No minors. They/them. Poly, demi, trans, spoonie. Gender mileage may vary. Fictive-heavy temagenic system. Masters, toys and friends of @dragongirlcock
After being bitten by a brown recluse spider, our hero, Jim “Stinky Feet” Stinkybottom, discovers that the spider’s venom had the unique quality of turning him into a stinky creature. As a result, he gets his foot cut off, finds himself in the middle of a battle between two tribes of spiders, the spiders of the day and the spiders of the night, and makes the acquaintance of a creepy old witch named Madame Lola.
Does Jim become her familiar, does she know why spiders are turning people into stinky creatures, have Madame Lola and Jim taken any sides in the spider battle, are they at war? How did Jim lose his foot? I am now invested in this premise I need to know what happens next.
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.
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.
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).
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.
This is a bit of an oversimplification. Arthur wasn’t Welsh in the sense that Wales and the Welsh language didn’t exist in the time he supposedly lived. He was a Briton. Anglo-Saxons called Britons and other non-Germanic people “waels” which means foreigner. Once the Kingdoms of England were established, the kingdom of the Celtic Britons in west west Britain was called Waelas which became Wales.
In addition to Caerleon, Arthur is also associated with the region of Lloegyr in southern Britain, which is now England. Thus “England” in Arthurian literature is a gloss for Lloegyr in the tradition of using contemporary place names for geographic regions.
Indeed, if Arthur was real, he probably had many Anglo-Saxon subjects. The Britons v Saxons conflict wasn’t as black and white as later depictions make it out to be. The Saxons didn’t arrive in Britain as a conquering imperialist force. They were scattered groups of refugees fleeing west from Attila the Hun. The more common reality was probably British kings fighting each other with Saxon mercenaries and civilians on all sides. The first few kings of what would eventually become the kingdom of Wessex had Celtic British names like Cerdic and Cynric. There is even a fairly convincing theory that Cerdic was the real Arthur, which would make him equally an English and Welsh (Briton) historical figure. (1)
The round table has been suggested to be based on the Caerleon amphitheater:
There is a dispute over whether or not Percival was derived from Peruder or vice versa or if they were separate characters who became conflated. Welsh, English, and Continental Arthurian traditions overlapped in time and influenced each other.
Lancelot, as we know him, is a French addition, but cases have been made for a Celtic origin. He could be derivative of the Irish god Lugh Lamhfada or his Welsh equivalent Llwch Llawwynnauc. Another possibility is Anguselaus or Anselaus derived from a latinization of the Pictish Unguist. (2) There’s also the Breton Lancelin.
The affair between Lancelot and Guinevere did come later, but there is precedent in her affair with Medrod (Mordred) in the Welsh texts (see Geoffrey of Monmouth).
Calling the Lady of the Lake a Welsh character is particularly egregious, given that she first appears in 13th century FRENCH Arthuriana as the foster mother of Lancelot. Attempts have been made to link her to Celtic mythology but not conclusively, and these Celtic candidates could just as easily have been conflated with her after the fact. Her connection to Excalibur comes post-vulgate.
Camelot can be identified with Camulodunum, the capital of Roman Britain (now Winchester), or Camalet, also known as Cadbury Castle, an iron age Celtic hill fort.
Arthur was not stolen from the Welsh because he never exclusively belonged to them in the first place. He belonged to all Celtic Britons, including the Cornish and Bretons, as well. Through the Bretonic tradition, he was introduced to the French, who were primarily responsible for creating the version of Arthurian legends most familiar to us today, not the English. The familiar forms of Guinevere, Bedivere, Gawain, etc are French, not English. The most famous English version of Arthur comes from Sir Thomas Mallory, who primarily sourced from the French tales.
It is the nature of myths to evolve, and there never will be a “true” version.
The etymology and meaning of Arthur’s name is uncertain. It could come from arth+gwr = “bear man” or artorig = “bear king,” but it could also be a corruption of the Latin surname Artorius or the noun artus = “strength (of the sinews).” The latter is preferred by proponents of the Cerdic theory because if Cerdic is the same as the Welsh figure Caradoc Vreichvras (Vreichvras meaning “strong arm”), his name would translate into Latin as Carotacus Artus. See the first link I posted in my previous reblog for more info.
I have no idea where the “Gaulish bear god” thing comes from but neopagans like to extrapolate “forgotten deities” from every relevant figure in Celtic mythology which isn’t very helpful. When it comes to Celtic mythology, there are a lot of things we simply don’t know and may never know, and it’s important to keep that in mind.
The name of Arthur’s queen varies even in the Celtic sources. She is Gwenhwyfar in welsh, but in Breton, she is Gwenivar and in Cornish, Gwynnever which would be pronounced very similarly if not identically to the familiar French Guinevere. The aforementioned Welsh historian Geoffrey of Monmouth called her
Ganhumara and Latin texts call her Guenuur or Guennimar. That’s only scratching the surface, but it’s interesting to note that Caradoc’s wife is called Guignier which could easily be another variant.
Cai is a corruption of the Roman given name Caius.
Galahad could be derived from the Welsh name Gwalchaved, but we can’t possibly be sure.
The takeaway is that you should be very wary of anyone who makes claims about the “original version” of a myth, legend or fairy tale. We don’t have the original versions and we never will. We have the oldest written versions which have already been through several generations of retelling before someone thought to write them down.
It really bugs me how this post frames the Myrddin - Merlin change as another corruption from the big mean poopy head English. It wasn’t. That was Geoffrey of Monmouth again. The guy who CREATED the character of Merlin as we know him today (as in he existed in folklore but Geoffrey added him to the Arthurian mythos and gave him a backstory). He changed the spelling because Myrddin sounded too much like the French word for shit. True story.
The funniest thing about this post is how it frames the Arthur v the Saxons aspect of the legends as this lost element that got cut out of later versions. It’s not, people. Barbaric Saxons remained the stock Arthur villains into the late medieval romances and beyond, carrying over into modern adaptations. You would know this if any of you actually read books instead of being pretentious about them on the internet.
One time I heard a dude online compare new and obscure LGBT terminology to newspeak. This I think is one of the biggest examples I have seen of people with their whole chest ignoring the basic themes of 1984.
In 1984 the whole point of newspeak was that it shrinks. Ideas that could once be communicated now cannot. Everything is simplified as much as possible. You cannot explain complicated ideas of freedom or equality because the words no longer exist, or they don’t mean what they once did.
More specifically, there is canonically no word for “gay” in 1984. There are only two words for the entire spectrum of sexuality. “goodsex” and “sexcrime”. If you’re gay it’s the exact same as being a pedophile. And those are is the exact same as cheating on your wife, which is the exact same daring to fuck your wife just because you feel like it. Which is no different than literally any sex act that might offend big brother.
Do you see what’s happening? In 1984 can no longer ask your wife to peg you or something because the word for pegging is the exact same word for pedophile. And you can’t come out as gay because all you can say is that you did a criminal sex act, which means you cannot make a case for your rights either.
Inventing made up words to describe obscure things that previously lacked words would literally be a perfect remedy to newspeak. This language would counter every barrier to communicating the necessary concepts. Because it’s what literally every normal non-dystopian language does.
Keep this in mind especially in regards to what's happening in Florida right now.
They associate LGBT+ content with grooming, define it as pedophilia or child abuse or sexual crimes or etc. Then they pass laws calling for sex offenders to be executed.
Bigots or morons claim "Oh, why are you against these anti-child abuse laws?!" Because the state is trying to redefine LGBT+ activity and individuals as being the same as child abuse. For all the bluster and anger over "Grrr, words don't mean anything anymore! These terms I grew up with don't matter anymore!" the truth is THEY are the ones trying to limits what words mean because they want to associate certain groups of people with evil people to make more innocent/ignorant individuals be okay with hurting those groups of people.
Seeing Lockwood & Co get canceled just reinforces how important the writers’ strike is, I think. The WGA’s demands are confronting the corporate shift spearheaded by Netflix which tosses aside at a moment’s notice the stories that people love, even if a show is watched and discussed and profitable. The point of a strike is that there is no reason this business has to be done in the way that the executives have chosen. All people involved in the creative process deserve a fair wage. Viewers deserve to see the stories they love—and support with literal money—continued.
By Netflix’s own metrics, there was no reason to cancel Lockwood & Co. The entire media landscape does not need to be made exclusively of blockbusters. The people working in the entertainment industry do not need to be scraping by to make ends meet while being turned from valued employees into discardable gig workers. None of this has to be the way it is—people are making choices. And the WGA is absolutely right to say no.
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.
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.
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).
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.
This is a bit of an oversimplification. Arthur wasn’t Welsh in the sense that Wales and the Welsh language didn’t exist in the time he supposedly lived. He was a Briton. Anglo-Saxons called Britons and other non-Germanic people “waels” which means foreigner. Once the Kingdoms of England were established, the kingdom of the Celtic Britons in west west Britain was called Waelas which became Wales.
In addition to Caerleon, Arthur is also associated with the region of Lloegyr in southern Britain, which is now England. Thus “England” in Arthurian literature is a gloss for Lloegyr in the tradition of using contemporary place names for geographic regions.
Indeed, if Arthur was real, he probably had many Anglo-Saxon subjects. The Britons v Saxons conflict wasn’t as black and white as later depictions make it out to be. The Saxons didn’t arrive in Britain as a conquering imperialist force. They were scattered groups of refugees fleeing west from Attila the Hun. The more common reality was probably British kings fighting each other with Saxon mercenaries and civilians on all sides. The first few kings of what would eventually become the kingdom of Wessex had Celtic British names like Cerdic and Cynric. There is even a fairly convincing theory that Cerdic was the real Arthur, which would make him equally an English and Welsh (Briton) historical figure. (1)
The round table has been suggested to be based on the Caerleon amphitheater:
There is a dispute over whether or not Percival was derived from Peruder or vice versa or if they were separate characters who became conflated. Welsh, English, and Continental Arthurian traditions overlapped in time and influenced each other.
Lancelot, as we know him, is a French addition, but cases have been made for a Celtic origin. He could be derivative of the Irish god Lugh Lamhfada or his Welsh equivalent Llwch Llawwynnauc. Another possibility is Anguselaus or Anselaus derived from a latinization of the Pictish Unguist. (2) There’s also the Breton Lancelin.
The affair between Lancelot and Guinevere did come later, but there is precedent in her affair with Medrod (Mordred) in the Welsh texts (see Geoffrey of Monmouth).
Calling the Lady of the Lake a Welsh character is particularly egregious, given that she first appears in 13th century FRENCH Arthuriana as the foster mother of Lancelot. Attempts have been made to link her to Celtic mythology but not conclusively, and these Celtic candidates could just as easily have been conflated with her after the fact. Her connection to Excalibur comes post-vulgate.
Camelot can be identified with Camulodunum, the capital of Roman Britain (now Winchester), or Camalet, also known as Cadbury Castle, an iron age Celtic hill fort.
Arthur was not stolen from the Welsh because he never exclusively belonged to them in the first place. He belonged to all Celtic Britons, including the Cornish and Bretons, as well. Through the Bretonic tradition, he was introduced to the French, who were primarily responsible for creating the version of Arthurian legends most familiar to us today, not the English. The familiar forms of Guinevere, Bedivere, Gawain, etc are French, not English. The most famous English version of Arthur comes from Sir Thomas Mallory, who primarily sourced from the French tales.
It is the nature of myths to evolve, and there never will be a “true” version.
The etymology and meaning of Arthur’s name is uncertain. It could come from arth+gwr = “bear man” or artorig = “bear king,” but it could also be a corruption of the Latin surname Artorius or the noun artus = “strength (of the sinews).” The latter is preferred by proponents of the Cerdic theory because if Cerdic is the same as the Welsh figure Caradoc Vreichvras (Vreichvras meaning “strong arm”), his name would translate into Latin as Carotacus Artus. See the first link I posted in my previous reblog for more info.
I have no idea where the “Gaulish bear god” thing comes from but neopagans like to extrapolate “forgotten deities” from every relevant figure in Celtic mythology which isn’t very helpful. When it comes to Celtic mythology, there are a lot of things we simply don’t know and may never know, and it’s important to keep that in mind.
The name of Arthur’s queen varies even in the Celtic sources. She is Gwenhwyfar in welsh, but in Breton, she is Gwenivar and in Cornish, Gwynnever which would be pronounced very similarly if not identically to the familiar French Guinevere. The aforementioned Welsh historian Geoffrey of Monmouth called her
Ganhumara and Latin texts call her Guenuur or Guennimar. That’s only scratching the surface, but it’s interesting to note that Caradoc’s wife is called Guignier which could easily be another variant.
Cai is a corruption of the Roman given name Caius.
Galahad could be derived from the Welsh name Gwalchaved, but we can’t possibly be sure.
The takeaway is that you should be very wary of anyone who makes claims about the “original version” of a myth, legend or fairy tale. We don’t have the original versions and we never will. We have the oldest written versions which have already been through several generations of retelling before someone thought to write them down.
It really bugs me how this post frames the Myrddin - Merlin change as another corruption from the big mean poopy head English. It wasn’t. That was Geoffrey of Monmouth again. The guy who CREATED the character of Merlin as we know him today (as in he existed in folklore but Geoffrey added him to the Arthurian mythos and gave him a backstory). He changed the spelling because Myrddin sounded too much like the French word for shit. True story.
The funniest thing about this post is how it frames the Arthur v the Saxons aspect of the legends as this lost element that got cut out of later versions. It’s not, people. Barbaric Saxons remained the stock Arthur villains into the late medieval romances and beyond, carrying over into modern adaptations. You would know this if any of you actually read books instead of being pretentious about them on the internet.