#i'm not even welsh lmao

[cloud-based-and-rainpilled]

Somehow I left Welsh subtitles on so YouTube decided to translate English > Welsh for Bar Rescue compilations and honestly I feel so Seen ™

[there-will-be-a-way]

Fucked up even more than I thought I would. The weed person wasn't rechable today (neither by knocking at her door twice a day nor by calling her) so I ended up compromising by drinking enough beer and wine to make me feel like throwing up. So much about sobriety. While spending time with my roommate I thought, "Well, this'll end in the ER again." Not today, but in the long run. Because I've reached the point in addiction where one drop of beer ends with me drinking for days and days, while using other substances, until I'm so physically addicted that going cold turkey is dangerous 🙃

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

So this is a weird ask but I figured an Actual Welsh Person would be the person to go to, and you've been pretty gung-ho about the language thing. So I hope I'm not bothering you with this.

Is there a cultural consensus on foreigners learning Welsh? I'm American and I don't have a single shred of Welsh ancestry. My family is historically German, and we've been here since the English Colony days, so it honestly seems really weird even to try to claim some tie to German heritage.

Anyway, my point is, I have absolutely zero legitimate claim to the Welsh language. I don't plan to travel to Wales in the foreseeable future. I have no reason to learn Welsh except that it sounds pretty and I enjoy a challenge.

Putting aside the issue of "lmao it's gonna be stupid difficult to learn an endangered language if you don't have anyone to speak it with" (I have a loose plan for dealing with that, and the experience of learning two languages to "can read most novels without needing the dictionary" level without anyone to speak them with in person already) entirely, do you reckon it's okay for me to study Welsh? I know Americans are really, really bad about just kinda assuming the whole world belongs to us, and I'm trying not to do that here. Especially because Welsh IS endangered.

I imagine your average Welsh person probably doesn't care what some random American does. But like, for people who care about the language...Would it be considered disrespectful or overstepping for me to study it? I don't expect you to speak for the entire country, of course, but I respect your opinion and I feel like you'd have a grasp on what the general feeling towards a foreigner like me might be.

Thanks for your time.

I honestly, truly, do not understand how the discussion around cultural appropriation has been twisted in the cultural zeitgeist to such an extent that people now feel anxiety about learning other languages.

This is not a personal attack on you, Anon - the gods only know that you clearly care and want to do the right thing, and that's beautiful and wonderful and also I will come back to extolling your personal virtues at the end of this post, so stay tuned. But I do want to take a moment here to talk about the broader issue at play, which I have seen echoed multiple times elsewhere, because fuck me what are we doing to ourselves.

Learn. Languages.

That is what languages are for! To be used for communication. If you don't learn languages, you are forcing everyone else to use yours. How have we somehow, as a culture, twisted that into being the less selfish option? How have we done that? I posted my favourite Welsh idiom recently, and someone reblogged it and wrote in the tags that they loved the idiom and would start using it, but they would do so in English because their "Welsh pronunciation would make their Welsh grandmother spin in her grave."

What kind of mental gymnastics is that?

How the fuck do you twist it so badly that you think taking a Welsh idiom for your own and exclusively using it in English is less offensive than saying it in Welsh but maybe a bit wrong? I've literally had people proclaim to me that they're learning Welsh on Duolingo but they never speak it because they're too self-conscious, and they tell me this not to highlight a massive flaw in themselves that they need to work on, but as though I'm supposed to pat them on the head and thank them for... still making me speak English to them.

There was that post where a Deaf blogger received an anonymous ask saying learning sign language is cultural appropriation, as though Deaf people haven't been calling for Sign to be taught in schools. As though a Deaf person being entirely isolated in everyday hearing society unless they have an interpreter with them is less offensive than a hearing person being able to use BSL.

Like, these are not sacred or religious languages. The purpose of Welsh or BSL or what have you is not to perform the Eleusinian mysteries. It's a living everyday language, same as English -

Except it's not the same as English. As Anon here so rightly points out, Welsh is endangered. That means we are desperate for people to learn it. That's how it will survive. That's how we reversed it from 'dying language' to 'living language', in fact - we managed to get lots of people to learn it. You know what is a threat, though? People not learning it because, like poor Anon here, they've been somehow convinced by Western society that you're only allowed to learn languages if you personally have a historic or cultural connection to them that you can prove via six forms of ID and a letter of recommendation from a druid. Or people never using it because they're too embarrassed to try and risk losing face by getting it wrong, or maybe sounding a bit silly, and thus forcing us to use English anyway. Those are threats.

Anon. Listen to me, feel the sincerity of my words: we adore you. We adore you. You cannot imagine how appreciated it is when someone learns Welsh. You cannot imagine how touched we are that you wanted to, that you tried, that you respected us enough and considered us valid enough that you made the effort. Our closest neighbours are the very people who are still trying to stamp out Welsh to this very day. Do you know the number 1 reaction I get, by a country mile, when I tell English people that I speak Welsh? It's some variant on a scoff, and the sentiment "Why? What's the point? Bit useless, isn't it?"

By a country mile. That's the reaction I expect, and brace for, and is overwhelmingly what I get.

So when someone who isn't Welsh actually chooses to learn Welsh?

Imagine what that feels like! To go from not-even-hidden disgust, from outright mockery and often active suppression campaigns, to a foreigner earnestly telling me that they love and respect my language so much they're trying to learn it. Imagine how that feels.

Please learn Welsh. Please learn it. We will love you for it. We will build you a statue. We will bake little Welshcakes with your face on in icing sugar. We will write you poems in complex rhyme. We'll name an Eisteddfod prize after you. We'll name at least, like, three sheep after you. Thank you, thank you so much for even wanting to learn. You're a delight and a marvel and a wonder. Your hair looks great today, as it does all days. You're a strong, independent human being of immense wisdom and compassion. If this were a Welsh myth you'd be a wise salmon the heroes came to for advice. What a fantastic human.

The welcome awaits if you choose to learn

[skarloeyspa]

it's finally here! RWS-inspired uniforms for my SR main six! Also wanna thank @/glowynviator for the inspiration! Go check out their designs they're super lovely!!!!!

Design notes below as always!

1864 - 1910s

Taking heavy inspiration from the dude in the blue hat and purple/pink vest in all these illustrations

Their uniforms are fancier based on the initial reason for Skarloey and Rheneas' purchase - developing Skarloey as a tourist attraction, namely a spa (wonder where I've heard that before...)

1910s - 1960s

(goofy dudes in the first pic lmao)

So the tourism thing didn't last very long and the railway became more reliant on its original venture, which was its quarries

This was also the time when the railway's main income came from its quarries

Their uniforms became more quarry-appropriate. But since they still had the occasional passenger train, they still had finer clothing like a blazer and tie and hat

The gloves are cotton! Intended for outdoor work!

The pictures featured are Welsh slate workers and I have no idea where the overalls idea came from

1960s - Present

Revenue began increasing during this era with the newfound slate and Book of Sir Harald, which brought in more passenger traffic

With more passenger traffic the railway reintroduced more formal uniforms for their engines

I had a lot of fun doing Skarloey and Rheneas because this was basically the whole reason I took on these designs hehe

So obviously the colors! Bright red livery and blue lining! It wouldn't look too nice if I just made everything bright blood red so!

Buttons are buffers! Their painted names are golden embroidery! Ties are their TVS liveries (because I said so!)

Speaking of TVS, Sir Handel, Rusty, and Duncan are wearing their TVS boots! Having regained their footing, the SR introduced a more formal uniform but they still had some freedom in their uniform (as demonstrated by Duncan)

Sir Handel's blazer is a bit long...not because he's short or anything!

Peter Sam wears a knitted vest instead of the waistcoat that everyone else has because...it just suits him...Duncan isn't even wearing a vest so there you go!

Everyone's number is a badge on their hat. Since Rusty's hat is more functional than decoration, they wear their number as a little badge on their lapel! Their name is still embroidered tho :)

I promise the railway can afford whatever nice shirt Rusty is wearing BECAUSE I SAID SO I WILL IT TO BE I'M THE RAILWAY MASCOT I AM (miscellaneous rodent scritching)

Engines with longer hair are required to tie them up for tidiness! Big L for Sir Handel as always.

Skarloey is wearing a ring! Because of the brass ring on his funnel!! I will make you aware of this detail!!!

And that's it I think! Thank you as always for reading to the very end :] It means a lot to me that people find my designs interesting enough to want to read my rambles on them lmao

Anyway!! Since you're here...I'll tease a bit about my planned projects! I want to share some refs for other standard gauge characters I've designed! I also have some ideas for an animatic or two similar to the one I made for Ryan last year :]

[ddgraywrites]

OC Origins Tag

If you're a writeblr noob like me and had no idea what "OC" meant and had to google it, it's an acronym for Original Character. You're welcome. 😂

Tag created by @pixies-love-envy and thank you @moltenwrites for tagging me!

WIP: Fictional Flame

Paige Dela Cruz

When I was in middle school I created an Asian Avenue page (really giving away my age here and if you don't know what AA is, it was a whole ass social media website JUST for Asians. The early 2000's was an interesting time) and instead of introducing myself as the REAL me, for whatever reason, I decided I wanted to be "Paige Dela Cruz" on the internet because I liked the name. I don't know, I was a weird kid. Fast forward to 2021 when I was trying to figure out what to name my OC, I remembered my weird little internet persona I had in middle school and thought it would be hilarious to use that name. As for her personality, she's essentially me before my dad died: innocent, introverted, determined, and hopeful.

Brynn Sinclair

This character is based on me after my dad passed. Paige and Brynn are best friends that balance each other out. I didn't even know I was doing this, but when I told my grief therapist about the book I'm writing, she thought it was interesting how I've divided myself into two parts: before death and after death. As for Brynn's name, I googled "gender-neutral" names because I'm obsessed with the name "Blair" but didn't want to use it, then I stumbled on Brynn which was soo fitting: Brynn is a gender-neutral name of Welsh origin, meaning “hill.” Taking to the nature-inspired character of their name, no mountain will be too big for this little one to conquer. I think it also means "fresh and breezy".

Pixie Ramona

She was a last minute addition to the novel and I'm kind of obsessed with her. Pixie is the erratic me. The hectic me. The undiagnosed AUDHD me (lol) and she added the extra seasoning my book was missing. She's creative. Loves art, music and everything in between. Pixie's into tarot and crystals and brings Paige and Brynn on some fun adventures. Without Pixie, my novel would've been so mundane and kind of depressing. Oh, and her real name is Rachel but she goes by Pixie. Why? Not sure yet. LMAO.

Even though all my characters are based on different parts of me, I really leaned into each one until they weren't me anymore, but their own person.

Anyway, this was a fun one! I really enjoyed this. Tagging (no pressure): @jev-urisk @renasdoodles @paeliae-occasionally @drchenquill @theverumproject

@count-von-kit @curatorotl @katenewmanwrites @davycoquette and anyone that reads this! <3

[panelshowsource]

it's a reference to this nursery rhyme!

i remember this !!

this is simply my suspicion and not shade whatsoever, but if john wasn't doing/hadn't done the golf channel with alex then i suspect elis would have been asked (first?) — he's got a much bigger online following, has more panel show experience, more radio dj experience, the intense welshness can be argued as a favourable "something different" in the eyes of the network. at the same time, nick fills the slot that elis would have otherwise had on this series, so it works out for john! either way it doesn't surprise me john is on :)

i'd also mention that in this clip john makes a point that few people want to acknowledge, which is that alex ultimately doesn't get final say over who is cast — even if he is collaborating with the network, recommending people, whatever. there are other bossman at the network who work full time on casting strategy and make those final casting calls. so i hope people don't hold alex totally responsible for who is and isn't on the show — it's complicated!

btw i would die for elis on taskmaster or anything else, i just adore the man

hahahahaha this is not creepy YOU ARE MY SOULMATE

and LOOK AT THEM!!! when are we getting meet the osmans pls...

LMAO thank you for bringing this back to my attention

i got a bunch of requests for a follow up to this post so i'll add it on my next reblog?

everyone has those musical moments they keep with them — mine are probably shakira, what's your favourite season, and bagface — and i love the idea that THIS of all things is yours 😂

gotchu!! sorry for the delay but hope u like them<3

i'm not hosting these atm but you can get them super easily by making a request here! someone actually just shared the inbetweeners commentary episodes here which is pretty cool :)

lmk if you have any issues :)

[froggyfroo-art]

Gwilym

It's been a loooong May for me, and yesterday sucked majorly so I drew this that evening to try and relax. I'm not happy with how anime-esque the face looks despite specifically trying NOT to draw in that style, but the anatomy is surprisngly alright.

Gwilym is one of a a few characters who mainly exist in my head specifically so i can imagine music videos while I'm walking along (as you do), and Gwilym formed while I was listening to the bands Fleur De Lys, Sŵnami and Gwilym among others (the latter being their namesake.) I've only really started developing them properly, so I don't want to explain who they are too much in case it changes, but here's some general stuff:

Gwilym goes by he/they (he/she/they to trusted friends and family) and is gay. They are a linguist (PHD) who speaks Welsh, English, Cornish and Breton (as well as a bit of BSL for a friend theirs), a Celtic historian and a musician. Their band is called Llewod Rampant, which is a four piece rock band (exact genre pending lmao) that they front as the lead singer and guitarist. Their personality is a bit serious, and they can be pretty stubborn and even antagonistic at times due to their Hidden Depths™ (still a WIP but the basics are there). Despite this they are surprisingly good with children, and present very friendly and playful whenever they interact with them. They were originally meant to be a Spawn character but I'm not sure if that's still gonna be a thing or not (they do not have an animal design yet, anyway) because I want to have a go at making other stories. Will still add an STS tag just in case.

[the-crow-binary]

Looking up CV names' meanings :)

Joachim: Established by God (Hebrew)

Walter: Commander of the army / Powerful warrior / Ruler of the world (derived from Old High German Walthari)

Leon: Lion (Greek. Fun fact: its meaning is said to be steeped in heroism and bravery)

Mathias: Gift of God (fucking LMAO) (Hebrew)

Elisabetha: My God is an oath, my God is abundance (Hebrew)

Rinaldo: Ruler's advisor (Latin/German)

Sonia: Wisdom (Greek)

Trevor: Great (or large) settlement / The large village / Wise (Welsh)

Or

Ralph: Wolf counsel / A courageous counselor (Scandinavian)

Dracula: Son of Dracul / The devil (Romanian)

Isaac: He will laugh, he will rejoice (or "one who laughs or rejoices") / Laughter (Hebrew)

Julia: Youthful (Latin)

Sypha / Syfa / Cipher: The sword / Caring, Master of their own destiny, charisma / Freedom-loving, free-spirited individual (???)

Hector: Steadfast / To have / To hold / To possess (Greek)

Rosaly/Rosalie: Rose / Rose garden (French, derived from the latin word for rose)

Grant: Tall / Big (ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT) (English, French and Scottish)

St Germain: Holy Brother (French)

Christopher: Christ bearer / Christ within (Greek)

Soleil: Literally the french word for "sun" (...french)

Simon: To hear, be heard / reputation (Hebrew and Greek)

Juste: Just, upright, righteous (french, literally, like Soleil)

Maxim: Greatest (Roman)

Lydie: The seller of purple / (a maiden) From Lydia (French)

Richter: Judge / To make right (German)

Maria: Beloved / Bitter / Rebellious (Latin)

Annette: Grace / Favor (French)

Shanoa: Black cat (Castlevania???)

Albus: White (lol) (Latin)

John: God is gracious (English)

Eric: Sole ruler / Eternal ruler (Old Norse)

Elizabeth: God's promise / God is my oath (Hebrew)

Drolta: Knowledgeful / Inventive / Elegant (??)

Nathan: Gift of god / He gave / Given (Hebrew)

Hugh: Soul / Mind / Intellect (British)

Camilla: Servant for the temple / Free-born / Noble (Latin)

Jonathan: God has given / Gift of God (Hebrew)

Charlotte: Free man / Petite (French)

Julius: Youthful / Downy; soft and tender hair (Latin)

Yoko: Sun child / Ocean child / Good, positive child (Japanese)

Soma: Lunar nectar /Moon (Indian, though its mostly feminine) / Creation, genesis, origin + truth, reality, genuine (Japanese, can't find one precise meaning) (It can also have a Hungarian origin wich in this case means "dogwood tree" lmao)

Mina: Royalty (Greek) / Protection/Protector (German) / Eternity, permanence (Japanese, chose the simplest meaning but i'm not even sure about it because. Kanji. Someone help)

Bonus: Belmont means Beautiful Mountain in french <3 (very fitting)

Feel free to add more! Or correct me because some of them were very confusing to me :')

[skaruresonic]

How does Welsh compare to Skau:re?

Skaruręʔkyéha·ʔ and Cymraeg: shaking hands over Anglophones making fun of our supposedly impossible-to-read-and-hear languages full of sesquipedalians and consonant clusters, oh no where are the vowels, ugggh I can't make that sound it's too haaaard ;A; kwęhs akaʔčtęríhsthek and does dim ots gyda fi, motherfuckers. Git Gud™

I'm actually having a lot of fun with it, even though as a native Anglophone just dipping my toes in the water, it's difficult to pronounce some of the sounds. That seems to be a matter of practice, however. You need to build up your throat muscles for any language.

you have no idea how fucking funny this is to me, though. Welsh has a lot more resources available online than Skarù·ręʔ, AND our requirements for speaking fluency are, at minimum, 300 hours higher than that, meaning we need to accomplish a lot more with a lot less. and yet we scrape by just fine - we're practically carving out the tunnel as we go - while English speakers whine and moan about how haaaard Welsh is because they can't make the "ch" sound. monolingual Anglophones are weak and will not survive the winter And actually, Welsh has seven vowels compared to English's five, so all the memes about "muh no vowels" aren't even accurate lmao.

Anyway...

First impressions, it bears a few similarities. It seems to be an agglutinative language, (though I could be wrong, ofc) and since Skarù·ręʔ is a similar polysynthetic language with a very different flow and cadence than English, I feel better equipped to understand Welsh now than if I'd just started off from a completely English-language perspective, if that makes sense. I can understand "Celyn dw i" means "I am Celyn" a lot better now that I've become accustomed to loosey-goosey object-first word order in Skarù·ręʔ. You also introduce yourself name-first, then the "I am called," "I am," "my name is," whatever follows. You speak object-first when you want to place emphasis on The Thing, to answer a question, or just whenever it sounds better idk lol. So like. I Get It. I get that "Dw i wedi blino" can mean "I am tired" while "Dyn dw i" means "I am a man" without my brain struggling to comprehend how these arrangements can coexist. I'm not so married to the concept of rigid English subject-verb-object order anymore that it's all that foreign to me. I'm just nodding along like Kermit the Frog. In fact, for some "arrange the English translation" questions, I accidentally arranged the word order into "man I am," "Celyn I am" because that's just how we tend to think in Skarù·ręʔ sometimes.

[transbeamrooikat]

the sillays <3 read ATYD a week ago and I've been gripped by a deep hyperfixation ever since lmao

ramblings about them + transcriptions under the cut :3

OKAY OKAY SO HCS:

Remus:

the tallest & lankiest of the group <3

he's a sweater cunt through and through (I would say it's a pain during summer but I've been to wales in summer and it's not cold enough that it'd be an issue)

I think he's welsh <33 idk if he'd be able to speak the language tho (I do kinda project onto him a little in the sense that I hc that he spoke it as his first language as a kid but was forced to stop speaking it to "better assimilate" to living in England + learning English, and now he struggles to speak it but really wishes he was still fluent/is actively trying to re-learn it)

he and Peter attempted to give themselves muggle dye jobs for the shits and giggles (I'd say sometime around year 4 or 5, the year I've drawn these in is deliberately ambiguous tho - sometime around the latter years (post year 5 I think? around then))

obviously scaring all over, he tries to hide it (at least on his face) for a while before giving up (when he did try to hide it Sirius helped him out as he's really experienced with beauty charms that cover scars)

has some acne, but not as much as Sirius and James - when he gets more comfortable with them, he jokes that its good, cause he "already has his fair share of scars"

Light brown hair, verging on blonde - begins to curl once he hits puberty, and gradually becomes even curlier than Sirius'

wears his hair somewhat long, in a shag – goes through cycles of cutting it, hating how it looks, thinking this time will be different and cutting it again, ect

like Sirius, he has "wolf-like" behaviors, but goes to lengths to hid them, and so they only come out when he's comfortable or really tired

has freckles in the summer

can't decide on whether he'd have a hooked or a straight nose

I hc him as trans to a certain extent (up yours jk rowling) but i also dunno how he'd have done that in the 70s... I see him as being pretty removed from his family, if not an orphan, so maybe in going to hogwarts he saw an opportunity and took it? he's obviously trying very hard to be stealthy tho, and researches magic to hid that he's going through AFAB puberty/especially go on T (although I don't think he'd necessarily know about HRT) (I figure Sirius would help him out once he finds out)

yellow stained teeth

Sirius:

Aquiline nose – or, a prominent nose in some way

Obviously black hair, curly - i don't think he'd let it grow much past his shoulders tho (maybe to point where he can feel a little on his back?)

I don't think that he'd like to tie it up, I think that'd freak him out (meeee core)

ACNE!! I feel that they all had acne to some extent, but Sirius covered it with a beauty charm (he keeps this secret till Remus find out, and Remus teases him for it) (I think his neck + lapels would be especially pimpled, given the hair)

blue eyes, but a muted kinda blue, with green and gold specks

sticks his tongue put when tired – doglike 

pops his acne as a form of SH/rebellion – he's ashamed of his scars, unless he wants to upset his parents (once Remus knows about it, he confides in him that they seem to care about it more than he does sometimes) 

was invited to join Remus and Peter on their their dying expedition but refused b/c he didnt wanna fuck up his hair, as it's something he's really proud of (which fair enough - there was a bit of an exploding bleach situation in their dorm room bathroom)

James:

he wears silver rimmed glasses, much to Remus' horror – he stops when he finds out Remus is a werewolf, and he first trys to wear a gold pair, but doesn't like it – he ends up trying out a copper framed pair and loving them

his acne is just as bad as Sirius', but he doesn't hide it, he thinks it "adds to his charms"

unlike Sirius tho, his ache goes away when they grow up

freckles!!!

I don't think he'd be white – i think of him as more white and Indian mixed? I'm not incredibly fussed about any of their races though 

His hair is a much darker brown than Remus', but he wears it in a similar cut, although it looks quite different on his wavy hair

He doesn't take care of his hair at first, horrifying Sirius (yk that one fluttershy meme? yeah lmao)

His acne is worse around his nose, where his glasses rest

He's got a significantly stronger build than the other marauders, despite being the shortest of the group – in fourth year, they placed bets on whether he or Peter would end up being shortest (they find it very funny that his deer form ends up being the tallest in the end, and he jokingly insists that they pay him back for the bet)

really nice dark brown eyes :D (not Hazel tho)

Peter:

not many hcs for him... difficult to put my thoughts to words

I think he's the least acne prone of the group, much to Sirius' confusion ("i SWEAR he doesn't even wash his face in the morning Moony–")

I don't mind the hc that's he's fat, but I do worry it can sometimes cross into jkr's weird fatphobia 

I think he has very short straw blonde hair, and that he keeps it in a military cut - he doesn't like to let it grow out

green eyes (Sirius often jokes that he looks a bit like a Malfoy)

straight nose

TRANSCRIPT:

text around Remus:

teeth get sharper closer to/around the moon -> (unlike Sirius', who's stay the same)

Animalistic-type eyes (like Sirius') bc, yk, werewolf

text around Sirius:

idk something about his face i cannot get right...

has the eye-courners I normally reserve for animal-esque characters

(note: he tends to cover his acne & the scaring from it w/ beauty charm [sic] unless he's relaxed/around the marauders)

cainins [sic] become more pronounced after he becomes an animagi

text around James:

sticky up hair pieces is ESENSIAL [sic]

his glasses are... I don't wanna give him 70s glasses

has more acne around his glasses (just like me fr fr)

text around Peter:

as much as I love characterizations of him like in "just lovers (like we were supposed to be)" [sic (?) here - I forgor to write 'and'] there is obviously space for how he's characterized in ATYD (and I love those characterizations too!!) - but I feel either way he lacks depth :(

he's very... plain? I think his conformitizm [sic] would have him be hesitant to join in w/ the marauders when they fuck with their appearances [which, just to add, doesn't mean he never does, he just has more caution around it]

he is SUCH an interesting character to me... m8 wdym you've betrayed the friends you've had since YEAR 7?? [note - year 7 is equivalent to hogwart's first year] i wanna get in his headdddd

okay Mr. Eyebags

him being named Peter is also so interesting to me - is the reference to the disciple intentional? In a way I kinda disagree with it. fuck you jkr (choke and die) I know better <3

[sunshinemoonrx]

I've been thinking about the original folkloric Arthur

Not a king, not a knight, but a great hunter and a humble soldier.

I'm not really an artist but I spent all yesterday filled with the urge to draw this version of the character, so here's a post that's 50/50 doodles and historiographical rambles about him.

I wanted to do scenes depicting the feats this earliest 9th-century Welsh folklore describes him doing, so first I needed a design for the guy.

Notes on my choices and historicity:

-These earliest local Arthur legends are recorded in an appendix to the Historia Brittonum (c. 830), where he is referred to as simply "Arthur miles" ("the soldier"), a protector-figure in south Wales. The name Arthur is thought to derive from the Latin "Artorius", so I've just written it here to create a consistent Latin version of the name and title. That doesn't mean it was his "real name"; there probably wasn't a specific real guy. Some have floated a 2nd-century Roman general named Lucius Artorius Castus as the "real king Arthur", but there's a 600-year gap between his life and any mention of Arthur, so that's extremely unlikely.

-The visuals are a mix of historic (he wears a tunic, a mail shirt and a cloak with an early medieval brooch) and the kind of anime boy that appeals to me personally. I can't tell you why I was so sure he had to be black-haired, it just felt right. I tried to avoid depicting him as too elite a warrior; I imagine the necklace was obtained as plunder from a raid. For his build, I wanted him to have some mass but not to look like a modern gym bro, and that crashed headfirst into my predilection for messy twinks, and I ended up drawing him (and the other characters here) with kinda "curvy anime babe" proportions, I guess, lmao

-The 10th-century Annales Cambriae say that at the battle of Badon, "Arthur carried the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and three nights on his shoulders and the Britons were the victors". This is probably referring to to a shield design, but I thought it'd be fun to interpret it as a back tattoo. The practice is attested as being practiced in the north of Britain from a 786 synod in Northumbria. The English clergy weren't fond of it and actually tattooing a cross isn't attested until the crusading era, plus from a modern perspective the vibes of a guy with just a big Christian tattoo are a bit questionable, so I decided to pair it with something else. Earlier Roman accounts of Briton tattoos mention animal shapes, and Welsh legends often depict people or their souls becoming birds (early modern Cornish folklore even held that Arthur survived in the form of a bird), so I went with a wing-pattern.

-The precursor to Excalibur, Arthur's sword Caledfwlch ("hard-cleaver", Caliburnus in Latin, Calesvol in Cornish) isn't magic yet, and his spear and dagger are given equal prominence, so I depicted it as the kind of straight sword common at the time, derived from the Roman spatha design.

-One of the two prior stories recorded in the HB is Arthur's fighting and killing his son Amr ("fab Arthur", "son of Arthur", is my translation into Welsh); I drew Amr in a half-tunic/half-dress because, again, I just kinda wanted to

The other story involves Arthur hunting the great boar Twrch Trwyth (Troit/Troynt), so that was the next thing to design:

This is very cool to see referred to this early, because the hunt of the Trwyth is the climactic set-piece of Culhwch ac Olwen (c. 1100), the most complete Arthurian tale we have from the period after the Historia Brittonum transformed him from a minor local figure into a magical warrior-hero for all the Britons and centrepiece of Welsh legend, but before Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae further began his transformation into the chivalric king popular in France and across Europe.

In Culhwch, Trwyth is a king who was turned into a boar by God as punishment for his sins, so I came up with a human design as well as a big pig design. The king in question was probably intended as a Briton, but I thought it would be fun to depict him as a Saxon, Arthur's enemies in the HB, especially as Saxon warriors often wore boar-crests on their helmets. I did one take with a mostly historic boar-helmet, and one more fantastical, almost like a boar-themed Kamen Rider helmet, as if rather than becoming an actual boar he became this more fearsome but still humanoid warrior.

I also made his sword slightly asymmetrical, to mirror the seax knives that gave the Saxons their name. Their actual main battle swords were straight, but I thought it was a fun touch for this magical tyrant.

As for the boar-form design, I like depicting monsters with sketchy outlines, like they aren't fully solid creatures of this world.

And that's how we get our first scene proper!

The legend recorded in HB says that when Cabal (Latinisation of Welsh "Cafall"), Arthur's dog, was hunting Troynt (Trwyth), he left a paw-print in a stone, which Arthur then assembled a cairn under, and if the paw-print stone is ever removed, within 24 hours it returns to the mound. (Cafall is also featured in the version of the hunt in Culhwch!)

Anyway, I can't really draw animals that aren't big scary creatures, so I didn't want to draw an actual dog. So since I'd already turned Trwyth into a guy, I figured why not just turn Cafall into a guy too? Plus, I get to draw a guy in a collar with a dog-tail and a little fangy. So win-win, really.

I also wanted to draw a version with the human Trwyth, and I figured I'd combine that with the story of Amr, and just do a page of swordfights:

"...on fatal field / we fended our lives, as the ranks clashed in battle / and the boar-crests rang..." -Beowulf

The Amr (or Amhar) story relates that Arthur built a tomb for his son, and that every time it is measured it comes up as a different length.

The fact this is such an early story is also very interesting, because one of the most famous parts of post-HRB chivalric Arthur is the killing of his son Mordred. Early Welsh references to Mordred (Medraut or Medrawd) portray him entirely positively. I do wonder if when Mordred became the more famous son of Arthur the story of Amr got folded into his, but we don't have evidence to do more than speculate.

I also now realise that my human Trwyth looks a lot like a Ringwraith, and honestly the more medieval lit I delve through the more moments of "oh that's why that bit of Tolkien is like that" I have.

Those were what I originally wanted to depict, but in doing them two more ideas occurred to me. One was depicting the Arthur of the Historia Brittonum itself (not just the pre-existing folklore it recorded), this local hero plucked into a much grander stage, cast as a pseudohistorical general leading his people against the Saxons.

This one came out very "edgy teenager on Deviantart", but fuck it, kill the part of you that cringes and be free, right:

The title comes from one of the medieval Welsh "triad" texts, each one a short line listing the "three great X of the Isle of Britain" to help bards remember. Arthur is referred to in many of them, here as one of the "Three Red Reapers of the Isle of Britain". I thought that was a good fit for his war-hero portrayal here. Also I tried moving the cross-tattoo lower down to make it sluttier.

HB's Arthur is an interesting middle ground. He's leading the Britons as a whole, but he still has one foot in his humble origins. He's named as Dux Bellorum, "battle-leader", and it's specified that the kings of the Britons were under his leadership although he was less noble than them. It's only somewhere between the grander Welsh legends that sprung up after this and the HRB that he would get upgraded to king.

For the final picture, I was inspired by a much more recent piece of Breton verse, a 19th-century gwerz (ballad) telling of Arthur arriving in Brittany (on account of being king of all Britons) to slay a dragon and getting help from Saint Efflam. The core story, though, is remarkably consistently preserved from the Vita Euflami, the original saint's life written around 1100. I was captivated in particular by the verse in the gwerz where Arthur announces himself:

Me zo roué ar Bretonet Artur an terrub lessanvet Deut aman deus a Lannion Evit tistruji ann Dragon.

I am the king of the Britons/Bretons Arthur, known as the terrible Come here from Lannion To destroy the dragon.

For one, the way the lyrics flow in the Breton just kinda goes hard, but the bombastic tone and the length of time the story was transmitted across brought a scene vividly to my mind, inspired by the persistent story of Arthur's prophesised return: Modern travellers in the Breton countryside being set upon by a dragon, only for Arthur to miraculously appear with this declaration, defeat the beast and vanish, his original task as hunter and protector fulfilled once more.

So I drew that! Once again, I like sketchy impressionistic monsters. Also, I think the people in the back are lesbians, but that's less of a conscious decision and more just what happens when you ask me to draw two people.

And that's what's been occupying my mind for the past few days! There's a couple more things I could do. Cai and Gwenhwyfar (precusors to Sir Kay and Guinivere) are characters I'd love to whip up designs for, and there's a bunch of really wild scenes in Culhwch. But that'll only be if I'm still feeling this specific creative energy.

Thanks for reading!

[georgieluz]

Hiiii!! How are you? 7, 10 and 22 for the nationality ask game please??

hellloooo!!

7. three words from your native language that you like the most

ok i have a lot but lemme try and narrow it down... i both love and hate that our word for 'ironing' is 'smwddio' pronounced similarly to "smoothio". our word for ladybird is 'buwch goch gota' which translates to 'little red cow' and hamster is 'bochdew' which means 'fat cheeks'.. actually most of our words for animals are pretty great... raven is 'cigfran' which translates to 'meat crow' lmao. some more fun ones are 'ychafi' which is the welsh version of 'yuck' or 'eww'. all welsh kids hear this on the regular bc mums will constantly use it as a way of saying "please do not do that gross thing again". 'spigoglys' means spinach, and 'sglodion' was my favourite word as a kid, it means chips! "dwi'n hoffi coffi" is every non-welsh person's favourite welsh sentence ("i like coffee") because of the rhyming, but "dwi'n hoffi sglodion" was my fave as a kid. i don't even like chips much tbh, but it just sounds so right on a welsh person's tongue!

and i guess to finish up 'cwtch' and 'cariad' are perfect welsh words in my opinion. cwtch is unique to the welsh language, it kind of describes a type of hug/cuddle that's more warm and intimate than both of them and invokes a cosiness and homeliness that can only come from Your Person/People. it's not romantic, though can be used that way too, but is for times with close friends and family and anyone special to you. cariad means love but it's also a term of endearment. i guess in the same way 'love' can be used as a term of endearment too, but it has a bit more affection and warmth to it than "hey, love". but yeah, people will often call each other cariad here as an endearing thing and it's something i still think is cute even as a fully grown cynical adult

10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language?

i answered this one already over here :)

22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed?

proud: that we've never voted for a tory government ever? lmao, but yeah, our resistance against the tories, especially thatcher, definitely makes me proud of wales. also, how we've kept our language alive despite all of england's attempts at eradicating it. bc that's not an easy feat and it very nearly wasn't the case

ashamed: our national performance in rugby and football this year? obviously, there are more serious things that make me ashamed but this would end up being way too long, and i'm not in a great place mental health wise, so maybe i'll talk about those things another time when i can go into them in more depth, etc!

for this ask game!

[pansy-placebo]

About me

Hi! Call me Pansy, or Bo.

I don't know what this blog will be yet, so it'll be a lot of reblogs for the time being. I'd like to make some friends here, though.

Content warning: brain damage, drug use, trauma, sex and rape mention, mental illness, er... politics? Also the DNI section includes a lot of difficult topics, I need to mention stuff to be sure to ward away assholes, sorry.

I'm mlm and polyamorous.

I'm a very gender little goblin man, I'm a drag artist with a couple shows under my belt. Said shows are very rare at the moment, so the drag I do the most is just dressing up lol. I'm really considering making a drag society/club in my local town- I'm Welsh, and re-learning the language since I went to live in England for a few years and completely forgot how to speak it.

My pronouns are he/him or xey/xem.

I have a degree in fine art, but got some brain damage (oops) which means my art production really slowed to a halt for the past few years. I still occasionally draw, paint and make jewellery though. At the moment, I'm too disabled to have any kind of job but I hope over time those issues will get better and I'll be able to support myself on my art again.

I have ADHDtism, here are some special interests and hyperfixations, some of which are active, some have passed and just left a lasting impact on my psyche:

goth music

nutrition, digestion, and diet culture (which is a scam btw)

art and art history

human anatomy

aquatic life, especially aquatic snails

religions, particularly shingon

sexual paraphilias, the more niche the better (that one lasted a decade) and I won't be posting about it here because honestly wtf is my brain

I write. So far this post has been a truly terrible showcase of my writing skills, because my brain is very blob-of-goo-sloshing-in-a-bone-fishbowl right now, but I used to produce mass amounts of poetry and I still write occasionally. Maybe I'll even post some of it from time to time, who knows!

I'm ok with some nsfw stuff, but I won't be reblogging or posting porn, and I don't want any of that on my dash please. PLEASE DON'T PUT PORN ON MY DASH.

I'm very mentally ill, but I'm reticent about it because I'm still feeling out the culture here. For now let's just say I have a lot of trauma in my past and sometimes my brain says "fuck you, lmao" and takes all my memories out of their filing cabinets and lights them on fire.

I'm also a drug addict, which exacerbates the amnesia, and a former alcoholic still wrestling with the bottle.

My politics: I'm very left leaning and very aware of societal issues. I'm somewhere in the arena of socialism and communism, and I've read enough theory to know I don't know how to correctly pick a precise label for my politics in that area. Initially while writing this post, the political section was super long and then I realized that this is not the point of this blog, so fuck that. You get the idea. I give a shit.

DNI:

porn blogs

SWERFs

transphobes, "gender critical" people, transmeds

aphobic people: if you think ace people are not discriminated against, you are included here, so DNI.

racists, nazis, islamaphobes, antisemites: for example if you think white people/culture are under attack, you are included in this section, so DNI.

discourse-havers: I mean the people who will bring the discourse to my dash. I mean a sensitive topic discussion which devolves into a screaming wall of reductive rhetoric and contrived logic where everyone who disagrees in any way is a bad person and people just start attacking each other for having the wrong opinion instead of having actual conversations about the subject at hand. I was on twitter for years, and I learned early on that The Discourse was never something to engage in, and I'm aware that it happens here too. Keep it off my dash. Thanx.

Pedos, MAPs, lolicons and their supporters.

ableists, anti-self-dx people. Do you think you can tell when people "aren't really" disabled, or that there are a hoards of people out there claiming to be disabled for the money? if so, DNI.

if your blog has a lot of self harm, gore or rape content

people who think doxxing is generally okay. I don't think it's okay in most situations

classists: Do you think poor people deserve to be poor, that they have done something to "deserve" poverty, that they should just spend their money better and stop being poor? do you never give money to homeless people because they'll "spend it all on drugs"? if yes to any of these, DNI.

Do you think people with eating disorders should just "eat a sandwich?" if yes, DNI. EDs are complex, I won't want to interact with people who belittle ED havers.

can't currently think of anything else to add here but yeah i think you get the idea.

See ya,

xxx

Bo / Pansy

[drtanner]

I keep forgetting that you’re English. Like, it’s jarring every time that I’m reminded that you’re English. Not that it’s a bad thing but I guess I never notice when you use more English slang terms or spellings and whatnot. In my opinion, I would’ve pegged you for being somewhere in the Central Time zone in the USA. Probably Illinois or Tennessee. Colorado is in the Mountain time zone but that would be another pick.

Sidenote; do the English and British get mad when called the other? Because if you’re actually British and I’ve been calling you English, my bad, I was going off of what I saw. Anyways bye love you (no romo) (I’m drinking, can you tell?)

Honestly my sleep schedule is fucked so I can't even blame you for thinking I live in a US timezone. I wish it were different but I have the ADHD so here we are. ( b ._.)b

Re: British/English, you'll get different answers depending on who you ask. To make this abundantly clear, England is in Britain, so it's true that an English person is British, but someone who is British may not necessarily be English. Britain also includes Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, so a British person may be English, Scottish, Welsh or (Northern) Irish.

However.

While English people are generally (generally) fairly happy to be called "British", if you call a Scot, a Welshman or an Irishman "British" you're probably going to get some choice words in return! This is largely because "British" has become more or less synonymous in a lot of folks' minds with "English", which is itself because historically we've been a bunch of domineering cunts who only care about ourselves and the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish have all suffered for it immensely over the centuries. And they still do! Which is why none of them like us and hate it when someone calls them "British"!

Saying "British" when you really mean "English" is a weirdly widely-accepted kind of erasure, and I don't particularly like being called British myself because of it. Then again, I'm not a unionist. Unionists just fucking love being called British.

Anyway! I'd tell you to enjoy your evening but it sounds like you're already well on the way there, lmao.

[josie69am]

Don't read this if you don't care about skincare lmao

I admit I'm a bit of a skincare snob (ive been on retinol for 2 or 3 years and I wear sunscreen almost every day the reason why it's almost and not actually everyday is cause I live in a basement and theres days where there's no sunlight getting in down here esp in winter) and the one thing that I was like this is too fussy even for me was toner

Anyways I just started using toner cause I just acquired some over time and I can't believe how much of a difference it did for me? A skincare YouTuber I follow (James Welsh) stands by using toner between each step of the routine which seemed overkill to me until this week I'm a believer now

I just always thought it was more for oily people but it's really cause i just never gave it a try

(I have very dry skin and I have been getting enough hydration and moisturization but the toner really just really softened my skin in a way I wasn't expecting. I'm using the soon jung ph 5.5 relief toner by etude house and I've had the same skincare routine for about a year now and it's winter in Chicago now so I decided to do a little extra something and it's really helped)

[zerodaryls]

For the ask game: 6, 22 and 24!

6: Most famous person you’ve met

Either Bill Nye (thE SCIENCE GUY! BILL! BILL! BILL! BILL!) or uhh if we're going with like. Teeny bopper famous dudes of the olden days (i.e. 2007) then Mitchel Musso aka the nerdy guy friend on Hannah Montana whose name escapes me (Oliver??? that's my cat's name lmao okay)

22: Favorite Movie

can't choose just one but i guess i'll go with Killer Klowns From Outer Space because i've been spending stupid amounts of money on KKFOS merch lately and because the theme song is constantly looping in the back of my brain

24: A random fact about yourself

uhhhh, idk... dwi'n dysgu Cymraeg! (i'm learning Welsh) and i really wanna be fluent someday and maybe even move to Wales if i can make that happen. i've got an autistic Special Interest in Wales (which i feel weird saying because like that's a whole country with people in it and it feels weird to be like THAT'S MY SPECIAL INTEREST especially being an American bc Americans are The Worst when it comes to being weird about other people's cultures but like. <insert that one Drake & Josh meme that's like I DO NOT CONTROL THE SPECIAL INTEREST here> 😅)

thanks for the ask!! <3