earthen and stone staircases that rose 200+ m in only about 100 m of net horizontal travel. This is roughly the same as climbing a 50 story building in the hot sun with a 10 pound backpack (second time today). This was followed by more up and down, with the only consolation being the endless wild blackberries to pick if you could brave the ridiculous thorns (my granddaughter Zadie would love it). On this section was my only meeting with other long distance walkers, three friendly women walking the Way of St Jacob (we would say St James or Santiago). Apparently there is a route through this region that runs for about 125km here. My only other company was a huge flock of rather aggressive Tundra bean geese (I looked it up) and some very friendly heavy horses behind a flimsy looking electric fence.

Finally, I reached a long series of very narrow, very steep switchbacks returning me to the river where I caught the ferry across to Kalb. Here also was the last toll castle of the day: Pfalzgrafenstein, right in the middle of the river on an island with its big brother on the hill keeping watch.

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maverick-werewolf · 3 years

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That's a very complicated question - but it’s also not. If that makes any sense at all. Let me elaborate...

What may have been the first use of the word “werewolf” appeared in the early 1000s. To quote my book, The Werewolf: Past and Future...

I hope this helped! Sorry I couldn’t give a more direct answer. Some other useful werewolf facts for this topic:

What Is a Werewolf

What Is and Isn’t A Werewolf Legend

Peter Stubbe and how he wasn’t a werewolf at all and was never, ever referred to as one

#werewolf #werewolves #asks #okeketochi1 #folklore #mythology #history #lycanthrope #lycanthropy

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shalebridge-cradle · 4 years

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Historical References in What Are You Going to Do With Your Life - Chapters 10-12

Chapter 10

Boleyn mumbles something about a priest. W. S. Pakenham-Walsh (1868 - 1960), Vicar of Sulgrave, Northhamptonshire, had a strong interest in Anne Boleyn. He claimed to have a series of spiritual experiences after praying at Boleyn’s burial site, and contacted clairvoyants to channel her spirit in the hopes she might become his guardian angel. He also claimed in his diary that he had contact with Henry VIII and other notable members of the Tudor court.

While witchcraft was often punished via the death penalty, Henry VIII made the law explicit in 1542 (though it was later repealed no later than 1547, under Edward VI). Several witchcraft laws were made in the UK over the years, in 1563, 1604, 1649 and 1735. These were all repealed and replaced with more general consumer protection laws, and the last person to be indicted for witchcraft (under the 1735 act) was imprisoned in 1944.

Tarot was a regular set of cards for most of its history, used in various, but similar, trick-taking card card games. It became associated with ancient wisdom in 1781, when Antoine Court de Gébelin wrote an essay claiming (with no evidence) that ancient Egyptian priests had distilled the mystical Book of Thoth into the cards.

“Psychic is Greek, and clairvoyant is French. One is about thinking, and the other is about seeing.” Psychic comes from the Greek word psychikos (‘of the mind’) and clairvoyance is a combination of two French words (‘clear’ and ‘vision’). Catherine of Aragon was known to speak both French and Greek, as well as Latin, her native Spanish, and English.

Cunning man (or woman) was another word for folk healers.

In 1532, Catherine Parr’s brother-in-law from her second marriage, William Neville, was accused of treason for allegedly predicting the king’s death and his own ascension as Earl of Warwick (a title made extinct during the Wars of the Roses, but would be recreated in 1547 and twice after that). He went to at least three magicians to confirm this prediction, all of which agreed that it was meant to be true (it wasn’t). One of these magicians was Richard Jones of Oxford, who was imprisoned and questioned on the matter. He did his best to exonerate himself of responsibility. I have found five references confirming his existence – but many of them claim he had a sceptre he used to ‘summon the four king devils’, which he used for divination purposes.

Chapter 11

Jones of Oxford was taken in for questioning as part of the Neville affair, and he did his best in his confession to exonerate himself. Neville’s claims of a prophetic dream showing himself as Earl of Warwick were now a “fair castle” which Neville assumed must be the castle of Warwick, and a shield with “sundry arms I could not rehearse”. He did admit to writing “a foolish letter or two according to [Neville’s] foolish desire, to make pastime to laugh at”. No treason, just jokes, please don’t execute me Thomas Cromwell. Jones claimed to take his alchemy seriously, however, and wrote that “To make the philosopher’s stone I will jeopard my life, so to do it,” if the king so wished. He would require twelve months “upon silver” and twelve and a half “upon gold”, and was willing to be imprisoned while he worked. Jones made a similar offer to Cromwell, but there is no evidence either man accepted. Jones was released in exchange for revealing incriminating evidence against another figure of interest. The other magicians caught up in this incident, William Wade and a man known only as ‘Nashe’, had perfected their disappearing act and were not sent to the Tower.

There is a story that Elizabeth I attributed the destruction of the Spanish armada in 1588 to John Dee’s wizardry. Given that, as mentioned, Dee was out of favour with Elizabeth at the time, this is likely untrue.

Elizabeth I’s death was in March of 1603, after she became sick and remained in a “settled and unmovable melancholy”, sitting on a cushion and staring at nothing. The death of a close friend in February of that year came as a particular blow – that of her second cousin and First Lady of the Bedchamber, Catherine Howard.

James I (or James VI, depending on where you’re from)… James I of England was also James VI of Scotland. His mother was Mary Queen of Scots, who was executed by Elizabeth I, and his great-grandmother was Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister.

“Anna, born Duchess of Jülich, Cleves and Berg.” This was how Anna signed hers’ and Henry’s marriage treaty, known as the ‘Beer Pot Documents’, because someone drew a stein at the bottom.

Bowling, as a game, can trace its origins back to ancient Egypt, and has been quite popular the world over throughout history. Henry VIII was an avid bowler himself (when Hampton Court was remodelled, bowling alleys were included with tennis courts and tiltyards), but banned the sport for the lower classes. The law against workers bowling (unless it was Christmas and in their master’s presence) was repealed in 1845.

We return to the ground, because from it we were taken. Paraphrasing of Genesis 3:19.

The (possible) first appearance of the word ‘alligator’ in the English language is from Romeo and Juliet. The description of The Apothecary’s shop mentions “a tortoise hung, an alligator stuff’d, and other skins of ill-shaped fishes”. Traditionally, medieval apothecaries and astrologers kept skeletons, fossils, and/or taxidermied pieces on display to demonstrate their worldliness.

The anger over calling the alligator ‘William’ could come from Parr, or from Anna. Her brother’s name, Wilhelm, is often anglicised as William.

Midsomer county does not exist and never has. It’s the setting for the long-running mystery TV show Midsomer Murders. Incidentally, Catherine Parr’s native county of Westmorland existed at one point, but no longer does (the area is now in the county of Cumbria). She is not the only English-born queen who this applies to; Jane Seymour’s Wiltshire and Anne Boleyn’s Norfolk still exist (and have since antiquity), but Katherine Howard was most likely born in Lambeth, which would have been in the county of Middlesex at the time. The area is now under the ceremonial county of Greater London.

“Honestly? Margaret Pole’s was worse.” Margaret Pole, Countess of Sailsbury and the last of the House of York, was kept in the Tower of London for two and a half years for her supposed support of Catholicism’s attempts to overthrow the king, before being informed of her death ‘within the hour’ on the 27th of May, 1541. She answered that she did not know the crime of which she was accused (and had carved a poem into the wall of her cell to that effect), but went to the block anyway. It allegedly took eleven blows from the inexperienced axeman to separate her head from her body. There is another story that she tried to run from the executioner and was killed in the attempt, but this is likely a fabrication. Regardless, pretty much everyone thought this was not only a bad idea on Henry’s part (killing Margaret removed any leverage the king had on her rebellious son, Cardinal Reginald Pole), it was also pointlessly cruel and a painfully undignified end.

(She was also Catherine of Aragon’s lady-in-waiting, and governess to Mary at several points.)

That everyone around her, bar a few visitors, would actively benefit from her death… Yet another quote of Elizabeth Tyrwhitt’s testimony: Parr, on her deathbed, claimed she was “not well-handled” by those around her; “for those that be about me careth not for me, but standeth laughing at my grief, and the more good I will to them, the less good they will to me”.

Chapter 12

According to a lady-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn claimed she would rather see Catherine of Aragon hanged “than have to confess that she was her queen and mistress”. This incident is probably the origin of the lyric “somebody hang you!” from Don’t Lose Ur Head.

Catalina uses a few Spanish phrases in this chapter, which don’t get directly translated. The first, No se hizo la miel para la boca del asno, directly translates to ‘Honey is not made for the donkey’s mouth’, and essentially means ‘Good things shouldn’t be wasted on those who won’t appreciate them’. Lavar cerdos con jabón es perder tiempo y jabón is ‘Washing pigs with soap is a waste of time and soap’, and is meant to indicate some things aren’t worth the energy.

…like that dream she has where she is cut up by a servant… An autopsy was done on Catherine of Aragon as part of the embalming process, which revealed the growth on her heart. This was done by the castle chandler (a dealer or trader) as part of his official duties.

Jane Seymour got rid of most of the hallmarks of Anne Boleyn’s tenure during her own queenship. The extravagance and lavish entertainments were banned, along with the French fashions Boleyn had introduced – including French hoods, which Boleyn is wearing in the portrait we have of her. Jane, as mentioned, wore a gable hood in her portraits.

“I don’t know why I’m so surprised that people care about what I say.” In the words of nineteenth century proto-feminist Agnes Strickland, Jane “passed eighteen months of regal life without uttering a sentence significant enough to warrant preservation”, which is kind of a mean thing to say. Seymour certainly said things during this time, we know this from reports, but there aren’t any direct quotes from her during her time as queen.

Here’s the painting mentioned, from 1545, during Catherine Parr’s tenure. Jane is on Henry’s left.

It was only after her death that Henry ‘loved’ her, but she is certain that he mourned for only for his own loss. There are reports that, during Jane’s labour, doctors advised Henry he might lose either Jane or Edward. Henry is claimed to have replied, “If you cannot save both, at least let the child live, for other wives are easily found.”

Countdown is a British television game show that revolves around word and number puzzles. It has been going for almost forty years, and is one of the longest-running game shows in the world, with over 7000 episodes.

“I saw a ghost bear kill someone, once.” Anne isn’t making this up. Supposedly, the incident occurred in 1816, when a Yeoman Warder saw a ghostly bear somewhere in the Tower of London. Terrified, he tried to stab it with his bayonet, only for the weapon to go through the image and strike the door behind it. The guard died of shock later on. A similar event happened in 1864, where two guards witnessed “a whitish, female figure” gliding towards one of the soldiers. The soldier in question charged this figure, only to go straight through it, upon which he fainted.

Elizabeth was imprisoned in the Tower of London for a little over two months in 1554, as a result of Wyatt’s Rebellion against Queen Mary. The rebellion was also the likely reason for the execution of Lady Jane Grey – both she and Elizabeth were Protestants in line for the throne, and therefore ‘more suitable’ as ruler. Both Elizabeth and Jane Grey denied any involvement, but the latter’s father and brother (also executed) were direct contributors.

“… you did die, Elizabeth was really upset about it…” Elizabeth took the news of Parr’s death badly. She refused to leave her bed, and was unable to go a mile from her residence, for five months following Parr’s passing.

Not because she liked that bearded potato man, God no… I found this deeply cursed engraving (first produced in 1544) in one of my books on the six wives, and now I want you all to suffer with me.

Anne of Cleves reacted poorly to being told her marriage would be annulled – some accounts say she fainted, others says she cried and screamed. Both could be true. The reasons given were threefold – One, the marriage was unconsummated (From testimony given by two servants, Anne thought a kiss goodnight counted as consummation – likely untrue, but this is the only reason that actually has merit). Two, Anne was precontracted to Francis of Lorraine (Untrue – the betrothal would only take effect if Anne’s father paid the dowry, and he didn’t). Three, Anne was not a virgin as claimed, based on the description of her ‘breasts and belly’, a Tudor way of saying Anne had previously given birth (untrue, and conflicts with the testimony for reason one). The annulment went through without Anne’s involvement, but (probably looking at the examples of her three predecessors) she accepted the ruling and kept herself from being banished, beheaded or otherwise.

(Other fact that has no bearing on reality – while researching Anne of Cleves, one of the pages that came up was The Simpsons Wiki. Apparently she’s the only wife who can claim the honour of having been in two episodes. :/)

Dogs don’t need to answer for their sins, they don’t have any. Katherine Howard was reportedly fond of animals in general, but had a particular soft spot for dogs.

She did the right thing. She told the truth. She died for it. Katherine Howard insisted, to the end, that she had no pre-contract of marriage to Francis Dereham. Would she have survived if she said she did?

#the cradle will write #What Are You Going to Do With Your Life: Work

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