#in early modern europe kill me

[purelyutilitarian]

Guys I feel so grown up and professional, I just “presented my research” like who am i

[somevagrantchild]

Missing Loustat scene discovered in Anne Rice's diaries

I HAVE SOMETHING AMAZING TO SHARE WITH YOU!!

As I was reading Anne Rice's diaries in the special collection library at Tulane University while I was in New Orleans for the Vampire Ball, I discovered this intensely sexy scene she wrote between Louis and Lestat that never made it into her books. This is Anne Rice's original writing, never before shared anywhere online.

Anne Rice wrote this scene by hand in her diary dated November 6, 2015 (which she mentions is the day before Stan's birthday. He would have been 73😭). I have deduced that it is her very first (and very rough) draft of the scene that eventually became chapter 4 in Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, aka the scene where Louis agrees to move into the chateau and be Lestat's partner/companion again. The final version of the scene in the book reads like wedding vows, serving as the beginning of their marriage in the modern era. As you'll see, the first draft was rather different. 

In Prince Lestat, Louis and Lestat's interactions are extremely brief, and they aren't able to talk beyond one stolen moment to reassure each other of their love. It would seem that in the six months between the end of Prince Lestat (when Louis thinks to himself that he will be with Lestat very soon), and the beginning of Atlantis (when that finally ends up happening), Louis and Lestat do not have any intimate conversation. They may have talked somewhat, but only briefly about superficial matters, or they may have not even spoken to each other once over those six months until Lestat asks Louis to meet him in New Orleans for chapter 4.

In an earlier diary entry, I found a note where Anne said she wanted their first reunion conversation to begin by finally addressing Louis dumping Lestat's body in the swamp after Claudia tried to kill him—something they have never once discussed. So when I came across this scene in a later diary, I could tell it was a direct follow-through on that idea. 

The scene begins with Lestat speaking to Louis, and it seems they are outside on the streets of New Orleans, but someplace private where they aren't being observed by mortals. This is different from the final book version with them sitting at a sticky table at the Café Du Monde (though it is similar to how Lestat tells us they walked around the city streets together for hours after the reunion scene was over). 

Anne headed this part of the diary entry with: Early on: L+L quarrel—

“I can forgive her for what she did. She was never a human being. She went from being an infant to a monster. But you—you stood there and watched. You carried my body into the swamps and dumped me there as if I were trash—you were the one I hated! How could you do that to me? Decades we’d been together!”

He stared at me for the longest time—not defensive, not angry.

“I could do it because I was afraid,” he said. “I didn’t know how I was going to live without you.”

“I don’t believe you. You were fine without me. You were preparing to sail to Europe. You were making plans.”

A torrent of words.

“Stop!” he said. “I’m here now. I love you! I thought you wanted me here! I thought you’d forgiven me. I thought we had a second chance, now, you and I. And miles to travel together!”

I nodded.

“A second chance!”

I nodded.

Then I took hold of him as if I was going to kill him. I threw him up against the wall and bit into his neck for the first time in two hundred years—the first time since the first time—and when the blood gushed into my mouth, I saw again—for the first time in two hundred years—his soul, his heart.

I was lost in his mind, his thoughts, his dreams, flashes…

I drew back—I’d drunk too much. He was being held there by me, his head bowed. I slapped him hard and when he opened his eyes, I pushed his open mouth against my neck. I forced his fangs into me.

And we were together, wrapped in one another’s arms…

Finally I pushed him back.

He was sitting on the paving stones, hair in his face, back to the wall. I took his hand and helped him up.

“Kiss me,” I said. “No, really kiss me.”

Finally I let him go.

“I can’t live without you! “ he said. “I swear, you wander off on me again, I…”

“I won’t. I won’t ever.”

We walked along in silence.

“He loves you too,” he said.

“Who?”

“The silent one, the one who’s never spoken to me, the one inside you.”

It was time. I could have lingered a half hour more in the old times, but the time was now.

The End 

------------------------------------

Above is the clean version, which I have corrected for missing punctuation, missing letters/words, and necessary dialogue tags.

Below is the original rough version as I have transcribed exactly from Anne Rice's handwritten diary.

------------------------------------

“I can forgive her for what she did. She was never a human being. She went from being an infant to a monster. But you—you stood there & watched. You carried my body in the swamps & dumped me there as if I were trash—you were the one I hated! How could you do that to me? Decades we’d been together!

He stared at me for the longest time—not defensive, not angry.

I could do it because I was afraid, he said. “I didn’t know how I was going to live without you.”

“I don’t believe. You were fine without me. You were preparing to sail to Europe. You were making plans.”

—A torrent of words.

“Stop! I’m here now. I love you! I thought you ’d wanted me here! I thought you’d forgive me. I thought we had a second chance, now, you & I. And miles to travel together!”

I nodded—

“A second chance!”

I nodded—

Then I took hold of him as if I was going to kill him. I threw him up against the wall & bit into his neck for the first time in 200 years—the first time since the first time—and when the blood gushed into my mouth I saw again—for the first time in 200 years—his soul, his heart—

I was lost in his mind, his thoughts, his dreams, flashes — (more)

I drew back—I’d drunk too much He was being held there by me, his head bowed. I slapped him hard & when he opened his eyes I pushed his open mouth against my neck. I forced his fangs into me.

And we were together, wrapped in one another arms — (more)

Finally I pushed him back.

He was sitting on the paving stones, hair in his face, back to the wall. I took his hand & helped him up.

Kiss me. No really kiss me.

Finally I let him go.

I can’t live without you! I swear, you wander off on me again, I … I ”

“I won’t. I won’t ever.”

We walked along in silence —

He loves you too

Who

The silent one, the one who’s never spoken to me, the one inside you.

It was time. I could have linger a half hour more in the old times, but was now —

The End 

------------------------------------

The spots where she wrote (more) are clearly areas where she intended to expound upon all Lestat was seeing and feeling in Louis's mind, soul, and blood, and then what he felt and saw as Louis was drinking from him. How I wish we could know what she would have written there! Also the lines that start or end with a — make me wonder if she intended to add more to those bits as well. Would she have actually written out Lestat's torrent of words?

Lestat's line "Kiss me. No really kiss me." isn't in quotation marks in Anne's diary. I chose to add them, because there were many other obviously spoken-aloud dialogue lines also without quotes. But it is possible that Lestat only thinks these words as he and Louis are kissing each other. It reminds me of in Queen of the Damned, when Daniel thinks, "I like kissing. And suggling with dead things, yes, hold me." The narration doesn't tell us Armand actually starts holding him, but Anne's style of using internal monologue makes it clear that's what happens in the action. So the "Kiss me." could be similar in this instance as well. And in that case it might mean Louis is the one who initiates the kiss, and this is Lestat’s internal “yes, yes!!” reaction to it. But I do suspect he is actually meant to be saying it aloud.

With the em dash at the end of it, the very last line could have been meant to continue: "but was now ______" was now...something. But considering she wrote "The End" after it, it seems like it was meant to be a final statement, so that is why I added the missing words I chose in my edited clean version.

Although this conversation is very different from the one we get in the final version of Atlantis, I do still see elements of it in the book's scene:

Louis's line "I can’t live without you! I swear, you wander off on me again, I …" became "so I'll come. And when you tire of me and want me gone, I'll hate you of course."

They still kiss, really kiss. In the book, it is moved to before their conversation, when Lestat first sees Louis in their Rue Royal flat, wearing the new clothes he ordered for him and Louis says, "This is what you wanted, isn't it?" and Lestat is so shocked, he's unable to respond.

They do still discuss Amel in the book version, in much more depth than he is mentioned here. Louis having never heard Amel's voice in his own head remains consistent. 

They do still go walking around the streets of the Garden District, though it happens after the conversation, not during it. Lestat does say they talked for hours during that walk, but about Amel and what's been happening to Lestat as Prince. Not about themselves or their past. 

MY THOUGHTS!

The confirmation here that Lestat never tasted Louis's blood before their new marriage begins in Atlantis is one of the most amazing parts to me, when combined with the offhand way that Lestat mentions what Louis's vampire blood tastes like in Blood Communion. Even though the final version of Atlantis never shows us Lestat drinking Louis's blood (either forcefully like this scene, or consensually in other ways), the mention in Blood Communion does confirm that it DOES happen off the page at some point during the years between Atlantis chapter 4 and the beginning of Blood Communion. 

We know that Louis drank much of Lestat's blood at the end of Merrick, and this was his first time doing it because we were told in previous books how much he resisted his powers being increased by drinking ANY other vampire's blood. It is nice to have it confirmed that Lestat never bit Louis or drank any of his blood in return either before or after Merrick. But now, after Lestat becomes Prince, this is now a new element to their relationship. It makes me consider more strongly that Anne perhaps meant to imply that they then for the first time began to engage in blood sharing the same romantic way Lestat did with Akasha in Queen of the Damned, and then in the even more explicit way she shows us with Rhoshamandes and Benedict in Prince Lestat. 

I don't take all Anne wrote in her diaries as canon. It is clear that much of what she wrote there were spitball ideas that she later chose to absolutely reject (as opposed to deciding they were true but she just didn't mention them in the books). But I do not see anything in this scene that the final versions of the books contradict. So even though this scene didn't actually happen in canon, we can believe that the feelings and emotions that drive this scene are still canon. And I love that for us 🥰

I have cross-posted this on ao3 to give us a good place to talk back and forth to each other about it in the comments section there. Reblog and reply to this post as much as you like, but if you want to have some conversations and share your own thoughts on what she wrote, ao3 will give us a much more organized place to do it, where other people will be able to easily find and read your meta as well.

[vidavalor]

Hmmm...I feel like I asked you this before,but why do you think Crowley doesn't like the 14th century??

I don't think you have actually, Rouge. Aww, the grumpy Crowley picture, my heart! I had missed him so. 😁 I can answer that, yeah, especially if you help me consume the holiday treats I'm lucky enough to have from some lovelies?

Why does Crowley hate the 14th century?

The short answer is also the only answer here and that's really just that the 14th century was, by all accounts, godawful. Especially if you lived in Europe, as Crowley and Aziraphale did then.

Yes, there is always hope and lovely people and somebody making art somewhere no matter what else is happening but heed this warning now: when we all start time-traveling, there will be these dirt cheap options to go to the 14th century and you should remember this post and definitely not do that. 😂

Here are some reasons why (and nowhere near all, as Tumblr only has so much space...):

Early in the century, The Great Famine of 1315-1317 hits Europe. Several years in a row of terrible weather ruins crops and, compounding the problem, a terrible disease rips through the cattle and sheep population at the same time as the crops fail, decimating the cattle and sheep population by an estimated 80%. Millions starve to death and millions more go half-mad from the lack of food, causing crime to also increase. The foundations of society start to shake as so many are sickly or dead that the ability to keep everything going begins to come close to collapsing. This is just the warm-up for the century...

This is already an era that is very hard to live in. We couldn't hack it then with our modern comforts and expectations. There's no indoor plumbing or heating or electricity. Medical and scientific knowledge was more limited so there were no vaccines and no understanding of germ theory. Diseases that we have eradicated today entirely or can treat and make no longer life-threatening would rip through populations in waves on the regular. Life expectancy was much shorter because of the inability to inoculate against viruses-- and, really, from a lack of understanding of germs and disease in the first place. No one understands enough about disease to even think about societal efforts to stop the spread because they don't yet know what a virus is.

These are the conditions when The Black Death-- bubonic plague-- shows up in 1346. It kills tens of millions. By the end of the 14th century, as a result of Black Death and wars, Europe's population has halved compared to what it was at the start of the century. Life expectancy was never great but now, with bubonic plague atop all of the other diseases already in existence, it becomes wild for someone to live past the age of 30. The average lifespan drops to 26 and families are having so many children because the diseases we've eradicated today through vaccines still exist and kill them in huge numbers, with 20-30% of all kids dying before they reach the age of 5.

In the midst of this? The average person was illiterate. Gutenberg's printing press wouldn't be invented until the 15th century and the ability to mass-produce written works with it is what helped it become the norm in Western societies for the average person to know how to read. Aziraphale and Crowley, in the 14th century, would have been able to get access to written works mostly by associating with priests and high-ranking members of royal courts, as these men were the main people who were able to read and write and were responsible for keeping records and transcribing materials.

There were still playwrights and artists and scientists and everything but the 14th century is also an age of rampant anti-intellectualism and all the insanity that comes with people being against knowledge and science and art. While there are always people making art and learning new things in every era, there's kind of a reason why when you think about great advancements in humanity, the 14th century is not really the time period of which you think. Technically, the Italian Renaissance began during the 14th century but basically every major work in it was made well after it and it's more like the foundations for it were put into place during this era-- probably by Crowley and Aziraphale having had enough lol.

It's an era of persecuting scientists, condemning art, being suspicious of people with knowledge in basically any field... there's a lot of calling people trying to do anything other than pray, starve or die sorcerers and witches and demonic and all that nonsense. There's hate everywhere, especially rampant antisemitism, with pogroms in the later part of the century where countless Jews were rounded up and murdered in the streets.

Atop all of this, Italy suffers an enormous earthquake that is also felt across parts of Europe that, when coupled with all the death and suffering, does what things like that have always done throughout history... increase the number of people who now think the End Times are upon them and usher in all sorts of extra doomsday-prep weirdness.

This is all egged on by the fact that societies across Europe are basically on the verge of collapse as a result of The Black Death killing so many people and everyone is grieving and afraid and on edge. It's also helpful to know that, in between all this famine and death? There's also wars on all over the planet. Basically every established country on Earth is at war with another one for the majority of the 14th century (to be fair, this is true of most of history) and the one happening in Crowley and Aziraphale's backyard of England was no picnic.

The Hundred Years War started in 1337. Historians consider its end date, uh... 1453. It was a war between England and France, who also had a whole civil war in there in the middle of it. There were some attempts at truces and some 'sorry, too many people are dying from the plague for us to keep trying to kill one another right now-- revisit this next year?' periods but the conflict continued for over a century. It was largely triggered by... what else?... the English king at the time-- Edward III-- trying to say that he should also be king of France. Surprisingly lol, no one in France was really into that idea... England and France both also see these massive revolts of working class people in response to the high taxes of the war, the limited resources, the plague, etc..

This is just a handful of the likely top reasons why the 14th century was not Crowley's favorite. I don't think Aziraphale was very fond of it, either. They're two curious, literate, food-loving, peaceful, warm-hearted people, and they would have spent that century drowning in the worst of the human experience.

I'm sure they think about all that misery sometimes when they're warm and comfortable without miracles and enjoying seeing greatly reduced child mortality and many people living past a century. They probably often think about it when they're eating food sourced from around the world that exists in plenty, especially in places like The Ritz, that would have been unimaginable for most during the 14th century.

[evilwickedme]

I said I'd never do jumblr content again and yet here I am because this keeps coming up and it's like the only thing I can think about. That said I will not hesitate to turn off reblogs if y'all are horrible in the notes again, and be warned that I will be blocking anybody who supports any of the theories I mention immediately

There is no such thing as a conspiracy theory that isn't antisemitic. There is no such animal

Antisemitic conspiracy theories go back thousands of years. The ones that still have the most hold on culture to this day are the blood libel, and the protocols of the elders of zion

The blood libel was an accusation that would be brought against Jewish populations in Europe often but especially around Passover claiming that we were killing Christian children for ritual purposes, usually to use their blood for baking matza or other nonsense (it is important to me that you know that this is nonsense. It is horrible and damaging but also to the core a ridiculous lie that never at any point made any sense. They just didn't care). Debatably this trope is present in the merchant of Venice. Undebatably Jews were killed because people did and still do sincerely believe this

The protocols of the elders of zion is a fictitious document published in Russia at the very beginning of the 20th century, supposedly detailing the meetings of the Jewish people who secretly run the world. The protocols were almost immediately proven to be a rip off of another document - ah, plagiarism - but that hasn't stopped antisemites from embracing it wholeheartedly (special thanks fuck you to Henry Ford for publishing them in his newspaper, spreading it across the USA). It built on previous antisemitic tropes, from the greedy banker trope (Jews were forced to be money lenders in medieval Europe as it was forbidden in Christianity and Jews weren't allowed to join any guilds, preventing them from making money in any other capacity - the reason why there are so many Jews in Hollywood is identical, but in the early 20th century) to the concept of dual loyalty (i.e. Jewish are loyal to ourselves above all else and cannot be trusted to be loyal to the country where we live, see: modern trope that every Jew is probably loyal to Israel and the subsequent idea that it's okay to ask every single diaspora Jew how they feel about Israel immediately upon meeting them). It's also worth noting that the word cabal, used to denote the shadowy organizations that supposedly control the world, comes from kabbala, which is Jewish mysticism

The idea of lizard people, created by a guy literally named Icke because he is a gross human being, was designed to repackage the antisemitic shadow cabal concept to be supposedly more palatable

Most qanon theories also build on all of this, such as world leaders preying on children (remember pizzagate?)

But more importantly conspiratorial thinking always positions you as the good guy standing against a mysterious "them", an other which is influencing things behind the scenes. The Jew is the ultimate other, and specifically an other that supposedly forms a shadowy world government, controlling everything and yet somehow not managing to get rid of antisemitism (see: protocols of Zion, lizard people, we control Hollywood and the government which is of course conspiring against you). There is no way to decouple the idea of an evil shadowy organization (usually also referred to as a cabal to really hammer it in) from antisemitism and antisemitic tropes

And this means that even supposedly "harmless" conspiracy theories attract antisemites and train people who aren't necessarily rabid antisemites to confirm those kinds of biases. Obviously Qanon and lizard people are antisemitic, but what does the moon landing have to do with Jews? Well, it was Hollywood and the government that faked it, obviously. Hell, even the conspiracy that Taylor Swift is secretly a lesbian and is either still secretly dating or is exes with Karlie Kloss is riddled with antisemitism -

Okay so I need to explain my position on this because I fucking hate this conspiracy theory, and the fact that most people simply won't acknowledge that that's what it is. Firstly, Taylor Swift has stated that she is not gay or considers herself an ally at least three times off the top of my head, and specifically denied that she was dating Karlie Kloss. Secondly, outing people is wrong. Thirdly, the conspiracy theory hinges on the idea that she would be risking her career by coming out, except that she's proven that basically no controversy can come in the way of her career, she's already "come out" as an ally, donated to glaad and the equality act, promoted queer musicians & artists & designers (there was a song in the reputation tour that was dedicated to a gay designer every single night of the tour). So what's stopping her from coming out at this point? Mysterious forces, clearly. The antisemitism in that I've already explained, but also the virulent antisemitism among Kaylor shippers aimed at her husband and at the fact that she converted to Judaism is fucking disgusting

Again: even a supposedly harmless conspiracy theory leads to antisemitism and attracts antisemites

A few years ago I tried to rewatch white collar cause I remembered really enjoying that show as a preteen and after around a season I just couldn't stand it anymore, because all I wanted to do was jump into the universe and yell at Mozzie to shut the fuck up because these conspiracy theories were barely presented as a joke and never challenged even once by any of the characters. When I rewatched that 70s show it also fucking sucked, but at least it wasn't showing up in every single episode. The blacklist focuses entirely on a literal Cabal, that's what they're called

This stuff is so normalized and it's fucking everywhere and it's exhausting. Jews are to this day being murdered over this. I can't change the world by myself, unfortunately, but if you don't have a specific person to blame for your troubles, shut the fuck up. Just shut up. There is no conspiracy against you. Sometimes life just sucks. Or definitely does for the Jews who get shot at over this shit

Again, I'll be blocking anybody who parrots this bullshit in the comments but especially fucking gaylors y'all are one of the main reasons that being a fan of Taylor Swift's music is fucking unbearable. Just accept you can connect to music made by somebody different than yourself it's not that difficult of a concept

[specialagentartemis]

@thefoxthief said in response to this post:

I have a question. I vaguely remember learning in an anthro class that there is little/poor evidence of mammoth hunting and most likely the bones used to built huts were collected from already dead mammoths. Teach me.

Pretty much accurate! Mostly, Ice Age people didn’t hunt mammoths, but it varied by region. It was very rare in most of Europe, a little more common in the Russian steppes, and a surprisingly regular occurrence in southwestern North America.

For the most part, in the Ice Age, people hunted animals like deer, caribou, wild sheep/goats, and wild horses (which were the size of modern ponies mostly). That was the size that it seems people preferred—that’s a lot of meat, but like, that’s a manageable-sized animal. The hide is thin and the vital organs are within a spear’s range and also it will have a much harder time trampling you to death if you miss. Killing and butchering a mammoth with stone and bone tools would have been possible, but very difficult and energy consuming (archaeologists LOVE doing experimental archaeology by taking stone tool replicas to the bodies of dead zoo elephants). Generally the belief is that bones from the mammoth bone huts of Ukraine and Russia were scavenged from dead animals—still no small feat, but the mammoths weren’t regularly hunted for them.

As my archaeology professor likes to describe it, hunting a mammoth is something that you might do once and then brag about for the rest of your life. It isn’t unheard of, but it was definitely rare.

… except in the US Southwest and the northern half of Mexico where there seem to be a bunch of really dramatic mammoth kill sites (and gomphotheres, another Ice Age elephant-like animal). The Naco Mammoth Kill Site and El Fin del Mundo site are particularly striking but there are several known ones in southern Arizona/northern Mexico. Those people were hunting mammoths 11-13,000 years ago for whatever reason!

However my story is set around the Black Sea 30,000 years ago, and hunting mammoths was rare and definitely not preferred. And important worldbuilding context is that the clan spends its winters upriver on the steppes to meet the caribou herds migrating south for the winter… but this winter has been harsh, with early freezes and cold winds (and advancing glaciers because we are slowly approaching the Last Glacial Maximum, though they don’t know that), and the normal caribou herds… aren’t here. The clan’s normal winter food source is nowhere to be found. And they are deeply DEEPLY concerned and also starving.

So when the herd of mammoths pass through, this isn’t business as usual, it’s a climactic move of desperation to try to take down a whole damn mammoth to save them all.

[insipid-drivel]

Toxins, Venom, and Poisons in Historical Western Medicine: How Are We Not Extinct From Doing Some Of This To Ourselves?

This piece is an involuntary piece inspired by @writing-with-sophia's awesome post "Poison list", which is an accurate and succinct list of commonly known (and ancient!) poisons, venoms, and toxins that have been and were used for causing poisoning in ancient and recent history. I wanted to write this because what struck me by their post crossing my dash was, the sheer number of poisons listed that were - and even still are - used as mainstays for healthcare around the world throughout the ages!

OBLIGATORY DON'T BE A DUMBASS PSA: If you're planning on incorporating these poisons into your HISTORICAL-era writing, it's also important to remember that many of them were used for medicinal purposes at one time, too, and it's great you're interested in learning about the subject! And also, you shouldn't try ANY of these! I will not tell you how to do it at home if you DM me, so don't! You are not appropriately trained to do it! You will harm or kill yourself and possibly your loved ones if you fuck around with any of these and it will be 100% your fault and you absolutely should feel bad bout it! I've seen some of you idiots believe 4chan posts about making home-grown crystals using recipes for actual mustard gas and seen you being wheeled into the ER on the news! I will not feel bad if you get yourself hurt if you screw around with any of these plants, elements, or animals!

Resource blog plugs and PSA over, now for the Hilariously Poisonous Medicines:

If you're writing something that's meant to take place prior to the advent of our more modern understanding of poisons, venoms, and toxins, factoring in "this is toxic to me NOW, but what about 500 years ago?" can add a lot of opportunities for interesting plot elements to your story.

These can include someone accidentally poisoning themselves with a toxic drug or substance that wouldn't have killed them if they'd handled it properly - like tansy? Grows all over the place in Europe and England? That'll kill you if you harvest it too late in the season, but it's good for intestinal parasites when it's harvested early in the year and processed right.

Did the lady's maid really kill her mistress with belladonna? Or was she trying to secretly help her mistress get rid of an unwanted pregnancy?

The protagonist's children can't survive to make it to weaning age! Is the wetnurse a poisoner, or does the milkman hide that he sells sour milk by pouring Borax into it so no one could taste it and has no idea he's killing his clients' babies?

Nuance and cultural mores regarding historical views about poisons and toxins can make writing even more fun, dynamic, and interesting! Explore 'em!

Just... please don't try any of this crap yourself. You will poison yourself, it will hurt, you will die, and you will hurt the entire time you're dying. Using OP's master list alone, here's the flip side of these lethal beasts through the eyes of our distant ancestors who believed illness was caused by "vapors", "bad air", and "imbalanced humors":

Hemlock:

Used across multiple different cultures in history. When properly administered to treat a disease, poison hemlock was used to treat asthma, whooping cough, bronchitis, joint/bone pain, muscle cramps, and insomnia. Hemlock was most often used as a sedative and antispasmodic.

Arsenic:

Arsenic is a heavy metal, and so has been used in everything from making specialty dyes for wallpapers (Scheele's green is the most infamous arsenic-based paint; Queen Victoria once had a guestroom in her palace redone with Scheele's green wallpaper. The first dignitary to stay there had to be carried out and taken to emergency care after breathing astronomical amounts of arsenic dust from the wallpaper's paint), to medicine. Arsenic was especially commonly used in history to treat skin ailments ranging from acne, to psoriasis, to syphilis sores. It was also sometimes prescribed for menstrual cramps, upset stomachs, colic, and arthritis, among many, many other things.

Cyanide:

Uh... I have literally never found any evidence of cyanide in medicine, outside of its use in modern medicine as part of certain chemical lab tests for measuring urine ketone bodies that involve no contact with a patient whatsoever. Cyanide literally works in less than a few seconds to render your entire body incapable of absorbing OR using oxygen in your lungs or already existing in your blood. Cyanide is really only good at making things that breathe not breathe anymore.

Nightshade:

There are a lot of different "nightshades", so being specific is essential here. Potatoes are nightshades. Tomatoes are nightshades. Calling anything a "nightshade" does not inherently mean it's lethally toxic. Belladonna is probably the most notorious of the "deadly" nightshades, but to this day, is still used medicinally, and would actually be seen as a health and cosmetic mainstay in historical fiction, especially if your setting is in Italy!

Belladonna is an Italian portmanteau for "beautiful woman", because tinctures (water-based drops) of belladonna were commonly used by Italian women as eyedrops to dilate their eyes and appear more attractive, aroused, and desirable. Today, belladonna's eye-dilating effects are still used by optometrists to dilate the pupils! Belladonna has been, and still sometimes is used as an NSAID, general painkiller, motion sickness treatment, asthma medication, and even as a treatment for IBS.

Ricin:

As OP said, Ricin is derived from the toxin found in Castor Beans, and is surprisingly new as an official "the only reason this is made is to make someone dead" poison. Not only is ricin a popular "nobody would think to test for this!" choice in mystery/thriller writing, but it has been used for political assassinations in real life before. Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian anti-Communist dissenter and writer, was killed in 1978 with a 1.7mm diameter ricin-coated pellet shot into his thigh muscle by an unidentified assailant using a modified umbrella as a gun. He died 4 days later.

Historically, castor OIL has been used for medicinal purposes, especially for treating constipation, inducing labor in pregnancy, and as a topical skin moisturizer. If you've ever watched the opening scene in Disney's "Peter Pan", when the childrens' mother is trying to give them a spoonful of medicine each, she's actually giving them castor oil! Castor oil tastes really bad (so much so that flavorings like cinnamon were often added to try to muffle the taste), so the childrens' reluctance and disgust at their mom making them take their medicine is very realistic for the era the movie came out in!

Strychnine:

Another lethal poison that started life as a medicine/food additive. Strychnine is no longer used medicinally at all today, but historically, it was used to stimulate the heart, treat bladder and bowel incontinence, and limb palsy. Strychnine is a deadly-powerful muscle stimulant that, as a poison, causes horrifyingly painful full-body strictures (spasms) and destroys the cardiovascular system. (Fun fact: Strychnine and hydrochloric acid were historically mixed into cheap vodka to make knock-off gin, especially during the Georgian Era in England if the brewer didn't have or couldn't afford juniper berries!)

Snake Venom:

Seriously, do your research before you write an actual, real snake species using venom they don't produce! The Big 3 Forms Of Snake Venom are: Hemotoxic, Neurotoxic, and Cytotoxic. Specific snake species exclusively generate the same kind of venom (so a hemotoxic snake will ALWAYS produce baby snakes that also make hemotoxic venom). Aristotle himself wrote in 380 BC that certain snake venoms could be applied for treating fevers, smallpox, and leprosy, and there is even some evidence in the historical record prior to the 1800s that different cultures have experimented throughout the eons with using venom for converting into antivenom, but I've never found a source citing anyone making a successful form of antivenom until around the 1850s.

Digitalis:

OP really nailed the important thing about Digitalis, and that is it's cardiac benefits for certain people - particularly for treating congestive heart failure. Vincent van Gogh was actually prescribed epilepsy medication that likely contained Digitalis, aka Foxglove, and there are some prevailing theories about van Gogh's love of bright yellow paint as being either caused or exacerbated by the symptoms associated with digitalis use, which can cause an attraction to and increased visual sensitivity to the color yellow. In several portraits, including one of his own psychiatrist, van Gogh shows subjects presented alongside foxglove flowers. Digitalis is absolutely lethal if consumed or taken without expert guidance, however, because it's the mother ingredient of Digoxin. Digoxin isn't used as frequently as it used to be a few decades ago, but it's still used and prescribed today for certain forms of heart failure and heart disease. Digoxin was also, at one time, was also sometimes used to induce chemical abortions.

Lead:

Dear god, lead. Not only is it so slow to kill you that you'll think that the only way to manage your symptoms is with more lead, but lead poisoning can be a life-long crisis for a person who is regularly exposed to it. Humans have used lead for everything from plumbing, to paint, to our cutlery, to cosmetics, to medicine. While yes, it is very possible to ingest enough lead in a single sitting to die within hours or days, most sufferers of lead poisoning experience it for years or decades before the symptoms become obvious. Some archaeologists believe that the Romans used lead cutlery because lead has a unique reaction when we lick it: when you have lead coating your tongue, it makes EVERYTHING you eat suddenly taste 10x better. I learned this myself from going target-shooting with my mom at a gun rage as a teenager, inhaled gunsmoke (which contains lead), and went for lunch immediately after. Even though I was just eating a $5 meal from In-N-Out, my burger tasted so good I thought I was gonna have to change my pants. When I asked the rangemaster at the target place about it later, he literally said, "Oh yeah, lead makes the worst cooking taste like heaven."

The ancient Romans ate a lot of rotten, spoiled, and sour food, and so lead would've made it easier to eat it back then. But the neurological effects of lead poisoning are nightmarish. It's suspected that, in America, the #1 reason we had so many active serial killers in the country from the 1940s-2000s was because of leaded gasoline. Ever since leaded gasoline was banned? Serial and random violent crime rates have dramatically gone down, especially in metropolitan cities. Ancient Rome, too, gradually became an increasingly violent city as its population went up and its reliance on lead did. We're only just now starting to figure out how toxic lead actually is, so go nuts with using it as a plot element regarding subjects like "Why Are You Like This?"

Mercury:

Mercury is also known as quicksilver, because in spite of being a heavy metal, the temperature at which it melts into a liquid is very, very low compared to most other metals. The first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, was rumored to be so obsessed with the notion of immortality that he would send his doctors on doomed voyages around the world searching for a legendary substance that would, indeed, make him immortal. Legend has it that some doctors who were tasked with the job found out about the last guys, and produced mercury before Emperor Qin Shi Huang and cried, "Here it is! I got it!" so they wouldn't end up doomed to drown at sea. Qin Shi Huang became so obsessed with ingesting and medicating himself with mercury that, when his legendary tomb was being constructed, he had a small-yet-accurate-to-scale map of China+the known world about the size of a football field with every body of water full of fountains of running mercury in his burial chamber. His tomb was rediscovered in the last couple of decades after archaeologists found suspiciously high levels of mercury in the soil on top of a "hill" that had been sitting in the countryside untouched for thousands of years. It turned out to be Qin Shi Huang's long-lost tomb.

Since those days, mercury has closely been associated in early medicine as a sort of cure-all, since it literally kills anything it touches (including people). Captain Blackbeard himself, the most notorious pirate in Western history (Western specifically; google who Zheng Yi Sao was), was known or widely believed to be a syphilis sufferer, and desperately sought infusions of mercury from ships he'd capture (and the doctors onboard) to treat it, believing like everyone did that mercury could cure syphilis. It can't. They just didn't understand back then that syphilis starts off surface-level, and then eats your brain years after the initial infection.

Aconite:

Again, ridiculously toxic outside of specific medicinal applications that still aren't safe today! Aconite, or wolfsbane, has historically been used as a heart sedative (for slowing the heart), diuretic, painkiller, and even used to induce sweating. Evidence of wolfsbane being used for medicinal purposes has been spotted here and there over thousands of years throughout the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Empires, but its original use came about in Ancient Greece for hunting and culling wolves by poisoning bait-food with it. That form of hunting died out long before the European Middle Ages, but the name "wolfsbane" stuck. Mostly because in the Middle Ages, a lot of people believed werewolves were a huge problem, and kept wolfsbane handy to deter said werewolves.

Thallium:

Today, thallium is mostly used in the production of camera and eyeglass lenses. Before its toxicity was known about, it wasn't strange to hear of thallium being used topically to treat fungal infections like ringworm. Thallium was also sporadically used in treating typhus and tuberculosis, along with a wide array of sexually transmitted diseases.

This list doesn't even touch the tip of the toxic iceberg when it comes to the sheer quantity of hilariously dangerous toxins people have, or still continue, to use for medicinal purposes! In a Victorian-era English London middle-class townhouse setting alone, there were dozens and dozens of ways to poison or otherwise harm yourself just by going about your daily life. So, if you've got a period piece you're working on, or are just bored, you can pick an exact date and time in our history and learn just how terrifyingly comfortable our ancestors were with upsettingly dangerous substances and home remedies. You can also watch a massive docuseries, called "Hidden Killers" and hosted by historian Suzannah Lipscomb, among other historians and archaeologists, which deep-dives into the hidden and unknown dangers of living in eras from Tudor-Era England, to the Post-WWII Reconstruction Age.

As a final note: I am NOT bashing Chinese or Eastern medicinal practices here, and in fact deliberately have gone out of my way to not include any references toward culturally-sanctioned medicinal practices in Eastern and Southeastern Asia. This post is specifically related to the history of WESTERN medicines and their associated history. I am not, nor have I ever been, a doctor of any traditional Eastern medicinal practices, and do not pretend to know better. Sinophobes are unwelcome in my blog space.

[cyborg-squid]

Just finished watching Nosferatu (2024), and one of the really interesting things about it is how it layers like multiple aspects of vampire 'history', from the original 1922 film to Bram Stoker's Dracula, and, it seems, to even early vampire myths. And the thing about the Dracula similarities, and this is odd to type out, but it's almost like they pared down some of the action-adventure elements from Dracula in favor of more horror elements, which is typically the opposite in book-to-movie adaptations. Gone is cowboy Quincey and the hyper-competent Van Helsing, replaced instead with an occult obsessed (yet still empathetic to the female lead's plight) Willem Dafoe (what do you mean that's not the character's name?!). No horse chases after Dracula's carriage in the Carpathian mountains either, which is good because that would have felt very out of place in this movie. Just very interesting to look and go "Oh yeah, huh, the book was the one with more action than the movie."

It also extends a lot more empathy towards it's female lead, Ellen, than I feel Dracula was to both Lucy and Mina, though since it's been a while since I read it, I may be wrong on those accounts. The most striking difference is the death of the vampire, and how in the book, Mina is on the brink of being turned and it is the combat efforts of the men that lay low the vampire, while in Nosferatu (2024), it is Ellen that kills Orlock, albeit at the cost of her own life, utilizing the connection that awoke him in the first place, and turning his own lust against him, keeping him away from his grave-earth until the sun comes up. And it's a little bit of a tricky read on the themes here for me, since she does unfortunately sacrifice herself to kill him and it was this supernatural 'thing' shes had since birth that woke him in the first place, this could read as a typical (of the time of Dracula and the 1922 Nosferatu) sort of 'complaint against woman sensuality and irresponsibility' of the time, but Ellen within the movie is consistently portrayed as a victim of Orlock's rather than his enticer, as he and others claim. She too confesses her own impurity and has that claim refuted by her husband (who is less interesting that Dracula's Johnathan), who himself has also been rendered 'impure' by Orlock's sexual assault of him. And her strengths are recognized by Dafoe, who on first meeting her rejects some of the methods used by not-Seward, like binding the limbs while sleeping and the heavy use of ether, which would have been rather common methods of the time (Europe in 1838) for subduing disorderly women, and it is he who does believe and validate her claims of a darker power at work, rather than mere melancholy or hysteria as others initially thought. And he recognizes that the men in the story are not, physically or supernaturally, capable of killing Orlock and that it must be Ellen and her unique connection who does it, but it is as a sacrifice, and that is where the tricky part lies. Because while it does have Ellen finally switching from prey to predator, from victim to victor, it is at the cost of her own life, and I don't like the idea of her mistake as a youth (which resulted in Orlock's pursuit of her) only being rectifiable through her death. But then on the other hand, this is a horror story, and frankly there is no way it could have had a 'better' ending.

As a side note, and this complaint really isn't with the movie itself, because it is a good movie. And that's all it needs to be. But it almost like... didn't need to come out in the modern day, if that makes sense? Like, to have trailers and a Christmas Day release date and a coffin shaped popcorn bucket and 1 million cast interviews, all that shit is unnecessary and doesn't really suit the movie that it is, though I can hardly blame the director and the other artists involved with it for that.

Also, I love this dumb fucking headline about the movie: me when I'm a fucking idiot who doesn't get it. Real "point and laugh mockingly" at it hours. fucking lol

[david-goldrock]

So, last night, me and my mom were talking about the I/P conflict and we started getting on the topic of antisemitism and she had some very interesting thoughts!

But I had said “Why do people say things like Jews are behind everything in the media? Why them specifically? Where did that come from?”

And she said her theory was “Well, since they experienced so much hatred and violence and persecution their entire lives, they became more secretive and reserved. Due to that, people started finding them weird and almost creepy, like they were conspiring, leading to them believing they are doing crazy shit, like being behind the media.”

And it really got me thinking. Why has it always been Jews? Why have Jews always, since the dawn of humanity, been the ones who have experienced so much hate and persecution?

Why then specifically. Like, why anyone, really. But the Jews just feel like such a specific group to target and hate. I know there’s a biblical explanation behind it, but I mean within history. Why has everyone hated them?

Why?

I can’t understand this. 

The more I think about how horrible it is, the sadder I get. Hell, I’m kind of tearing up as of writing this because the thought is just horrible. 

Like, you and Morgana and Shine and every other lovely Jew I have met on this site are so kind and wonderful people. I can’t understand why people, amazing and wonderful people like you guys, could be hated and abused for centuries for simply existing. 

It’s horrible…

DISCLAIMER: I do not know enough about the subject, only a couple of articles, and a few classes in high school. this is not a replacement for studying, this is only what I know

tbh the answer is, sadly, Christianity, Islam, Nazism and the protocols.

let's start with Islam as it is simpler there: the Quran tells Muslims to kill all jews, to make everyone Muslim, and that judgement day will not come until the jews are dead. we were dhimmi (second class citizens) for the better part of the last millennia and a half, and jews lived in extreme conditions there.

Now the christian world. your mother is partially right, it has some to do with the separatist nature of jews: after the diaspora began (and even a bit before, when the unrest in Israel grew in the second temple period), judaism got even more separatist than it already was: no marrying outside the faith, stay in the community, you need so-and-so jews to do this and that and so forward. this led to jews living separately from the other people around them, which made them suspicious, this is probably the main reason that even after the fall of fundamental christianity, jews are still hunted in the modern world. that said, the tools and traditions of antisemitism are older, and are still in use

First, in the early days of christianity, it was common in catholic thinking that jews are collectively responsible for the death of Jesus of Nazareth, and that they should be punished for that sin.

Moreover, the Catholic Church has forbidden christians from handling money, and forbade jews from owning land (which is pretty difficult for being a farmer), while the jews had an extremely high literacy average compared to the rest of Europe (because unlike the christians who listened to sermons, jews had to learn the bible and debate it and understand it, while learning in the "Cheyder" (room, also the nickname for a rabbinic school)). this meant that jews were disproportionally attracted to jobs like banking, loaning, lawyering, entertainment, and any job that required literacy, but not land. This was good for the economic worries of the jews, but terrible for their position in society. jews were associated with the people who took your money wrongly, or helped to get you in jail, and made the animosity between jews and christians high. this is the origin of 2 famous conspiracy theories: jews control the world's economy, and jews control the world's media.

This is not mentioning the old libels, such as the blood libel (that jews use christian children's blood to bake matzah [I am certain that none of the people who say that know what a matzah is, it is a pale beige color, how could you hide blood in that?!]) or the well poisoning tale (that claimed that the reason for the Black Death was jews poisoning the water wells). these libels could have been applied to any minority, but jews were the scapegoat, starting a long tradition of similar libels (read the American leftist news, and you'd see the same stories everywhere, each time in a different costume).

Then the nazis came to power, and while drawing a lot from ancient antisemitism, they invented a lot of new stuff (IDK why Hitler chose the jews, but he did, and it was massive): jews were now irredeemable from birth, possessing inherent negative qualities that could be passed down through generations, stealing everything they claim to have invented, being inherently inferior to other germans, being communists (and capitalist) that plan to destroy the economy and get rich, betrayers who made Germany lose WW1, and many more stereotypes that keep on in the cultural memory

A bit later, in Russia, a document called "The protocols of the elders of Zion" was released (I don't know its history, I am sorry), and it is the backbone of every modern conspiracy, you know, the kind that goes "so-and-so" are a secret group of deep state actors trying to take over the world. this is the protocols. its ideas are embedded deep in the cultural understanding of all of us. if you believe in any conspiracy theory, the protocols will be a no-brainer.

[transmutationisms]

hii, do you have any reading recs for where to start in terms of the history of medicine? thank you so much and i adore reading your succession analysis

if you're new to this subfield i would recommend starting out by just thumbing through the cambridge history of medicine (2006, ed. roy porter). you don't have to read every word in here, but definitely the introduction and any chapters that look particularly relevant to your interests. there are also some medical chapters scattered throughout the cambridge history of science volumes. cambridge volumes are often limited to europe and north america, and they're generally not methodologically daring, so you don't want to get stuck on them forever. but as a starting point, they can help you start to recognise a few influential names in the field, and give you a sense of what the history of medicine 'canon' is & draws from.

after that you can start to get more specific. history of medicine is a bit of a misnomer field in that it contains a few distinct-but-overlapping subject areas: histories of diseases themselves (this will cross into history of biology, paleo-virology, molecular archaeology, genetics, &c); histories of sickness (often drawing from affect theory, disability studies, and history of emotions); histories of medical practice and practitioners (philosophy of health and medicine, labour history, studies of class and discipline formation, military history); histories of public health (broader population thinking, archaeology and anthropology, history of hygiene, history of state formation and biopolitics); histories of medical devices and instruments (history of technology, material history, economic and industrial history). you'll also serve yourself well if you have some sense of specific time periods and places you're interested in—not that i'm telling you to be close-minded, but it just helps if you have some idea of what you're looking for.

you are more than welcome to come back and ask about a more specific sub-topic :-) since you've basically given me free reign, i'll just toss out a few histmed books i've particularly enjoyed, in no particular order:

medicalizing blackness: making racial difference in the atlantic world, 1780–1840, by rana hogarth (2017)

the expressiveness of the body and the divergence of greek and chinese medicine, by shigehisa kuriyama (1999)

doctoring traditions: ayurveda, small technologies, and braided sciences, by projit mukharji (2016)

plague and empire in the early modern mediterranean world: the ottoman experience, 1347–1600, by nukhet varlık (2015)

killing the black body: race, reproduction, and the meaning of liberty, by dorothy roberts (1997)

hearing happiness: deafness cures in history, by jaipreet virdi (2020)

pasteur's empire: bacteriology and politics in france, its colonies, and the world, by aro velmet (2020)

contagion: disease, government, and the 'social question' in nineteenth-century france, by andrew aisenberg (1999)

colonial madness: psychiatry in french north africa, by richard keller (2007)

curing the colonizers: hydrotherapy, climatology, and french colonial spas, by eric t jennings (2006)

ideals of the body: architecture, urbanism, and hygiene in postrevolutionary paris, by sun-young park (2018)

[lunaticobscurity]

ok, @posthumanwanderings asked me about my favourite simple 2000 games, and it'd be easier to format this as a text post than as a private message. so here it is:

vol 37: the shooting ~double shienryu~ - released in europe as steel dragon ex, this is the excellent arcade shooting game shienryu, along with a newly-made sequel. the ps1 port has a ton of weird extras, but this port has a whole sequel.

vol 50: the daibijin - released in europe as demolition girl, this is about attacking the supermodel riho futaba, who has become kaiju sized, for some reason. contains the iconic phrase "breast acquisition data". when it came out here, it had some brief infamy as one of the games unfunny hacks would play and exaggerate how bad it was, for the purposes of alleged "comedy"

vol 64: the splatter action - released in europe as splatter master, it's a cute, gory beat em up, in which you control a little pumpkin man with chainsaws

vol. 73: the saiyuutou saruden - possibly released in europe as monkey king, but i'm not sure if it actually happened. i wrote about it here

vol 81: the chikyuu boueigun 2 - released in europe as global defence force, i'm sure you all know what this is. iconic, era-defining, one of the best games on the entire ps2, not just in the simple series. i'm not joking.

vol. 95: the zombie vs kyuukyuusha - released in europe as zombie vs ambulance, it's post-apocalyptic horror crazy taxi with boss fights. you'll probably get bored after a few stages at most, but the novelty of it is compelling for a while at least.

vol. 101: the oneechanpon ~the neechan 2 tokubetsu-hen~ - the early musou-style oneechanbara games are rough to go back to compared to the more modern character action-style games, but if you're going to play any of them, this is probably the most interesting. it's got a bunch of guest characters from other simple 2000 games!

vol. 104: the robot tsukuuruze ~gekitou robot fight!~ i wrote about this one here

vol. 105: the maid fuku to kikanjuu - a beat em up where you play as a heavily-armed maid killing evil dolls and shit

vol. 112: the tousou highway 2 ~road warrior 2050~ - i wrote about this one here

[myemuisemo]

Gorgeous wilderness description opens "The Avenging Angels," part 12 of Letters from Watson. I wonder how much was inspired by Sir Richard Francis Burton's The City of Saints, recounting his travels in the west and visit to Brigham Young.

Our fleeing party is initially in the Oquirrh Mountains west of Salt Lake City.

The modern highway route skirts the Oquirrhs, in favor of a straight run across the salt flats.

If Ferrier, Lucy, and Jefferson Hope really made 30 miles in their first days, they reached the Cedar Mountains, which are less terrifyingly craggy but very much a desert. Deseret Peak is the pinnacle of this range, though any route across would look for a lower pass.

Were they to make it into what's now Nevada -- with Carson City clear the other side of the state -- there'd be a lot more of this. It's not hospitable country even today.

The big horn sheep is exotically western! And genuine! I am distracted from Jefferson Hope's wasting much of his kill by the discovery that the Sierra Nevada mountains (California - Nevada border, nowhere near our fleeing party yet, but important to me IRL) have their own genetically distinct big horn population.

Hope's slaughtered big horn is likely a Rocky Mountain big horn.

Of course, it's all a disaster. Everyone had to be doomed by the narrative in some way.

But we get an exact date: August 4, 1860.

Camp Floyd, the U.S. Army camp for the occupation of Utah following the Utah War of 1857-8, was right at the south end of the Oquirrh Mountains. Jefferson Hope had the option of hiding Ferrier and Lucy in the mountains and walking them right into the protection of the U.S. military. Maybe there were too many LDS settlers in the low spots in between (though I think Doyle didn't know or remember that the Utah War had happened).

Now comes the crucial moment that chafes me hard.

As the young fellow realized the certainty of her fate, and his own powerlessness to prevent it, he wished that he, too, was lying with the old farmer in his last silent resting-place. Again, however, his active spirit shook off the lethargy which springs from despair. If there was nothing else left to him, he could at least devote his life to revenge.

What about rescuing Lucy after she's married? Okay, Jefferson Hope can't get back to Salt Lake City in time to prevent a forced marriage. However, we're told later that she was a marriage prize primarily for control of her father's property. Once that's in the hands of her husband, would he bother pursuing her? In this period, marriage would make it his and eliminate her rights to it. (I'm assuming nobody is disputing the legality of polygamous marriages in this universe.)

Jefferson Hope really seems to buy in that once married (against her will), Lucy is legitimately another man's property. Admittedly, it's an era when pressuring an heiress into marriage was seen as fairly acceptable, if one's table manners were good. The burden was on the young woman to be too wise and firm to give in, and yet when Lucy shows fine judgment and takes action to avoid the match, she's taken by force. The system is so completely rigged against her; no wonder she can't find any hope to live for.

The schism that sends Drebber and Stangerson on their merry way appears to be fictional, as the Reorganized LDS under Joseph Smith III in the Midwest is too early (1861) and the Godbeites in SLC is too late (1869).

By the end of Jefferson Hope's epic pursuit from Russia to France to Denmark to England. we have now accounted for Drebber's existence in Cleveland, his employment of Stangerson, the gold ring, and the note about how Jefferson Hope is in Europe.

We have not accounted for why Drebber would go arm in arm with his enemy into a vacant house.

[alpaca-clouds]

Paganism in medieval Europe

Okay, you know what? Fuck it. I am going to continue rambling about medieval Europe for a while. It is kinda fitting for the season anyways given that I associate winter and the holiday season with Lord of the Rings first and foremost.

So, let me talk about this one myth about the middle ages that exists in two opposite versions... and both are wrong! Paganism in medieval Europe is one of those things that people really love to get wrong and depict in whatever way suits them.

On one hand we have the conservative Christians who will basically ignore how paganism was for a while in the very early medieval period at times suppressed with violence and just go: "Europe is Christian and basically was always Christian, because that is just how it is."

While on the other hand you have the Neo Pagans (especially white women) who will tell you: "Oh, yeah, paganism was so suppressed, but some very curagous women still kept it alive and they were also burned during those medieval witch hunts!!!" (If you want to know why the witch hunts were not medieval, look right over here.)

Both are not right. Because the truth is a lot more complicated. Some of you might have even heard about this one part of it - Christmas.

See, here is the thing: Yes, during the pagan hunts (which mostly happened between the late 4th and the 8th century) paganism was very, very much suppressed within Europe. Again, temples and holy sites were burned down, idols were defaced and so on and so forth. And yes, people were killed during those times for their beliefs. How many died during this time? Frankly, we do not know. There have been some mass graves found in Eastern Europe that we assume are connected to this - but we frankly do not know how many died or were displaced due to this.

But... And you know there is always a "but". Christians realized after a while - just like the Romans did when it came to suppressing Christians - that suppression actually does not work very well in terms of converting people to your religion. So, they tried a different approach: Incorporation.

And this is where the Christmas story comes in. I do not need to tell you that even if Jesus really existed, the entire "travelling so so long for the citizen count" and basically all about the birth story is made up. This is something we can proof. And even if it happened, it would not have happened at midwinter. So, no, December 24th or 25th is not the birthday of Jesus.

No, the reason that midwinter became Christmas is, that basically all of the indigenous European religions celebrated midwinter. So, to convert thema after a while the Christians went: "Oh, we also have this super rad midwinter celebration, because it turns out that our Jesus was tots born on midwinter, you know?" This story is fairly well known. What people do realize less is that it was not just midwinter.

Over the time a lot of indigenous religious festivities were incorporated into the just Christianity. Old gods now became saints, with angels and saints absorbing old pantheons. That way Christians could remain with the "only one God" argument, but also be like: "Oh, yeah, you can totally keep worshipping your gods, because see, they were actually angels!"

Which is also why Christian tradition does differ always a bit between the different countries throughout Europe. Like which of the Christian holidays are celebrated and in what way is not the same. Because they often were mixed up with whatever indigenous holiday happened around the same time.

So, yes. A part of European paganism survived even until the modern day. But not through rebellious women or anything like that, but thanks to Christians just incorporating those holidays into their own religion.

... And also that is why we have an Easter Bunny.

[litcest]

Pericles, by William Shakespeare

Pericles, Prince of Tyre, better known as just Pericles, is a play by Willian Shakespeare (and possibly co-authored by George Wilkins) which was first printed in 1609. Wilkins published in 1608 The Painful Adventures of Pericles Prince of Tyre which is the prose version of the story, but goes a little different in some aspects. 

The play was based on the (fictional) story of Apollonius of Tyre, which was a widely popular during the Middle Ages all around Europe, being translated and adapted into many languages. It was translated to English as early as the 11th century, but the most diffused version was the one by John Gower in his Confessio Amantis of 1390. Therefore, it isn’t such a surprise that Shakespeare decided to turn this tale into a play.

The plot is kickstarted when the hero of the story is given a riddle by King Antiochus of Antioch in order to win Antiochus’ daughter’s hand in marriage. If the hero can’t answer the riddle correctly, he is to be killed. However, the situation is a tricky one: if the hero tells the answer to the riddle, he will also be killed, since the riddle if about Antiochus incestuous relationship with his daughter and Antiochus doesn’t want anyone knowing.

I’m taking the text from Internet Shakespeare Editions, which disponibilizes the original version of the play, as well as a modern spelling of it (I’ll be quoting only the modern spelling, for easier understanding). As a supplementary material, the site also has Wilkins’ The Painful Adventures of Pericles Prince of Tyre.

For the Apollonius version of the story, please check my post Historia Apollonii regis Tyri.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre, by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s play begins with a chorus, as is traditional of Greek plays, that explains the background of the characters. The chorus introduces King Antiochus, the greatest King in all of Syria, who ruled over a beautiful city. His wife had died, leaving him with only a daughter, who is described as “so buxom, blithe, and full of face, as heaven had lent her all his grace”. When the daughter came of age to be married, Antiochus seduced her. The chorus says that Antiochus ‘provoked her to incest’, which I’m interpreting as he courted her and she corresponded his feelings. I’m highlighting this because in some versions of the story it’s said that the King raped his daughter, but it doesn’t seems to be case in Shakespeare’s Pericles.

Chorus: “With whom the father liking took, And her to incest did provoke. Bad child; worse father! to entice his own To evil should be done by none.”

Since the Princess was beautiful, many foreign princes wanted to marry her and, to not arise suspicion of the incestuous relationship the Princess shared with her father, Antiochus decided to allow her to marry. With one condition: she would only marry the one who managed to solve the riddle he proposed. Those who couldn’t give the right answer to the riddle would be killed.

Pericles arrives to take the challenge and Antiochus introduces him to his daughter.

Antiochus: “Nature this dowry gave, to glad her presence, The senate house of planets all did sit, To knit in her their best perfections.”

Antiochus presents Pericles with the riddle, and the Princess wishes him luck (which are her only lines in the whole play). The riddle goes as this:

“I am no viper, yet I feed On mother’s flesh which did me breed. I sought a husband, in which labour I found that kindness in a father: He’s father, son, and husband mild; I mother, wife, and yet his child. How they may be, and yet in two, As you will live resolve it you.”

Pericles quickly understands that the riddle is regarding the King and Princess incestuous relationship and is shocked by it. He loses his interested in marrying the Princess after discovering she has committed the sin of incest. Antiochus presses Pericles to give an answer, but he doesn’t want to, because he thinks that revealing the incestuous relationship might enrage Antiochus and result in the King killing him anyway. As such, Pericles lets Antiochus know that he figured it out without actually making the accusation of incest. Antiochus decides to give Pericles forty days to think about it.

Pericles decides to flee back to Tyre all in his attempt of avoid Antiochus’ rage, but Antiochus sends an assassin after him. And this is the last the see of Antiochus and his daughter for the rest of the play. In Act III, they are mentioned to have died and in the epilogue of Act V, their deaths are said to be the punishment for their actions:

Chorus: “In Antiochus and his daughter you have heard Of monstrous lust the due and just reward.”

As for Pericles, when he arrives in Tyre, he tells what happened to Helicanus, who advises Pericles to leave once more to avoid being hunted down. As he flees, his ship gets wrecked by a storm and he washes up in Pentapolis, where the kingdom is celebration the birthday of Thaisa, daughter of King Simonides. Pericles decides to win her hand in marriage during a jousting contest. Indeed, Pericles wins and the two marry. They stay in Pentapolis until Pericles learns of Antiochus' death and deems it's safe to go home with Thaisa.

While at sea, Thaisa seemingly dies giving birth to a daughter, named Marina. Pressured by the crew, Pericles allows Thaisa’s sealed coffin to be cast overboard and decides to go to Tarsus, where he leaves Marina in the care of his friends, Cleon and Dionyza, and goes back to rule in Tyre.

However, Thaisa hadn't died, and her coffin is found by a doctor, who heals her. Believing that there had been a shipwreck, Thaisa assumed Pericles and Marina to be dead and so becomes a priestess of Diana.

Fifteen years go by and Dionyza becomes jealous of Marina's beauty, and so decides to murder her. Before Marina can be killed, she is kidnapped by pirates and taken to a brothel, where luckily she manages to persuade every man to not violate her.

Pericles decides to go back to Tarsus to see his daughter, but is shown her grave. Distraught, he decides to abandon his duty as a ruler and sail aimlessly. Eventually, he arrives in Mytilene, where Marina works, now not as a prostitute, but as a musician and entertainer.

A friend of Pericles, to cheer him up from his depression, hires Marina to play for them. Marina and Pericles each share theirs laments and realise they are father and daughter. For further rejoice, the goddess Diana then tells Pericles that Thaisa still lives. The whole family reunite and go back to Tyre, where Pericles returns to the throne.

Painful Adventures of Pericles Prince of Tyre, by George Wilkins

Like I mentioned in the introduction, Shakespeare’s possible collaborator in the play, George Wilkins, published his own prose version of the tale of Pericles. I wasn’t initially planning on reading this, but changed my mind when I discovered that, in Wilkins’ text, Antiochus is explicitly said to have abused his daughter.  The Princess kept silence, unable to tell anyone what happened in shame.

“Antiochus the Great, who was the first founder of Antioch, the most famous city in all Syria, having one only daughter in the prime and glory of her youth, fell in most unnatural love with her. And what by the power of his persuasions and fear of his tyranny, he so prevailed with her yielding heart that he became master of his desires.”

I did a double take when I read this. Had I been wrong in interpreting Shakespeare’s text? Had I read it with rose-tinted glasses, trying so hard to have a consensual father/daughter relationship that I had ignored the signs of abuse? Well, no. Or, if I did, I’m not alone, as Bicks (2021) agrees with me:

“[…] yet none of the play’s quartos, from the 1609 Q1 forward, includes even a hint of Wilkins’s excruciating account of the rape. Rather, they dismiss the daughter from the start as a girl who is complicit in her father’s incestuous lust.”

(Bicks then goes on to say this is an erasure of the Princess story and blah blah blah, but I don’t care for that. I care that Shakespeare’s version has the Antiochus relationship with his daughter as being consensual).

Later, Antiochus and his daughter are revealed to have been killed by lightening (the means of death are not described in the play), which one can suppose was the divine punishment inflicted by Jove (a.k.a. Jupiter or Zeus).

Conclusion

After looking at many versions of the Pericles/Apollonius story, it becomes clear that what was originally a sexual assault was re-worked by Shakespeare into being a consensual relationship. Was it to make the characters more palatable to the audience? Doubtful. Antiochus is the antagonist of the play, having him rape his daughter would fit with his villainous status. Regardless on whether the Princess is being raped by her father or is in love with him, the other characters (and the audience of the time) would find them despicable. Besides, other Shakespearean plays include rape, so it’s clear that the author doesn’t shy away from the topic. Was it, like Bicks suggested, an erasure of the Princess voice? I also don’t think so. 

I prefer to think that Shakespeare read Apollonius and thought that there didn’t need to any rape in that relationship, that the father and daughter could very well be engaging in a consensual relationship and ran with the idea. The effect is the same, in at least Shakespeare doesn’t victimizes the Princess by having her be violently raped and told in details like the others authors had previously done.

References: 

Archibald, Elizabeth. Apollonius of Tyre : Medieval and Renaissance Themes and Variations: Including the Text of the Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri with an English Translation. D.S. Brewer / Boydell & Brewer, 1991.

Bicks, Caroline. “‘If I Should Tell / My History’: Memory, Trauma, and Testimony in Pericles and Hamlet.” Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World: Rethinking Female Adolescence. Cambridge University Press, 2021. 127–159.

[sirowsky]

Day 7 of the Celebration Stories, and this one comes from my lovely wife @lucrezia-thoughts with the prompt: "Please, tell me you missed me." with the supreme Marcus Pike! <3

Rating: Mature Warnings: Marcus Pike x friend reader, reader has no physical description and no specified gender, cursing, college reunion, fluff, happy and open ending. Word Count: 732 Sirowsky's Masterlist

--Reunion--

   He was one of your best friends in college, but you haven’t seen him since then.    You’d parted ways after graduation, and while you had initially tried to stay in touch, this had been before the age of smartphones and all the modern technology that makes connecting to other people so easy these days, so it hadn’t taken long before your busy lives had killed your friendship.

   You weren’t going to come to this reunion, for a lot of reasons, but in the end, it had been the prospect of seeing him again that had made it impossible to stay away.    He’s in the FBI these days, and you know that he’s working with art theft and stuff, but that’s also pretty much the extent of what you know.    Whether he’s single, married, a father, or perhaps no longer identifying as male or straight, you have no idea.

   But sitting there, at the far end of the café that’s being used for the event, you’re certain that none of it matters. You just wanna see him again.    You watch your former classmates make their entrance, one after the other, and then proceed to behave exactly as you expect, because of course they haven’t changed much. Which is somewhat comforting, but also dull.

   You’ve been there for an hour and a half, and barely spoken to anyone, because you hardly knew them when you were in class together, and even less so now.    There were two other people that you were also close with back then, Miles and Kayla, but they got married and moved to Europe years ago, so they’re not coming.    And since it’s looking increasingly unlikely that the man you’re waiting for is gonna show, you get up and start making your way to the door.

   It takes a while, because everyone wants to pretend to care that you’re leaving early, and you’re too polite to just tell them to fuck off, so you fake a smile and try and work your way through them as painlessly and quickly as you can.    Stepping outside it feels like you’re taking your first breath of actual air in almost two hours, and it cools you down, so you take a moment to just stand there and breathe.

   “Still not a people person, huh?” a familiar voice sounds from your right, and you turn your head to find him there, slowly strolling towards you with his hands buried in the front pockets of his jeans.

   “Marcus…” you breathe, stunned to finally see him again.

   He looks even better than you remember. More mature and definitely a lot calmer, but that boyish twinkle in his eyes hasn’t gone anywhere.    And somehow you feel like you’ve just come home.

   “Please, tell me you missed me,” he says with a smile as he comes to a stop right in front of you. “Because I have had a terrible year, and I could really use an old and good friend right about now.”

   You decide not to dwell on whatever the terrible stuff might be, because you’re also in need of a good friend to take your mind off the greyness of your life, so you smile back.

   “Yes. I’ve missed you terribly. Now give me a hug and then let’s go find some good food and catch up,” you suggest, and he quickly wraps his arms around you with a warm chuckle deep in his throat.

   He seems to hold on to you just a little longer and a little tighter than what you’d expected, which makes you think that maybe he really has gone through some shit, and is downplaying it to not ruin the reunion.    But you don’t mention it. You just take his arm once he pulls back, and together you saunter off down the street, looking for a Chinese restaurant, and somehow you know that this friendship isn’t going to die off again this time.

   You’re both a little different now, shaped by the things you’ve gone through, no doubt, but you’re also the same.    Everything about him feels familiar, from his walk to his mannerisms to his voice and the way he talks, and you imagine that it feels the same for him.    And you just know in your heart that any friendship that can feel this unchanged and comfortable even after a decade of no contact, is meant to last.

<<<<<<<THE END>>>>>>>

Thank you for reading and if you enjoyed this, please consider reblogging so that more people might find it <3

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[vacantgodling]

hello my dear friend ren [holding microphone up to you] i am Intrigued by gust btaf.... would you mind telling me a bit more about him? :3

HEWWO <3 thank u for asking about my current fixation ODJSKCN

gust is. hm. a character. to start off, here's the 'official' tldr blurb i have about him in all of my planning notes:

known mononymously as ‘gust’, he manages a large network of packs and werewolves to fight in the crusade against vampire kind. much about his origins and true goals are unknown, and some speculate that he is perhaps the inventor of werewolves however he won’t confirm or deny that. sees that despite it all sjaak was still clinging to life and turns him into a werewolf for he admired his tenacity.

to expand these thoughts: gust is (as far as anyone knows) the first werewolf/wolfman/lycanthrope, however you wanna call him. he's probably the oldest character in the story, though his true age is unknown, but he's definitely thousands of years old. no one really knows how he was turned, or why, or how he discovered vampires or moonstone, or literally like. Anything about his backstory. but that's definitely all by design--his purpose has always been the same: to eradicate vampires from the face of the earth.

to do that, he has cultivated numerous packs of wolves across europe (and in modern day this would expand to much of the known world) and travels around bestowing moonstone onto those who would be worthy additions to the cause (such as sjaak), roping in broodmothers to breed a new class of eventual werewolves into adulthood, and slaughtering the fuck out of vampires in exeedingly gory fashion. you could argue somewhat that he does this for the good of humanity, but given his actions... it seems like he doesn't really have a 'pure unadulterated love' for humanity like the noble cause could perhaps dictate.

circling back to the age thing, i think the order of oldest characters to youngest would be:

GUST (who knows) -> DALAL (was alive in morocco sometime in the 1200s) -> LUIS & MARITXELL (were alive in europe sometime around the 1400-1500s) -> ROSITA (probably born in the 1600s) -> EDUARD (probably born in the 1600s) -> AZELIE (probably born in the early 1700s) -> SILVANO (probably born in the early 1700s) -> FLORISSA (born in 1779 in portugal, so probably 31-32 at the time of story) SJAAK (born 1788 in the netherlands, so about 22-23 at the time of story) -> BISCELLA (born 1790 in germany, so about 20-21 at the time of story)

in terms of his personality, he's mysterious, hypocritical, proud, ruthless, and a whole host of other adjectives. he's very objective. he sees the larger picture and he doesn't really care so much about the little details or sacrifices that have to be made for the common goal. even if that means killing children, or taking broodmothers against their will, or even turning people into werewolves against their will... in his mind they're all necessary evils. he doesn't view the world as black and white, nor as any choice as something that is done purely out of goodness--but that everyone is selfish and has their own desires and everything that is done is because of them.

in keeping with btaf's themes... he definitely has a warped perception of free will. free will exists when it is convenient to him, and also exists as a tool that the powerful wield against the weak. free will also exists in love and dependability to him; but he has no qualms about taking away other sources of stability so that people have no choice but to depend on him. he doesn't claim to be a good man--just a man with a purpose, and one who isn't afraid of exerting his own means to fulfill that purpose. he and sjaak get into numerous arguments over this entire thing and especially about his treatment of florissa and how dalal views him, being one who has been around him longer than anyone else in the world.

but those are details! overall, gust is a complex manwolf thing but like. ngl he's hot so like yknow, i'd get it if people want a piece of him pff.

[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!