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Metaruu’s Headcanon Ask Game

Send in a character or characters and an icon and I’ll give you…

🏳️‍🌈 A sexuality headcanon

🏳️‍⚧️ A gender headcanon

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🧸 A headcanon about their childhood

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🎶 A headcanon about music

👽 A headcanon about a weird quirk of there

💤 A headcanon about their sleep

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🎭 A headcanon about what they lie about

❤️‍🔥 A romantic headcanon

💄 An appearance headcanon

🖕 A headcanon relating to anger

😺 An animal related headcanon

😬 A headcanon about the worst thing they’ve done

😭 A headcanon about the worst thing that happened to them.

😶 A random headcanon!

Wikipedia, most definitely.

For several years, nearly all of my Arthurian knowledge came from Wikipedia, because I (rather oddly) decided to try to get a comprehensive idea of Arthuriana as a whole before actually diving into medieval literature. This was probably because, despite having absorbed my very eccentric great-grandfather's belief that we were descendants of Merlin, I wasn't really into Arthuriana before I was given a prompt to write an alliterative paragraph featuring the letter G, started writing about Gawain, never came to a conclusion, decided to make it a novel, decided I needed to do research to write a novel, etc. This led my seventh grade self to a lot of bad takes, particularly about Lancelot, and very random headcanons. On the other hand, the assumptions I made about Agravaine, while based purely on his name, were mostly accurate.

I can spot at least four possible morals to this story and there are probably more, but I'll leave them to the reader.

Anyway enough King Arthur flour asks time to talk about Ragnelle.

That is the start of William F. Skene's translation of "Cad Goddeu". Here are others for comparison (with a couple more lines because I like them):

I was in a multitude of forms before I was unfettered: I was a slender mottled sword made from the hand. I was a droplet in the air, I was the stellar radiance of the stars, I was a word in writing, I was a book in my prime. I was the light of a lantern For a year and a half…"

--Marged Haycock

I was in many a guise before I was disenchanted. I am a grey-cowled minstrel : I believe in illusion. I was for a time in the sky : I was observing the stars. I was a message in writing : I was a book to my priest. I was the light of the altar-horns, for a year and a half.

--John Gwenogvryn Evans (who translated the title as "The Battle of the Scrub" rather than "The Battle of the Trees")

I was woven  in so many forms before this one.  I was a sword drawn, high and long against sky, and I was its tear in the air, the dullest of stars.   I was the word among letters, the story’s breath within the book, the light of lanterns.   For a year and a half I was the continuing bridge...

--Órlaith on Wordpress

There are a number of others out there; these are just a few which struck me as being distinctive in an interesting way.

‘I have been a multitude of shapes, Before I assumed a consistent form. I have been a sword, narrow, variegated, I have been a tear in the air, I have been in the dullest of stars. I have been a word among letters, I have been a book in the origin.’ Taliesin .. c. 534 – c. 599

It’s uncanny how similar Trump is acting like Hitler. People are now doing the Nazi salute. They’re drawing the symbol. The KKK was seen in Kentucky asking people to join them. ICE has been ripping families apart. Companies have pulled back Diversity Initiatives. We’re no longer part of WHO and there won’t be any communication from the CDC at least until February 1st. We’re being censored and the news can’t be trusted. Thousands of Americans didn’t know there were protests against Trump yesterday outside the U.S. Quotes from The Handmaid’s Tale and Anne Frank have been compared to what’s going on right now.

According to The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Studies and Prevention the U.S. has officially been given a red flag alert for Genocide.

I’m exhausted but I will never stop being angry.

....They're COUSINS!!?!

(Source: Dream of Rhonabwy)

(Source: A Welsh Classical Dictionary)

#SOMEONE PLEASE DROP THE SOURCE FOR THE HECTOR ONE THAT SOUNDS AWESOME

@sanddef

It's from Cantare di Astore e Morgana (the Cantare of Hector and Morgan).

Here’s a link to a translation originally posted by lazerbem on Reddit, courtesy of Redpanda from the Arthurian Theater Discord server:

Google Docs

Cantare of Hector and Morgan

A few things which are “canon” somewhere for people who are worried they’re stretching it too far

Arthur was killed by a giant cat. 

Arthur killed the cat.

Arthur didn’t fight the cat. Kay did.

Kay and Bedivere use salmon as taxis. 

Lucan is half giant, half lion. (This Lucan, Lucano in the original Italian, is evil and not related to Bedivere). 

King Arthur raided the land of the dead.

The human knight Caradoc Briefbras has three half siblings: a dog, a horse, and a pig.

A large portion of Arthur’s troops was killed a while before Camlann by his nephew’s attack ravens in self-defense. Arthur and said nephew were playing chess at the time and neither did much to stop it.

Merlin retired peacefully and went to live in the countryside with Taliesin.

Wherever Arthur walks, plants die. They don’t grow back for years.

Arthur had a spunky (half?) brother who died in battle after making a mysterious oath.

Dagonet is more or less able to run the kingdom when Arthur is gone. His biggest error is overspending on mercenaries.

Guinevere has an evil almost identical twin half-sister.

Hector beat up all the best knights except for Galahad while possessed by a demon.

Gawain plays tennis.

Gawain has used a chessboard as a weapon.

Near the start of his reign, Arthur left Lot in charge of the kingdom and went on a quest with a sassy parrot.

Gawain or Galahad succeeded Arthur as king. 

At the rate it's going, Hurricane Milton looks like it will be incredibly destructive. As of the latest forecast I could find on the weather channel, it was "centered 560 miles southwest of Tampa...a strong Category 4 packing 155 mph winds as of 5 a.m. EDT...tracking east-northeast at 12 mph". According to the NHC, it could potentially be "one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida".

I know it's easy to get jaded with hurricanes and that sometimes, they aren't really bad enough to be worth evacuating for, but from what I can tell, this one absolutely is. If you're in an evacuation zone, leave if you can or find a shelter if you absolutely can't. Please stay safe, everyone.

good morning tumblr! be careful. i have saved a whole load of these to my phone at this point, so...

peak storm surge-

more storm surge - darkest purple is >10 feet, and is worst - though we might need more colours

recent track, showing landfall at 2 am on Thursday rather than 8 pm on Wednesday

75 is apparently completely clogged, as you'd expect at this point. people are leaving en masse and with good reason. there is free transport to shelters through uber in pinellas, hillsborough, and pasco - use it. the promo code is MILTONRELIEF. jim cantore arrived in tampa yesterday. jim cantore.

To add a little clarity, Jenny Rowland in that book isn't actually saying the poem is bad; she finds it very interesting and is mostly analysing it from a detached perspective for the antiquarian traditions it records. There's some commentary on the poetic skill, both positive and negative, which is where the section I posted is from; it's mentioning there's slightly less metrical, technical skill vis a vis the rules and forms of medieval Welsh poetry than some other saga *englynion*, supporting her proposition this dialogue dates from after the form's heyday. I just screencapped a bit I thought was funny out of context because I have a mutual who likes Gwyn a lot and thought they might enjoy seeing him getting kinda bullied, ahah

Fair enough, I can agree with that, and I probably should have read into it further before reblogging. I suppose from my own reading I've become accustomed to vicious authorly attacks on Welsh anti-blorbos. Like this:

Wow, Laurence Main, tell us how you really feel with those sarcastic parentheses on "St" Illtyd! (For the record, I have met that author, and he is a delight to know, but he does not hold back about "Old Ill-Tide" or Gildas and also hates Taliesin with a burning passion).

Or this, from Adam Ardrey:

More sarcastic quotation marks and more hate for Gildas, who was not gentle in his own works and didn't mention King Arthur in any of his surviving writing and is still getting flamed for it around a millenium and a half later by people who are Maelgwyn fans, are trying to prove Arthur was real,* or both. I have written mediocre Gildas fanfiction at two in the morning with this as the fuel, because I think he probably gets too much hate, though having never met him, I can't judge any better than the people who claim he burned his praise of Arthur for petty reasons.

Anyway, this post went off the rails a lot, but all that is to say that literary scholarship can get incredibly opinionated, it's easy to fall into one viewpoint or become overly cynical about it in general, and I think I have mostly done the latter. Also, that Jenny Rowland book sounds rather interesting; I might have to check it out.

*For the record, I have no firm stance on the matter, since as far as I can tell it can't be proven or disproven. In my head, he both was and was not real. Schrödinger's King. Or warrior, rather.

Arthurian characters I interpret as acespec:

Galahad, the Grail Heroine, and Bors: They generally have no apparent trouble or qualms with the eternal chastity thing (except Bors when he gets cursed, but he gets cursed).

Brangaine: In La Tavola Ritonda, she tells Gouvernail that she never wants to have sexual relationships, and in a text I haven't yet read or been able to identify, she apparently stops Kahedin from sleeping with her by using a magic pillow to make him fall asleep, a role which is Camille's in Kaherdin and Camille.

Dinadan: In LTR, they call him the Wise Man Who Does Not Love, and while he has a romantic interest in LTR, their relationship isn't sexual. To the best of my knowledge, he has no other romantic interest and no sexual relationship in all of medlit and pretty much always scorns both concepts. Usually aro, demiromantic in one text, and always ace.

Lucan: It's not anything he says or does, but unless you count the actions of Lucano the evil half-giant half-lion in LTR, he doesn't have any romantic and/or sexual relationships in any medlit I know of. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but in my mind, he's on the aro and ace spectrums.

Happy Ace Week to all who celebrate!

Edit: I had somehow left out Dinadan, who I originally meant to include a picture of. I guess you could say he's implicit. Truly one of the aroace icons of all time. He ran so Jughead could also run.