#that makes SO much sense of COURSE it's German Folklore

[pilferingapples]

Re: the story about Charlemagne and the ring, I grew up with that story! It's a German folk tale, with no clear origins besides handwavey "oral traditions". I never thought to look it up before, but Wiki says it's called the "Fastradasage" & that (like so many of our folk tales) it ended up in a bunch of German folklore collections in the 19th century, but I can't imagine those are the oldest written accounts. It also says Petrarch mentions the story in like the 1330s? Either way, it's def in the canon of fairytale-esque German folk tales :')

Thank you so much !! I was about to get totally lost in the Search Tabs, I would not at all have known the origin point to look for! This is so cool!

[bonemother]

Easter as a Culture Hero

Sometimes I wonder if I bother @neil-gaiman too much with questions about American Gods, but then I remember that I’ve only asked him two questions and two questions from one person does not a bother make. The most recent one was about whether Easter would be considered an actual goddess or a culture hero, since Eostre was concocted by Jacob Grimm in his book on folklore and was not a real Germanic goddess. Bu since culture heroes like Apple Johnny and Paul Bunyan exist in that world, why couldn’t Easter also be a culture hero? She was created by man as a goddess, so of course she would come across as similar to a goddess, but she’s more similar to the New Gods in that sense. She represents the modern celebration of the return of spring and everything that comes with it. Names have power, and Easter is a pretty powerful name to have. I dunno. Does anyone else have thoughts?

[punkscowardschampions]

GC, Ronali & Cali

Ali: Who’s gonna fill me in on what I’ve been missing out on/did any of yous care I might’ve been 💀

Ali: Carls not included, of course 😘

Ronan: ‘Course we did

Ronan: not much you’ve missed is all

Carly: told u 🥱😴💀👻

Ali: Boo 👎

Ali: is it not the season, like

Ronan: Barely, like

Ronan: cut us some slack

Carly: no we shan’t

Ali: oh mein gott

Ali: it’s actually THE most festive night of the season, you’ve just reminded me Ro

Ronan: What? You’ve lost me

Bartley: Is she speaking German

Ali: Barely, like

Ali: you don’t know about Krampusnacht?

Ronan: Are you on about [insert some crap krampus horror film you think she’s talking about cos they exist]

Ali: Yeah but it’s not just a film, boy

Ali: it’s folklore, so tonight 🎅 & 👹 come, if you’ve been good, you’ll have a present from 🎅 if you’ve been bad, 👹 will get ya

Ali: [tell them about the Krampus run vibe and how it’s an excuse to get pissed and scare people, in a nutshell lol] so…

Ronan: Ah, now I get it

Ali: Did you keep your costume, you’ve got a headstart if you did

Bartley: Once again mine is useless

Carly: my ma’s for sure a whip yous can borrow 🎅👹😈❤️

Ali: See, resourceful

Ali: sure [Halloween pop-up girl] sold you a lasso

Moses: Sharing is caring

Carly: tis the season 🎁🎁

Bartley: I thought you had a boyfriend, Ali

Ali: What’s that got to do with anything?

Moses: Where’s your sense of fun, Bart

Ronan: He only means what’ll he, if not your parents, say about partying for a made up holiday

Carly: made up when yous dont wanna party

Carly: any excuse when yous do

Ali: Honestly, like

Ali: if no one is bothered, I’ll take the party elsewhere, no big

Carly: it’ll be fun eejits 🎅🎁👹🔔⛓🌜😈🐐

Moses: Ignore them, it’s a party, ‘course, where else would you want to be, really

Ronan: It weren’t a no

Ali: the enthusiasm I love to see

Carly: what a day when im w mosey boy

Carly: never thought I’d see it again

Bartley: didn’t you say that last time

Carly: have u something to say yourself boy?

Bartley: I just said it

Moses: 🤣 fuck’s sake, calm down children

Ronan: I am calm

Ronan: confused as to what’s going on or not now though

Bartley: that’s new

Ronan: Who got you out of bed on the wrong side?

Ali: let’s not, a fake holiday is not worth the aggro

Bartley: Fine by me

Moses: Jesus, you really are in a pissy mood, boy

Johnny: Leave him be, taking the piss’ll make it no better

Moses: A party’d sort you out

Moses: all work no play, as they say

Johnny: Enough, least he pulls his weight on jobs

Johnny: you want to worry yourself less about parties little girls throw

Moses: I don’t pull my weight? How come I got picked for [a job, idk, but you know the vibes lol] and you didn’t?

Johnny: How come you reckon you’re to air our business here when it’s no place? Sort yourself out and find me where you’ve the knowing I’ll be if you’ve something more to say when there’s no girls listening

Moses: I’m not trying to talk to you

Moses: and no one else is trying to talk about work but you

Johnny: What you’re trying to do is lead my brother astray how you did your own

Ronan: Come on, don’t let’s fight

Bartley: Yeah, stop it

Ronan: Ali, if the party goes ahead and I’m still invited, count me in

Ali: not going to be accused of not being able to read a room that much, like

Ali: but I’ll be sure to catch you soon

Ronan: [private @ Ali]

Ronan: What was all that? Do you have a clue?

Ali: Maybe I really did bring demonic vibes to the chat because no, not really

Ronan: I had myself crossed you coming back would be a different vibe, yeah

Ali: Sorry

Ali: if it’s consolation at all, that’s mutual

Ronan: Some

Ali: you’ve forgotten how boring school is, that’s the problem

Ali: lost so many IQ points forcing myself in that place every day

Ronan: Every day? I don’t believe it

Ali: Alright, alright but Carly really did need me that day

Ali: compared to my usual, gold stars all ‘round, like

Ronan: What’s wrong with Carls

Ronan: she seemed grand then, unlike the rest

Ali: Girl problems

Ali: I thought all that might be family troubles, hence I kept myself tactfully quiet

Ronan: No one’s told me of troubles but I’d be last to hear

Ali: ah, look, I’m probably way off and it’s just me coming around again pissing them off

Ali: long as you’re more pleased to hear off me than you gave out at first?

Ronan: I didn’t mean nothing by calling it a made up holiday

Ronan: I’ve missed hearing off you

Ali: I know you didn’t, we’re all good

Ali: it’s been so weird, not coming ‘round here

Ronan: Been as bad not having you

Ronan: as you can see

Ali: Be why I was trying to bring you the party

Ali: but it’ll wait

Ronan: It shouldn’t

Ronan: Moses had his point, who can be in a mood and have a face on in the middle of a party

Ali: He would think so

Ali: I don’t want to piss off Bartley and Johnny though

Ronan: The one’s that way through no fault of yours and the other’ll cheer up for it, trust us

Ali: Should you try talking to Bart or is that the worst idea ever

Ali: worse than switches and forked tongues, even

Ronan: I’ll give it a lash

Ali: You might wake up to a present yet, boy

Ronan: What’ll it be?

Ronan: and don’t say a surprise

Ali: 🍊🪙is probably traditional

Ali: you’d rather coal, I bet, or a surprise 

Ronan: You can decide on what you reckon my saving the party is worth, was your good idea in the 1st place

Ali: You really want to?

Ronan: Yeah

Ali: and obviously I’m gonna bring way better presents, you knew that right

Ronan: Might’ve crossed my mind

Ali: ‘tis the season 🎀

Ronan: Have you watched [more bad krampus films]

Ali: [tell him the ones you have from that list but some you have not]

Ali: I could definitely make a better one tonight though 📹😱🩸

Ronan: Find me whenever you’re after being filmed, I’ll do it for you

Ali: Okay Mr. Director

Ali: it’s a shame how well your name lends itself to a Roman Polanski ref because it’s not a compliment 

Ronan: Am I best not to look up who he is?

Ali: In your defence, you’re allowed to date teenage girls

Ronan: Right, he’s that sort

Ronan: someone should’ve filmed him strung up by the balls

Ali: There’s still time, along with the rest still working

Ronan: Gonna need to give us a minute

Ali: 📜🔪⏱

Ali: you can have the night off, as you’re coming to my party

Ronan: You’re having it then

Ali: things can’t be made worse by it, can they

Ronan: Nah, I don’t reckon so

Ali: Blame you entirely if it’s not so then, yeah?

Ronan: Yeah

Ali: 💛 you wanna be on the nice list so bad

Ronan: I’d be a dope to wanna be on the other tonight

Ali: 👹 not a fan?

Ronan: Be a list who’d volunteer if I was after being beaten up without 👹 busying himself

Ali: Never

Ronan: Join us in the nice corner, like

Ali: I don’t know if that’s a possibility 

Ali: but I have banked a whole fortnight so we’ll see

Ronan: You’ve a start made

Ali: 😇 make heaven yet

Ronan: Gates are staying closed a long time with all the living you’re yet to do, getting ahead of yourself there, girl

Ali: no 💀 wish

Ali: just

Ronan: Just?

Ali: Sorry, that was ominous

Ali: nothing important

Ronan: Or nothing you want tell me

Ali: I’ve just missed you all

Ronan: Least you never forgot all of us

Ali: am I 👩‍🦳, boy?

Ronan: Taken like you are now

Ali: Hardly

Ronan: What’s hardly to mean

Ali: I’m not 🤰💍🤱

Ronan: I wasn’t saying that, going there

Ronan: you who called him your boyfriend, don’t it matter?

Ali: It matters how?

Ronan: To you and to how you act

Ali: I can still party

Ronan: Well, I’ll talk to my moody cousin and get the party brought

Ali: I can

Ronan: I don’t know his mood’d be improved but go for it

Ali: Dunno about that either but least I can do

Ronan: You’ve done nothing to upset him far as I can tell

Ali: Everyone just gets lairy in group chats, sure it’s nothing more

Ronan: Maybe he’s been working too hard, everyone heard that said

Ali: Oh, I thought you meant Bartley

Ronan: I do, who else would I?

Ali: like you’ve not so many cousins, cut me some slack

Ronan: Could always be more

Ronan: [and tell her about some other peeps you know who have loads more than you]

Ali: Crazy I could have that many

Ali: but my parents families aren’t exactly around, they don’t feel real even if they exist

Ronan: We’re all of us within shouting range here, I can’t think what you having family you don’t see must be like

Ali: I feel sorry for my daddy, he never wanted to leave his brothers and sisters

Ali: just how it is though, for me, always has been

Ronan: ‘Til we arrange our roadtrip for you to go and stay 

Ali: 😁 ‘til then

Ali: awkward if they all suck

Ronan: Bad craic and odds if it’s all of ‘em, yeah

Ronan: yours are both good enough to make the amends for it though, I reckon, and pick up any slack

Ali: when’d you get so good at pep talks, damn

Ronan: I dunno that I am really

Ali: I’d not lie to you

Ronan: I’ve alright odds for getting the party back on track then

Ronan: just give him his own

Ali: Godspeed, Ro

Ronan: Be grand

Ronan: have yourself ready for your fake holiday when wes show up later on

Ali: do you even know me

Ronan: I’ve some knowing of you, sure

Ali: then you know dressing up is half the fun

Ronan: Were on halloween

Ali: see

Ali: your costume was sick

Ronan: We might’ve left a 👿 mask over somewhere, see if I can’t wow you again

Ronan: [speaking of trying to impress her talk about what you currently have in your fireworks stash and what you could feasibly get in the short notice of this impromptu affair]

Ali: my kid brother is not invited this time so 🤩🤩🤩

Ronan: Between us we’ll give him something to watch from his window so’s he’s not left out

Ali: you’re adorable

Ronan: I know the aggro when they are, ‘course I’d spare you

Ali: can blame himself for his previous making it a no-go

Ali: learn him a lesson

Ronan: Would’ve had you down as a more fun sister

Ali: Wow, shocking 

Ronan: No harm done, ah come on, could let him have his invite

Ali: it’s my parents not me!

Ali: also who do you propose looks after him all night, boy, ‘cos I know it wouldn’t be you

Ronan: Carls

Ronan: do you not trust her to?

Ali: I don’t think that’s how she wants to spend her evening

Ronan: She spent ages with him at your last party, what’s the difference

Ronan: and won’t your brother who likes doing women’s work be there?

Ali: that’s a new one, he’ll like it, so retro

Ali: and he’ll be keeping his keen friend away from Bart, like

Ronan: There’s why you’re the smart one, you’ve only gone and solved what his pissy mood must be about

Ronan: I’d forgot her

Ali: Mhmm, he’s wishing she’d forget him sharpish 

Ronan: Ha

Ali: You could do the right thing and distract her yourself

Ronan: Distract her how, she’s keen on him not us

Ali: You don’t think you could change her mind, come on

Ronan: Nah, I don’t

Ali: you could

Ali: but I’m also just messing around, obvs

Ronan: You reckon?

Ali: Totally

Ronan: If I weren’t messing myself, like

Ali: there’s so much else for us to be getting on with 🎇💥🎆

Ronan: True enough

Ali: can’t let me down now

Ronan: Never

Ali: You’re the best

Ronan: Give over

Ali: sorry sorry, lack of socialisation getting me cheesy

Ronan: Your boyfriend coming this time?

Ali: Do you think I’m making him up?

Ronan: I’m asking when’s he gonna prove he exists if you’re not

Ali: coming for me hardcore tonight, I see how it is

Ronan: Or him, why don’t he wanna be at your party, all your parties

Ali: shy is going to sound like a copout at this point

Ronan: It does

Ronan: girl who’s mates with your brother is shy, she still parties when you throw ‘em

Ali: He just prefers alone time, idk, it doesn’t bother me that he doesn’t want to be at my parties

Ronan: Aren’t you bothered about him meeting your friends?

Ali: would you be?

Ronan: I’ve no girlfriend

Ali: if you did, would you want her to meet all that lot

Ronan: Isn’t how we do things

Ali: yeah, there you go

Ronan: There I go, but it’s different for you

Ali: girls usually only intro their boyfriends if they want to show off, in my experience

Ronan: He’s not worth showing off, is it?

Ronan: say no more

Ali: Ha ha, dickhead

Ali: some things make for good secrets, that’s it

Ronan: If you’d rather keep secrets

Ali: if you’d been given the choice, wouldn’t you have rather no one knew about you and Carly?

Ronan: Me and Carly was shaming

Ali: would it have been if not for everything Moses did

Ronan: Would’ve been a mistake still

Ronan: is your boyfriend that?

Ali: no, I like him

Ronan: What’s the sense keeping secret and away someone you like?

Ronan: I don’t get it

Ali: He’s older, alright

Ali: old enough he’d get in trouble

Ronan: Old enough he’s the need to be strung up himself, like?

Ali: nah, still a teenager

Ali: but you know how my kind can be if the mood takes

Ronan: Where’d yous meet, school? Be why you’ve been going in regular

Ali: that was all down to my ma, trust me

Ronan: If you say so, I do

Ali: he doesn’t go to my school, I don’t get to see him much

Ronan: Don’t he drive?

Ali: he does

Ali: but when I’ve school I HAVE to go to and we’ve both jobs, barely any time really, what I meant

Ronan: Your ma’ll ease up now you’ve behaved, she’s not banned the party

Ali: she would if she knew of him

Ronan: None of us’ll tell her, even Barty boy at his sulkiest and he won’t be when I’ve finished

Ali: I appreciate it, you know that, yeah

Ronan: Carls might want watching when she’s a state but it’s nothing you don’t know yourself

Ali: She’s cool

Ronan: No troubles is what I like to hear

Ali: You and me both, boy

Ronan: I’d hate for you to be off the minute you’re back

Ali: No way

Ali: unless I get a better offer, of course

Ronan: I was the best earlier

Ali: and I had all the faith in you that you didn’t yourself

Ronan: Keep it, unless your secrets are weighing you down

Ali: You’re acting like it’s weird but think about it, you never told anyone what happened between us

Ronan: To do you a favour, he’s the man you’re not to protect him it’s the other way ‘round

Ali: it does me a favour too

Ronan: With your mammy but as I’ve said none of us are snitches

Ali: so what favour were you doing me?

Ronan: Of Moses not treating you the way he does Carly

Ali: I can handle Moses

Ronan: You’ve no need to with how I handled it

Ali: Sure but you get my point

Ronan: Yeah

Ali: you don’t want him to come to the party?

Ronan: When did I say he’s not to come?

Ali: I’m asking

Ronan: I’m cool with him, I dunno why you’d ask

Ali: Okay

Ronan: Right then, I’ve a cousin to find and fireworks to source

Ali: In a bit then

Ali: [Private to Carly]

Ali: Well

Ali: that was tense

Carly: - craic all round ☔️🥀

Carly: cept your boy making himself known to tell mosey to shh 😅

Ali: wasn’t expecting a banner or anything but damn

Ali: he’s probably pissed off with me now too

Carly: why youre talking to me instead of him 👀 none taken baby

Carly: & you can always have your banner off us 🥳🥁🏆🎊✨🎉🎈🎁

Ali: I wanted to check on you, actually, shh

Carly: im grand

Ali: that was a dick move from him

Carly: used to moves like that & its nothing a party won’t fix

Ali: he seems really bothered, too bothered to just be business as usual

Carly: I got too in his & hes 😤😠😡🤬 @ me

Ali: in his head

Carly: idk

Carly: werent far enough to find sense still 😵‍💫🙃🤯

Ali: boys are so confusing 

Carly: ive never had the knowing of a boy so 🥵🧲😈🔥🧨💥 to 🥶🧊🍦❄️⛄️

Ali: conflicted comes with the territory, sadly

Ali: does he want what his body is saying he wants or what his head is telling him he should

Carly: w them 2 the other 2 acted on what they wanted

Carly: no chance of whiplash like only different injuries

Ali: do you reckon you’d rather

Ali: or it’s a ❌ for all of them for now

Carly: spite of what hes putting about in the groupchat I’d never go back esp not crawling to moses, my god

Carly: ive sense I was born w if no more

Ali: you know I’m not judging

Ali: I remember all too well what 🥶🧊🍦❄️⛄️ was like to act otherwise

Carly: moses true colours arent ❤️🍄🧡🐅💛🌞💚🍀💙🧿💜🔮

Carly: his 🥵🧲😈🔥🧨💥 scares me, what he’s said & i know he’d do

Ali: I won’t let him

Ali: and he doesn’t need to come

Carly: im in no danger @ this distance & thats to include if he comes

Carly: idm

Ali: only if Johnny comes which he never will

Carly: theyve 💪🥊🤕 from 👶👶 nothing’ll get em to quit never

Ali: too much difference between them

Ali: it happens

Carly: look @ my ma & me 🍏 & 🍊 to be sure

Carly: we’ve only no bad 🩸🩸 cos I let none spill

Ali: I know, problem is Moses is made to be his when there’s nothing to be done

Carly: maybe he’ll outgrow it some as an elder, hes time to

Ali: never say never

Carly: I did ⬆️ but I take it back 💙🧿💙

Carly: & 🙏💙🔮💜🤞🌠 on everything they’ll find their peace of sorts 1 day

Ali: you don’t owe nice

Carly: u sound like bb when hed have me leave my ma for 💀👻

Ali: that’s your mother, like

Ali: nothing is that simple

Carly: he dont know complicated, his cooks & cleans for him when hes home from a long day working w his daddy 🍀🐇🌠🎲

Ali: their parents seem really sound, from what I’ve been told and seen around

Carly: I love his mammy shes really nice to me 🦘👑💎🌞🐻😇🐘

Carly: not that she would b if she’d found me in his van but hey for now shes 

Ali: I wish I could know her

Ali: have you been back to his since?

Carly: how we left things hes probably moved his spare 🔑 since

Carly: wouldnt blame him but Ive not got it in me to check

Ali: I wouldn’t be able to either

Carly: i’ve already been knocked 🤢🤮 giving up everything for him to still call me mental the same as if I never

Ali: what about your proper meds?

Carly: ive my knowing of the date cos u said it idk

Ali: no wonder you feel 🤢🤮 babe, you have to taper that shit if you wanna go off it or your body is gonna go crazy

Carly: oh

Carly: so maybe hes right & I am ❤️🐇🐛☕️🌹

Carly: ah no the 🎢 is me

Ali: well, he could’ve definitely still been a prick, no need to rule it out but yeah

Ali: we’re to get an appointment and the doc will tell you how to get off ‘em and not feel insane/terrible

Carly: am I to get off em?

Carly: should I?

Ali: do you want to or did Bartley tell you to?

Carly: idk if he’s knowing about 💊👨‍⚕️ i dont remember ever telling him it werent all from cavante

Ali: he could’ve misunderstood, saying to stop them is more reasonable if simplistic 

Ali: I’m not going to go and smack him one anyway

Carly: is erin coming tonight cos he’ll be 👀 for me to smack her

Carly: I’ve memory of saying so

Ali: I’ll get Tommy to put her off

Ali: no 👊 needed

Carly: I cant 👊 you’d have to do it 🦋🐝

Ali: I’d begrudge it when Moses and now Bart have been nos, like

Carly: if I talk to him either @ the party or before & hes in a worse mood for it please please don’t be 😤😠😡🤬 @ me too

Ali: of course not

Ali: the bad vibes are nothing if not appropriate, I guess

Carly: theyre my fault & its your 1st party since ur ma got 😤😠😡🤬

Carly: i feel so bad

Ali: you feel bad because you’re poorly

Ali: we can just cancel the party

Carly: no feckin way r we 🎅🎁👹🔔⛓🌜😈🐐

Carly: i’ll drag myself to yours if ive to & bring the deadliest party on my own

Ali: well, we can’t have you getting gravel burn

Carly: wouldnt be the 1st time but the most worth it of many a

Ali: okay, okay, no party💩ing, promise

Carly: yay

Ali: though I am going to have to brave talking to Johnny now, as you’ve brought up gravel burn, so, give me all the luck I need

Carly: you dont need none he loves u

Ali: maybe he’ll talk to his brother

Ali: though I don’t think Bart would tell him the truth? Idk, still might make him feel a bit better

Carly: I’d bet hes as wes talking

Ali: yeah, he will be

Ali: I’ll not bother him for a bit, be good

Carly: might be they’re 🍻🎱🎯 down the local

Carly: name a lad who wouldn’t be 😁 by it ☔️☀️🌈

Ali: a shout

Ali: I’d be 

Carly: me too but only if theyve 🎵🎶 & not just 👴🍺🚬 ive often that craic waiting @ home

Ali: no music no party

Carly: your 🎤🍯💛‘d get it going anywhere

Carly: sing tonight & everything’ll turn round

Ali: I’ll sing for you, how about that

Carly: do you mean to?

Ali: Yep

Ali: whatever you like

Carly: I’ll sing for you too then though I’ve nowhere the power you’ve

Carly: weve to stick together & combine our 🌑🌌🔮🌠🎱🎇💣🌌🌑 all we can when it’s shite & wrong, how u said

Ali: 🐇🐣🦋🌼 soft power all of your own

Ali: 🔁 always

Carly: ive felt im a trapped 🦋🐞🐜🐛 climbing walls

Carly: after ripping my wings or legs off like

Ali: we’ll get it in the morning, okay, first thing

Carly: dr’ll be 😤😠😡🤬 @ me

Ali: they just don’t know how to talk to people nice, not like nurses, I’ll be there and do the talking, so they know how upset you are and struggling

Carly: he cant be told that, he’ll away me to somewhere like your brother is

Ali: no he won’t, not for that

Ali: you can tell me what you want me to say but trust me, they don’t have the space to be putting everyone with struggles in there

Carly: [her mum’s name] says I’m to keep my gob shut or lie if its to be open & all I do’s make her look bad telling I’ve struggles at all

Ali: It isn’t about her, it’s your brain and your feelings

Carly: yea but she’ll be v 😤😠😡🤬 if we go

Ali: we’ll say we’ve gone for me then

Carly: k that’ll work

Ali: it’s all in hand

Ali: and you’ll feel all the better for it

Carly: I wont have to speak to him you’ll do it?

Ali: Yep

Carly: k 💛

Carly: drag myself there next 🍓🩸

Ali: 🚲 us there

Carly: ilysm id carry u

Ali: I love you too

Carly: I wish you could talk to that boy how u are the dr

Carly: youd find words to put to whats wrong w us & they’d be right 1s not like what comes out of me all wrong

Ali: If I thought he’d appreciate that and not be full 😤😠😡🤬 at the lack of privacy

Carly: I just want him to understand

Carly: when he asked me what I shouldve said so

Ali: you weren’t in a good headspace, the fact you got any words out to make sense is impressive enough given

Carly: he were impressed by my 🧽✨🧼🧺🧹🥄🍴🍳 anyway 

Carly: least that sort of mental has its use

Ali: Of course he was

Ali: they’d have gorja girls so incapable we don’t know how to work a microwave, bless ‘em

Carly: my ma’s example doing nothing ever to change their way of thinking

Ali: but she’s really got the aesthetic, eh

Carly: ah that what we’re calling it now?

Carly: of all the cultures to take from what matters the least she didn’t bother herself to venture far from the front door

Ali: suppose I’m not to talk when I’m trying to think of a Krampus costume but yeah

Carly: but no youve an important point

Carly: what are we to wear? he told me I looked nice when I dressed for him

Ali: you could go full 🤶?

Carly: feels too erin idk

Ali: right, we need to workshop that

Carly: im still me w out 🍭🍬🚬🌿🌼🍄

Carly: or I hope ive some personality underneath

Ali: of course you are, you’re always the youiest you

Carly: heads together 🧠💫🧠

Carly: we’ve need to be of a mind to shut em up calling u 🥱😴💀👻 for being taken by ur man johno while we’re about it 

Ali: do you think I am

Carly: don’t u be daft!

Carly: theyre gobshites

Carly: ro for his jealousy, moses to stir & bb cos of my carry on

Ali: I know I’m different but I don’t know how to act as if I’m not

Carly: you’ve no cause to act no way for them lot

Carly: youre magic as is & theres nothing in all whats unreal to b changed

Ali: 💜💜💜

Carly: 💛👼💡👩🏼‍🎤🌟🐱🧚‍♀️🏆✨🐝🧙🏼‍♀️🌞🦁🌻👑🌝🧜🏼‍♀️🍯🎇👩🏼‍🚀

Ali: You’re my best friend

Carly: i’d never had 1 before & now I dont want another ever ever again but u

Ali: you better not replace me

Carly: w who? erin? or your neighbour girl?

Ali: yeah, exactly

Ali: you’re too smart to waste your time

Carly: youre the only 1 to say im smart & not mean it as slagging

Ali: people are dumb if they don’t see it in you

Carly: or blind by ur 💡🌝💫🌞🌠🎇🌟🌜✨🌌⚡️☄️

Ali: i’ll go 🖤 with my outfit, you shine solo

Carly: I’m not after no solo spotlight, duet or never

Ali: 💞 it is

Ali: but there’s a lot I need to cover for real

Carly: & lots im to get out since im no longer ❤️💜💙

Ali: fur bikini for sure

Carly: sure id win @ 🥶🧊🍦❄️⛄️

Ali: they’d all be 🥵🧲😈🔥🧨💥 but right so they’ve not earnt it

Carly: if his attention could be earned id try it

Ali: he’s paying attention, fuming or otherwise

Carly: how many drinks in him before I give mine?

Carly: 🍺🍺🍺? 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺?

Ali: 🍺🍺🍺

Ali: too much could go badly as easily as it could go well

Carly: & we’ve no knowing if theyve started yet

Ali: I’ll ask Johnny for you

Carly: as you’ve to talk yourselves, yea

Ali: 🤞🤞🤞

Carly: 🌑🌌🙏💙🔮💜🤞🌠🍀🐇🎱🎲🎇💣🌌🌑

[under-lore]

Where do you think Mt. Ebott is on Earth? Most seem to consider somewhere in the United States or Canada as the most probable answer, though that makes sense considering the majority of the fan base is from their and Toby himself is an american (also Hometown in Deltarune is pretty obviously supposed to invoke the image of Everytown, America).

That said, I'm pretty sure the medieval weapons used by the humans in the intro don't line up with what indigenous Americans had access to.

So maybe somewhere in Europe? Would fit with the vaguely medieval esthetic of thr Underground, and Asgore's theme being a reference to the german King in the Mountain motif.

A very tricky question !

Indeed, Undertale seems to be throwing hints into every direction at once. The name "Frisk" comes from Scandinavia whilst "Chara" exists in Irish and Greek. The narrator references the USDA (US department of agriculture), the underground references medieval Europe and german myths. Etc... the list goes on and there seems to be no easy answer.

Mount Ebbot lookalikes have also been found in most of these countries...

To start off, the kind of sword that we see in the introduction of the game indeed doesn't really fit with what native americans were using before europeans discovered the continent. They mainly used weapons such as bows and arrows, spears or tomahawks... Not this :

It is difficult to judge such a generic sword design, but this type of sword seems to ressemble a lot more those used in Europe from ancient Greece to the end of the medieval age than those used in Asia in this time period.

Its uncertain how long ago monsters were sealed. Bratty and Catty mention it as having been millennia, however, those two are often exaggerating things. That being said, as it is the only proper source we have on the matter, i believe we can assume that the order of magnitude they give must at least be somewhat accurate.

Another thing that may be relevant is the fact that the sound of the bells that play in the final corridor is called "mus_churchbell".

With that on top of the obvious ressemblence with christian church designs in this area, it would seem likely that christianity was already present in the area Undertale takes place in back when monsters were sealed.

In that case, most of Africa and Asia as well as all of the Americas and Oceania would be eliminated, making Europe the biggest candidate by far.

It could also be possible that monsters learned of christianity at a later date via things the humans would have left in the garbage dump. But as monsters only moved out of Home shortly before Chara fell, it would be quite odd for it to have gained much significance underground.

Besides, monsters do not even seem to know about the modern Christmas traditions. Which they would have likely learned about if they only knew of christianity from the dump.

Christmas as a holiday didn't really take off before Charlemagne in the year 800. And it didn't reach its modern form before the 19th century.

As you've pointed out, there is an odd use of the german language in the Undertale OST. One that references german folklore : "Bergentrückung".

This may be a point in favor of Undertale taking place somwhere where german culture has at least a strong influence if not an area where German is spoken.

The narrator knowing what the USDA is and making anime references also seems to imply it being somewhere in the western-aligned world.

Of course, it is likelier to be somewhere that has a lot of mountains as well.

While this one is a bit more of a stretch, a place where a lot of trash per habitant is produced could also be quite fitting due to how much the garbage dump seems to receive.

There is no definitive answer to this question. However, certain areas seem much more likely than others. It would seem to me that somewhere in the Alps would combine the most fitting factors out of any other place on Earth.

Switzerland in particular seems like a very good candidate as it fits every single one of these criteria. Besides, it is also famous for its chocolate ! Which could explain Chara's taste for it if they were swiss.

[the-fae-folk]

Hello ! This is my first ask, so I apologize if it doesn't make much sense. Can you tell us about the Fae Courts, specifically the Seelie and Unseelie ones ? The descriptions I've been able to find online don't go into much detail beyond a few main characteristics, and I was wondering if you knew some things about them and their lore ? Thank you for putting together this blog, it is very interesting !

Welcome, Child. The two courts you speak of, Seelie and Unseelie, are a tradition whose roots lie deep within Scottish Folklore and a number of other pools. Now, a lot of what we imagine when it comes to Faeries tends to fall along the lines of graceful elfs and pixies, parades of royalty and finery, and many strange but relatively wonderful faerie beings. You and I know that there are more kinds from a great number of different sources. But how do you categorize them? How do you group them? Well in older days, one way to do so was to say that here in one group were the good Faeries, and in this other group are the wicked ones. But of course, that doesn’t really work too well, especially when the supposedly good ones keep doing nasty and vindictive things to people whenever they feel even remotely inconvenienced or slighted. The name, Seelie, gives us a good clue as to what is going on. It comes from an older Anglo-Saxon word, “Sælig”, which meant blessed or happy. Adding the prefix “Un” to that was a negation effect. Unhappy, unblessed. Either feeling miserable due to evil natures, or more likely... causing misery and unhappiness to others. As far as scholars can guess, Irish and Scottish shared many of the same myths and their characters. The Irish Tuatha Dé Danann shifted at some point from deities and supernaturally powered kings and heroes to the Daoine Sídhe, what we know as Fae. It’s uncertain when this happened, but the growing power of Christianity very likely had something to do with it. These depictions of Faeries could be separated into their own groupings, much like the Seelie and Unseelie. But it was not wicked or kindly, it was a distinction of where they could be found, in the air or on the ground, and whether or not they were frightening. While the Irish had the Daoine Sídhe, the Scottish had the Daoine Sìth. More or less the same beings, at least at the start, but the depiction of them was painted somewhat differently. While the Irish Fae were said to teach skills like metalworking and to deal with humans quite often, the Scottish Fae kept to themselves, and any dealings with them were almost always likely to end badly. The names, Seelie and Unseelie, did not show up until very very late in Scottish Folklore. In fact, it was only by the late medieval and early modern period that those terms took any real meaning at all, as much of the Scottish Folklore we actually have deals with the Highlands and Islands. Even then, the people didn’t really see these as clear and concrete distinctions, as different groups of fairy peoples, but rather they offered them as euphemisms and epithets, naming what they saw or what they hoped would be. If the Folk are cruel and nasty without cause, ugly and horrible to see, or frightening and eldritch... then clearly they are Unseelie. They are everything we are afraid of. But if the Folk seem beautiful and kindly, offering aid or sage advice, or are willing to let you alone as long as you pay the proper respects, then clearly they must be Seelie. The blessed, the wonderful, the happy. And the ideas of what Faeries were wasn’t a solid unchanging tale. Even as the witch trials spread throughout Scotland it changed what the Faeries were and how people saw them. Interactions with the English, with the Irish, the Welsh... all influenced the tales of the Folk and other folkloric aspects of the Scottish myths. One idea came up from the more Germanic and Norse cultures, depicting Faeries as the shades of the dead, still wandering in and out of heaven or hell or places between. As a parade, a wild hunt, a night ritual during sacred times of the year. And whether those dead were good and beautiful, shining bright, or whether they were dark and unholy, terrible demonic forces... that too would graft itself onto the ideas of Seelie and Unseelie Courts. In modern fantasy literature we’ve inherited this idea of two distinct Fairy Courts, and a popular trick is to assign them parts of nature that seem to fit them. Winter and Autumn for the Unseelie, the dead and dying, the cold and unmoved. Spring and Summer for the Seelie, warmth and life, light and laughter, plenty and growth. Still today our ideas of what the Folk are change and grow as time goes on, with every addition to the idea of what Fae are they will change a little more. And it’s important to remember that the things we speak of, the names we talk about, are not free of all those influences, that they might not have started out even remotely like what we use them for today. I would definitely suggest finding more comprehensive and citable sources to delve into when it comes to Scottish Folklore, for there is a vast amount that I simply cannot cover here, not even if I had several lifetimes to do so. Remember, not everything is online, even now. There is so very much that has not yet bridged that gap between paper to webpage. Speak to the librarians, ask for their help in finding sources, chances are that many would be thrilled at the opportunity to put their library science degree to good use.

[bandathebillie]

Where are some instances in The Witcher books that makes it connected to Polish culture? I’m curious.

Apart from a plethora of little winks and nods or direct references to folklore, the biggest thing that gives The Witcher its unique polish vibe is the way in which the dialogue was written. Sapkowski made a blend of a certain archaic form of polish with "street talk" and a particular (rather dark and fatalistic) sense of humor. It gave the stories a very local feel. Sadly most of it is lost in translation.

There are references to polish literature. Some paraphrases of famous quotes from polish writers, notably from Sienkiewicz and Mickiewicz.

References to polish folk tales like retelling of a princess striga story (episode 3 of season 1). The hunt for the golden dragon in the books has obvious reference to polish legend of Wawel dragon (none of that was in the show tho). Mentioning a ballad about Vanda who drowned herself in a river which is reference to polish tale of Wanda who also drowned so to not marry a german.

In The Tower of the Swallow Jaskier makes a joke out of the first phrase ever written in polish language.

And of course names and mythical creatures.

There's much more but I hope I satisfied your curiosity :)

[deoffal-mp-adm7000-n-s1-2022]

The 57, Part 1:

1. Oni: This first piece is inspired by the likes of painter and illustrator Kawanabe Kyosai, he was considered ‘the demon of painting’ for his graphical works on japanese folkloric creatures, satire and euro giro art, this version of an oni though is so much more western and graphical, almost as if it was drawn by Gustave Dore, or Coop. This is all on purpose, I drew this face to be a fusion of both the idea of the oni as the japanese demon archetype in mythology, but drawn with a western spin that isn’t too dissimilar to our image of demons etc, with oni’s typically being guardian spirits and ogres in japan compared to our western image of them as devils and mischievous blighters. This piece represents the nostalgia of my younger self when finding comfort in the drawing the recognisably alternative with demons and monsters, a fantastical art form that hasn’t changed since the medieval period and even longer still, it’s an animalism of the human portrait, a fallen angel made beast etc, we love images like this still and so this is my tribute to where my roots come from when drawing the odd and alternative as someone who still finds joy in reimagining that immature idea of the monstrous and caricatured.  

2. Drachen: This piece is very similar to the last in concept too, Drachen being the German for dragon, why German? Well because when I think of western ideas of fantasy I think of norse dragons and pagan deities, German folktales like Hansel and Gretel, the brothers Grimm etc. It again strikes an immature love affair within me  to think that even those as dark as Lovecraft once loved the traditional of fantastical monsters and european images of folklore of knights and dragons, such in the that of Beowulf, one of the oldest western fantasies of which has a dragon too. This image is based on more of the Jabberwocky in appearance though as described in Lewis Carrol’s surrealist dream in Through the Looking Glass (1871), so this dragon is more basilisk than Wyvern per say.  

3. Reduce: This image is a nod to old body horror, that of the films of John Carpenter, Ridley Scott and John Romero, melting zombies, exploding corpses and horrific metamorphosis. The idea of the focus on reduction being that to make horror you have to know the fundamentals to exploit and extrapolate greater reactions from the audience, after all, I wouldn’t be able to reinvent human anatomy and the structure of the typical portrait without knowing the basics of composition, morphology and again anatomy on a scientific level almost, so the reduction is to reduce something to a fundamental state so as to better reimagine and exaggerate it in your own version of it. 

4. Bite: This piece has been used as all my current profile pictures, I love it’s Madonna esque positioning, it’s almost as if Francis Bacon chose to paint Madonna, with the focus on the mouth and the bulbous ballooned head making for quite the strong contrast against the white background, white backgrounds only being used when I feel too much detail would be lost by smothering an image with a black background without proper intent for it of course. This piece has been discussed before as a representation of oral sensation and man’s oral curiosity, after all alot sexual gratification is not too dissimilar to satiating yourself and feeding yourself to the point of full climax, as the brain response and release of dopamine in both scenarios is not too dissimilar when you study the data here and there. People have impulses to bite each other and to feed off of each other sexually, it’s why oral sex is so common nowadays and why it’s such a popular search term on porn sites, people want to gratify all their senses to experience overall climax rather than neglecting aspects of their body that most may shame them for experimenting with. Is it no wonder that people like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Issei Sagawa all turned to cannibalism once they killed their victims? Just a thing to think about, though for most it’s merely about playing with the noumena with all your senses, not just the assumed for every scenario. 

5. Hickey: This again isn’t too dissimilar of an idea compared to the last piece, this time based on the literal act of sucking on the body of another person as if we were leeches in the time of feeding, another very common and normative practice now, makes you think that cannibalism isn’t such a ridiculous fetish to consider in the macro, that of taking pleasure in connecting with other people by actively softcore consuming or attaching your to them as a shown of affection or connection all together, it’s why people kiss and snuggle, affection can be cannibalistic and in turn can scare alot of people quite easy in my opinion, it can be associated with the fears of being smothered by love and contemporary relationships but most people long for that union out of instinct as any psychologist and zoologist could tell you. 

6. Paranoia: I used to be far more paranoid than I am now, but most people don’t realise that the contemporary issues of social media and interpersonal connections nowadays stem from a form of social schizophrenia, wherein people are so afraid to think for themselves, speak up for themselves and live for themselves without feeling a voice moan in their own head or to imagine what everyone is going to say, it’s the feeling of having eyes on you and waiting for the next person to live rent free in your mind that has made my generation so afraid of it’s self and everyone else around them. It’s almost as if arguing more technology and access to it has actually opened so much more of a pandora’s box type problematic, where people are more switched on then ever and paranoid of every decision they make so as to not be judged by the person next to them, what a world. 

7. Plant: This piece is a simpler image, that of imaging plant life, fungus, extremophiles and various other flora as sharing the same conscious judgement we do, as discussed constantly in the works of Algernon Blackwood, discussed best in his work ‘The Man Whom  Whom The Trees Loved’ (1912), the main plot being that a couple who live in the woods are confronted by the ever approaching yet distant outer world of the natural world, the trees as their sentinel against the human world and the supernatural. The trees want the husband as he is a naturalist who admires nature’s majesty in all it’s glory and eventually can’t leave the forest for the sake of his wife’s concerns, he is eventually made one with the woods and the audience is left to consider the narrative “who ever said that plant life and fungus, something of which we are actually 30% too biologically, could be considered lesser or incapable of sentience? how could you prove a trees intelligence or nature’s full capabilities when we measure everything by human logic? Who’s to say we aren’t the dumbasses merely trespassing on Gaia's lawn?”.

8. Gregory: This piece is more science fiction based and still has a focus on literary reimagining through illustration, this piece being both inspired by David Cronenberg's film ‘The Fly’ (1986) and Franz Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’, the fly follows the narrative that the sciences have their limit and that man should be careful when playing god or attempting to fight nature, becoming an entity that slowly degenerates over time the longer he transforms into a bug due to having his cells fused with a bug during a teleportation test, this was inspired by Kafka’s most famous work ‘The Metamorphosis’, as the lead character Gregor Samsa becomes a bug like creature one day and transforms into someone incapable of autonomy and independent living, afraid of dying as a burden to his family and the state, he goes into the woods to die alone. Both deal in themes of reimaging the use of allegory to test our sensibilities, whether that be by the lenses of science fiction in the fly or the satirical ideas of Kafka in the metamorphosis, the idea remains the same, using a introspective reimagining of the profile and portrait of man to teach a lesson on ethics and humanism in the face of the abhuman and unknown noumenal world, is something we have been doing since the days of dragons and ogres as mentioned before. 

9. Pressure: This piece is simple enough, pressure, both social and professional drain me to the point of feeling as if my body can no longer carry itself, but getting up each day to revitalise myself is all I can do, it’s all anyone can do in spite of this time of immense generational pressure and it’s greater impact on our physical and mental health, it’s something academics like Jordan Peterson see all too well and often, knowing full well that suicide rates are up and mental illness treatment hasn’t gotten better, the problem just becomes harder to measure the larger it gets and the more minute its actions seem to be. As someone is especially sensitive to touch and can feel their body’s response to excessive social and physical activity, It might as well feel as if my body was melting or falling to pieces, it’s a genuine issue not to overcome this contemporary fatigue and terror in everyday post-modern reality. 

10. Vicarious: This piece speaks for itself, people are so afraid of their own potential and ability that they would rather live through someone else, be someone else or follow someone else to the ends of the earth, and fads, fashion, snake oils salesmen, false icons and idols looking to make a quick buck on your insecurities and fears, and life gurus have always existed, all they’ve ever needed with each new generation is a rebrand and a new identity to leech through. I’m not saying I’m innocent in this either though, I operate out of an alias, but that’s only because I know that each person is given 3 faces in life, most forget that you have a face for the world (Deoffal Maldoror, the brand and identity), the face for your family (The interpersonal you and your superego), and the face for yourself (your ego and it’s constant competition against the id). This concept was most popular among Japanese proverbs, I don’t know why personally, but it always comes back to me as such an important concept, when everyone is attempting to share faces and live vicariously, never forget there is more than one you and depending on which one offers the most amount of conflict you may have to rebrand it to better suit your individuality against everyone else, I certainly, I ain’t sharing my face with anyone, that’s why I like keeping so private where I can. Living vicariously is just another form of social dependency and obsessive actualising in the interpersonal world, no greater fad has existed in memes and the zeitgeist ever when it comes to representing a generational problem with independent thought and responsibility for one’s actions. But there’s always going to be more herds then shepherds so you have to pick which lane best represents you honestly and objectively in life, which is a concept as nietzschean and epicurean as god being dead. 

[maxwell-grant]

What’s the difference between a pulp hero and a super hero?

There is a common sentiment when discussing pulp heroes, when compared to superheroes, that positions the two as if they were separate by entire eras, with pulp heroes being as distinct from the superheroes as the dinosaurs are to mankind. But then again, the dinosaurs never really went away, did they?��

Oh sure, they endured a great extinction, they downsized and ceded their thrones to the tiny little rats that scurried in their shadow, who then grew to become just as big, and then even bigger, but they never went away. They simply adapted into new forms and formed new ecosystems. We call them birds now.

The gap between Superman and The Shadow is merely 6 years, hardly much of a generation. There are those that argue that the Marvel and DC universes still have pulp heroes, that Batman is (or was) one, that characters like The Question and Moon Knight carry on the tradition. We have characters like Hellboy, Grendel, Tom Strong and Zack Overkill as original, modern examples of pulp characters, strongly identified as such. Venture Bros had in 2016 the best modern take on the Green Hornet. Lavender Jack is still going strong. So the idea that pulp heroes are defined solely by being old and outdated isn’t exactly true, when clearly there’s still enough gas in the tank centuries later for stories with them to be told.

Is there any meaningful distinction between pulp heroes and superheroes? If not, can we identify one?

Costume is definitely a big part of it, as Grant Morrison famously argued in his own summation. Of what he considers the big difference between the two: 

“What makes the superhero more current is the performance aspect. That's what The Shadow and those other guys don't really have. Their costumes are not bright, and they don't have their initials on their chest, and everything isn't out front and popping like the superheroes. I think we can relate to that about them because in the world we live in, everyone has a constant need to be a star. I think superheroes are keyed into that parallelism. They're performers. They're rock stars, and they always have been.

And he’s right, to an extent. It’s definitely tied into the central differences between The Shadow and Batman, as I’ve elaborated. While The Shadow was far, far from the only type of pulp hero, the superhero’s costume has long been defined as THE thing that sets it apart from every other type of fictional character. At least, when it comes to American superheroes. 

Because the “criteria” for superheroes is nowhere near as set in stone as some would like to believe. Our basic definition of superheroes is based around comparisons and contrasts to Superman and Batman, and how they fit into what we call “the superhero genre”. The existence of a superhero genre is, in and of itself, debatable, and any working definition for superheroes is inevitably going to have too many exceptions. 

Superheroes are not defined by settings, like cowboys or spacemen, or their profession, like detectives. They can’t be defined by superpowers (Batman), a mission statement, having secret identities (Fantastic Four, Tony Stark), being good people, or good at their jobs. The costume, the closest there is to a true, defining convention, still has a considerable share of exceptions like Jack Knight’s Starman, a great deal of the X-Men who do not wear uniforms, or most superheroes created outside the US. The most basic definition of superhero is of comic book characters with iconic costumes and enhanced abilities who fight villains in shared superhero universes, but even that falls short of exceptions by including characters who are not superheroes (John Constantine and other Vertigo characters, Jonah Hex, the Punisher). Some people would call Goku or Harry Potter or Lucky Luke or Monica’s Gang superheroes, Donald Duck has literally been one. “Character with a distinctive design and unusual talents who fights evil” includes virtually every fictional hero that’s ever achieved a modicum of popularity in a visual medium.

Even telling stories with super characters doesn’t mean you’re going to be writing a superhero story (Joker). Superheroes are not defined by settings and genres, but they can inhabit just about any of them you can imagine. Horror, westerns, gritty crime drama, historical reconstruction, romance, space adventure, war stories, surrealism stories. As Morrison put it, they aren’t so much a genre as they are “a special chilli pepper-like ingredient designed to energize other genres”, part of the reason why they colonized the entire blockbuster landscape.

Aviation became a thing in the war years, so they started producing en masse aviation pulps as a subgenre. Zeppelins became popular, so they had a short-lived zeppelin subgenre. Celebrities starred in their own magazines. The American pulps were different from the German pulps, or the Italian pulps, or the Canadian pulps. In China, wuxia arose at a similar time period and with similar themes and distribution. In Brazil, we have “folhetos”, short, poetic, extremely cheap prose often written about romantic heroes and “cangaçeiros”, the closest local equivalent to the American cowboys. In Japan, “light novels” began life as pulp fiction, distributed in exactly the same format and literally sold as such. Pulp fiction has long outlived any and all attempts to define it as 30s literary fiction only.

Likewise, “pulp” and “pulp heroes” are terms employed very, very loosely. Characters like The Shadow and Doc Savage arrived quite late in the history of pulp fiction. You had characters like Jimmie Dale, Bulldog Drummond, Tarzan, Conan, a billion non-descript trenchcoat guys, and before those the likes of Nick Carter and Sexton Blake, dime novel detectives who made the jump to pulp. You had your hero pulps, villain pulps, adventure pulps, romance pulps, horror pulps, weird menace pulps. Science fiction, planetary romance, roman-era adventures, lost race adventures, anything that publishers could sell was turned into pulp stories starring, what else, pulp heroes. 

How do you make sense of it all?

The main difference to consider is the mediums they were made for. 

Pulp heroes were made for literature, superheroes were made for comic books.

Superheroes NEED to pop out visually, to have bold and flashy and striking designs, because comic books are visual stories first and foremost, who live and die on having attractive, catching character designs and the promise of an entertaining story with them. Pulp heroes, in turn, can often just be ordinary dudes and dudettes and anything in between in trenchcoats or evening wear or furry underwear, or masters of disguise rarely identifiable, because the only thing that needs to visually striking at first glance in a pulp magazine is the cover, so your imagination can get ready to do the rest. Smoking guns, bloody daggers, a romantic embrace, monsters hunched over ladies in peril, incendiary escapes. The characters can look like and be literally anything.

Comic books are a sequential art form where art and writing come together to tell a story, and every illustration must serve the story and vice-versa. It needs to give you an incentive to keep being visually invested in whatever’s going on. Pulp literature stays dead on the page unless animated by your expectations; you may have the illusion of submitting to an experience, but really it’s you expending your imagination to otherwise inert signals. You have to provide the colors and flashy sequences and great meaning yourself, and as a trade, you get much more text to work with in novels than you do in comic books, where the dialogue and narration are fundamentally secondary to the visual, whether it’s a superhero punching stars or a monster covered in blood.

Each art form has its strengths and weaknesses, of course, which are only accentuated when each tries to be of a different kind. There's been pulp heroes that tried making the jump to comics, and comic heroes that made the jump to literature. There’s good, even great examples, of both, but even at their best, there's always some incongruity, because that's not the medium these characters were made for. 

Superheroes are characters defined by being extraordinary. The pulp heroes are too, in many cases, distinguished from their literary antecessors because they were too uncanny and weird, a middleground between the folklore/fairy tale heroes and the grounded detective and adventure characters such as Sherlock, and the later far out superheroes. But they don’t necessarily have to be extraordinary. Sometimes they can very well just be completely ordinary characters, caught in bizarre circumstances and managing them as best they can, or simply using skills available to anyone who puts in effort to do good. Often enough the extraordinary comes in the form of a bizarre villain, or a tangled conspiracy, a monster from outside the world, a unique time period. The extraordinary is there, but it doesn’t have to be in the hero. 

That is, I’d argue, the other big fundamental difference between the two. "Superhero” is a name we use to define a type of character who fits an extraordinary mold, a Super Hero. It’s a genre, it can be every genre, it’s a shared universe and a stand-alone epic. There are guidelines, structures at work here. Grids, page count, illustrators. The Big Two and their domain over the concept. Academic usage of the term, standards that rule the “genre”, when it is defined as a genre. Malleable and overpowering and adaptable and timeless as the superhero may be, it’s still bound by a certain set of rules and trends.

The term “pulp hero” is a term that we use to label just about any character that happens to star in something we recognize as “pulp fiction”, even if it isn’t literally written in pulp, even if it’s decades later. It’s a “metaphor with no brakes in it”. Superheroes can be pulp heroes. The most powerless, unlucky, homeless bum can be a pulp hero, there were entire subgenres of pulp stories based on homeless protagonists or talltale stories told in bars. The cruelest villain can be a pulp hero. Boris Karloff about to stab you with a knife named Ike IS a pulp hero, and so is a space slug on a warpath (look up what happened when Lovecraft and R.E Howard collaborated).

As much as I may dislike the idea of pulp heroes largely only existing in the shadow of superheroes nowadays...that is kinda appropriate, isn’t it? Of course they are going to live and make their homes in the place where the sun doesn’t shine. Where Superman and co would never go to. 

Of course the 90s reboots of these characters failed. Because they tried turning these characters into superheroes, and they are not superheroes. They can visit those world, but they don’t belong in them, or anywhere else. They live in places where the light doesn’t touch, worlds much bigger and darker and more vast than you’d ever think at first glance, worlds that we still haven’t fully discovered (over 38% of American pulps no longer exist, 14% survive in less than five scattered copies, to say nothing of all pulps and pulp heroes outside of America). Not lesser, not gone, despite having every reason to. Just different, reborn time and time again. The shadow opposites.

In short: One is represented by Superman. The other is represented by The Shadow. There are worlds far beyond those two, but when you think of the concepts, those are the ones that things always seem to come back to.

[howlingdemon13]

Actually, I think I will scream about it. You didn't think your resident horror-enthusiast/vampire expert/occult dabbler was going to let this thing go, did you? The movie has been out since August, so I don't feel the need to tag this with spoilers. Consider this your warning.

Angry rambles ahead.

Overall, I'm always happy to get a Dracula/vampire-centric film. I really enjoyed Renfield and I was excited to get a more horror/thriller film about my favorite villain in literature. Is the movie bad? No. I liked the main protagonist a lot and I think the tension-building was actually pretty solid for the most part. I also really liked the monster design. It’s obviously very Nosferatu, but I did get Van Helsing vampire vibes from it, so that was a treat. The Demeter wrecking in Whitby is very minor, cut-and-dry plot point, but one that I think was mostly handled well and I'm glad that this film was made because it's been a long time since we've had any vampire films where the vampires are actually scary (and not in a hitting on teenagers kind of scary). The ending didn't really make much sense in the context of the source material, but it didn't really annoy me as much as other aspects of the film did. It's no secret that this film is heavily inspired by Alien, which is another one of my favorites, and I think that framework for bringing The Demeter to life was a good one (people stuck on a ship with a monster). Also, they went pretty hard with the deaths tbh.

Oh, and the instances where Dracula can manipulate people he’s bitten! I think people forget the mind link between Dracula and Mina, so I’m glad that the “thrall” ability was used here. I'll get the biggest nitpick out of the way. Fucking hate the CG blood in this movie and the overreliance on CG for Dracula in general. From what I can see online, Dracula's actor is in full makeup/prosthetics. Okay, cool, so why does it look completely CG in the final cut??? This isn't to say that CG always looks bad, but this is Dreamworks. You had a makeup department that put hours of work into a really cool monster design, and you went and over did it in post. And going back to the blood... It looks like tomato soup. Like, I'm not buying that these characters are bleeding. Idk if the fake blood just looks like that or if they did something in post that lightened it, but it took me out. Again, this is a vampire film. How do you fuck up blood in a vampire film?

The ship and environments looked pretty solid though. Can’t complain. Now that that's out of the way, on to vampire lore and the worldbuilding as established in the source material. I have the book opened next to me. Be afraid. I should point out that Bram Stoker's characterization of Eastern Europeans in his book are... not good. Stoker never set foot in the country and got most of his info regarding East. Euro. folklore and culture from books (riddled with stereotypes, of course). That is to say, I'm relying on death of the author here, and I am willing to give him a bit of grace here. Not a lot though. He's contributed to me having to encounter the G-slur on a regular basis. And that brings me to Anna. In the books, Dracula has control over/has made an agreement with the local villagers (specifically the Roma community, but I don’t have the spoons to get into that rn). Anyway, I don't buy that she doesn't know that Dracula is a vampire. She says that the people of her village fear Dracula and that she and other women have been offered to him as food. He drinks her blood ffs. It's clear in the text that the locals suspect that Dracula is a vampire or liken him to one. The term “nosferatu” is also used in early chapters since this region of Romania has a large German population dating back to at least the 1300s. A few other Slavic words for evil entities are used to describe Dracula by the townsfolk, but stregoica specifically is used and defined as "witch". Which isn't wrong, but if you know me, the word we're after is strigoi. A creature or spirit that feeds off of the energy or blood of a living person. Vampire. Much of what we associate with vampires today comes from the Romanian version of the vampire. Use it. Please for the love of god use it.

(I write lore-accurate Castlevania fics and my family is from Satu Mare. I promise you I know what I'm talking about).

All of that is to say that Anna would definitely know that Dracula is a strigoi (or would liken him to one based on his behavior), and that she would probably know how to kill him. Would making Anna knowledgeable about Dracula's nature perpetuate multiple stereotypes? Yes, I am 100% willing to admit that. However, in the worldbuilding of a fictional story which the film is using as its framework, it falls in line with the text no matter how we feel about it. The folklore surrounding strigoi is very much still alive in some ways in Romania even today. In rural areas, sure, but alive nonetheless. And, if you want to avoid the stereotypes completely, you didn't even have to write her in. Aside from being given to Dracula by her village as a food source (which I think perpetuates some pretty gnarly stereotypes by itself), she doesn't really give the other characters useful info aside from "Dracula drinks blood" (which is already evident in Dracula draining animal corpses) and "he's a monster but not an animal" (which doesn't really help/would have been figured out eventually - not that it matters because the point is that everyone on the ship is supposed to die). Basically, I feel like her lacking any real knowledge about Dracula makes zero sense in the worldbuilding established in the book and the film, and her even being there if she did ends up being needless anyway since everyone dies. It's compelling when characters are faced with a creature that they know nothing about. That's why Alien is so good.

And, no, I don’t think she’s a bad character. She kind of reminded me of Anna Valerious but more of a lowkey badass. I just wish they had given her either more knowledge about Dracula or just had her as a stowaway who gets bitten early on (it wouldn’t really change the plot too much).

Also, the rosary not working? I know the captain is found tied to the wheel on the ship clutching a rosary in the book, but he wouldn’t have been able to shield himself effectively with it, so that checks out. Movie has no excuse for how that sequence was written.

That’s all I can tell about without my brain exploding. Thanks for sticking with this dumpster fire.

trying not to scream and yell about the last voyage of the demeter (which i know i'm very late to)

[konglindorm]

Born a Monster

While animal bridegrooms are an extremely popular folktale motif, it’s fairly rare to encounter bridegrooms who were originally born non-human. (This is particularly interesting as it is much more common for brides to be born nonhuman—see “The Little Mermaid,” anything about selkies, “Undine,” “Melusine”—there’s also a distinct aquatic theme here, but I’m getting off-topic.)

There are only two other stories like this that come to mind: “The Pig King” (Italian and French) and “Hans My Hedgehog.” (German) (I am sure there are other stories out there that fit into this category, but there are hundreds of thousands of fairy tales in the world, and I can only read a small percentage of them, and can remember even less.)

“Prince Lindworm” differs from these other two born-a-monster stories in that his reason for being a monster is slightly more traditional. Monster bridegrooms are generally turned into monsters as a punishment���usually for a fairly minor offense, such as general rudeness or turning down romantic advances. The lindworm is a lindworm because of his mother’s minor offense of eating too many flowers. There’s no punishment involved in Hans’ or the Pig King’s monstrousness; their parents wanted desperately to have children, and someone magical heard their pleas and said yeah, okay, sure—but with a fun little twist. (Although Hans’ dad totally brought it on himself by saying “I want a kid so bad I wouldn’t even care if he was a hedgehog.”)

All three stories involve the beast marrying before his transformation. But while Hans and both versions of the Pig King remain beasts at least part-time for some time after their marriage (we’re talking months, here), the lindworm is transformed on their wedding night. Hans and French pig are the types of characters that can only be permanently freed from their animal forms when the animal skins are destroyed. Which their wives handle, having become extremely fed up with this whole bestiality situation. The terms of transformation for the Italian pig are just that he be married three times. (Which, by the way, no one actually knew about. The terms and conditions were totally secret in this situation. And personally, if I didn’t know about the 3 weddings deal, I probably wouldn’t have kept getting married after multiple spouses attempted to kill me, but whatever, you do you.)

Prince Lindworm just feels more like an enchanted bridegroom story than the others—partly because of the consequences-for-your-actions element of his lindworm-iness, but mostly I think because of the transformation sequence? And the role the main girl plays.

Hans’ bride comes off more like a Brave Little Tailor girl than an enchanted bridegroom girl; you don’t really get the sense that she’s saving him from enchantment. He won the right to marry her through tailor-typical feats, and their relationship is something that she endures until she figures out she can make it a little more bearable by trashing his hedgehog skin.

The pig king’s bride lying with him every night when he’s not wearing an animal skin is actually pretty common in folklore, with the best example being “East of the Sun, West of the Moon”—and of course there’s “Cupid and Psyche” there, too. But I do feel that a fundamental part of those stories is the journey that the girl goes on after seeing his face. “The Pig King” just feels—I don’t know.

I think an important part of enchanted bridegroom stories is the step where the girl does something to save the beast—whether that’s going on a journey to find him, initiating a bizarro transformation sequence, or searching frantically through the palace to find him and marry him before he dies of sorrow.

I don’t know. I just think that "Prince Lindworm" is better than the other born-enchanted stories I’ve encountered. It just feels right.

I can’t think of a good ending, here. Whatever. Remind me to come back to that whole girls-more-commonly-start-out-non-human thing sometime when I have the energy to spare for anything non-Lindworm related. (Even when bridegrooms are born monsters, they’re still distinctly enchanted, born from normal humans. Brides are more likely to be just naturally nonhuman, which is—there’s something significant in that, I’m sure, and I actually meant it to be a part of my seminar paper five years ago, but the professor made me narrow my focus, which was probably a good idea as the paper was still like 25 pages long.)

Preorder my book, Lindworm, here!

[duhragonball]

Hellsing Liveblog Afterward

So, this is just a place for me to toss in some other Hellsing stuff I wanted to talk about outside the reading of Hellsing itself.

Okay so first off, I wanted to document this cool trivia I noticed about Rip van Winkle, the werewolf(?) with the musket that fires magic bullets.   Her weapon is based on the 19th Century German opera Der Freischütz. The opera is based on a  story published by Johann August Apel in 1811, and this writing was based on German folklore.    The legend involves a marksman who makes a contract with the devil and receives seven magic bullets.   Six will hit whatever the marksman wants, but the seventh is at the sole discretion of the devil himself.   In Hellsing, the Major speaks to Rip about her own musket and reminds her that the opera ends with Zamiel, the devil, coming to claim his due.  This is intended to foreshadow Alucard counterattack on the H.M.S. Eagle, where he plows through Rip’s defenses and kills her in gruesome fashion.

So I went back and counted all the times Rip van Winkle shoots her musket, just to see if there was any special significant to it.    The first was when the old Nazi officers complain to the Major, and Rip shoots the Colonel’s cane before he can strike the Major with it.     At least, I’m pretty sure that was the idea here.  The cane breaks and everyone looks around and Zorin points to the lady with the gun to indicate who just did that.   So that’s one bullet.

After assuming control of the H.M.S. Eagle, Rip van Winkle meets with the Eagle’s first officer, who betrayed the crew to Millennium in exchange for vampire powers.    She then betrays him and his fellow traitors, killing them all with a single shot from her musket.    This is where we first find out what her ability is.   So that’s two.

The British Navy tries to take back the ship by sending a helicopter full of SEALs, but Rip destroys the entire team with another shot from her musket.   So that’s three shots fired.

While Hellsing prepares their own response, the Navy tries again, this time sending a fighter plane to sink the Eagle with missiles, but Rip shoots down the missiles and the plane with one bullet.   Four.

This is where I started to wonder if there was a particular pattern to Rip’s use of the musket.  I’m pretty sure she just uses one bullet and can fire it as many times as she pleases, but she was literally singing songs from the opera and it seemed kind of superfluous to have her foil two separate attack by the Navy.  The first one showed us that conventional forces wouldn’t get the job done, so the second one only makes sense if Kouta Hirano was just trying to add to the count.

Then Alucard arrives aboard a modified SR-71 Blackbird.   At 85,000 ft in the air, he’s out of range, but then he nosedives onto the deck of the ship.    Rip fires again to destroy the Blackbird before it crashes into them.    Five.

Alucard survives the crash and wipes out all of Rip’s soldiers while she has a panic attack.   Cornered, she finally gathers her wits and attacks Alucard.  Her bullet hurts him, but he eventually catches it in his teeth, neutralizing her weapon and leaving her at his mercy.  That’s shot number six.

I was hoping this shot would be the seventh, since the seventh bullet in Der Freischütz belongs to the devil, and Alucard caught this one in his teeth, but no.   Then I remembered that the musket gets fired one last time...

... in London, when Alucard releases the familiars of all the victims he’s consumed over the centuries, including Rip Van Winkle.  She fires the musket once more, but this time it’s Alucard directing the shot into the helicopters of the Ninth Crusade.   Shot number seven is at the discretion of the devil himself, and “Dracula” is a diminutive of “Dracul”, a Romanian word for “devil”.   Neat stuff.

Okay, so now let’s talk about Seras, because that’s kind of my jam.   What’s the deal with this line?  “Her existence is somewhat of a marvel.  You could say it’s somewhat of a joke.  Perhaps she herself has not even noticed yet!!”

That’s the Major discussing Sir Integra and Seras in Volume 5.   He stresses that neither is to be underestimates, and I think he makes a good case for Integra, but with Seras he never actually comes to the point.   So what’s up with that? 

Of course, there’s the truth we saw in the final battle.  Once she finally drank blood of her own volition, Seras became a full-on vampire and one of the most powerful warriors on the field.   She destroyed the Captain quite handily, and he was the strongest guy Millennium had.   But this seems a tad obvious?   Why not just spell it out for Zorin.  “Hey, our intel says she’s weaker than expected because she won’t drink blood, but that could change at a moment’s notice, and she’s still strong enough to take down a lot of our soldiers, so proceed with caution.” 

I’m not saying the Major is wrong.   He told Zorin not to engage, and he made the right call.    I’m just wondering what the “joke” is exactly.  

I think it might be one of two things.   By the end of Hellsing, Seras demonstrates a similar level of ability to Alucard.  Sunlight appears to have no effect on her, she can summon familiars like Alucard, and regenerate her wounds with great alacrity.   I’m pretty sure she’d be about as hard to kill as Alucard himself, which Integra said was a product of Hellsing “enhancements”, rather than natural vampire power.   Except Seras was never “enhanced”, she seems to have just inherited these “super-vampire” powers from Alucard when he turned her.   The Major and Doctor may have anticipated this, and the “joke” was that Seras could completely upset the balance of their plans, except she’s too squeamish to drink the blood that would make this possible.  

Or, the joke might be that Alucard turned Seras at all.   He just sort of did this out of nowhere, and I’m pretty sure no one saw that coming.   Millennium and Walter had been keeping tabs on Hellsing for decades, and not much changed until Alucard decided to add Seras to the group.   The vampires in Millennium’s Last Battalion were all produced through the Doctor’s artificial vampire research, which was based upon intense study of Mina Harker, the last person Alucard turned into a vampire before he met Seras.   

So from that standpoint, Seras represents a superior version of Mina, who represents the ideal that the Doctor was trying to achieve.  At best, his finest artificial vampires could only be as strong as Mina Harker, and Seras got that way in one night by a twist of fate.  

I guess there’s no way to be sure what the Major meant.  I checked the OVA subs and dubs and they basically repeat the same line, so there’s nothing for me to triangulate there.  And maybe it only refers to Seras being a joke in the sense that she was mostly comic relief up to that point.   Even that badass moment she had against Jan Valentine’s ghouls probably didn’t impress anyone at the Millennium office.   

Finally, I checked out Hellsing: The Dawn, and it really wasn’t worth the trouble.   I couldn’t find any official English release, so I sort of gave up on it, but I finally ran across it last week and decided to check it out.   

Basically, it’s only six chapters, and very little actually gets done in those six chapters.   I’m not sure if Kouta Hirano is just running super late on the thing, of if he abandoned it completely, but my guess is he got this far in and decided there really wasn’t any point in continuing.   

Let me break it down for you.

Chapter 1: Walter is sent to the Major’s facility in Warsaw, to destroy the vampire research.   He jumps out of a plane with Alucard’s coffin.

Chapter 2: The Doctor reports on his progress to the Major, and they briefly discuss “She” aka Mina Harker.  From what I gather, Mina is still alive/undead in 1944.   Then Walter crashes into their facility and declares his intentions to kill them all.

Chapter 3: The Major is impressed with Walter’s power and offers him a place in his command.  Walter refuses and the Major leaves him to die at the hands of the Captain.

Chapter 4: Walter fights the Captain, and Alucard finally emerges from his coffin in Girlycard form.

Chapter 5: Walter and Alucard fight the Captain, who now stands revealed as a werewolf.   The Major somehow recognizes Alucard on sight and takes an interest in observing the battle.

Chapter 6: Alucard leaves to go hunt down the Captain’s superiors, leaving Walter to fight alone.  Alucard then encounters Rip van Winkle and defeats her with ease.    He seems like he’s about to kill her when some menacing figures approach from the shadows...

In other words, not a whole lot actually happens that we couldn’t have guessed from the original Hellsing manga.    At the rate he was going, it would have taken Hirano maybe 30 or 40 chapters to actually get to anything truly juicy, and I’m not sure the audience would have wanted to wait around for that.    The main problem is that we already know how this ends.   None of the good guys or bad guys die, because they all show up in Hellsing 55 years later.  The Major will lose badly enough that he has to evacuate the whole operation to Brazil, and that interests me because somehow he has to lose this battle, but not so badly that he can’t escape.  

What disappoints me is that there’s really only three things of interest about this part of the Hellsing mythos: Walter’s decision to betray England, Alucard’s relationship with Walter, and the Major’s relocation from Euope to South America.    The Dawn appears to gloss over all of these.   The Major asks Walter to switch sides in their very first encounter.   Walter refuses, but we know he’ll say yes later, so there doesn’t feel like there’s any conflict to this.  So far, Walter comes off like a little shithead, so if he changes his mind at the end of this story it’ll seem completely capricious.   I’d like to think the Major could say something persuasive to convince him, or Alucard could piss Walter off enough to push him into the Major’s arms, but none of that seems to be happening.  

The Girlycard form is taken completely for granted.   Al shows up and Walter immediately takes offense.  He knows Alucard doesn’t normally look like this and he sees no reason for this new look.   Al just says the same thing he says about it in 1999, that form and appearance mean nothing to him.   Well if it doesn’t mean anything to Alucard or Walter, what’s the point?

The way I always imagined it, the Girlycard form had a lot of emotional baggage for Walter.   I figured he met Alucard in this form, and they spent some time together hunting down the Major.    Walter fell in love with Girlycard, even though he should have known better, and when Alucard finally abandoned the form, he knew that there was no way his feelings would ever be returned.   And this would build resentment within Walter, making him more interested in joining the Major.  

Instead, none of that seems to be happening.    This is just one big long fight in one building.   Hirano already threw his biggest gun at Walter, so there’s no buildup to the Captain.   Alucard won’t fight the Captain, but it’s unclear what else he’s supposed to do instead.  There might be a good story in all of this, but these first six chapters don’t encourage me.    Also, they keep jumping over to check in on Arthur Hellsing in London.   I don’t think this guy is Integra’s father, but maybe her grandfather had the same first name?    He looks cool, but he has nothing to do.   He’s like thousands of miles removed from the action, so anything he says or does just comes back to him talking about how tough and cool Walter is.   So yeah, I think The Dawn is a huge waste of time, and maybe Kouta Hirano reached the same conclusion.  

And... yeah, that’s all I’ve got.   In May, I’ll be liveblogging another comic.   Will it be as successful?   Only time will tell...

[livlepretre]

So this is a weird thing to bring up, but I was thinking about the weirdness regarding the accents of all the Originals and remembered the scene in ATFBBTF where Elena tells Klaus that she knows he is faking the accent. In canon, we know Mikael has a British accent (despite being a viking in a settlement located in current day Virginia) and all of them speak the way they do in the present throughout all their flashbacks. I love all of your charactizations throughout your fics and wanted to know: What are your personal headcanons regarding all the accent stuff and how all the cultures the Originals have lived through have affected the way they speak, think, behave, etc.?

Not a weird thing to bring up at all, because as it turns out, I am hyper-fixated on this franchise and would love to talk about any element of it! 

This is kind of long so I put my answer under the cut: 

Personal headcanons: I like to think that all of their accents are subtly WEIRD not only because they have moved all over the place but because pronunciation of languages like English have shifted so much over time. Like, I remember an early interview with Daniel Gillies where he said that he tried to make his accent sound like it was from everywhere and nowhere, because the Originals had traveled so extensively over such a long period of time. The other thing is that their syntax tends to lag inevitably behind-- yes, they incorporate new phrasings, like Elijah using “OMG” with such relish in 2x19, but I try to think about the way English was shaped in modernist novels when I’m writing Rebekah-- her idioms are all about a century out of date-- or slip in little anachronisms that aren’t quite off but are no longer common in daily speech like “shan’t” or even older slang like “belle chose.” 

The scene in FE where Elena asks Rebekah how many languages she speaks sums it up pretty well-- they’ve been speaking a lot of these languages as they evolved from middle languages to early modern languages to modern and then contemporary language. The slippage amongst them must be pretty extraordinary-- I like the idea that even though the Originals “mostly” sound contemporary that there would be a lot of random archaic forms peppered in. 

Another idea I had is that their names are probably different than the ones they originally had, but since they’ve all traveled and evolved linguistically/culturally together, they have changed how they think of each other, and maybe even their original names are getting fuzzy in their mind (Rebekah alludes to this in that same conversation in FE). This is partially born out of my general distaste for the Viking!origins that make no bloody sense to me and the fact that even if they’re all Vikings, why is Klaus’s name Niklaus (the German form of a Greek origin name), and then Elijah, Esther, Mikael, and Rebekah have Hebrew origin names and then mysteriously Finn, Kol, and Freya have Viking names? It makes no sense which is why I came up with the idea that they’ve changed their names over time, adapting and adopting what suited them. 

The idea that they grew up in Virginia a thousand years ago is so cringe that I mostly try to block it out (I was writing ATFBBTF while season 3 was airing, which is why I reference it explicitly; that was before I was comfortable just papering over things I don’t like so much)-- like, Elijah, there weren’t wild horses in the Americas a thousand years ago! You’re confused! 

I’ve talked about this at detailed length with @icebluecyanide (whose thoughts on this are AMAZING) but I’m really fond of irrevocably attached to the idea that the Originals are actually Russian or some other Slavic country in origin. Playing on the whole “my father was a wealthy landowner in Eastern Europe,” and also in a meta-sense playing with Eastern European vampire folklore. (Also I would love anything that gets rid of that awful Mikaelson “surname”! That name keeps me up at night. Also, why does Rebekah have it. She’s not a son.) 

I do think that they all tend to be really, really stuck in the middle ages in terms of their thinking about their place in the world, the roles of men vs. women, fathers vs mothers vs sisters vs brothers, and who has filial duty to whom. Maayyybbbeeee some Humanist ideas sunk in, but honestly, there’s a reason that Rebekah still cleaves to Klaus and it’s because he’s her brother and she very much conceives of herself as lower in the family chain, even though she also rebels against it (but never quite seriously). Klaus is patronizing and domineering because he very much so sees that as his divine right-- he’s the special one, the hybrid, the king of kings. And also, he’s not even aware of his sexism when in SWBS he tells Elena things like “don’t you want to be a nurse or a teacher or a mother” (not that those aren’t critical, difficult, amazing careers!)-- it’s just that his idea of career options for women hasn’t changed in like at least a hundred years so he falls back on to him the obvious standards. 

Hmm what else... they’re all definitely cultural chameleons, though, obviously, some places left bigger impacts on them than others. I think of Italy, and England, and New Orleans when I think of their “home” cultures, but that might be because that’s where we see them in flashbacks the most often. It’s easier to blend in for the three who are awake for most of everything, of course, because changes are incremental and fluid from their perspective, happening little by little and organically as they travel. 

Oh! And I think my last thing is that I am really fond of the idea that Kol and Finn were both just caught in a supernatural sleep for all that time they were daggered... so Kol is constantly having to reinvent himself and his facility with language since I get the impression he gets daggered pretty often, though also undaggered whenever his siblings decide they miss him, which is often enough to keep him spry and make him really really good at learning language and adapting, but poor Finn has to learn contemporary English from scratch when he’s undaggered and he’s lost and bewildered in the modern world and it’s really only the fact that he already thinks of his whole existence as a bewildering haze of hell on earth that he (eventually) learns enough English and modern customs to cope (so long as no one pays close attention; he blanks a lot on which word he should use.). 

I think that’s it??? 

[bustedbeing]

Pat Bond, a Sexual-Subculture Pioneer, Dies at 94

Mr. Bond was a 44-year-old music teacher when he founded an organization for masochists. After a few meetings, sadists were also invited.

Image



The Eulenspiegel Society, an organization for adherents of bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism, took part in the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March, the precursor to New York City’s gay pride parade, in 1973. Pat Bond, the organization’s founder, can be seen directly behind the organization’s banner, wearing jeans and a tie.Credit...Leonard Fink, via The LGBT Community Center National History Archive



By Penelope Green

May 11, 2021

He was not a sex educator, a sex worker or a political figure. No case law was established in his name.

But to cultural historians, anthropologists, sex educators and members of the now sprawling alternative-sex community known by the umbrella acronym of B.D.S.M. — for bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism — or by the more prosaic (and historical) term “kink,” Pat Bond, to use the pseudonym he preferred, was a foundational figure, applauded at conferences, noted in academic papers and hailed as an elder by those who shared his interest in role-playing sex.

A modest, elfin man with a Van Dyke beard that turned snowy with age, Mr. Bond had long had masochistic fantasies but had never acted on them until he was 44. It was 1970, and the identity politics of that era made him think there must be others like him. He wasn’t looking for sex so much as community when he placed an ad in Screw, the pornographic magazine geared toward heterosexual men, that read:

“Masochist? Happy? Is it curable? Does psychiatry help? Is a satisfactory life-style possible? There’s women’s lib, black lib, gay lib, etc. Isn’t it time we put something together?”

Five people answered the ad, but only two showed up to that first meeting in Mr. Bond’s tiny East Village apartment: a heterosexual woman who went on to adopt the pen name Terry Kolb and a gay man who never returned — annoyed, Mr. Bond said later, “that we were all into different things.”

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Every week, however, more and more people appeared: just masochists at first, but eventually sadists, too, were welcome.

All were eager for community, not just sex, and under Ms. Kolb and Mr. Bond’s leadership, they formed a nonprofit organization. They named it the Eulenspiegel Society for Till Eulenspiegel, a picaresque character in German folklore who was cited as a symbol of masochism in “Masochism in Modern Man,” a 1941 book by Theodor Reik, a protégé of Freud’s, that was one of the few texts at the time about this erotic minority.

Alternative papers like The Village Voice at first refused to run ads for the organization, which later adopted the acronym TES. But after Mr. Bond, Ms. Kolb and others picketed The Voice’s offices and Ms. Kolb wrote an article, which The Voice published, advocating for “masochist’s lib,” the paper relented.

TES meetings were run like encounter groups with educational programming — expert speakers weighed in on sexual techniques or on legal or psychological issues — and also as exercises in consciousness raising, following the practices of the day.

The group hashed out an ideology — “freedom for sexual minorities,” as they described themselves — and advocated for their community, marching in the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March, the precursor to New York City’s gay pride parade. There was a board, and a mission statement, written by Mr. Bond, that declared, among other freedoms, “the right to pursue joy and happiness in one’s own way, according to one’s evolving nature, as long as this doesn’t infringe on the similar happiness of others.”

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Mr. Bond in the early 1970s. He was 44 when he held the first meeting of the Eulenspiegel Society; two people attended.Credit...via Terry Kolb

Mr. Bond died on Feb. 13 in a hospital in Far Rockaway, Queens. He was 94. Deborah Callahan, a family friend, confirmed the death, which was not widely reported at the time, and said he had suffered from congestive heart failure.

“TES was really a new kind of kinky organization in that it was social, political and educational,” said the feminist author and cultural anthropologist Gayle Rubin, who has written extensively about sexual subcultures.

Dr. Rubin, who is an associate professor of anthropology and women’s and gender studies at the University of Michigan, added: “TES expanded the organizational repertoire of sadomasochism. In addition, Pat Bond and Terry Kolb began to develop a political language for S-and-M.

“They were able to do that in part because of the times. It was a period when many social movements were articulating political frameworks for various populations that had been marginalized. They also drew from the language of gay liberation, where there was already a model for repositioning what had been seen as sexual deviation as a sexual minority. To do this for sadomasochism was pretty breathtaking at the time.”

(Ms. Kolb left the group the year it began and moved to California. She eventually joined Samois, a group for lesbian sadists and masochists, the first of its kind, that had been modeled on TES. She now identifies as bisexual. In a phone interview, she remembered Mr. Bond as being “introverted and very serious.”)

The Eulenspiegel Society was unusual in collecting disparate groups — heterosexual as well as gay — “and affirming their dignity and defending their political rights,” said Rostom Mesli, who has studied the identity politics of the 1970s and is the managing director of the Leather Hall of Fame, which recognizes individuals or organizations that have made distinct contributions to kinky subcultures. Mr. Bond and Ms. Kolb were recognized in 2015.

“The assumption,” Dr. Mesli added, “was that kinksters who would never have sex together still had things to do together, could learn from one another or do activism together. It totally redefined the borders of the kinky world by creating a sense of community and shared identity among groups that had evolved with virtually no connection among each other.”

TES had its own magazine, Prometheus, at first distributed at meetings and erotic specialty stores, but eventually at mainstream emporiums like Tower Records in New York City. It is now online only. In the early days, it included an S-and-M horoscope and comic strips, as well as personal ads and ads for supplies.

Mr. Bond wrote articles in which he wondered if S-and-M behaviors were cathartic or developmental. He worried that they might veer into abuse, or become addictive. And he urged that his organization “practice diligence and intelligence” so that it might always be “a liberating force.”

The magazine was not without a sense of humor. After the list of names on its masthead, a parenthetical promised, “If we missed anybody important, we’ll grovel in the next issue.”

Pat Bond was born Walter Allen Campbell on May 24, 1926, in St. Petersburg, Fla., the youngest of three children. His father, Joel, was an orthodontist who died when Allen, as he was known, was 6. His mother, Marie, was a homemaker.

He attended the New York State College for Teachers at Albany, now the University at Albany, and graduated in 1951. He worked as a music teacher in New York City’s public school system and later as a secretary.

Since the late 1970s, Mr. Bond had lived in a basement apartment in Ms. Callahan’s family home in Far Rockaway, a century-old three-story clapboard house that his mother had owned and sold to Ms. Callahan’s parents. Ms. Callahan’s father, known to TES members as Brother Leo, was Mr. Bond’s best friend.

“Allen was a member of our family,” Ms. Callahan said. “He would sing at our dinner table, and lead us in Christmas carols. He was lovely. He cared deeply about justice, and doing the right thing. He was marching for various causes up until 15 years ago. He always wanted to be helpful, even when he could no longer really help.”

Mr. Bond was married briefly when he was young, and the marriage was annulled. He eventually found a dominatrix after TES’s founding — he called her his “lady friend,” Dr. Mesli said. That relationship lasted for nearly half a century, until the woman’s death a few years ago.

“Our sexuality has typically been something you make fun of or sensationalize to sell something,” said Susan Wright of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, an advocacy group that fights discrimination against those in the B.D.S.M. community. “Pat offered something different: Let’s just sit down and talk. He was at the cutting edge of conversations about consent and understanding what it means to look your partner in the eye and not be scared to be honest about what you desire.

“Consent is the heart of this community,” she continued. “It’s the difference between kink and abuse. And then of course the education: How do you do this safely? If you’re going to be spanked, what’s the best spot?”

In the half-century since TES’s founding, Mr. Bond’s organization and the community it serves have come out of the shadow — sort of.

In 1996, the author Daphne Merkin wrote an essay about spanking in The New Yorker that raised eyebrows in the chattering class. But less than a decade later, the “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy — essentially a contemporary bodice-ripper, but with spanking, about a young woman’s relationship with a wealthy sadist — was a runaway best seller, and then three movies. If the behavior it depicted didn’t exactly become mainstream, its rituals entered the cultural vernacular.

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Mr. Bond at TES Fest, his organization’s annual convention, in 2017. He attended the conventions, held in hotels in New York and New Jersey, until 2018.Credit...Efrain John Gonzalez

At its peak, in the early 1990s, the Eulenspiegel Society had 1,100 members. The internet pruned its ranks — there are countless alt-sex communities and dating sites online — but also opened its programming to a wider audience.

This year, TES turned 50, and it still offers weekly meetings (now virtual) and classes. Until the pandemic, TES held annual conventions, known as TES Fests, at hotels in New York and New Jersey. They had the flavor, participants said, of an academic conference, but with a twist: There would be classes in rope handling, whip technique and handkerchief code, as well as more serious programming about consent and negotiation.

Despite his age, Mr. Bond was able to attend the 2018 TES Fest, his last. “Someone offered to put him on a leash, in an age-sensitive way, and led him around,” Michal Daveed, a spokesman for the organization, recalled. “He seemed very happy.”

Penelope Green is a feature writer in the Style department. She has been a reporter for the Home section, editor of Styles of The Times, an early iteration of Style, and a story editor at The New York Times Magazine

[laurasimonsdaughter]

A bit of (Dutch) witchcraft

I usually stick with folktales, but not all folkloric beliefs and traditions have stories. Those that don’t are probably more likely to disappear, because it’s harder to pass them on. One thing I find that is only ever partially captured in stories is witches and witchcraft. Witches are usually side characters and their practices and characteristics change according to the needs of the narrative.

My particular interest is in “good witches”, who in most legends and fairy tales are not referred to as witches at all, but as “healers”, “good women” or, as in one of my favourite Scottish stories: “just a good old body that has the second sight”. In Dutch folklore these healers are sometimes called “kruidenvrouwtjes” (herb-women), because of their herbal remedies. Because outside of fairy tales, witches and witchcraft were a much more everyday thing.

You’ll have a hard time learning about traditional folkloric witchcraft in the Netherlands though, partially because it wasn’t called “witchcraft”:

Etymologists think that the word “magie” (magic), which is from Latin and Ancient Greek origin, came into the Dutch language in the 17th century, via French. “Heks” and “hekserij” (the closest translations to “witch” and “witchcraft”) became prominent around the same time. Before that time the more common terms were “toveres” and “toverij”, according to historian Ruud Borman. The roots of those words are present in the Old-Dutch and Proto-Germanic languages, so it makes sense that they were the ones connected with the folkloric beliefs, but that they did not stick around in stories that kept getting told and retold. (There are also mixed words like “toverheks”, which basically means “magic-witch”.)

When people speak of witchcraft in the here and now, they usually mean some sort of (revived) paganism. But this is once again based on the old folklore. People do not mean the “fairy tale witch” but they do mean the “good old boy that has the second sight”. Because of course the old type of folkloric witchcraft had (and has) everything to do with the old folkloric beliefs.

Dutch types of pre-monotheistic beliefs have the same roots as what is now identified as Germanic Paganism. It’s easily conflated with the Gaelic-Celtic tradition, because there are (naturally) many points where they overlap. Like the importance of nature, moon phases, etc. But there are differences, and they go deeper than names and use of language. For instance, as far as I know the Dutch traditionally primarily celebrated midwinter and midsummer (joel). As opposed to the Celtic practice of marking both the solstices and the equinoxes.

As I do most of my reading and writing in English, it’s easy for me to skip over the specific terms and tales of my own country. But one of the things that delight me the most is how much diversity and comparability there is in folklore from culture to culture and the more I learn about the details the more of that I see ^^

[literaticat]

When an agent asks for a non-western fantasy, what qualifies as non-western?

I’m an English-Senegalese author writing ya fantasy. My story takes place in a futuristic setting. The ‘physical’ setting (if that makes sense) is based on western buildings and stuff, but the culture in my world is Senegalese (names, folklore,…)

Does this qualify?

"Western" in this context means anything where the point of view, culture of the world, etc, is based on Western-European culture. (Which includes England, and to some extent, America, insofar as most "White America" mythos comes from European roots).

(Though America has some threads of non-Western-European cultural traditions as well, of course; Native American culture, Gullah Geechee culture, and the like, obviously do not come from a Western European tradition.)

So like - a re-telling of a Grimm's Fairy Tale set in a "Germanic Forest" type world with all those archetypes -- that's definitely Western fantasy.

So sure, yes, I think if the culture in your world is base on Senegalese mythos, that would certainly count as NON-Western. Obviously the futuristicness means anything is possible - and even if it was set NOW, there are crossover items in any world -- an office building or apartment block in Dakar probably looks much like an office building or apartment block anywhere else, and there's a history of Portuguese and French colonization that I'm sure lend language and some culture touch-stones -- but still, it's its own thing, and that thing is Not Western European.

[joannechocolat]

ORFEIA: on grief, and the dark side of fairytale.

When my daughter was eight years old, I began to write a crime novel about the death of a child. Nine pages in, I abandoned it. The thought of losing a child like that, even in fiction, was so viscerally upsetting to me that I ditched the idea permanently. Or so I thought.

Twenty years later, I wrote Orfeia, the story of a woman, Fay, who loses her adult daughter Daisy through suicide, and of her journey through the different levels of London, through Faërie, and finally to the Land of Death, where she must face the Hallowe’en King, and enter a battle of wits with him for her daughter’s return. It is a battle she cannot win, as she is losing her memory; and yet I like to think that victory, like love, is in the eye of the beholder.

Why I decided to write this story then, and in that fairytale genre, I didn’t ask myself at first, except that it seemed right, somehow, and because somehow the story wanted – needed – to be told.

In some ways Orfeia closely follows The Strawberry Thief, in which Vianne Rocher has to come to terms with her beloved Anouk growing up, getting married and moving away. At the time of writing it, my own daughter was embarking on the same journey, and it was inevitable that some of my own experience would make it into my fiction. I know it isn’t the same sort of loss, but for a parent, there is a kind of bereavement when a child leaves home, along with a sense of questioning their purpose and direction, now that the child’s upbringing is no longer at the centre of their life. But Fay’s real story comes from elsewhere, and has taken me a long time to process.

We often find in fairy tales accounts of people who die of grief. But I saw it happen first-hand, and it was anything but fantasy. My great-aunt, my grandmother’s sister, had been living as a cleaner in Paris. Her only son, whom she adored, but with whom she was estranged, had been living abroad for years. From time to time she would hear news of him and his family, but he never wrote to her. She had a single – very old - photograph of him with his wife and their daughter, which she always proudly showed me when I came to visit.

One day a friend, assuming that she already knew, made a casual reference to her son’s suicide. My great-aunt found out in this dreadful way that her son had died some years before. The shock of the news sent her into a sudden, dramatic decline. The tough Parisian resilience that had helped her survive a war, an acrimonious divorce and near-financial ruin just collapsed almost overnight. In only a few months, she became completely unable to function, or even to remember who she was. She would look at herself in the mirror and complain that “an old woman” - or sometimes a “witch” - was spying on her through a secret window. She died in a retirement home, less than six months afterwards.

That memory has stayed with me, and I used it in Orfeia. I wanted to take a familiar story (the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice) and use it as a metaphor for a woman’s journey from grief to a kind of acceptance. The fairytale and fantasy details act as a reflection of Fay’s mental state, as her life (and maybe her sanity) begins to unravel. I also wanted to hint on some level that her growing confusion and memory loss might be something to do with grief-induced dementia.

             If that sounds a little bleak, it is - which is why I also wanted to give Fay some kind of resolution. It’s also the reason I chose to tell this story through the lens of fantasy; because the truth underlying it – the raw grief of a mother robbed of her child – was still too much for me to explore within a real-world setting. But fairy tales are dark tales; in spite of attempts to make them into harmless stories for children, they deal with the darkest of issues – grief, loss, murder, abuse, monsters both human and inhuman, and of course Death, that ultimate monster, and our constant struggle with him – which is why they speak to us on a deeper, more intuitive, more primal level than stories of the real world.

In pre-Freudian times, fairy tales were the only means to express deep and unspoken feelings that could not be otherwise expressed. Now that we understand more about the workings of the human mind, they emerge as a kind of counterpart to the human subconscious; a direct conduit to what we feel; the secret language of Humankind.

During my time as a Languages student I fell into the rabbit-hole of German psychoanalysis. During that time I came to believe that there’s a direct parallel between the levels of the conscious and unconscious mind and the different narratives that we use to express our identity. History is the ego; the conscious, rational, factual mind and the official identity of a culture. Story – that is, fantasy, folklore and fairytale - reflects the human subconscious; its needs, fears, and dreams throughout the centuries; the secret, hidden identity running alongside the official version. So the further we look into ourselves, and the more we explore our cultural identity, the more likely we are to find value in these “fantasy” narratives, which are in fact the truest expressions of our collective unconscious.

In Orfeia I wanted to challenge the distinction between what we think of as “reality” and “fantasy.” Just as Fay slips from one state of consciousness into another, the story slips between both worlds, from the familiar ego-London to the World Below of London’s subconscious and its secret, forest heart.

The framework of existing folklore is surprisingly receptive to this. The two Child Ballads I chose as the foundation of the story lead naturally to each other. King Orfeo – the Celtic adaptation of the Orpheus myth - already contains many fairytale elements, which made it easy to incorporate the further elements from The Elphin Knight. And the idea of riddles as a means of communicating with Death (the unknown, the unconscious mind, etc) just seemed like the next logical step. To expand my theory of the conscious and the unconscious mind as a universal analogy, I was trying to introduce the idea that fantasy and reality are all part of the same world, just as the conscious and the unconscious mind are all part of the same brain. Anything that can be imagined is real on some level of existence. That means that all my books – including the ones not generally seen as fantasy - are actually part of the same extended multiverse. Whether I’m writing fantasy as Joanne M. Harris, or literary fiction as Joanne, I like the symmetry of that - and also how much it will annoy those among the literary community who refuse to acknowledge fantasy as the legitimate art form it undoubtedly is.