Ash I am all seven deadly sins of gender

[Ash I am all seven deadly sins of gender]

[dogmotif]

i love tumblr because sometimes i get an urge to rb posts about something nobody likes and everyone just politely ignores me. everyone's like oh he's fallen into madness again, he'll be fine later i guess

[Ash I am all seven deadly sins of gender]

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

YES Agamemnon sucks but also consider every time Menelaus tries to volunteer for fighting in the Iliad Agamemnon goes into full older brother mode and tries to convince him not to, and when Menelaus gets literally scratched lightly Agamemnon has a full panic breakdown about how his baby brother is going to DIE (he's fine) and as such I can't hate him I really can't.

[Ash I am all seven deadly sins of gender]

[zaatanna-moved]

anyway just a reminder for the myth lovers out there

king arthur was welsh. merlin was welsh. camelot was in wales. the lady and the lake she pops out of; welsh. excalibur; magic inanimate welsh object. etc.

on the way to see family, i drive past a lake that in which is welsh legend, is the last resting place of excalibur.

i’m just saying in my experience a lot of these legends had been so anglo-fied in the past and it’s like, all this cool shit is celtic welsh legend.

[jackironsides]

Arthur’s wife was called Gwenhwyfar first.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Like the kraken I emerge, summoned by the English theft of Arthur

• Arthur is a Welsh name. It means ‘bear’. He’s likely derived from a Gaulish bear god
• In the form of King Arthur, he is an anti-Saxon mythological WELSH figure, representing the native Brythonic people of Britain against the Anglo-Saxon invaders, dating from the 500s AD
• The version appropriated by the English in the 1100s is the shitty boring sanitised version - they did it because they were trying to compete with the romance tradition on the continent at the time but didn’t have anything of their own to romanticise
• Merlin is called Myrddin
• Percival is Peredur
• Kay is Cei, and also was subject to enormous character assassination in the English version - in the Welsh version he’s much closer to Arthur’s right hand man
• Guinevere is Gwenhwyfar
• There is no Lancelot, no Galahad, no tedious affair story
• There is no Camelot. Arthur’s seat was Caerllion - modern Caerleon, putting him into both the region of the Silures (one of the most fearsome and warlike of the British tribes, modern South East Wales) and the old Roman fortress, which would have been an impossibly huge Palace for a warlord at the time.
• They all have super powers and get up to wacky hijinks involving hair care, giants, strange giant wildlife, spectral revolving/glass fortresses in the Celtic sea, and a really fucking weird chess match. Also a cloak made out of beards.
• What the fuck is the round table

Anyway it’s particularly irritating because traditional Welsh culture and beliefs have been so thoroughly stripped away and destroyed by England over the centuries, and Arthurian legend is one of the few surviving fragments we have left to preserve. And he’s specifically an anti-English figure. So the ubiquity of the boring and appropriative English Arthur across the whole fucking world is… Well, it’s not great.

[may-or-may-not-be-me]

This is so interesting! Does anyone know a good source/reading material where one could get more of the original Welsh versions of the stories?

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

The Mabinogion, translated by Sioned Davies is your best bet! It’s got a bunch of big-ass Welsh myths in, but most relevantly it includes Culhwch ac Olwen, which is a full-on Arthurian text (plus a couple of interesting ones).

There’s a whole bunch more that’s survived in fragments, but they’re all in Old Welsh - fully readable if you speak Welsh, but obviously not much use if you don’t (I don’t know if you do or not but from context I’m guessing not lol).

[cythraul]

Trioedd Ynys Prydain (literally “the Triads of the Island of Britain”, though in English they’re usually called “the Welsh Triads”) are a huge collection of lists of three things from Welsh lore, including a lot of Arthurian lore. They’re not stories, but they contain fascinating allusions to stories, to whole strains of the Arthurian tradition, that we may or may not have elsewhere.

Keep reading

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Absolutely fantastic addition, yes, Rachel Bronwich’s Triads are glorious.

[quotidianday]

This is a good quick video on the subject.

[Ash I am all seven deadly sins of gender]

[evilios]

Random fact that for some reason makes me very sentimental: There are still busts of Deities where we can’t tell if the depicted one is Artemis or Apollo.

[evilios]

Do you think I stopped obsessing over this? Nope! Here:

330-300 BC, Greek, from Athens

[Ash I am all seven deadly sins of gender]

[lastoneout]

why do people on the internet know so much about the epic of gilgamesh

[multishipperpirateking]

[lastoneout]

people have started throwing shade at other ancient works of literature in the tags how long do you think before I have a college educated cage match on my hands

[cvrc11]

Emm speak your divinely-inspired thoughts with your whole chest like a man

[Ash I am all seven deadly sins of gender]

[prideknights]

The Queen of Spades, the asexual pride knight! Her armor is engraved with constellations and in her hands she wields a sword forged from the fabric of space itself ♠️✨

[Ash I am all seven deadly sins of gender]

[iphisesque]

Chris Bursk, Ovid at fifteen

[Ash I am all seven deadly sins of gender]

[adurot]

I have just learned that Mountain Goats are NOT, in fact, actual Goats.

[adurot]

I have never heard of this band. I AM in fact referring to the animal.

[adurot]

But wait, there’s more!

[elfgarlic]

but you know what IS a goat? a musk ox

[whalesharkpasta]

WHAT

[silvercaptain24]

W H A T

I NEED ANSWERS

[Ash I am all seven deadly sins of gender]

[cleverclove]

Do you ever think about Laertes spending all night wading in the cold, dark water searching desperately for Ophelia’s body? Do you ever think about him staying out for hours and having it hurt to look everywhere because oh god did she hit her head on that stone? Is that the branch that led her to her death?

And imagine him finding her at last. Her feet are scabbed because she didn’t wear shoes for weeks in her mental anguish. A foolish part of him thinks she could just be asleep.

Her face looks so peaceful like this. She looks just like their mother.

Laertes vomits.

[Ash I am all seven deadly sins of gender]

[natalieironside]

Y'know one man who spent a significant portion of his adolesence pretending to be a girl? The godlike, swift-footed Achilles.

[failure-artist]

actually did read a book by an early twentieth century intersex trans man who compared himself as a child to Achilles.  

[spacelazarwolf]

that’s so cool, do you remember the name of the book?

[failure-artist]

Memoirs of a Man's Maiden Years, I think

[lowereastnowhere]

Karl M. Baer! He was a Jewish polyamorous activist and writer. His autobiography was actually made into a silent film in the 1920s, but it's unfortunately considered a lost film due to the Nazi crackdown on media pertaining to the queer community.

[Ash I am all seven deadly sins of gender]

[bogleech]

Before this catches on with miserable adult babies reblogging to only add “KILL IT WITH FIRE” or some other idiotic, unfunny meme:

This is a mature female spider of the Nephila genus. I’m not sure the exact species, but members of this genus are also known as “golden silk orb weavers.” Their yellow-orange silk can be used to make golden cloth, like in this tapestry.

The bite of a Nephila isn’t serious. Wikipedia describes the worst case scenario - localized pain or a more severe allergic reaction - but most bitten will only experience a little itching. Like any spider, they only bite in self defense or when forcibly pressed against skin, and these big females are especially docile. I’ve held a related species on two occasions, they don’t scare very easily.

They’re so laid back, in fact, and so insistent on remaining in the same web, that these are the spiders some cultures have used as mosquito guards, deliberately setting them up to spin webs in open windows or over the top of a baby’s crib.

You can trust spiders with babies. Don’t be an asshat about your phobia plz. (By which I mean it’s perfectly okay to have a phobia and be afraid, but you don’t need to hate all spiders and wish they were all dead they didn’t do anything but get born spiders)