Tumgik
#maybe i should use tumblr more for this stuff.....
proshipconfessions · 2 days
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I fucking hate antis. I used to be one, and I am still SURROUNDED by all this “liking fictional CSA means you’re icky and one of the bad victims and YOU WILL DO IT IRL!!!!” Bullshit.
People I admire and look up to end up saying it. My “friends” end up saying it. It’s everywhere. I often feel like I can’t trust anyone, not even my close friends who have already told me they don’t care what I’m into.
it’s terrifying. ive seen what antis have done to us, I’ve seen how easy it is for people like me to be exposed. I’ve seen how people will see you as nothing but the filth that soils everybody’s shoes; or the sick, drooling predators just waiting to strike. I’ve seen how people are isolated, abandoned, and even driven to kill themselves because Society just doesn’t fucking like freaks. And everybody on this app says that “most people are proship!!! It’s the normal opinion!! We’re the normal ones!!! ”
I CAN NEVER BELIEVE IT. where the fuck do you live??? People abhor my gayness. People abhor my true gender identity. People abhor the way I carry myself as an autistic person. PEOPLE HATE, SO FUCKING MUCH, and they hate what they think is weird. People don’t even get that Lolita isn’t endorsing what the main character does. if it’s so normal, then why is it so much MORE normal for people to react to the concept of lolicon with “oh, they must be nasty hairy pedophiles living in their mothers basements with tons of CP. it should be illegal!”? if it’s so normal, why is it more normal for self-righteous video essay YouTubers to treat “booktok girlies” like crass, pitiful zoo animals for liking taboo shit in their spice novels? Why do they always come to the conclusion that they’re all stupid old cunts who could never tell the difference between fictional abuse and real abuse?
if it’s so normal, then why is it more normal for people to make this fake binary of “proper, real sexual violence fiction” and “filthy, romanticizing sexual violence fiction?”
People in general Might understand you if you just say you make art about dark subjects. They might be “normal” about that.
But I know full and well that it would be a different story if I bring up fictional incest or CSA. It would be an especially different story if I mentioned that its not to cope with trauma, just to get off on.
…I probably have trust issues, and I have antis to thank for that. It’s getting so common in the media. I’m so sick of people telling me it’s commonly accepted. It is NOT. What I write is gross, triggering to most and seen as immoral to SO many people. Even people I love.
I make new friends, but I don’t let them get close. I’m always terrified/constantly thinking about them discovering that I’m a freak and leaving me— or worse, outing me to others. it’s actually why I’m too scared to start posting like I used to on tumblr. I know what I am. I don’t try to delude myself into thinking I’m “normal.” I am not, and maybe that’s okay.
I hate antis for what they’ve shaped me into. How their rhetoric that I clung to in fear for so long had shaped me into an uncaring, virtue-signaling asshole. I hate them for how I crumbled when I discovered I had become the very thing that my friends and role models swear to destroy. I hate their logic for getting into almost every fucking crevice of the internet and even my peers’ beliefs. This stuff ruined my mental state.
———
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gigifujijifu · 8 months
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Anyone else remember the little 88x31 buttons from older internet days? I've been remembering them a lot lately.
I make ffxiv ones in msp when I'm in queue or my bf is flying me around between quests.
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spacespore · 9 days
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HI TUMBLRR it’s me
#I ate ramen just now it was soooo god I think ramen is just it just is better after 10pm#im right#ughhh ok that actually reminded me earlier my classmate was making an Asian people eat dogs joke like he put on this awful accent and he wa#all like ‘dog tastes so good with rice’ and then he did other stuff too#but what really made me upset is that someone who I thought was my friend found it really humorous! wow okay!#I know it’s not really a big deal but im still kind of sad like I’ve lost all my respect for you now#anddd they were my only friend in the class so now I’m stuck there for the rest of the semester I guess . I mean I’ll still be nice to them#but I just don’t think I can bring myself to like them anymore sorryyy . not really . but kind of#idk if I’m overreacting . in elementary school though people would make jokes actually about me eating dog and it always made me really sad#but I never held it against them cause we were children#but now I feel like you’re old enough to know what you’re laughing at..#wow ok this really derived away from me being on tumblr and having just ate the worlds best ramen#well . not really I mean it was good but I’m allergic to normal noodles and I need to eat rice noodles and they’re not bad I just don’t lik#them as much Lol#I feel like my actual posts say nothing but if anyone ever reads the tags they probably know everything about me..#I use tumblr to complain half the time loll and I used to post my drawings more but I haven’t made any good drawings recently😭😭😭BUT WAIT!#i have a comic I’ll post in October we’ll see how far I am in it by then…#im like . halfway done with chapter oneeeee so maybe like I’ll post all of chapter one on hallowern.. how does that sound… cause actually#for those of you who don’t know my story has ghosts in it#im like trying to keep it a little silly right now but the tone might shifftttt idk!!!!! we’ll seeeeeeee cause actually I have NOT worked#out the entire plot.. just like. most of it.#but I keep having ideas like midway through ughhh it’s an endless cycle!!!!!#like Francis . she used to be a random character who shows up once but then I was like . wait no! anjali should have ghost friends! and tha#that’s how Francis came to be#and actually today I kind of finalized her design^_^ albeit in my math notebook lol
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narzissenkreuz-ordo · 10 months
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me, wondering why ive been having panic attacks at night recently
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arcaneyouth · 6 months
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i'm starting to think living with 5 other people may simply be a problem
#vent post#negative#i've come to the conclusion i'm not getting enough sugar in my daily meals#(which is. ironic in a lot of ways. but i don't know what else the problem would be)#and that's great that's cool that i've come to this conclusion. i don't think i can solve this one#we don't buy that much sugary or junk food stuff anymore#my dad's got diabetes that makes sense that's understandable#so a lot of our family meals are like rice and meat and a salad#but yknow i'm not really gonna ask my parents to change that! it's been like that for a long time now it's fine it's alright#but i don't think i can actually solve the problem#i. already have a lot of foods that the rest of my family isn't allowed to touch. because i am So Picky#and when they were eating my foods more often i was Starving#i don't. think. i can ask for more. and you know what that's fine! that's fine that's ok i like my meals they're tasty as hell#what about snacks then? can we get snacks for the whole family? well no#we stopped buying more junk foodish snacks because it was All my siblings were eating#and it was bad! it was bad they shouldn't have been doing that. but now i don't think my parents trust us to be responsible with snack food#so our snack foods are. protein bar. fruit snacks (i had to request these specifically). popcorn#that's. that's fine. that's fine maybe i should be focused on fruit instead! fruit is good sugar!#well we don't store fruit i like the way i like it (don't put it in the fridge) so i never eat any of it anymore#but everybody else seems fine with it so really i'm not going to win this argument cause everybody else actually eats it more when it's out#(i don't think this is true. but i think it's true for My Dad and My Mom specifically.)#and i just. it really got me thinking about how much i don't have foods that i like in the house or meals that i love because Somebody Else#likes it done differently and not the way i like it#and that takes priority#to the point where i don't know what the fuck kind of foods i like because we just don't. have. any#i prefer white rice. mom prefers brown so we get brown. i prefer crunchier potatoes. mom prefers them soft so we make them soft#i like my fruits cold. my parents prefer to be able to See the fruits so they stay on the counter. i only eat chicken breast not any other#part of the chicken. my parents prefer thigh meat so we get thigh meat (which i don't eat)#oh huh. this post was a lot longer but tumblr deleted half the tags. yeah that's fair
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crescentfool · 7 months
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bonerattle arena fucks severely. i was not expecting it to rival my love for jammin' salmon junction, but wow. this map feels like a love letter to people who love and enjoy salmon run. (i ended up playing the rotation for around 3.5 hours... which you can watch here if you like!)
the map's circular shape on normal/high tide effectively makes the spawns from this map come from every angle. it's a test of awareness and movement skill- and the walls + inkrails really, really make rotating around the map feel so fluid and easy.
and low tide's hexagonal two-ring design is so fascinating too! instead of testing movement, it tests your team's ability to make judgment calls on luring and making sure you don't overwhelm basket from luring too much.
i also feel that every special in salmon feels really rewarding to use on this map- even reefslider! i've played enough to see that most specials bring so much utility and value, and i just love that no special feels like it's "useless" on this map.
there's also a few flyfish tech on this map that echoes the bomb tricks on jammin' salmon junction and spawning grounds (and i guess gone fission too), it feels really intuitive on what spots can pop two baskets at once (it's the grates and the rails) and i just? feel really rewarded for playing as much salmon as i do.
i feel that the map's inclusion of the ink rail mechanic evokes a lot of similar vibes to ruins of ark polaris- and i really liked that! there's definitely some things i want to fine tune and understand better about them, but they're really fun.
i still need to see how other weapons feel on this map, but it feels like both mobile and stationary weapons can exceed here- there's nice perches for long range weapons, lots of walls for quick weapons to use to escape situations... it's so swag...! a very good final map, i think!
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carcinized · 1 year
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i have srsly had irl queer people make fun of me for being queer + liking sports and tell me that is like, not gay or something. like ok just say youre chronically online. womens soccer is the queerest thing i have ever been a part of hands down. also youre an awful person
#tobin talks#ITS ABSURD. HOW CAN YOU BE THAT MEAN#this was when i was 15 so maybe thats why. but like..... its so awful. like 15 yo's always gonna act like that#but come on. lots of us online are older than that. we could be better and NOT teach this behavior to 15 yo's#because you know they learned this shit online. the specific person who did this to me was most active on tumblr.#not even tiktok or twitter this was a tumblr gay. begging you guys to change the culture 😭😭#this goes for more than just sports obvs its about general pushing stereotypes#which is how you get queer people sacrificing parts of their identity in order to be accepted into the community#as opposed to sacrificing the queer parts of their identity to be accepted into queerphobic communities?#like tell me how thats morally sound. accept ppl as they are and not just for things theyre systemically discriminated for??#be a nice fucking human being??#the queer community can tear each other apart lately i wish we would go back to the pure love of it all#bc like for me it is not worth it to be close with most queer people anymore. my friends are mostly all cishet#because guess what even though they dont understand my queer identity at least theyre not assholes about my entire personality otherwise#its so awful Like. can we all agree to not be cliquey#you dont have to be a paletable aesthetic gay. you dont have to be chonrically online and never go outside. you dont have to not drive#you dont have to be bad at math. what other fucking stereotypes are there man#its so fucking stupid!!!!!!!!!!!!! like 'let people enjoy things' goes for all things not just online stuff like this is a two way street#yes non online/gay/neurodivergent people should be kinder about 'cringe' interests. but hey that doesnt mean we get to be dicks to people#with more common interests or like... idk man im talking in circles here. but god when did the lgbtq+ community turn into a clique#do this do that if you dont we'll ignore that part of you or actively make fun of you for it.#STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1#non rebloggable im just ranting here this is not one to rb. but like. ITS SO AWFUL AND MEAN. STOP
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katyspersonal · 2 years
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It is strange how I both really do NOT wish for Bloodborne anime to exist because it will probably ruin a lot of mystery and engagement based on fans struggling to interpret, with 'canon' unseen characters designs and worse - DIRECT ANSWERS *horrified woman's scream sound effect*
But also I really WISH for Bloodborne anime to exist because I want to see the favs to emote and do cool stuff in 2D. The internal struggle
#fandomry rambles#like lrb (like lrt but on tumblr) shows tho the best way is to make your own animations#or collab#what i am saying is that bloodborne anime is cool as a concept but it should never be a canonical product#maybe fandom's collaboration that is cool to watch but doesn't bind anyone to accept its headcanons and designs and theories#it is also why i respect titan comics writer so much - they outright said their ideas are not binding canon for anyone#even IF comics are licensed#i mean the history knows anime adaptations of games but like... even if they are rarely perfect ones?#ignoring some stuff not stated/shown in games that is in animes becomes sooooo awkward to ignore (speak from experience)#like imagine bb anime that gives canon designs for adeline or rom or caryll and like#from this point on there is an APPARENT rift between fans who use anime canon and who design their own stuff#i just love it better when everyone is in equal conditions as a fan if that makes sense? sorry it is hard to apply to this fandom fdhds#i just love Enough freedom of interpretation intact and without encouraging towards certain side#for example imagine if titan comics touched upon unseen characters rather than focus on seen + new original ones?#or if that cool fanmade manga centred around lady maria was canon?#bloodborne just leaves exactly as much room for imagination and thinking as NEEDED. it is perfect balance#you don't want more and you don't want less. just enough balance between canon and what you gotta come up with yourself
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arcadequeerz · 7 months
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Made a Cohost. It's @/liminal.
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friendlysailor · 10 months
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Ahoy!
I'm currently sailing the oh so rough seas that is exam time, so I'm going to be away for a bit longer. I just once again have to express how happy I am every time i see interactions with this blog, even though I've been very inactive recently. It really has helped strengthen and keep up my resolve in wanting to help make digital privacy, piracy and computer knowledge more accessible for as many as I can. So again, a big THANK YOU to you all for being here!
I've been considering if there would be any interest in me trying to create a more in-depth resource for finding ways to improve your quality of live when using computers and the like?
While my first thought was a simple list, I know that those can get overwhelming really quick. So I've been playing around with the idea of a "clippy"-like addon to the blog that can offer you directions to common issues (such as, "How do i remove the 'search on the web' results on Windows 10?", "What browser-addons should I have?" and "How to speed up YouTube on FireFox?"). I think I would also want to have it be accessible through a GitHub-page, so that mobile-users also could easily access it, and so you all have other options than to only have it accessed through a Tumblr blog.
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ded-lime · 1 year
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past me thought that if i just reverse image search i could find a source for anything. biggest mistake of my life you cant find shit on the internet: image searches don't seem look at tumblr? (i'm pretty sure they used to?). even if its not deleted and a lot of things are. i don't know man it's really frustrating for me. just another reason to reblog stuff more i guess
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bluchlcdny · 2 years
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Hello !
A bit of info about me :
My name is Jay
I’m 23 years old
I’m a gay trans guy (he/him pronouns)
I’m neurodivergent
I love video games a lot
I’ll reblog fandom stuff & funny stuff & cute animals & other random shit and occasionally post my silly thoughts on here idk ! I don’t engage in discourse it’s a plague tbh I just wanna chill lol like the word already sucks without shitty internet drama and whatnot bro
Side blogs
@froggyf4g - super gay blog (not very active rip)
@ivycrownedpanther - helpol/witchy blog (pretty active)
secret blog??? mayhaps.
DNI if:
You’re racist/homophobic/transphobic/misogynist/anti-semitic/etc. (basically go fuck urself if ur bigoted lol)
You’re a MAP/pedophile
You’re a minor. This blog is mostly SFW but I do like to reblog funny haha sex jokes sometimes and I don’t tag them
You’re anti-kink/u kinkshame
You’re anti-paganism
More things will probably be added as I think of them lol
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I just need to vent.
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velociheroviridi · 2 years
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I posted 18,161 times in 2022
That's 6,827 more posts than 2021!
17 posts created (0%)
18,144 posts reblogged (100%)
Blogs I reblogged the most:
@bera-chan
@jollyfanasties
@galahadwilder
@lady-of-the-spirit
@marisolinspades
I tagged 490 of my posts in 2022
#viridi speaks - 343 posts
#viridi tags - 97 posts
#uquiz - 24 posts
#viridi posts - 12 posts
#pls - 10 posts
#dick grayson - 10 posts
#anyways - 10 posts
#batfam - 10 posts
#dc - 8 posts
#dcmk - 6 posts
Longest Tag: 139 characters
#so my first fanfics mightve been when i watch kim possible and danny phantom in 8th grade? (watched it on youtube cuz i was a cableless kid
My Top Posts in 2022:
#5
YALL, my local con has THE funniest panel title
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we can never escape the weight of our sins, truly
10 notes - Posted August 26, 2022
#4
I finally finished the first chapter of my reverse Batfam isekai batman!Dick hurt/comfort fic so I felt like sharing my take on both canon and age reversed Batfam that I made for my fic
(My version of) Canon:
Bruce – 41 > Batman/Missing in time
Barbara – 26 > Oracle
Dick – 23 > Nightwing (and officer Grayson) for about 3 years/5 months into being Batman
Jason – 21 > Red Hood
Tim – 18 > Red Robin
Steph – 18 > Batgirl
Cass – 17 > Black Bat
Duke – 16 > Signal
Damian – 13 > Robin
Reverse:
Bruce – 40 > Batman
Damian – 22 > Shadowbat
Duke – 20 > Signal
Cass – 18 > Batgirl (name subject to change)
Tim – 17 > GrayBat
Steph – 17 > Spoiler
Jason – 14 > Ibis/Blue Jay
Dick – 12 > Robin
Barbara – 9
I might redo some of the reversed names cuz it's been a while since I actually came up with them and also the canon part is just basically me trying to line up age gaps and picking my favorite names
14 notes - Posted July 19, 2022
#3
love looking thru all my notifs and seeing just how many of my mutuals are already into something that I just got into
Re: Iron Widow
14 notes - Posted July 13, 2022
#2
Oh no... I've made a horrible mistake
Now that the Spy x Family anime has come out, I'm gonna always be having to figure out if a post is about Damian Wayne or Damian Desmond
The confusion has already begun
41 notes - Posted April 25, 2022
My #1 post of 2022
it's crazy to think about how long comic book characters have been around for
Dick Grayson was created in 1940
There's probably been tons of kids, adults, and older people who were just obsessed with him as I am now
It's just crazy to know that I probably share the same favorite character with people who lived such different lives than me
A soldier in WW2, one of the first astronauts to go to the moon, a kid enjoying color tv for the first time - it's possible any of them could have loved the same character I, so many years later, do now
And that's just so heartwarming and cool and wack all at the same time
62 notes - Posted July 24, 2022
Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →
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haeroniel-doliet · 2 years
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God that mood where you both need to do stuff and want to do stuff but both needs are vague and have too many options so you just. Do nothing you want or need to do and realize all the time you had is disappearing. A good time!!!
#haeroniel talks#forget the tag oh well#but for real. had 4 days off work and a ton of real life stuff i both have to get done and have been meaning to get done for a long time#ive pretty much only played video games and called my friends. genuinely not time wasted and i love when i get to do that#and like rn i would love to play more games and spend time with my friends like if one offers you know i never say no#but its also already getting dark and i have to go back to work tomorrow and ive not done everything i promised to have done yknow?#time doesnt feel real and i dont wanna get up even if the anxiety slowly builds to hopefully productive panic#but in the mean time im like ugghh i wanna stop laying around just playing sudoku and watching lame youtube. i wanna play something#(unclear what it is i actually wanna play too many options i kinda wanna play all of them and none huehheh)#im also very sad i havent drawn in ages and any attempt just feels shit. like maybe if i read enough fanfic thatll respark the love.#id love to post something before christmas to get me excited to draw again over the break but who the hell knows if i'll manage#and yeah still have the annoying job related/driving school related/therapy applying/other life admin that really really should be done#im just being grouchy and stuck and need to vent hi tumblr love you all kiss kiss i wish i could function better#i think maybe perhaps. ill concede that driving school and therapy arent priority (important but ive wasted ages on them already)#i think i can do work related things bc theyre sort of fun. i can use my parents help to whack through the life admin and then#maybe i can let myself spend the rest of the evening guilt free either calling my friends and/or playing or if im going totally w drawin
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emerynn · 24 days
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In a post that was… a long time ago, you put in the tags:
“i JUST wrote an essay on this omfg i have SO many thoughts about sir gawain and the green knight”
The post was about how Gawain literally had no way to win in SGATGK. You were talking in the tags about shame culture and the instability of the moral culture and symbols and identity and the like, and I was wondering….Do you have a link to that essay or something?
If not then that’s totally fine, I just ALSO have many thoughts on sir Gawain and the green knight and love not only the poem but the essays and academic articles and stuff surrounding it, and that essay honestly sounds really interesting and cool! So I thought I’d ask, but yeah!
Hey Anon! First of all, thanks so much for coming into my inbox to talk Sir Gawain with me - a very unexpected but very welcome surprise! I'd completely forgotten about that post I reblogged, but yeah, I took a Middle English paper in my second year of uni, and the Sir Gawain essay was my favourite one to research all term. It's just such a fun poem, and like you said, there's so much great discussion to delve into for it. It's been a little while since I thought about it though, so it's so fun to have a reason to shift my brain back into medieval mode again!
It was just a weekly essay (we had to write an essay each week on a different text/author/group of texts), so it was rather frantically researched and wasn't something I was able to spend loads of time on. I don't think I came to any particularly new or interesting conclusions, and I didn't post it anywhere or anything. That said, given that it's pretty short, I'm happy to copy and paste it here for you if you'd like to read it! Like all my uni essays, it was written the day before the deadline in a slightly sleep deprived haze, so it's not the best thing written on Gawain by a long shot, but it'd be lovely to have someone outside of my supervisor read it! Obviously just please don't use it anywhere or plagiarise it, but I assume that goes without saying lol
If you do get around to reading it, I'd love to hear your thoughts! But no pressure at all ofc - honestly it's just super nice to be asked! I'll put it below a read more, along with my sources - thanks again for the lovely message anon :)
‘For man may hyden his harme,   bot unhap ne may hit, For there hit ones is tached   twynne wil hit never.’ What do you understand to be the meaning and significance of Gawain’s last words?
Despite Gawain's confidence in asserting the green gridle as a signal of his fundamentally flawed nature, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight deliberately complicates the reader's ability to interpret the girdle - and by extension, the poem's moral - in such easy metaphorical terms. Gawain's initial symbol, the pentangle, embodies an honour system which sees morality as intertwined with reputation, making Gawain's apparent goodness into a static symbol whose worth depends on its ability to be interpreted by others. By replacing it with the girdle, the poem alludes to the instability of a community-based chivalric moral code. In offering the reader multiple interpretations of the girdle, with Gawain's held in no higher narrative esteem than Arthur's or the Green Knight's, the poem suggests the limitations of relying on community for moral validation, which ultimately leads to a performance rather than practice of morality, and therefore stunts any opportunity for personal growth.
Gawain’s certainty in labelling the girdle a metaphorical scar, to ‘remorde to myselven/ The faut and the fayntyse of the flesch crabbed’ (2434-35), is immediately challenged by two alternative perspectives – the Green Knight’s, and Arthur’s.[1] The Green Knight suggests Gawain take the girdle as little more than a trophy, ‘a pure token/ Of the chaunce of the Grene Chapel at chivalrous knightes.’ (2398-99), ‘pure’ acting in direct antithesis to the charge of sin that Gawain lays against it. Arthur and the court, meanwhile, have an emotionally opposed reaction to Gawain, greeting his morose confession by ‘Laughen loude thereat’ (2514), and appropriating Gawain’s symbol of personal shame into one of communal honour: ‘For that was accorded the renoun of the Rounde Table,/ And he honoured that hit had evermore after.’ (2519-20). The poet presents the reader with three inharmonious definitions, with no individual appearing the obvious source of authority. Thus, Gawain’s attempt at using the girdle to signify a universal truth in his aphoristic statement, ‘man may hyden his harme, but unhap ne may hit’ (2511) is radically undermined. Through offering, and refusing to discredit, alternating interpretations, the Gawain-poet makes his own description of the girdle’s ‘abelef as a buderyk bounden by [Gawain’s] side’ (2485) ironic in the passivity of its phrasing – Gawain may say that ‘unhap ne may hit’, but Arthur’s swift reinterpretation of the girdle repositions it from absolute symbol to simply a belt that Gawain has tied to suit his subjective purposes, and may just as easily untie. This ending marks a significant transformation for the reader’s understanding of the Romantic world Gawain inhabits, previously one in which symbols and epithets can be interpreted to indicate moral truth about an individual; a transition made clear in the movement from the pentangle as Gawain’s symbol, which Ralph Hanna describes as ‘the emblem of a world where meaning is clear and exemplary’ to the girdle, ‘to which meaning must be assigned’.[2] The Gawain-poet upholds the pentangle for its symbolic potential, pausing the narrative to interject, ‘And why the pantangel apendes to that prince noble/ I am in tente you to telle’ (623-24). The and the details provided in relation to the pentangle – ‘Hit is a synge that Salomon sette sumwhyle’ (625)’, ‘Englych hit callen/ Overal, as I here’ (629-30) appeal to the desire for a symbol with absolute meaning. The interpretation that follows of the pentangle’s application to Gawain, representing his five virtues, associates the accuracy of historical and linguistic information about the symbol with the apparently also objective information it relays about Gawain’s moral character. As Putter and Stokes suggest, ‘ethics and aesthetics come very close together in this poem’; in a reputation-based society, a kind of metaphorical vision is encouraged, which allows symbols like Gawain’s pentangle to be correctly interpreted as indicative of his nature.[3] Thus, the Gawain-poet provides the reader with the girdle as an alluring signification of an absolute moral truth, only to complicate this moral to such an extent that the girdle comes to signify the opposite, replacing the pentangle’s moral idealism and certainty with the suggestion that morality may be subjective.
Fitting to his interpretation of the girdle, the Green Knight disdains the kind of performative morality that underlies the reputation-based structure of Arthur’s court, associating it with the pride he has apparently come to test. Thus, he announces, ‘What, is this Arthures house […]. That all the rous rennes of thurgh ryalmes so mony? Where is now your sorqudrye and your conquests[..]/?’ (309-311). The Green Knight’s condescending tone relies upon the inevitable tension between the hyperbolic tales he is aware of, and the disappointing reality. There is a metatextual element to this speech, as the contemporary reader, too, would have heard tales of Arthur’s court’s ‘conquests’, and thus what is within the text a challenge to the pride of Arthur’s court becomes an implicit challenge of the implausibility of the Romance genre. As Ad Putter suggests, in Sir Gawain, the poet appears to deliberately use this fantastical genre to pose ‘an interpretative challenge […] how can we take it seriously?’[4] His response is to explore the psychological ramifications of existing as a character within this canon. As Gawain’s despair at the end of the poem indicates, this mythological society in which reputation is paramount has a fragile moral core. When Gawain flinches during the beheading scene, the Green Knight chastises him by saying ‘Thou art not Gawan’ (2270), alluding to his famed reputation. But what this truly reveals is that no one can be ‘Gawan’, who would not fear his head under a falling axe – within a genre predicated on hyperbolic acts of knightly courage, the Gawain-poet radically asserts the humanity that underlies Gawain’s character and makes living up to his generic reputation impossible. In doing so, the poem not only further undercuts Gawain’s shame at not fulfilling this reputation, but it discredits the entire notion of morality based on chivalry – based, fundamentally, on how good one is judged to be by others, rather than by an internalised moral compass. As A.C. Spearing suggests, the ramifications of this society manifest in a ‘criteria of conduct […] not fully internalized’: thus, Gawain ‘fails to recognize’ that his initial retention of the girdle ‘is a sin’ until it infringes on his reputation – that being, until the Green Knight reveals his knowledge of it.[5] Like Arthur, who responds to the Green Knight’s challenge of the court’s reputation by blushing – ‘The blod schotte for schame into his schyre face’ (317), Gawain, caught out in his lie, feels ‘All the blod of his brest blende in his face,/ That all he schrank for schame’ (2371-72). Their identical responses betray how Gawain’s embarrassment at his contradicted reputation, rather than actual feelings of moral guilt, lie at the core of the shame he associates with the girdle.
The poem thus exposes the flaws of a communal morality system, in which morality becomes more rigid and absolute – either the individual does, or does not, maintain their idealised reputation. Hence, Gawain’s assertion that if he is flawed, he must be fundamentally flawed: ‘Now am I fauty and false, and ferde have ben ever’ (2382). In this sense, the poem’s ending is further unsettling, as Arthur’s absorption of the girdle as a performance piece into the mythos of the court signifies his ignorance as to the dangers of this [MS1] structure. He continues to assume an externalised identity predicated on reputation, and as such, will continue not to scrutinise himself internally. Gawain may view the girdle as a metaphor for shame, and Arthur for honour, but, as David Aers notes, ‘none of this is of much consequence since nothing much will change anyway’; the absolutism of the Arthurian court prevents moral development.[6] The poem’s ending becomes bathetic, as the self-destruction inherent to the Arthurian court is stressed in the characters’ ignorance to their need for moral progression. Indeed, this is made all the more tragic as Gawain has already demonstrated within the poem that he can progress towards his idealised reputation, even if he can never truly fulfil its requirements. When he initially places his head down to receive the Green Knight’s blow, Gawain ‘[shrinks] a little with the schulderes for the scharp yrne’ (2267). As the Green Knight notes, such an act is contrary to his hyperbolically brave reputation, as ‘Gawan […] that is so good holden,/ That never arwed for no here.’ (2270-71). However, Gawain’s response demonstrates his ability to grow towards this role, as he determines not to flinch a second time, and successfully ‘graythly hit bides and glent with no member’ (2292). As Ralph Hanna suggests, the beheading scene is heavily charged with symbolism connoting rebirth, from the New Year setting, to the description of Gawain ‘Never syn that he was burn born of his moder/ [….] half so blythe’ (2320-21), to the spilling of his blood onto white snow, which Hanna calls ‘a tabula rasa on which Gawain must learn to write what he […] is now.’[7] If Gawain has emerged from a metaphorical death morally absolved and able to discover himself anew, then the positive potential of this revelation is immediately squandered in his curt refusal of Bertilak’s invitation back to his castle. His identity is still wholly externalised, and therefore his first instinct upon gaining an apparent greater self-understanding is to return to the court to vocalise it.The Arthurian court has a holistic and restrictive grip on individual identity in Sir Gawain, inescapable not because there is no opportunity to do so, but because the knights themselves – represented in Gawain and Arthur’s definitions of the girdle as still performatively signalling their reputations, just as the pentangle did – are ignorant of the very ways in which their potential is stunted by the structures they inhabit.
In showing the multiple, often conflicting meanings the girdle is given, the poem uses Gawain’s quest of self-discovery to destabilise the very moral structure at the core of the Arthurian court. In doing so, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight suggests the limitations of an external moral compass, and instead encourages the cultivation of the kind of more nuanced, internalised mortality that Gawain fails to realise.
Sources I quoted from: These are definitely worth reading in their own rights, since they express everything I had to say, and do so far better than second-year me ever could! You might have already read it, but if not, I'd particularly recommend the Spearing. I loved his interpretation, and it ended up forming most of the basis for my argument.
[1] The Works of the Gawain Poet: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, ed. by Ad Putter and Myra Stokes (London: Penguin Classics, 2014), p.401; all further references to this text will be made in the body of the essay.
[2] Ralph Hanna III, ‘Unlocking What’s Locked: Gawain’s Green Girdle’, Viator, 14 (1983), 289-302 (p.290).
[3] Putter and Stokes, ‘Foreword to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, The Works of the Gawain Poet, p.246.
[4] Ad Putter, An Introduction to the Gawain Poet (London; New York: Longman, 1996), p.45.
[5] A.C. Spearing, The Gawain-Poet; A Critical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp.224- 25.
[6] David Aers, ‘Christianity for Courtly Subjects: Reflections on the Gawain-Poet’ in A Companion to the Gawain-Poet, ed. by Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 1997), p.99.
[7] Hanna, pp.295-96.
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