I've moved!

Moving everything here to liminalpsych instead to make it a primary account instead of a sub account.

[liminal-psych]

About

Note: I’m moving everything here over to liminalpsych, because this was a subaccount to an account I made years ago and haven’t touched in years, and tumblr doesn’t let you swap a sub account for your primary account. Starting over it is!

Pronouns: They/them, followed by ve/vir or xe/xir, followed by any other neopronouns. Just avoid he/she/it and you’re good.

Identifiers: Queer, non-binary, agender, kinky, gray-ace/demisexual, ADHD, polyamorous (…for well over a decade and a half now, yikes)

What I do: Psychotherapy (specializing in trauma, adhd/autism, gender dysphoria/transition support, GSMs), equestrian activities (have two minis and three full sized horses in my backyard), live action roleplaying, aviculture (I own some parrots and finches), writing sometimes

Links:

liminal_psych on Archive Of Our Own

Active Fandoms

Fandoms I’m actively engaged in, participating in, reading and writing in, obsessing over, etc.

Genshin Impact: I haven’t been this into a piece of media in years. Favorite characters are Alhaitham, Xiao, Zhongli, Ningguang, Yae Miko, Ayato, Dehya, Baizhu (who is a whole damn gender, as is Alhaitham), Dottore (favorite villain to hate, great character, terrible person). My Traveler is Aether and I main Itto (who I adore, though he doesn’t make the top 10 list of favorite characters).

Arthurian literature: New interest! New hyperfocus! Reading all the original material and some new stuff too. It’s ridiculous, Arthurian myth is basically just a centuries-long accumulation of fanfic and OC’s that tons of people have collectively headcanoned and called it canon. Wild. Got into it thanks to Heather Dale’s Arthurian songs that made me start writing a fix-it fic to Trial of Lancelot where Lancelot, Arthur, and Guenivere are in a polyamorous triad. Because love triangles where everyone actually cares about each other and so polyamory would fix it easily drive me mad. But then I couldn’t figure out the story ending because I didn’t know enough about Arthurian literature, shelved it for almost a decade, then recently pulled it out, dove into Arthurian lore, and got hooked. Not sure whether to make a separate Tumblr for it or not but I’ll just do all my fandom stuff here for now.

Inactive Fandoms

Fandoms I’ve been involved with in the past but not currently. Probably wouldn’t take much to make them active again, but they’re currently on the back burner.

Dragon Age (Inquisition especially, don’t care for Origins, still working on playing through DA2)

Sherlock Holmes (every iteration I’ve encountered, but BBC Sherlock’s first two seasons especially)

Redwall (my entire adolescence, my first roleplaying experience, and setting of the longest story I’ve ever written)

Early Marvel MCU (mostly the original Avengers crew + Loki, all the trauma and found family stuff)

World of Darkness (Mage: the Ascension particularly)

Flight Rising

Casual Fandoms

The honorable mentions. Fandoms I haven’t actively participated in but which hold a special place in my heart.

Terre d’Ange (Kushiel novels by Jacqueline Carey)

Valdemar (Mercedes Lackey)

Tortall (Tamora Pierce)

Feral Souls trilogy (Erica Woods)

Farscape

Legend of Zelda (Ocarina of Time had a major impact on my developmental preteen brain)

Final Fantasy (7 and 10 especially)

Dune (first 3 books, also 2020 movie)

LARPs

NERO/Alliance/Refuge (staffed, roleplayed, don’t play anymore but have posted character stories in AO3)

New World Magischola (R.I.P)

Event Horizon (R.I.P)

Daemon, in 2023 anyway

Temet Nosce (personal brainchild, on hold indefinitely)

World of Darkness / Mind’s Eye Theater (haven’t done this in aaages)

[forthegothicheroine]

I hope all the Orkney brothers did great on Scottish Twitter

[forthegothicheroine]

Gawain

Agravain

Gaheris

Gareth

Mordred

[liminal-psych]

So I finally got through the introduction, foreword, and translator’s notes of Faletra’s translation of The History of the Kings of Britain, and started reading the actual text. It’s way more readable than I feared!

A few things:

1. The introduction/translator’s notes/context providing that comes before these texts is just as interesting to me, if not more so, than the text themselves. Faletra’s got a ton of great info providing context on Geoffrey of Monmouth, the history of the text, the cultural and historical context of it, etc. A lot of the sort of thing I’ve been hunting for, actually: timelines on the development of Arthurian legend and literature. Guess I just had to look at translator’s notes of extant texts rather than a book solely on the development of elements of the literature.

2. Faletra’s translation was an ass to find in ebook format. It came highly recommended by the one Arthurian nerd group I managed to find on Facebook, because it’s a more updated translation than the Penguin version and also includes a translation of the Life of Merlin which is otherwise really hard to find. But it was only really actively being published and promoted for a few years after it was published in 2008. I could find hard copies for sale (well, paperbacks; the hardcovers are hideously expensive) but the Kindle edition had …expired, I guess? Is that a thing that happens? And iBooks didn’t have it either. I finally found an ebook version on Google Play, so I downloaded Play and purchased the ebook. (I have decided Play Books is my least favorite e-reader app so far. It annoyed me enough and I liked the book enough that I’ve purchased a paperback, but it won’t get here til next week.)

3. Faletra is a professor at Reed College, specializing in medieval literature of the British Isles. Basically, he got annoyed when teaching the Penguin edition of the History, translated by Lewis Thorpe in 1966, as that was all that was really available at the time, and decided to do his own, with lots of additional context and appendices. From his website: “I also wanted to provide students of Arthurian literature, and of medieval literature in general, with a readable and affordable text that supplied ample appendices of contextual readings. Broadview’s Literary Texts and Contexts has been an ideal home for this project, as it encourages editions that provide a range of background materials.” So now I’m going through Broadview’s publications and wow, there’s a ton of cool stuff!

4. Arthur is Cymric (aka Welsh, we’ll get into why I’m using a different word later), and making him anything else is actually … really problematic? And I had no idea! I knew he was Cymric in some stories, but so many modern stories depict him as vaguely English, so I had internalized that version. I’ve had to rewrite my story a tiny bit to make him Cymric instead.

So one reading of early medieval literature can be essentially, (and I quote from a delightful tumblr post): “If there's a common theme in early medieval literature, particularly in the north, it's that Blood Feuding Is Terrible Actually. So much of Scandinavian and [Saxon and Old English] law is just: How Not To Blood Feud (have you considered a cash settlement instead? Please?). (The only thing worse than blood feuding is kinslaying, cuz you can't even have a good blood feud about it)” - https://at.tumblr.com/liminal-psych/is-there-a-version-of-the-arthurian-tales-that/fwzxb3bf7kfj (you have to scroll a ways down the lengthy post to get to the part about blood feuding, but that person’s take overall is a great read, including such quotes as “French Guinivere is Queen Eleanor's Mary Sue no I do not take criticism” and “It's not a sin if Magic Made Me Do It”)

…But anyway. Early Arthurian stories in particular can be read as an anti-colonialist narrative.

Not Geoffrey in general. The History is all “so some Trojans left Greece and came to the British Isles where a vision from Diana told them that there used to be giants but aren’t anymore, so it’s just empty land to settle on, free for the taking!” And then there still were some giants. And Picts. And other peoples. And the Trojans took over and settled there. Cue lengthy battle scenes (that are surprisingly interesting and engagingly written, not an easy feat honestly, fight scenes are my least favorite thing to write).

And then Geoffrey “ends with with the ancient Britons decisively defeated by the Saxons, their remnant degenerating into an inferior people. As Geoffrey explains: ‘Through their habitual barbarity, they were no longer called Britons but “Welsh,”’ and he repeats the standard Saxon derivation of the word ‘Welsh’ as meaning ‘foreigner, slave,” writes Faletra. The translator spends a lot of time arguing that Geoffrey was not in fact pro-Cymric, as some have suggested. He seemed to admire their ancestors, but disparages the Cymry of his time as “barbaric”.

(“Welsh” and its etymological ancestors was used by the [Saxons and Old English] for “anything and anyone we associate with the Britons”. Including Cornwall, Yorkshire, and a slew of other regions. “Cymry” comes from a Brythonic word meaning “fellow-countrymen” and seems to have been in use by the Cymry since at least the 7th century to refer to themselves. Wales is called Cymryu. I’m going to try to use their word for themselves and their country as much as possible, because Cymryu has been through some *shit* under the English.)

Still, the gist of it before the fall to the Saxons and/or Old English, and what led to the Cymry themselves translating his Latin text into the Cymric language, is a story of resistance against foreign invaders. Arthur unites all the locals, drives out the foreign Saxons who’d been occupying the land for 100 years, and Cymryu and surrounding lands get to be their own independent kingdom ruled by the local people for a generation or two, one last gasp of glory before everything falls apart and the Old English and/or Saxons take over again. Geoffrey’s work, and his popularization of the Prophecies of Merlin, and his writing of the Life of Merlin, all give rise to this idea of the Once and Future King and the idea that the Cymry will have independence once again in the future.

So if you make Arthur an Englishman, (or Norman or Saxon or Anglo-Saxon, those are all names you’ll see used in Arthurian lit), you completely lose the narrative of an indigenous person uniting his people and driving out the invaders. It’s an erasure I didn’t even realize had happened, which is a disappointingly effective erasure. But the modern Arthurian legends focuses on quests and the Grail and the romance of it, all of which we get from the French versions of Arthuriana, and they didn’t care to differentiate one British kingdom from another, I guess. I don’t know, I haven’t gotten to the French stuff yet.

Anyway, Faletra’s work is fascinating so far, and his notes and appendices are great.

[liminal-psych]

First impressions of Arthurian lore, part 2 (again copied from my Facebook posts because I only just started using Tumblr again, this one’s from Nov 25th):

Reading up on Arthurian legend, and…

There are surprisingly few resources of any kind out there on the development of the stories themselves. No books for public consumption, just expensive textbooks and research papers.

Plenty of books retelling the legends in one way or another. Plenty of books on ”who was the real King Arthur / where is the real Camelot” etc, trying to determine historical basis for the stories. Some pagany stuff deriving spirituality and magic from Arthurian lore.

But way fewer other resources than I expected.

And my (rather advanced, thank you) Google skills failed to find me a recommendations list for translations of the various source texts. Which just seems strange. Do people just not engage with the source material with Arthurian legend? Is it just endless derivations and fanfic of fanfic of fanfic? This is not bad, this is fascinating, but it’s also very weird to me.

(More recently, since originally writing this, I have learned that people are still engaging with the source material, but it’s apparently just “10 gay people on Tumblr” doing so, to quote oldtvandcomics.)

And way fewer Facebook groups than I expected. I found one, the Arthurian Society, which I finally posted to asking for translation recommendations and resource recommendations. They were very very helpful.

(Note: More recently I have discovered that apparently the place for resources on getting started with Arthurian lit is Tumblr, of all places.)

It looks like the Camelot Project will be where I exist from now on while I’m in this hyperfocus. I’ve barely scratched the surface of it but it’s already super helpful.

I was resisting the urge to make the resource I’m looking for, a timeline of what characters and lore elements were developed when and by whom. I’m going to take notes as I read through the source material and try to make it for myself, whether or not I share it publicly in any form. I begin to see why people haven’t done so, though, as it is *complex*.

So what do I read first? I want to start at the beginning. But that’s harder to figure out than you might think.

At the start, we’ve got 1138, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. That’s the true “beginning” of Arthurian literature.

But if we want to look back further, Geoffrey’s sources were Gildas's sixth century De Excidio Brittaniae (On the Ruin of Britain) and Nennius's ninth century Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons). Gildas gave us Vortigern and Aurelius Ambrosius. Nennius gave us Saxon chieftains Hengest and Horsa, was the first to mention "Arthur the soldier," the "dux bellorum" (leader of battles), and also gives us a fellow named Ambrosius, who uncovers two fighting dragons under the foundation of his tower and prophesies the political future of Britain (sound familiar? Geoffrey incorporates him into the History as “Merlin Ambrosius”). Plus probably a bunch of Welsh material that Geoffrey never cites, for more on Merlin and Arthur.

Resources before Geoffrey are just brief mentions of Arthur. Merlin, on the other hand, has a wealth of pre-Galfridian material.

In addition to the History, Geoffrey also wrote two pieces about Merlin: Prophetiae Merlini (which was used for long afterwards by British politics in the same way as people have referenced Nostradamus, to attempt to predict or legitimize political events by saying it was predicted by Prophetiae Merlini), and Vita Merlini, a poem about Merlin’s life.

There’s Merlin Ambrosius of Nennius’s writing, and then there’s the Myrddin of early Welsh poetry. He gets called Merlin Silverstar at times to differentiate from Merlin Ambrosius, though you might have guessed that the two got merged into one figure pretty quick, the Merlin we now know of in modern Arthurian lore.

Then there are these six Welsh poems. The manuscripts that the poems are found in post-date Vita Merlini by over 100 years, but Welsh linguists have used orthographic evidence to show that the poems themselves are decidedly older than the manuscript, and may predate Geoffrey’s work as a result.

The poems are “Yr Afallennau" (The Apple Trees), "Yr Oianau" (The Greetings), "Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin" (The Dialogue of Myrddin and Taliesin), "Cyfoesi Myrddin a Gwenddydd ei Chwaer" (The Conversation of Myrddin and his Sister Gwenddydd), "Gwasgargerdd Fyrddin yn y Bedd" (The Diffused Song of Myrddin in the Grave), and "Peirian Faban" (Commanding Youth).

(When we say “poems” in this period of literature, we’re talking stuff like Beowulf. Novella length stuff. 50, 100 pages of lengthy lines and the like. So these are small books in their own right.)

And then of course there’s the Mabinogion, which was compiled into a manuscript much later than Geoffrey’s time but comes from earlier Welsh oral traditions which likely predate Geoffrey. There are apparently elements of the Mabinogion that are in Arthurian legends.

So do I start with the Mabinogion? The six Welsh poems about Merlin? Nennius and Gildas? Or Geoffrey of Monmouth?

Probably gonna start with Geoffrey, because it’s easy enough to find, and in fact free on the Camelot Project (though the formatting may drive me mad and lead me to get an ebook translation, apparently the Penguin Classics version is perfectly fine.

[arthurianasuggestion]

good morning! 💞✨ it’s my birthday today so everyone should tell me their favorite arthurian anecdote or the thing that gives them the most feelings from arthuriana. as a treat

[forthegothicheroine]

One of the first things that springs to mind is when the author of Diu Krone, the German romance where Gawain gets the grail, suddenly stops to address any other writers who make Kay evil to tell them that they are WRONG, if Arthur trusted him so much he COULDN’T be evil, he’s just grouchy!

[arthurianasuggestion]

they are literally right!!!!

[liminal-psych]

I love this and it’s adorable

[liminal-psych]

First impressions of Arthurian literature and lore

(Since I guess I’m using Tumblr again, I’ll just copy my recent Arthurian explorations here from ye olde Facebook. This is from Nov 11, some initial understandings are erroneous and I have learned better since then.)

Digging into Arthurian literature and legend for the first time (it never interested me the last time I was exploring medieval everything, as a teenager) and it’s become rather a hyperfocus.

You all, Arthuriana is a trip.

Basically it’s just a giant body of fanfic. All the popular Arthurian legends that are commonly known? Total fanfic all the way down.

Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae in 1136 or so (decidedly pseudo history but presented as a chronicle) is the original text, and thus I guess the canonical one. It may have been inspired largely by folk tales that might have existed of Arthur and his knights beforehand, but we’re not sure.

Lancelot was literally Chrétien de Troyes’ OC. French knight (French, like de Troyes, shocker) stuffed into the Arthurian legend who got catapulted to a spotlight as a result of the popularity of the tale. Written in around ~1177.

And Lancelot’s affair with Guinevere? Actually probably a commission from a patron, Marie de Champagne, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII. And probably written by Chrétien’s clerk, Godefroi de Leigni, theoretically because Chrétien felt complicated about the adultery themes.

And then of course Malory incorporated it into Le Morte d’Arthur in 1485, and that’s been what everyone since then has mostly used as the Arthurian canon despite it also being absolute fanfic of a fanfic.

So Arthurian lore is just a giant messy collection of fanfiction.

Also early Arthurian lore was pretty damn gay. (As was the later Gawain and the Green Knight, possibly because it was written for the court of a probably-gay-or-bi King.) More on that in a future post. Galehaut deserves a whole post just for himself, I think. He’s certainly been erased and marginalized enough over the years.

[fuckyeaharthuriana]

Do you have a translation of the French Vulgate?

Yes if you mean in general. I have Lacy Lancelot Grail series.

But if you mean as an online shareable text, unfortunately not.

[oldtvandcomics]

I think I have something!

The one I’ve been using was what I’ve found on the Internet Archive. It has the text in original Old French, and little summaries in English in the margins. Of course it depends on what you need it for, but if you want to just read it, it’s a perfectly good option, and might actually be easier to get through than a complete translation.

VOLUME I - LESTOIRE DEL SAINT GRAAL

VOLUME II - LESTOIRE DE MERLIN

VOLUME III - LE LIVRE DE LANCELOT DEL LAC PART I

VOLUME IV - LE LIVRE DE LANCELOT DEL LAC PART II

VOLUME V - LE LIVRE DE LANCELOT DEL LAC PART III

VOLUME VI - LES AVENTURES OU LA QUESTE DEL SAINT GRAAL + LA MORT LE ROI ARTUS

VOLUME VII - SUPPLEMENT: LE LIVRE D'ARTUS

I hope this is more or less what you’re looking for?

[gringolet]

INTRO TO ARTHURIANA MASTERPOST

under the cut for absurd length

Keep reading

[gringolet]

“Arthurian Mythology” is a misnomer

i see the term arthurian mythology being used a lot– its actually the ao3 tag, and is used to refer to arthuriana in a lot of pop cultural contexts. but i think the term is not only innaccuate, but is inaccurate in a way that can be actively confusing and get in the way of actually understanding arthuriana, especially for people just getting into it.

a mythology is a collection of stories stemming from oral tradition that are of religious and cultural importance to a group of people and deal with cosmological and supernatural pasts and exist to explain the world.

Arthuriana is a body of literature, which while it contains religious themes, is not a part of the christian religion, is not an oral tradition and largely doesnt deal with cosmology. there is certainly overlap– the joseph of arimethea section of the vulgate cycle is in part inspired by popular christian mythology, which does exist in a way more akin to greek, norse, etc mythology. Things like stories of saints and things like the tarasque are a part of christian mythology. parts of the mabinogion and welsh arthurian texts are in part adapted from welsh mythology, with some characters being arguable literary decsendents or equivalents of dieties or supernatural figures.

but arthuriana as a whole is not a mythology, despite some texts having connections to various other mythologies. arthurian isnt a cultural group or religion, and the characters are not “arthurian dieties or mytho-figures” they are iconic and enduring cultural characters, but so are robin hood, don quixote, and hamlet.

arthuriana is a losed body of texts, and treating it as a mythology is actively confusing, because it really discourages engagement in actual texts, and encourages a homogenization of arthurian stories. there is an “arthurian narrative” that has pervaded the cultural millieue and has no relation to actual arthurian literature, which suffers as a result, with texts becoming more and more rare and expensive.

anyway, its an interesting vocabulary thing, and if you want to be accurate, saying ‘arthurian literature’ or ‘arthuriana’is more appropriate than ‘arthurian mythology. or king arthur and the murder boys. thats good too.

[liminal-psych]

I have some minor quibbles about this (the definition of what constitutes mythology is debatable), but overall a useful point! I’ve been fumbling over what to call “being into Arthurian stuff”, it’s nice to know “fan of Arthuriana” is a legit way to do so.

I’d also argue that pre Galfridian (and maybe pre Nennius), Arthurian stuff *is* mythology. Go back far enough and it’s all Otherworlds and Annwn and gods and local folklore.

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

academic articles about queer arthuriana for @intersex-ionality and @gawain-in-green

okay first up i’m not an arthurian specialist, i mostly do medieval irish material, also this is heavily skewed towards medieval french arthurian material with some english influences – not welsh material (sorry), and not other continental material generally. just bc i did medieval french more than i did anything else, and i did a bit of middle english but i know more about lancelot and chrétien than about malory so yeah

this is a very incomplete list but it’s stuff i have references to (in past essays, or because i have a photocopy of it in a folder somewhere). if i were not so fucking disorganised i would be able to give you so many more but i am a disaster, so.

not all of this stuff is like… directly about queer readings, but it feeds into queer theory (e.g. looking at non-normative expressions of sexuality, construction of gender and so on). also strong emphasis on things that overlap with the supernatural, monster theory, that kind of stuff, because that’s just what i’m interested in

* ‘the armour of an alienating identity’ by jeffrey jerome cohen and the members of interscripta, in arthuriana vol. 6, no. 4 (winter 1996) – has some good shit, it’s cohen so it’s kinda dense but i found it interesting

* ‘masoch/lancelotism’ by jeffrey jerome cohen in new literary history vol. 28, no. 2 (spring 1997) – all about the fact that lancelot is the original masochist, some interesting explorations here, again it’s … dense (why cohen, why)

* ‘the prose “lancelot”‘s galehot, malory’s lavain, and the queering of late medieval literature” by gretchen mieszkowski in arthuriana vol. 5, no. 1 (spring 1995) – this RUINED MY LIFE, if you want to have feelings about lancelot-galehaut then read this one, i will never be over it

* there is another Extremely Gay article about lancelot/galehaut and i think it is from the book of giants: sex, monsters and the middle ages by jeffrey jerome cohen (who is like half this list)… it made me cry. i think it’s that chapter that  @finnlongman posted a couple of excerpts of here

sidenote: i do really rate cohen’s work but omg he’s like… dense af sometimes. his prose isn’t quite judith butler levels of incomprehensible but HE’S NOT FAR OFF. so just be warned about that. you settle into it, it starts making sense after a while, but … he should use shorter words.

other books that might be interesting, though they don’t deal exclusively/directly with arthurian material:

* monsters, gender and sexuality in medieval english literature by dana m. oswald includes some arthurian material and looks at the differences between old english and middle english material with regard to sex and also monsters woo. we love a monster.

* sodomy, masculinity and law in medieval french literature: france and england 1050 to 1230 by william burgwinkle for some french stuff. don’t think there’s much that’s directly arthurian, but there’s some stuff about marie de france, so that’s kinda tangentially related

* constructing medieval sexuality ed. by karma lochrie, peggy mccracken, james a. schultz (lots of interesting chapters in this one exploring different aspects of sexuality in a medieval context)

also not arthuriana but like. while we’re here:

* ‘“for to be sworne bretheren til they deye”: satirizing queer brotherhood in the chaucerian corpus’ by tison pugh in the chaucer review, vol. 43, no. 3 (2009) has some interesting things to say about the whole idea of oaths of brotherhood within a queer framework/interpretation

* between medieval men: male friendship and desire in early medieval literature by david clark deals primarily with old english / germanic material, so substantially less useful for arthuriana but some useful (?) approaches to queer readings of medieval texts

* sexuality in medieval europe: doing unto others by ruth mazo karras was an interesting read… frustrating for me because of karras’s failure to engage with irish material at all and how poorly defined ‘europe’ was within this book (what does ‘medieval europe’ even MEAN? way too broad), but far from useless re: how sexuality was understood in a historical context so with caveats, would rec

* ‘heroes and their pals’ in one hundred years of homosexuality and other essays on greek love by david m. halperin offers a paradigm for looking at heroic / warrior relationships like achilles/patroclus etc, which can also be explored in the context of medieval material

anyway this is not nearly as complete or arthurian-specific as i’d hoped it would be because it turned out! i keep shitty notes! and i am astonishingly disorganised in how i keep track of this kind of thing! sorry. i tried. there was an attempt.

but i have a few followers who may be able to help, so @ all of youse, pls share your favourite articles on queer arthurian stuff, thank

[nh2d-deactivated20220723]

Is there a version of the Arthurian tales that like… acknowledges the fact that Lancelot gets sexually harassed/assaulted all over the place??? In terms of harassment he literally gets kidnapped by those four queens that one time, and then he gets assaulted by Elaine at least twice, and then Guinevere throws him out because she doesn’t believe him—and did Galahad ever find out about how he came into existence?

(I love this question, thank you anon.) So, first off-- I can’t speak to modern stuff, because I pretty much stick to med lit except, like, Kaamelott. So this is going to be solely based off of what I’ve read of med lit, which is absolutely not exhaustive. Content warning in the following paragraphs for both rape and medieval perspectives on consent which amount to rape apologism, as well as references to suicidal thoughts.

The short answer is no, because medieval society did not have the same conception of consent that we have today. I am a 20-year-old astrophysics major with zero historical or literary credentials to my name, and so this is NOT an academic answer at all (and if any medievalists want to add onto this further then please go ahead). This is all just my impressions gauged from reading med lit as a layman.

The Elaine thing, as far as I can tell, seems to be non-consensual mainly in order to exculpate Lancelot of guilt for fathering a child, and to add in relationship drama. From what I’ve read, the authors seem to be saying less he was raped and more this sex was not his fault. This is important because it contrasts with the sex with Guinevere, which absolutely IS his fault and for which God judges him in the Grail Quest. To my knowledge Galahad never finds out how he was conceived on the page, but at least in Malory he spends like a good 6 months on a boat with Lancelot and I find it hard to imagine Malory DIDN’T assume they talked about stuff like that? I asked my friends if they remembered him being told and Val said he thought he was told at one point but none of us could remember when, so take this answer with a grain of salt.

The thing that does stand out to me is that in the Grail Quest, which reflects Galahad’s worldview, Lancelot is judged not for Elaine but for Guinevere-- which adds an interesting layer to Galahad’s perspective on him, since the sin comes not only from the sex but also from the abuse of Lancelot’s position at court in order to get away with treason. Also, Galahad is a pacifist, and Lancelot destroys Camelot not because he sleeps with Guinevere, but because he kills for her. For me personally, who prefers to reinterpret Lancelot/Guinevere as a very deep friendship, this is really compelling, because Lancelot’s two biggest crimes in the eyes of Camelot are: 1) loyalty to the queen at the expense of the king, and 2) killing literally whoever he needs to in order to keep Guinevere safe. Neither of these is actually dependent on sex, but this is my personal bias for reasons that I will get into below and is a reading that willfully runs counter to the text. The text says that Lancelot fails the Grail Quest because of the sex, even if it isn’t sex that destroys Camelot.

The queens situation is different-- as with everything involving Lancelot and women, it’s specifically designed to present women as immoral corrupters of men. I think this is the closest you’re going to get to acknowledgement of the sexual harassment he faces, but it’s a double-edged sword: yes you are supposed to side with Lancelot, the victim, and you are supposed to hate the queens, but... it’s because the authors want to remind you that there are always evil women out there to prey on poor innocent men and lure them away from chastity. It sounds odd to associate Lancelot with chastity, but in contrast with more popular characters like Gawain he is defined by his faith to one specific woman. (There is one exception to this that I can think of, which is The Marvels of Rigomer, but that’s an abnormal text on many levels and the author wrote it with the intent to villainize Lancelot).

The evil queen gang is a motif that appears over and over again in medieval lit. It’s always Morgan, Sebile, and then either one or two other queens who don’t matter as much. They are always hyper-sexualized. They fight with each other over men (ex: Les Prophéties de Merlin). They take multiple lovers and go to ridiculous extents to get laid (I highly recommend reading a summary of Sebile and Sangremore’s hookup because it is hilarious and weirdly wholesome). They are villains.

I read a post once that said that the gendered stereotypes of sexual activity will always follow the norms of the era: nowadays it’s men who are portrayed as promiscuous in media, because society thinks having lots of sex is Cool (TM), but in medieval Western European literature it’s men who are portrayed as chaste, and women who are the Evil Temptresses judged for their lasciviousness. This is definitely a situation where you’re supposed to think man! Poor Lancelot just cannot catch a break! This really sucks, he’s getting tempted into sex! (Note the choice of tempted instead of pressured, I still don’t think the authors thought of this as attempted rape). BUT the reason this plot arc exists is to villainize women en masse; I think it is written with far more sexist intent than with the Elaine situation, where rape occurs pretty much because Galahad needs to exist somehow.

This brings us to Guinevere. I have a LOT of opinions about Guinevere. As presented in text, she is abusive and gaslighting, and, although it’s accidental, almost drives Lancelot to suicide. This is not an accident. Chrétien de Troyes pretty much exemplifies the genre of courtly love in Europe, and Lancelot or the Knight of the Cart is perhaps the most notable text produced in that tradition in France. Courtly love is predicated upon masculinity defined by service to women: service to women no matter the challenges, no matter the hardships, and no matter how she treats you. When I see Guinevere abusing Lancelot in KOTC, in the passages with her I’ve read in the Vulgate (I haven’t read much of the Vulgate yet), and in Malory, I see the author saying: look how much Lancelot suffers for his love! Look how noble and masculine it makes him! Look how he endures not only the hurt inflicted on him by society but also by the woman he loves! Look how much purer and inherently good men are than women! 

The authors, in writing the scenes with Guinevere and the queens (again, I think the Elaine situation is different), absolutely want you to acknowledge that Lancelot is unfairly victimized by women. They want you to internalize it. They want you to nod along and say wow, women sure suck, huh! Even the most beautiful and noble women can never match the love a man can possess! Women are really out there tempting pure men into sex and trying to corrupt them to evil! This is called blasme des femmes. It’s a major element in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as well, and infinitely many other medieval texts (I mention SGATGK because I read an article about it once).

So that’s my meta. But as I said above, I engage with Arthuriana as a transformative fan, and so I also want to mention how I personally think of these narratives. Because Arthuriana is a living tradition, you can reinterpret these plot points however you want. Every fan I’ve talked to, for instance, absolutely regards Lancelot to be a rape victim who suffers trauma due to what happened with Elaine, as do I. I also know people (like Grace) who look at the villainization of Guinevere and say no, fuck you, they love each other and she is not an abuser. I know a lot of other people (including myself) who say nah, Lancelot and Guinevere were just friends. I’ve seen a few Guinevere-abuses-Lancelot takes as well and I personally am uncomfortable with them because they never seem to address the misogynistic motivation of having every single woman Lancelot meets be an abuser or rapist, but I am sure there is a really good handling of that out there somewhere that I haven’t run into.

The last point I want to make is one I first made when I was kind of arguing with people about why they hated Guinevere so much. It’s not addressed at you, anon, but rather at anyone reading this to whom it might be a helpful thought: we as a fandom ignore the fact that Gawain is a serial rapist in many, many texts. I think Morgan, Sebile, and Guinevere deserve the same consideration*. They should not be judged more harshly for the same crime, as long as their status as an abuser or rapist is not integral to their character (as it is with Elaine). Med lit is sexist, and some of that sexism is obvious, but some is deeply insidious and tends to fly under the radar even today. Thank you so much for this question, I care about this topic so much and am delighted to get to talk about it. <3

*I’m not saying don’t acknowledge it happened in text, I’m saying we shouldn’t regurgitate the texts’ sexist portrayals in our own content without consideration for their origin. And again, this is NOT a broad statement, I am sure that there is a hypothetical fic out there where these characters are just as bad as they are in the source texts and it’s handled really well.

[animate-mush]

I want to engage with this but I'm not sure where to start. I know that's ominous but I'm not disagreeing, I'm just...interested.

One thing that cannot be overstated is that in the medieval mindset rape is not a breach of chastity or, indeed, virginity. (For the victim, obviously). You touch on this with Lancelot and Elaine where Lancelot remains Pure even after their encounter, but it's worth reinforcing that this is not a feminine appetite vs masculine purity thing - for women and for men Rape Doesn't Count (see, for instance, the large number of Virgin Martyrs who are also rape victims). The issue of what does or does not count as rape is a muddier one, but it is what it is.

Masculine Purity and is a huuuuuuuge thing. I have a good friend who did a lot of her graduate work on Masculine Purity in medieval literature and Heroic Virgins and all that. I don't have a lot to say about this except to agree with you that it's a Thing (contra the "virginity was invented by the patriarchy to oppress women" crowd). Lancelot's sexual (and otherwise) purity allows him to perform miracles.

Something to bear in mind is that the French Romances in particular were composed for (and in many cases by) a female audience. Lancelot suffering for Guinivere (and only for Guinivere) is not necessarily a See How Much Better Men Are Than Women thing, it's also hot af. Right? Like that's the point. This is why I say Gawain is a Male Power Fantasy and Lancelot is a Female Power Fantasy. It's a direct answer to (and escapist fantasy from) marriage as a political tool for the securing of alliances and the beggetting of children (who in turn are useful to secure future political alliances). Lancelot is the medieval Mr. Darcy - the peerless man who gladly subjugates himself to you. The man who asks nothing and gives everything. He's not just being nice to get you into bed because sex is entirely off the table. He's the Lover, whose devotion is selfless and without reward and is wholly about you and nothing else, intentionally distinct from the Husband who is a social and political necessity and nothing more. This is why Arthur himself comes off so poorly in so many if these texts: the whole genre was built to satisfy the kink of the woman unfortunate enough to be married to Louis the Pious and was Over It. To the extent that Guinivere comes off as unnecessarily cruel, the point is wow, she doesn't deserve him, but you know who does? Me. I would treat this poor boy right. But even though she's mean he does it all anyway because he Loves Her So Much and, once again, that's hot af.

French Guinivere is Queen Eleanor's Mary Sue no I do not take criticism

There's also this idea of showing that Love us Pure by suffering for it. Like, Tristan and Isolde is the Ultimate Love Story (tm) because their love is Maximally Pure because it is magically induced. This is very foreign to modern (meaning here: my) sensibilities, but that's a huge part of why it is how it is. The Love Potion ensures that they have no ulterior motives - they have no motives at all - and so their mutual devotion is unsullied by baser things like agency. It all starts to fall apart only when Tristan accidentally falls for a woman he can actually legally have. I don't know where I am going with this but it seems very relevant. But the narrative never judges or condemns Tristan and Isolde for loving each other- they are blameless because they are induced so to do. Which I guess circles back to Lancelot and Elaine. The takeaway is that while rape is of course Very Bad, dubcon is actually desirable because it absolves the parties of any personal wrongdoing or transgression. It's not a sin if Magic Made Me Do It. Isolde's "infidelity" to Mark is not condemned. I mean, sometimes Mark murders them both over it, but that, we are shown, is because Mark is a Terrible Person. Isolde never has it coming (Tristan sometimes does because he falls for another woman without the excuse of a Love Potion, that cad.)

The other side of this is the centrality of personal purity vs sin. You point out that Lancelot fails the Grail Quest because if the sex, even though it's not the sex that destroys Camelot. Which is exactly right. The Grail Quest is about personal purity, and Lancelot has sacrificed his own personal purity. The wider political ramifications are immaterial. It's a spiritual quest, and so is affected by Lancelot's personal spiritual failings. The fall of Camelot is down to blood feuding, and honestly blood feuding is its own punishment.

If there's a common theme in early medieval literature, particularly in the north, it's that Blood Feuding Is Terrible Actually. So much of Scandinavian and Anglo Saxon law is just: How Not To Blood Feud (have you considered a cash settlement instead? Please?) Lancelot doesn't just kill for A Woman, he kills a dude with brothers outside of the normal rules of engagement. He aggro'd the Orkneys. It's one thing to Suffer Personally for your devotion (and by One Thing I mean, as always, hot af); it's quite another (that is, not sexy because nothing is sexy about blood feuding, which is terrible) to make it political by murdering people in socially unacceptable ways.

(The only thing worse than blood feuding is kinslaying, cuz you can't even have a good blood feud about it).

But my point is the Grail Quest doesn't care about the fall of Camelot. That's politics. The Grail Quest cares about personal Purity. This is why Gawain is the worst grail knight because he's all politics and functionally no spiritual purity. (The best Grail Knight is, of course, Bors, because when folks tell him: this is about Personal Spiritual Purity so you gotta purify yourself, he's like Cool. I'm on it. And then just...does. By contrast to Gawain who's like "that sounds like work" and goes home.)

I guess the title of this essay ended up being Purity vs Politics. Anyway, super interesting stuff.

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

this is all very fascinating and interesting to me but also this:

It's one thing to Suffer Personally for your devotion (and by One Thing I mean, as always, hot af); it's quite another (that is, not sexy because nothing is sexy about blood feuding, which is terrible) to make it political by murdering people in socially unacceptable ways.

(The only thing worse than blood feuding is kinslaying, cuz you can't even have a good blood feud about it).

was delightful

(not being able to have a good blood feud about kinslaying also comes up as a problem in medieval irish texts... how do you pay an honour price to somebody’s kin after you murder them if you are, in fact, both their kin and their murderer? doesn’t work! nobody to compensate! big murder spirals occur!)

[prokopetz]

It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?

[veteratorianvillainy]

#friendly reminder that I once put my statistics degree to good use and did some calculations about ship ratios#and yes considering the gender ratios of characters#the prevalence of gay ships is completely predictable (via sarahtonin42)

[persephoneshadow-deactivated202]

I feel this is something that does often get overlooked in slash shipping, especially in articles that try to ‘explain’ the phenomena. No matter the show, movie or book, people are going to ship. When everyone is a dude and the well written relationships are all dudes, of course we’re gonna go for romance among the dudes because we have no other options.

[prokopetz]

Totally.

A lot of analyses propose that the overwhelming predominance of male/male ships over female/female and female/male ships in fandom reflects an unhealthy fetishisation of male homosexuality and a deep-seated self-hatred on the part of women in fandom. While it’s true that many fandoms certainly have issues gender-wise, that sort of analysis willfully overlooks a rather more obvious culprit.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we have a hypothetical media franchise with twelve recurring speaking roles, nine of which are male and three of which are female.

(Note that this is actually a bit better than average representaton-wise - female representation in popular media franchises is typicaly well below the 25% contemplated here.)

Assuming that any character can be shipped with any other without regard for age, gender, social position or prior relationship - and for simplicity excluding cloning, time travel and other “selfcest”-enabling scenarios - this yields the following (non-polyamorous) possibilities:

Possible F/F ships: 3 Possible F/M ships: 27 Possible M/M ships: 36

TOTAL POSSIBLE SHIPS: 66

Thus, assuming - again, for the sake of simplicity - that every possible ship is about equally likely to appeal to any given fan, we’d reasonably expect about (36/66) = 55% of all shipping-related media to feature M/M pairings. No particular prejudice in favour of male characters and/or against female characters is necessary for us to get there.

The point is this: before we can conclude that representation in shipping is being skewed by fan prejudice, we have to ask how skewed it would be even in the absence of any particular prejudice on the part of the fans. Or, to put it another way, we have to ask ourselves: are we criticising women in fandom - and let’s be honest here, this type of criticism is almost exclusively directed at women - for creating a representation problem, or are we merely criticising them for failing to correct an existing one?

[observethewalrus]

YES YES YES HOLY SHIT YES FUCKING THANK YOU!

[ainedubh]

Also food for thought: the obvious correction to a lack of non-male representation in a story is to add more non-males. Female Original Characters are often decried as self-insertion or Mary Sues, particular if romance or sex is a primary focus.

[slitthelizardking]

I really appreciate when tumblr commentary is of the quality I might see at an academic conference. No joke.

[lierdumoa]

This doesn’t even account  for the disparity in the amount of screen time/dialogue male characters to get in comparison to female characters, and how much time other characters spend talking about male characters even when they aren’t onscreen. This all leads to male characters ending up more fully developed, and more nuanced than female characters. The more an audience feels like they know a character, the more likely an audience is to care about a character. More network television writers are men. Male writers tend to understand men better than women, statistically speaking. Female characters are more likely to be written by men who don’t understand women vary well. 

But it’s easier to blame the collateral damage than solve the root problem.

[destinationtoast]

Yay, mathy arguments. :)

This is certainly one large factor in the amount of M/M slash out there, and the first reason that occurred to me when I first got into fandom (I don’t think it’s the sole reason, but I think it’s a bigger one than some people in the Why So Much Slash debate give our credit for). And nice point about adding female OCs.

In some of my shipping-related stats, I found that shows with more major female characters lead to more femslash (also more het).  (e.g. femslash in female-heavy media; femslash deep dive) I’ve never actually tried to do an analysis to pin down how much of fandom’s M/M preference is explained by the predominance of male characters in the source media, but I’m periodically tempted to try to do so.

[folklorebytaylorswift]

[sdrgiobhjkfdlbjreiug-deactivate]

I hate that I laughed at this

[kyraneko]

“Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there,” and another one appears. And dodges the downward sweep of claws, darting to the side, bouncing off the pentagram’s barriers, and tripping over the demon’s tail. “In the Vatican!” she cries out as she moves, using the State Farm Agent summoning charm to modify the situation as she was taught, and mentally thanking her trainer for expecting her to be fast enough to do it on the first incantation.

Most State Farm agents, when they run into trouble, have to get the customer to do the jingle a second time. That guy with the buffalo was lucky.

The magic takes hold, and she materializes in the aisle of St. Peter’s Basilica, still holding the demon by the tail, in the middle of Sunday morning Mass. The music clatters unprofessionally to a halt as laypeople, deacons, priests, monks, nuns, and the Pope all turn their attention to the surprised demon whose fifth course of dinner has turned, unaccountably, into a visit to one of his least favorite places on Earth.

There is chanting in Latin, and vaguely cross-shaped gestures, and clouds of incense, and the demon vanishes in a puff of smoke, whether from the efforts of the clergy or of his own volition no one can say. The Agent doesn’t wait, fleeing towards the doors and escaping in the confusion.

She gains the exit and walks, purposefully, toward Rome proper; there, she ducks into the nearest alley. A burner cell phone comes out of one of the less-used pockets of her purse, and she dials a number from memory.

“Allstate,” says a smooth masculine voice after three rings.

“State Farm,” she answers. “I’m calling in a favor.”

“Yeah?” Interest. “What sort?”

As she talks she’s pulling out her smartphone, keying an app that was activated by the summoning, and pulling up the policyholder data that enabled the incantation to work.

“Insurance fraud,” she said, and can almost hear teeth sharpening on the other end of the line. She gives him the name, the address, the policy number. “Someone needs some mayhem.”

“That’s my name,” the man says.

She smiles. “Someone needs all the mayhem.”

He chuckles. Slow. Evil. Even with the echoes of demonic laughter ringing in her ears, she’s impressed. “Don’t worry,” he says, almost purring.

“You’re in good hands.”

[thewinterotter]

OH MY FUCKING GOD I just read insurance commercial fan fiction and it was so good, bless you, I’m going to remember this day forever.

[kyraneko]

whatnursejack:

IT COMES BACK TO ME! *preens*

Part 2:

It’s not too long later—State Farm will occasionally loan out their teleportation trick, though Heaven help anyone who tries to use it to compete with them—and the man they call Mayhem is squatting next to a demonic circle with tacky half-dried blood under the leather soles of his shoes. Whoever dispelled the circle didn’t do a good job of it; the ring is still faintly smoldering and Mayhem has already singed his fingers on the air above it. He’s in the basement of a house with a State Farm homeowner’s policy, waiting for his partner in, erm, crime, to show up.

“Oh, good heavens.” He smiles at the sound of someone hopping delicately back, then carefully tiptoeing through the mess. Demons are messy eaters, and Flo’s wearing all white.

She steps gingerly over what might be most of a femur, looks from circle to Mayhem to—is that half a skull on the floor? “Freaky. Whaddaya need?”

“Tech,” he says. “State Farm knows the homeowner summoned them, but the Agent reported at least five people present. Maybe six. She isn’t sure, what with being busy evading a demon inside a very small space with zappy walls.”

Flo’s already got a—where does she get those from anyway? a cardboard box in her hands. Mayhem watches as she unfolds it, refolds it, and ends up with something significantly bigger, shaped like a satellite dish. He tries to watch how she does it; they may be working together, but they’re still rivals and his own higher-ups will be very interested in the latest whatever-it-does that Progressive has come up with.

A blue glow lights up the concave side. Mayhem is pretty sure cardboard doesn’t work that way. Flo makes a pleased sound, and starts rattling off names, addresses, policy numbers.

Impressed, Mayhem asks, “How the fuck?” If Progressive is developing some sort of superspy technology, well, that’s kind of ominous.

Flo grins and looks embarrassed. “I, ah, have occasional dealings with a couple guys from That Other Insurance Company. One of them knows someone who knows someone who works in quality control for the Infernal Realms, and it turns out Hell monitors all their summoned manifestations for safety purposes. His contact got me the list of who was there.”

Mayhem nods. He’s had occasional encounters That Other Insurance Company himself. Bland, grey-suited, timid men who are even worse spies than they are insurance agents. “Wait, Hell has a quality control department?”

“And all other forms of administration,” Flo says. “I understand it’s to generate maximum paperwork. It is a place of punishment, after all.”

Mayhem actually winces. “That’s definitely hellish. All right. The Agent who called me in is flying back from Italy and should meet us in a few hours. Should give us plenty of time to plan an attack. Are they all State Farm customers?”

“Just the one,” Flo replies, folding her toy up, and Mayhem watches with vague envy as it becomes a giant sword. “One Allstate, one Progressive, one Geico, two Farmers. We gonna invite anyone else to the party?” She hopes so. Mayhem’s precision strikes on any sort of insurance fraud perpetrators are the stuff of legend, and the Farmers guys would bring in enough absurdity to make it a work of art.

Mayhem’s grin is something that ought to haunt her nightmares. Instead, she finds herself matching it. “Yes,” he says. “Let’s.”

[dakotacityukuleleorchestra-deac]

I wished adult media meant “a more nuanced and more global perspective and that considers long-term implications” instead of “darker and sexier”

[ivyblossom]

Hi there, I'm a big big fan of yours :). I have been thinking about the very first episode, when Sherlock and John come to the restaurant and Angelo says without hesitation to Sherlock, Anything for you and your date. I'm thinking that this is a confirmation that Angelo knows that Sherlock is gay, and that he might even have seen Sherlock with other dates, in the past. Because why else would he say something like that, with such confidence? Would be interesting to hear what you think! Cheers!

Most of the people who care about Sherlock say things like that. His brother and his landlady think he’s gay, and Mrs Hudson admits that he’s never been in a relationship to her knowledge, but she makes that assumption more than anyone. Why is that?

I’ve said this before, and I see others have suggested that it’s natural for people to assume someone like Sherlock is gay. 

Here’s the thing about that: straight people pretty much never assume someone who hasn’t expressed an explicit attraction to the opposite sex is gay. Unless a man fits the flamboyant, limp-wristed and lisping stereotype of a gay man (which Sherlock is not), straight people will 99.9% of the time not question their core assumption that everyone they meet is straight, and sometimes not even a stereotype will makes them twig. Exhibit A: there were people who were surprised to discover that Liberace was gay. 

This is heterosexism and it is rampant. It’s the reason why gay people have to keep coming out their whole lives, forever, every time they meet new people, because in the English-speaking world, people tend to assume that everyone is straight until they are forcibly corrected. That’s the reason why coming out is even a thing. It is intensely boring. Because of this reality, it seems unlikely to me that people like Angelo and Mrs Hudson are making entirely baseless assumptions about Sherlock’s sexual orientation. I mean this isn’t middle school. They would have had some evidence to behave with such certainty, and it would have had to have been some pretty blatant evidence.

Read More

[dungeongrind]

The Very Hungry Rust Monster is a mini-comic I made a few years back. I’ve seen it floating around Tumblr without attribution recently, so I’ve uploaded a higher-resolution version, properly credited.

[ddemotivators]

…and neither were his friends!