#mayday massacre

[grail-lifesupport]

Swimming lessons went so well today! My baby is a natural at it 🥰

[orkneyism]

AITA for throwing a spring party for myself (25F) and my friends (My Loyal Subjects) on the anniversary of my husband's (28M) mass killing of infants? It's also the birthdays of my oldest nephew-in-law and friend (24M) and my youngest nephew (8M) who survived the said massacre attempt?

[gawrkin]

The demonization of the Orkney faction...

[oldtvandcomics]

Yet another happy and wholesome episode of the Arthurian Legend to commemorate. 😊

[cherrysnax]

need to preface this by saying I looooove Felicia sm but god it’s so frustrating that when she pops up she gets to keep her personality, her depth, her everything, even in like her very few appearances but MJ has to get EVERYTHING WIPED AWAY even in the comics??? but literally the only close to faithful adaptions of her are spectacular, some of the 90s show and PART of the raimi movies and it’s only slivers!!!! And usually if mjs around Gwen doesn’t exist so we never the catalyst to her and peters bond, their shared grief that Peter can’t understand at first <\3

[divinerodentiastudios]

Today is the international labor day, or Mayday. This day is a holiday in most parts of the world, but not the United States. Why is that?

May 4th, 1886, Chicago. Workers were demonstrating in support for a new 8-hour work day standard. The

Demonstrations were at the start of it all peaceful. When the police tried to disperse the meeting, some unknown person threw a stick of dynamite at the police. The explosion and retaliatory gunfire caused the death of 7 police officers and 4 civilians, with dozens injured.

8 anarchists were charged with the bombing, and all of them convicted of conspiracy. The juditiary system did not have a solid case against the anarchists but convicted anyway. 7 were charged with the death sentence and the last one got 15 years. It is generally accepted fact that none of the anarchists threw the dynamite.

Grover Cleavland was concerned that having labor day on may 1st would strengthen socialist movements too much and therefore signed another date into law in 1894. This is why the American labor day is in september. He did not want people to be reminded of the day 11 people died to institute a 8 hour work day.

The 8 hour work day never materialized(well, it did but not until the new deal in 1933), and may 1st was chosen to honor the unjust sentencing of the anarchists, and the year after, the first Mayday was held.

All laws and regulations have been forged in blood, and nearly every time the bosses and business leaders have decried regulations. If we don't get to use child labor, we can't afford to operate. If the workday is reduced to 8 hours, profits will shrink. If we allow union meetings to take place, they will ask for too much and we'll be forced to close down. Yet, every time regulations have passed, the businesses continue to operate. For every pay increase that would put the Bosses in the poorhouse, profits have continued to rise.

Do not believe their lies, they'd rather you risk your life working with a dangerous machine for pittances and throw you out when their machine have injured or killed you than decrease profits by a tiny, tiny amount. Your lives are worth less than profits in the eyes of these ghouls. They will continue to kill our brothers and sisters unless someone stops them. Unless you unionize. Unless you demonstrate.

[queer-ragnelle]

Feel like malory choose which characters he didnt like and which he did and then went through the motions of doing his retelling but that means stuff like Arthur doing the Mayday Massacre gets like a paragraph and has no influence on the narrative. Malory put a biblical exodus king/herod the great moment in there and then said “dont worry about it :]” meanwhile I literally cannot stop thinking about The Implications

he really did. the largest downside is malory was simplifying the post vulgate, which was already a simplification of the vulgate. so it’s like a horrendous game of telephone & all the depth & nuance is lost.

for example, in the post vulgate, arthur sleeps with morgause when he’s young, before he’s married, & she didn’t realize it was him (it was dark?? medieval logic.) point being that the adultery double standard isn’t a factor, she did not mean to cheat on lot, & arthur was single. that’s a narrative hiccup on malory’s part. furthermore the prophecy of a child born on may day come to destroy the kingdom was vague, so arthur’s intention was to round up the children born around that time, & raise them, until they were old enough to distinguish who was who. lot & morgause were sending baby mordred willingly, thinking this was a good opportunity for their son to be tutored in the high king’s household, only for the ship to crash, & for them to believe their son had died as a result of this summons. but he didn’t, & was raised alongside sagramore, eventually coming to court & learning of his real brothers, the other sons of morgause, that way.

i think the original stories & spins malory included were the best of it, especially gareth beaumains & his adventures with the damosel savage. but much of what he adapted he fumbled, all the motifs are forgotten, characters are inconsistent or hold beliefs which aren’t supported by the narrative itself (ie, mark sucks we hate him! what has he done? shhh don’t worry about that just hate him! team tristan!). kind of a mess!

i recommend the vulgate instead. it’s long. but skipping the history of the grail starting from the story of merlin it gives an in depth explanation of everything at play, all the characters rise to power, & their motivations. then the vulgate proper picks up with baby lancelot. norris j. lacy’s translation is a dream to read with really thorough footnotes to explain any references made or translation nuances.

the PDFs can be read here if you’re so inclined.

[grecoromanyaoi]

All day I have been thinking about Seinfeld characters talking about/living in arthuriana. Arguing over if there is a Puce knight or not, among other mundane things

elaine supports the mayday massacre 100%

[forthegothicheroine]

I usually just don't include the mayday massacre in Arthuriana on the grounds that it's not in Monmouth, it's not in de Troyes, it's not in Tennyson, writers have no obligation to use it just because it's in Malory-

But I did enjoy including a riff on it in Darkest Timeline, with Arthur specifically averting it, because it's part of the theme that throughout that story Arthur does everything right and none of it works.

[quidam-sirenae]

😏🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 and I don't have the right emoji on my phone but who's your favorite arthuriana parent?

😏- Gawain?

This guy. This guy. I do think I have quite a different idea of who he is since one of my Core Arthurian texts is Gawain and the green knight. I also really like the wedding of sir Gawain and dame ragnelle so my thoughts about him are essentially “oh he gets bitches” which tbh if I was straight I would be a Gawain girlie. However apart from like those two stories, do not shack up with that guy. Especially if you are narratively in the vulgate. It’s going to cause problems, he’s basically a Jason character in the vulgate, but a bit more charming. He’s so interesting to me because he changes so much in the different stories- he’s the best of Arthur’s court, he’s the worst of them, he’s married, he’s a perpetual bachelor, he’s super chivalrous all the time, he’s killed a hundred people in a rage, ect. His narrative inconsistency is so sexy.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿- Pick A Pelli Spawn (Percival, Aglovale, Tor, Lamorak, Aylane, Dindrane, Donar, ect)

Percival 10%. He’s my guy. I have a paper in the works about symbolic sex and thigh wounds and Christianity ect basically arguing that the thigh stabbing scene in le morte is both a castration and an orgasm. Which is really hard to bring up at parties when people ask what I’m interested in. Also read spear by Nicola Griffiths it’s good. There is not a version of Perceval I’ve met so far that I don’t like, though he’s much less fractured in characterization than Gawain or Kay. Though I will admit I haven’t actually read his section in the vulgate yet- I’ve read none of the grail quest narratives from the vulgate as of now.

Favorite Arthurian parent-

In terms of favorite to dissect: Arthur. He’s so interesting in terms of succession and children especially the mayday massacre and I love to dissect that. In terms of least shitty: Morgan actually has some really cute moments with Lancelot in the vulgate so I’m going to pick her despite the everything else about her. (I also want to look at the eyelid kissing in the vulgate and contrast it with Catullus)

[mordredsheart]

all i’m saying is that even if you buy the mayday massacre perhaps the blame should not fall entirely on arthur but also on the allegedly wise sorcerer that he trusts unconditionally and who could suggest no alternative beyond “fuck them kids”

[gawrkin]

Why did gawain not become king of orkney after Lot died?

That's a simple question with a very complicated answer.

To be really, really, really short and concise**, it boils down to two things:

One: Lot originally didn't die fighting Arthur.

In the earlies stories of Arthuriana, like Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, Lot never warred with Arthur. The Sword in the Stone and the Mayday Massacre never happened in these older stories, so Lot has no reason to fight Arthur.

In fact, King Lot lives all the way to the end of Arthur's reign. Here's one example:

Didot Percival

So really, Gawain doesn't succeed Lot because originally, Lot was alive the whole time and Gawain dies at Mordred's rebellion before he can succeed Lot, who dies shortly after.

Lot's early death is actually a relatively recent Plot Point that was introduced in Vulgate/Post-Vulgate.

Its a retcon that only exists as a plot device to give Gawain a motive to be evil for revenge against Pellinore and his family.

There's also a bit Stations of the Canon at play here - Traditionally, Gawain is supposed to be one of Arthur's Greatest Warriors, so inevitably, he must join the Round Table... even when later stories change things so it doesn't make sense anymore.

By Post-Vulgate, Arthur is not only responsible for the death of his father but also seemingly the death of his newborn baby brother, Mordred. Gawain, logically, has no reason to like Arthur, much less join him.

So basically, its later retcons that don't jive with Gawain's positioning as member of Arthur's household. With Lot's early death, Gawain shouldn't be running around adventuring and questing when his homeland needs him to run things.

The medieval writers took for granted that Gawain is able to be present in Arthur's court for particular reasons.

Which leads us to the second reason

Two: Because then Gawain would be unable to adventure anymore

Basically, Gawain is a traditional hero of Arthuriana, and him not being in Camelot anymore would drastically change the cast dynamics and the story. It's like if Superman and Batman retired from the Justice League and didn't show up anymore.

Gawain can't meet Lancelot and join the Grail Quest if he's stuck up in the North, doing boring Kingly duties.

Ultimately, the Medieval writers just simply didn't care about Gawain's realistic feudal duties and obligations. To them, Gawain and the other knights are adventurer-protagonists: they're heroes first, feudal lords second.

That's why you don't see Lancelot managing Joyous Gard - that's boring real life crap the Medieval audiences wouldn't be interested in seeing. So, Lancelot goes around joining tournaments and beating up knights in random directions instead.

Arthurian Literature is essentially Chivalric escapist fantasy. It's about quests and fights, action and excitement.

And YES, it doesn't make any sense that Gawain isn't called "King Gawain"

**(I wrote an entire essay as an answer, only to stop I when realized its too long and overly wordy LOL)

[37-children-of-the-dreams]

Me with a running brain:

Episode 12 “The Outpost” had the ice vultures symbolize Crosshair and the mountains had been strategically placed behind Crosshair like the wings of the vultures while also making him look like an angel.

But vultures are birds that symbolize death…

So bird death + angelic imagery = An Angel of Death?

And if myths and religion taught me anything, an angel of death is not an evil person who is happy causing massacres, but a being who just does their duty as a divine servant who brings death.

Crosshair has caused death out of duty, loyalty and because of his brainwashing. He has killed because that was what he was made for. He does what he does because that’s all he’s known and he couldn’t get of his “good soldiers follow orders” until Mayday spills it out for him and dies being kind to him.

He was never an evil person, he just brought death because he was born to bring death.

By technically, Crosshair is metaphorically an angel of death.

[pendraegon]

If you HAD to give Mordred a fob song, which would it be? (< has actually never really listened to fob [grew up in small town w/only 2 radio stations: country-western and cbc] and is looking for a good song to start with thanks to the pendraegon effect)

OHHH i have a few songs in mind for mordred and bc it's you asking, i will obvi give another hint on the fobthuriana songs<3 for mordred specifically i'm giving him 27 (which like. debated this for agravaine for a second and then i was like. nah. this is MORDRED. i have a VISION.) which is also incidentally one of my favorite songs from my favorite fob album of all time lol

also bc these lines hurt more in consideration of the mayday massacre which ): mordred ):

[sexualassbutts]

Concert List 2023

- Jo Dee Messina x2 - Grand Union - Patrick Murphy - Maddie & Tae - Citizen Soldier x3 - Smash Into Pieces - Uncured - Above Snakes x4 - Moon Fever x2 - OTHERWISE x2 - Adelitas Way x2 - Edge of Paradise - Blind Channel x2 - The Birthday Massacre - Lacuna Coil - Black Moods x2 - Royal Bliss x2 - Games We Play - Mayday Parade - All Time Low - Garzi - Stitched Up Heart - Point North - Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows - Escape the Fate - Nerv - The Hu x2 - Asking Alexandria - Zero 9:36 - Contingency - A Killer’s Confession x2 - ReddStar x2 - Apex Aura - Seven Cities Dead - Ekoh - Catch Your Breath - The Word Alive - From Ashes to New

[maddie-grove]

Little Book Review: General Fiction Round-Up (May-December 2022)

Maddaddam by Margaret Atwood (2013): In the final volume of Atwood's environmental dystopian trilogy (preceded by Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood), the survivors of a manmade eco-fascist plague, along with a population of genetically engineered humanoids, must try to make a life in the ruins. Atwood is one of my favorite authors and, while I generally prefer her non-speculative fiction, I really enjoyed the whole trilogy. She's really engaged with the ideas she explores (mostly related to GMOs and income inequality) and grounds them vividly in everyday life. I especially like the way the genetically engineered humanoids (the Crakers) process the world around them.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (2019): In the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood tells the story of three women in the same universe: a Commander's daughter in Gilead, a daughter of Mayday operatives living in Toronto, and Aunt Lydia, first seen "training" Handmaids in The Handmaid's Tale. I liked The Handmaid's Tale in high school, but I can't say I came away wanting to know more about that world...yet, as it turns out, I totally did want to know more about the pastel horrors of an elite Gilead girlhood. The audiobook is also top-notch, with Ann Dowd, Ann Whitman, and Bryce Dallas Howard doing the three main POVs.

Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link (2005): In nine "short" stories (many of them are quite long), Link writes about absurd things happening in mundane settings. Pretty Monsters, another short story collection of hers with some overlap, was one of my favorite books I read in 2014, but this time I wasn't feeling it. I'd already read the three best entries: "Stone Animals" (about a nebulously haunted house in a suburb of NYC), "Magic for Beginners" (about a mysterious TV show and a teen boy whose father is maybe trying to murder him via writing a novel), and "The Faery Handbag" (about a girl whose grandmother carries around an entire lost country in her purse). The others never really came together. I might have lost my taste for whimsy.

Dune by Frank Herbert (1965): In the very distant future, fifteen-year-old Paul Atreides has to move to a different planet for his father's work, and it only gets worse from there. I resisted reading Dune for the longest time because it sounded as dry as a desert planet where you have to reabsorb your own urine to survive. However, it fucks. I loved the layers of power dynamics and game-playing, especially in the scenes with Lady Jessica. Evil, horny Baron Harkonnen and his weirdly tragic nephew Feyd-Rautha were also great. I didn't like it so much after the time skip, though, and I think I'll give the sequels a pass.

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix (2021): Paranoid and reclusive after being targeted twice by Christmas-themed killers, Lynette Tarkington's social life consists of a support group for "final girls" (women who have survived grisly massacres that were adapted into horror movies). I never quite got on board with this one, for two major reasons. The first is that I was irrationally annoyed by the idea that horror movies were seemingly all one-to-one true crime stories in this universe. That's on me. The second is that Hendrix never managed to convince me that most of these women had ever had a significantly positive relationship with each other. This novel could've been a Toast article.

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix (2014): Amy, a cash-strapped and unhappy twenty-something working at an IKEA knockoff, is offered a transfer to a better store if she'll stay after-hours to investigate some strange recent happenings. This isn't my favorite Hendrix novel; however, it is the fucking scariest. The characterization isn't as rich as it is in most of his other novels--I would describe it as efficient--but the pacing is effectively brisk and the nature of the fake-IKEA haunting almost made me shit my pants.

We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix (2018): Kris Pulaski, once a guitarist/songwriter for up-and-coming heavy metal group Dürt Würk, now lives a life of resignation as a hotel night manager. Meanwhile, her ex-bandmate Terry Hunt is still a massively successful rock star after going nu-metal...and suddenly Kris has reason to believe that he did something truly sinister to make that happen. After My Best Friend's Exorcism, this is my favorite Hendrix novel. He's unusually moderate in putting his heroine through the mill, both in terms of physical peril and self-flagellation, and balances it with the joy she finds in her creative life. The otherworldly threat she faces is nicely chilling, and I loved the bittersweet ending.

Stranger Things: The Other Side by Jody Houser (2019): In this tie-in comic to Stranger Things, we see the first season from twelve-year-old Will Byers's point-of-view as he struggles to survive in the Upside Down. There's some good characterization of Will and a few cool visuals, but overall it's pretty inessential. The writing is kind of flat and sometimes awkward, and the art style is overall muddy and unappealing.

Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim (1995): Neil and Brian, two kids growing up in the same midsized Kansas town, both have life-altering traumatic experiences in the summer of 1981. Brian doesn't remember what happened, and comes to believe in the following years that he was abducted by aliens; Neil knows exactly what went on between him and his sexually predatory Little League coach, but that doesn't mean he understands it. Several years ago, I saw the 2004 movie version, which is amazing both as an adaptation and on its own terms: nuanced, well-paced, beautifully acted and shot, and faithful to all that's good in the source material. Unfortunately, this did slightly lessen the impact of the (also stellar) novel.

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss (2018): In the early 1990s, working-class seventeen-year-old Silvie spends a summer holiday in a Northumberland village, reenacting Iron Age life with her churlish history buff father, her downtrodden mother, a pompous anthropology professor, and three of his students. It's promising to be more miserable than your average family camping trip, between the lack of modern tech/food and Silvie's father's domestic tyrannies, but are we getting into The Wicker Man territory? This is a tense, deliciously creepy, and lyrical little novella that I finished in one evening because it was so exciting.

Normal People by Sally Rooney (2018): Withdrawn rich girl Marianne, despised at home and at school, starts a no-strings-attached relationship with working-class Connell, who's handsome and bright but kind of a follower. Thus begins an on-again, off-again thing that will follow them through college and change them forever. I really liked this romance between two troubled yet essentially sensible and sweet college students, although it's a bit slow at times. I especially enjoyed the first time that Connell and Marianne's power dynamic flips; she's kind of an It Girl at university, while he's out of his depth.

Summerwater by Sarah Moss (2020): Several families "enjoy" a miserable summer holiday by a Scottish lake over the course of a rainy day. We get the perspectives of several vacationers--judgmental moms, crotchety old men, worried newlyweds, teenagers desperate for wifi and privacy, anxious little kids--with several dark hints that someone will meet a terrible fate. Moss's writing is pleasurable to read and often funny, but I needed a damn flow chart for these people.

The Brittanys by Brittany Ackerman (2021): Brittany, a Floridian high school freshman in 2004, navigates life in her gated community and her suburban high school, hanging out with her friends (most of whom are also named Brittany) and wearing low-rise jeans. Maybe I was unduly influenced by the author being named Brittany, but this novel reads like a bunch of fond adolescent memories with the occasional gesture at some larger meaning. It feels like the author couldn't decide between trying to do an emotional mid-oughts coming-of-age story (like Lady Bird) or a slice-of-life portrait of a certain type of high school experience (like Fast Times at Ridgemont High). The stakes aren't high enough for the first (the biggest through-line is that Brittany's BFF Brittany might be a lesbian but neither of them seems to know it) and the scope isn't wide enough for the second. I think the book would've been better off as, like, two short stories.