Νησσοτροφεῖον

[emilevich]

Vasily Kandinsky, Capricious Forms, July 1937

[biruesque]

extremely normal thoughts of a teenage girl

[canmom]

big character poster saying THE DOUJIN CIRCLE IS THE ATOM OF THE FUTURE SOCIETY

[romanceyourdemons]

first day as a second century warlord i have my men tie branches to their horses’ tails to stir up dust and make it look like there’s a lot of us but i forget it just rained so there isn’t any dust and the enemy can clearly see there’s like twenty of us all spread out in a line

[romanceyourdemons]

second day as a second century warlord i bribe a bunch of kids to start singing a nursery rhyme i carefully crafted to spread misinformation and further my strategic ends but they change the lyrics to be about poop and the enemy isn’t misdirected at all

[romanceyourdemons]

third day as a second century warlord i lure my enemy into a narrow valley and send a team of archers to shoot them from the high ground but there was a feral hog napping on the trail up to the overlook and they couldn’t decide whether to try and shoot it or just go around and by the time the hog woke up and left on its own the enemy had already passed safely below

[romanceyourdemons]

fourth day as a second century warlord we attempt to join a battle on the side of the guy we want to ally with but he and the guy he’s fighting have really similar names and it’s finally dusty and i misread the standards and attack the wrong guy. so now we’re stuck with this total loser of a liege lord, because how the fuck do you explain that after a battle?

[romanceyourdemons]

fifth day as a second century warlord and some sort of wizard wanders into camp, my loser liege lord wants to execute him for being a wizard but i convince him to let the wizard stay, because i want to do more weather-based strategies and i’m pretty sure having a camp wizard can help with that. after the welcome to the team banquet the wizard steals half the treasury and my liege lord’s wife and leaves

[romanceyourdemons]

sixth day as a second century warlord my loser liege lord sends me to reinforce a city he’s taken, but in the confusion of leaving i forgot to take the token that would have gotten us into the city, so my men have to wait outside the city walls for like eight hours while i ride back to get it

[romanceyourdemons]

seventh day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord finally joins me in the city, it turns out he’s actually a pretty cool guy, and he isn’t even that mad at me for letting the wizard steal his wife. i decide to shoot my shot but i’m really nervous and keep on stalling because what if i mess up our relationship and by extension jeopardize the security of my men, and eventually he just says goodnight and goes back to his room, where an assassin is in the process of setting up to kill him

[romanceyourdemons]

eighth day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord tells me to fake defect to his rival warlord, the one i originally wanted to ally with, to find out if he was the one who sent the assassin and why. but my whole way over to the rival warlord i’m worried that this has something to do with the wizard thing or how awkward i made it last night

[romanceyourdemons]

ninth day as a second century warlord i try to tactfully ask my fake liege lord if he sent the assassin to kill my loser liege lord and it turns out the idea of using assassins never occurred to him, but now that i’ve suggested it he’s really into it. in order to save my loser liege lord i volunteer to be the one to kill him

[romanceyourdemons]

tenth day as a second century warlord on my way back to my loser liege lord’s city i realize i won’t be able to collect my men from my fake liege lord until i bring back my loser liege lord’s head. this would have been a great thing to think of before i got myself in this situation. i go back to my loser liege lord and ask him to rescue my men, and he tells me that if he could sack my fake liege lord’s camp he already would have. that doesn’t change the fact that my men are still trapped. they’re prisoners, even. i go back to my room to sulk

[romanceyourdemons]

eleventh day as a second century warlord i find a little caged pigeon in the rafters of my loser liege lord’s room and deduce it belonged to the assassin. without asking permission or telling my loser liege lord goodbye i let the pigeon loose and follow it north. don’t ask what i was doing in my loser liege lord’s room. it’s not important

[romanceyourdemons]

twelfth day as a second century warlord i disguise myself as a wizard and enter the camp of the coalition leader the pigeon led me to. in the middle of my little sleight of hand performance i make eye contact with the coalition leader’s second-in-command. IT’S THE WIZARD THAT STOLE MY LOSER LIEGE LORD’S WIFE. after the banquet i corner the fake wizard and ask him what the fuck is going on and he just says “wouldn’t you like to know” and leaves. i don’t know what to say to that so i just let him go

[romanceyourdemons]

thirteenth day as a second century warlord i’m honestly so sick of not knowing what’s going on, so i adjust my wizard costume to passably disguise myself as a woman and break into the women’s area of the camp, where sure enough my loser liege lord’s wife is. i ask her what she’s doing here and she tells me the fake wizard overheard her singing a poem she overheard on the street, not knowing it contains the coalition leader’s formation’s weaknesses. the fake wizard kidnapped her and assigned an assassin to kill her husband before they figured out the poem’s significance. she shares the first couplet with me but i’m discovered and thrown out before she can share any more. she doesn’t need to. through a bizarre coincidence of homophones, it’s the poop version of my misinformation nursery rhyme

[romanceyourdemons]

fourteenth day as a second century warlord i go back to my loser liege lord and tell him everything, urging him to join with my fake liege lord to attack the coalition leader according to the weaknesses in the nursery rhyme. he tells me frankly that he doesn’t trust me anymore. i ask him to execute me if that’s really true, because i can’t bear to live if i can’t protect him and i can’t protect my men. he agrees to attack the coalition leader

[romanceyourdemons]

fifteenth day as a second century warlord. due to the information in the nursery rhyme, and thanks to my loser liege lord reminding me of the weather conditions multiple times while planning our battle strategy, our alliance carries the day. my loser liege lord gets his wife back. my men tell me that our fake liege lord actually treated them really well and they’d like to stay with him if i don’t mind. i do mind, now that neither the men i love nor the man i love have any use for me, but i don’t tell them that

[romanceyourdemons]

sixteenth day as a second century warlord i’m preparing to leave to i don’t know where, maybe to try to become a wizard for real, when my loser liege lord stops me and asks me where i’m going. he says he had hoped i would continue to work as his advisor. i was unaware i was his advisor in the first place. i agree, and he tells me he’s truly honored to have me in his service at last. he has known i am a rare and talented man with a strategic intelligence far above his ever since the day he witnessed me tying branches to my horses’ tails in six inches of mud, and could not for the life of him figure out why

[sepiascissors]

Critical background info on our beloved second century warlord

[kittycatcarla]

Image description: Screenshot of another set of posts by OP:

"jesus christ where'd all these people reading my silly little warlord posts come from"

"anyways i'm glad so many people like my warlord guy, his name is huang mi (styled yuzhi) and he's like that all the time. he has a big scar on his thigh from fucking up a sword dance. he hates being wet and has never owned or sought to own an umbrella. his favourite colour is orange, but his men didn't want to wear that colour so now their uniforms are red but it's not like he minds that much right it's just a uniform just a stupid uniform. whatever. he has a recurring nightmare where he keeps mispelling his own name, and he wakes up screaming every time. with his advice his lord has never lost a battle"

\End ID

[naruki]

Oedipus and the Virtual Sphinx (Brian Kenny as Oedipus), 40x30 inches, Oil on Linen, 2018

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I think people get mixed up a lot about what is fun and what is rewarding. These are two very different kinds of pleasure. You need to be able to tell them apart because if you don't have a balanced diet of both then it will fuck you up, and I mean that in a "known cause of persistent clinical depression" kind of way.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

When people say they enjoy things, they usually mean one of two things. The first is that these things are fun; that is, they satisfy immediate emotional needs or desires for pleasure. Candy Crush is fun, for people who are into that sort of thing; waterslides are fun, watching TV is fun. Fun, in the way I'm defining it for this post, is the party food of pleasure; immediately and usually temporarily satisfying, and after that, mostly satisfying only as a happy memory (although some of these activities, like watching a TV show, can generate further opportunities for pleasure down the line like daydreaming, discussion, and making fanart). Like party food, this kind of fun is a good thing to have, and someone who doesn't get enough of it is at high risk of stress-related health concerns. Also burnout. A lack of fun is a major contributor to burnout.

The second kind of pleasure that most people talk about is rewarding activity. The lack of rewarding activity in one's life is a major contributor to depression. It creates a sense of purposelessness and worthlessness and generates a low attention span, sapping the ability to feel long-term motivation or pleasure. People usually try to pick themselves up with the first kind of fun, which is a band-aid but not a very sticky one; the lack of rewarding activity grows and festers over time. Rewarding pleasure involves working on something long-term that feels worthwhile. There are usually also spots of fun (or you wouldn't have gotten into the activity enough for it to become rewarding), but there also tends to be long slogs that aren't that fun. Nevertheless, when people report on doing said activity, they will speak about it with great enjoyment and remember it being enjoyable and claim they like it. (I like being a writer. Writing can sometimes be boring as shit.) (Look into Csíkszentmihályi's work on experience sampling and flow states for more info on this, it is FASCINATING.)

In Reality is Broken, Jane McGonigal sums up what she thinks are the most important contributing factors to rewarding activity. These are not the only factors, but I agree that they're a good baseline of the critical ones. I'm going to paraphrase them using different language. The four big contributors are:

Satisfying work. This is the vaguest one because different people find different things satisfying. Basically, the task itself should feel productive, and you should not feel bad about doing it to the point where it causes you distress. Satisfying work involves clear goals with actionable steps and a clear product, preferably something that you can see, touch or use. A clean house, a new high score, a freshly built table, a happy child.

Mastery. Rewarding pleasure is often something that you can get better at. There are things to learn, practice, improve. Improving your ability to solve tricky code problems, getting better at painting landscapes, figuring out fun new strategies in Magic: The Gathering, being able to build computers better or faster or cheaper. Mastery does not require becoming the best at something (although some people enjoy that specifically also), merely seeing progress in yourself and being able to take pride int he fact that you are better than you were.

Social connection. Rewarding pleasure often involves social or community connection. A long-term social group that discusses fan theories of their favourite show. Your weekly tabletop rpg. Teaching a room full of kids who to make leather belts. Working at a small bookshop and making small talk with all the tourists. Some people find social activity to be fun in the 'immediate pleasure' kind of way, some don't, but it is a critical factor in mental health and in the long-term... rewardingness (?)... of a hobby. Animals can also partially fill this niche, but be warned, they are far, far less effective than people. Your cat might be able to stop you from committing suicide today. You cat alone will not make your life satisfying.

Contribution. Humans are community animals and have a need to be something larger than ourselves or, more specifically to be of service to something larger than ourselves. Looking after kids, cooking big meals for others, creating art or physical products for others. Teaching the next generation how to read. Serving your God. Saving a species of small fish from extinction. Volunteering at your local charity shop or soup kitchen. Being a member of a crowd to reach the Guinness World Record for "most people fit into a storage crate". Making useful tutorial videos, being an entertainer, joining your local queer support group or political organisation. Humans fucking love to be part of something bigger than their own brain and they fucking love to help people.

The world is full of rewarding activities, and not all of them rate high in all four categories. The woman working in the charity shop warehouse and chatting with her coworkers isn't necessarily all that interested in mastery of her job (although I've worked in these places and some people do take pride in learning to be as efficient as possible), the musical hermit training to become the best violinist in the world might not be all that interested in social connection or how the audience actually feels about him. You might have noticed that I've listed hobbies, jobs, and non-employed but important life work (volunteering and childrearing) as possible rewarding activities; you can find rewarding activities everywhere. (In fact the lack of rewarding pleasure in our work lives is a very serious problem that companies keep trying to condescendingly band-aid over. The late David Graeber had a lot to say about this and I highly recommend his work, particularly Bullshit Jobs, which is a book specifically discussing the lack of above points 1 and 4 (satisfying work and sense of contribution) in so many modern workplaces and its distressing psychological ramifications). Rewarding activities are not 'fun' all the time; in fact, Csíkszentmihályi's work found that many of them are quite unfun most of the time. They do, however, create long term pleasure, and are emotionally and psychologically critical.

One final point: research shows that computer stuff counts less. This isn't a 'hurr durr edison was a witch get off your damn computers and get a real job' point; plenty of people do most of their rewarding activity on computers, because the supply cost is so low (most of us already own some kind of computer) and it's so much easier to find an existing community. But it does, psychologically speaking, count less; your brain isn't very good at seeing computers stuff as as 'real', on a primitive sensory level, as things you can touch with your hands or people that are right in front of you. Your massive community of fellow fans on the internet are less effective at filling your social needs than the crochet club at your local library, even if you like the people on the internet much more. It doesn't have to be everything, but ideally you should have at least one physical meatspace social club and at least one physical meatspace hobby, craft, or volunteer job. (They can be the same thing. You can volunteer at a soup kitchen for both.) They don't have to be the most important thing -- I care way more about my writing (electronic) than my crochet (meatspace) and I do the writing a lot more -- but the meatspace thing should exist, if you can manage it.

[ironedorchid]

In education studies, similar ideas is often discussed using the Circle of Courage[1] developed by Larry Brendtro and Martin Brokenleg. This was based on research into what makes some at-risk kids resilient while others struggle to survive. The researchers worked with North American Indigenous / First Nations communities, and a lot of the imagery used in promoting the message was created by Indigenous artists and uses medicine wheel iconography.

via

The 4 parts of the circle are:

Belonging: a sense of community, loving others, and being [able to say "I am loved"][2]

Mastery: competence in many areas; cognitive, physical, social, and spiritual, responsibility, striving to achieve personal goals rather than superiority

Independence: Making one's own decisions and being responsible for failure or success, setting one's own goals, disciplining one's self.

Generosity: Looking forward to being able to contribute to others, being able to give cherished things to others.

These ideas are important in education because it shows teachers that when kids feel safe and accepted, when they are given work that is meaningful to them, and they have opportunities to make choices, then they are more likely to engage in learning.

Brendto and Brokenleg's work is also important because it shows teachers that kids who are considered to have behavioural problems are responding to their environment, and while teachers can't fix what is happening outside school, they can make their classroom a safe environment (belonging) and provide work which provides kids with ways to practise mastery, independence, and generosity.

[1] JStor link to "The Circle of Courage" (1991) Larry K. Brendtro, Martin Brokenleg, Steve Van Bockern and George Blue Bird [3]

[2] The image version does not include the whole sentence

[3] You might need an account to access the 1991 article on JStor, but you can read their 2006 paper which shows how their model compares to similar ideas from resilience research and positive psychology for free via Research Gate: The Circle of Courage and Positive Psychology

[hauntedbystorytelling]

Anonymous photographer, Japan, 1954. | Courtesy Galerie Lumière des Roses. | source

[mmmmalo]

For anyone still under the impression that June Egbert is just a product of the Toblerone wishes with no particular relevance to Homestuck proper, here’s an argument to the contrary: that June (or whatever you like to call her) was already here, woven into John’s relationship with the idea of Dad.

Act 1 has a certain preoccupation with the ideal forms of things, John having multiple instances of saying X isn’t a REAL X unless it has this or that characteristic. “A fire BELONGS in a fireplace, categorically.” One of those outbursts touches upon masculinity, with John saying a gentleman without a monocle is a piss-poor excuse for such. Along such a paradigm, you might gather that something like John saying the beaglepuss sucks as a disguise or trying (and failing) to integrate Dad’s pipe into the façade communicates that John is kind of grasping at this ideal of masculinity exemplified by Dad and getting frustrated that he can’t seem to measure up to it (or that masculinity feels “fake” on him).

This sort of dynamic is more blatant with Dave, who talks openly about how he isn’t a “hero”, not really, measuring himself against the impossible standards set by his Bro. But as much was already implicit in Act 1.

Later it gets established that John has some kind of fear of heights: the first ogres appear after John experiences vertigo from almost falling off the stairs, and again after getting launched by the pogo hammer. (Just as Karkat suspected he was given a planet covered in his own blood as a form of harassment, Sburb placed John’s house on that needle plateau because of this fear of heights; the game generally manifests adversaries in response to fear). The phobia becomes relevant to Dad stuff after the ogre fight is over, when John is hesitating to jump down into Dad’s room: it isn’t just that John’s nervous about entering the room for the first time, the descent itself makes John anxious. Furthermore, this juxtaposition serves to establish that the fear of heights and anxieties around Dad are related somehow, if not outright synonymous. The two are associated again at the beginning of Act 5 Act 2, when dream!John tries to jump over a canyon to reach Dad, but awakens mid-leap. The formal reason John awakens is Vriska of course, but if we ignore her we’re left with John approaching Dad and immediately experiencing vertigo. (The name “June” comes from Vriska contacting John shortly after this dream, incidentally)

This comes up again when John finds Dad’s wallet and gets overwhelmed by the prospect of Manhood and the responsibilities it entails – next thing you know John is flying around in Dad’s car, having fun… and after the scene is interrupted by Seek the Highblood, we return to find John crashing the car (another fall from the sky!) and talking with Vriska about dread surrounding societal expectations, and the possibility of rejecting them to pursue something different for yourself. John came into the scene worried (if quietly) about the expectations surrounding manhood, so the Vriska conversation serves to makes those kind of concerns more vivid.

The car crash is itself kind of a metaphor for that conversation’s trajectory… in Act 6 we see something analogous play out among the Dersites who have gotten into dapper-wear: one Dersite sits on a hat, panics about ruining it, and then begins to wonder if perhaps a crumpled hat could have a value of its own, aesthetically. (Dirk expresses this sort of counter-assessment more bombastically: “…the next best thing. By which you mean, the vastly superior thing.”) Dad Crocker swoops in to condemn the crumpled hat, but the Dersite’s tentative revaluation of an apparent failure mode is something the scene shares with Vriska, who initially regards her ambivalence towards murder as a symptom of personal failure, unbefitting her caste. John enters that conversation with a crumpled car, and from context we can guess John’s revaluation concerns “failing” to be a man in the way Dad is, and how maybe that doesn’t need to be considered a failure.

As laid out so far, I guess none of this quite necessitates trans-Egbert, since people can come at “anxiety and reservations at the prospect of embodying masculine ideals” from a number of angles… but there are other considerations which make me think wrestling with self-deprecating thoughts like “I’m a failed man” are maybe comorbid with a budding sense of being a girl, in Egbert’s case.

Foremost, I think it helps to recognize that Dad’s car can function as a symbol of John’s body. To sketch a case for that:

1a. Death often means transformation: the trolls die in questcocoons to reach the godtiers, suggesting that death stands between the caterpillar and the butterfly, their too solid flesh dissolved into a goo.

1b. A command in Act 1 implores John to “retrieve arms from MAGIC CHEST”. John complies twofold: we see some fake arms retrieved from the toy chest, held up by John’s real arms which have been “retrieved” from John’s ostensibly armless torso.

2. This dual usage of chest is deployed in part 3 of Openbound, in service of building a dysphoria metaphor (among other things). The segment reintroduces us to Fiduspawn, a game in which one creature hatches from another, a host creature, killing the host in the process (fans of the Alien films may recognize this as derivative of the “chestburster”, fans of Homestuck may recognize this as analogous to godtiering). Damara (who Rufioh refers to as “doll”) becomes the host plush, who is accused of locking away Rufioh’s “happy thought” (Tinkerbull) in her “chest”. Rufioh’s beef with Damara serves to illustrate an adversarial relationship with one’s own body, the ways in which the body itself seems to function as a barrier to some happiness. The carnal imprisonment of euphoria (the “happy thought”) represents dysphoria. The conversation between Kanaya and Porrim which follows has analogous content and offers a potential resolution to such a conflict, with Kanaya coming to distinguish her body from the reproductive duties assigned to her body by her caste’s place in society, and knowing that she is not “bound” to the Matriorb by any will but her own…

3. But the paradigm of Fiduspawn reminds us that the act of actually ripping the happy thought out of your chest has suicidal overtones, when taken literally. And Aradiabot notwithstanding, the inner ghosts the kids give up are often green: Dirkbot tears out his uranium heart and explodes, Rose peels pink bricks off the green core of an island and wonders aloud if her existence is a mistake, and (returning to our main topic!) John tries to retrieve the green package from Dad’s car. The retrieval of the box comes to represents the birth of the self from its shell, the now broken body, a gesture which overlaps with the pursuit of death.

So we can infer that Dad is akin to Damara here, having locked the desired object (the box, the “happy thought”) within a container that we can identify with John’s own body. Thus Vriska’s talk of perhaps rejecting her assigned role in society proceeds naturally from the wreckage of Dad’s car: insofar as the car functions as an emblem of the masculine expectations imposed upon John, the car’s wreckage suggests the possibility of liberation from those expectations, liberation from your own body. John is “sick to death of cake” – cake is a Life symbol imposed by Dad, in visceral excess, accumulating as every birthday marches John towards Manhood. The possibility of living as a girl does not seem to have occurred to John yet, life and masculinity seem inextricable and absolute. The first time John sees Dad’s car totaled (after Rose drops it), the symbol of self-as-corpse is surrounded by yellow bands of caution tape. The Authority Regulator who placed the tape will later declare himself to be THE LAW, and we should take his word for it: the scene’s function is to declare that the crumpled car, the “dead” and therefore feminized body, is forbidden to John. No surprise then that as John marches to her death, in defiance of the Law’s prohibition, she-whose-name-does-not-yet-suit-her is met with impressions of several maps that actually align with their territories: troll movies whose titles are their contents in full, a rocket encoded by the sound PCHOOOOO. John wants that for herself, I think. And as @lscholar once pointed out, it’s worth noting that John’s pursuit of this unity (this pursuit of “death”) is interrupted by Dave, who in saving John’s life repeatedly emphasizes their status as “bros” – masculinity being, again, inextricable from life within John’s symbol system.

…and that’s the short of it. A more detailed account might get into the association of Vriska and other blue girls with the feminized corpse, or read into Equius self-consciously roleplaying as a cat girl between John’s joyride and crash, or perhaps try to apply this car-body framework to the appearances of Dad’s car in the Epilogues. And I haven’t even touched upon clowns…but I’ll call it here for now.

[grimdr]

one of the most valuable insights that oral literature has to offer is that stories change, and no individual version of a living story (or a story that was living when it was recorded) — whether it’s the oldest, or the most extensive, or the most precisely structured, or whatever other criterion we might come up with — is more or less “authentic” or more or less “original” than any other

I find it’s challenging to wrap your head around this when you live in a culture that values literacy over orality as much as ours does — it’s very easy to fall into the trap of privileging either written versions of a text (e.g., when dealing with stories that exist both in oral form and in old written forms, like a fair amount of Goidelic folklore) or the oral versions that best align with what we expect from written literature; I see my students do it all the time and I know I’m far from immune to it myself

but at the end of the day a thousand-year-old written version of a story and an oral version collected in the 1930s are just…two different versions of the story. they come from radically different contexts and we may want to (or be able to) do different radically things with them, but neither is inherently “better” or “more authentic” or “more original” than the other

[grimdr]

Fhreagair trans-cuchulainn am post agad: one of the most valuable insights that oral…

one is not better than the other, but i do think there is a need to distinguish between them; the way people will talk about very modern folklore in the same breath as very old literature and assume both have as much to tell us about ancient belief systems, for example, collapses the different contexts in a way that i think is unhelpful to everybody.

i guess it’s like… the authenticity is related to the purpose to which the thing is being put. medieval texts aren’t an authentic source for 19th century fairy faith and 19th century folklore isn’t an authentic source for medieval narrative but each is an authentic source for itself. it’s just very often people use one for the other which is wrong not because one is worth less but just because it’s inappropriate to the context

oh, for sure! that’s what I was thinking about when I said “we may want to (or be able to) do radically different things with them”.

I’m really thinking purely at the level of narrative here, where I find people (myself included) have a tendency to look to the oldest or earliest written version of a story as if it’s the realest/best/whatever else and later versions (and particularly oral versions) are kind of…off-brand or corrupted

in particular I’m thinking about an article I had my students read about Balochi oral versions of Aladdin, a story whose genesis is opaque but which as far as we can tell probably didn’t exist, at least not in the form we have it now, before Hanna Diyab told it to Antoine Galland in 1709 and Galland published his translation/retelling (Galland reinterpreted all the stories to some extent but we don’t know to what extent “Aladdin” specifically is a translation vs. retelling because we don’t have the Arabic manuscript he says Diyab wrote for him)

even if the full structure of Aladdin “originates” with Diyab or Galland, thinking about Galland’s written text as “the original” and the Balochi versions as corrupted/inaccurate latter-day derivatives doesn’t really help us think about either Galland’s text or the Balochi versions for what they actually are — a carefully constructed product of early Orientalist scholarship and turn-of-the-18th-century trends in French literature on the one hand; stories circulating in a living oral tradition in a very different cultural context on the other — or even really about the relationship between them, particularly when the “derivatives” are at almost 300 years’ (and at least two, possibly three or four, languages’) remove from the “original”, let alone a thousand years or more in the case of some narratives in the Goidelic languages

[countrydionysia]

Welcome to the 2020 Rural Dionysia

We are excited to announce the launch of the first edition of the Rural Dionysia. Over the past years, the City Dionysia, first held by @forthegloryofthetheoi and later passed over to @sisterofiris has known some success. It is for this reason that we decided to introduce the Rural Dionysia as a smaller event to warm us up for the Dionysian season. 

As of now, the two admins are myself @thegrapeandthefig and @adri-le-chat. Our ask boxes are opened, so feel free to address questions to either one of us or directly on this blog if the need arises. 

How to participate

The Rural Dionysia is meant to be a smaller competition than its urban counterpart, as such, we have selected only 3 categories: 

Freestyle poetry

Modern hymns

“Complete the fragment”

As you can see, we are keeping the poetry category from the City Dionysia and adding 2 new ones. For clarity: poetry and modern hymn differ in that a poetry entry can be about anything (myth, personal religious experience, etc.), while a “modern hymn” entry has to sing the praises of a deity.

As for the “Complete the fragment” category, here is the chosen fragment for this edition: 

Sappho, Fragment 43 … throws peace mind … sits down … for day is near into confusion … but come, … toil … my friends

The challenge is that the initial fragment must be included somewhere in your piece somehow in their original order. This means you can fill the gaps however you want, but you can’t switch the order of the words in your piece. For added clarity, please put in bold or underline those words in your composition, so we can spot them right away :)

Please submit your piece through submissions on this blog. Check the rules below for further information. 

Calendar of the event

Nov. 15: Official announcement and opening of submissions Dec. 13: Final submission day.  Dec. 15: Vote opening Dec. 26: Vote closing Dec. 28: Announcement of the winners!

No worries though! We will be posting reminders about each step when the time comes. 

General rules

They are the nearly the same as for the City Dionysia, that is: 

Roleplay and fanfic are not acceptable submissions. This is a religious festival, please respect our faith and do not submit an entry if you are roleplaying or writing fanfiction.

Unlike with the City Dionysia, entries do not necessarily have to be about specific deities or hellenic polytheism except for the “Modern Hymn” category, which has to be dedicated to one or many gods. 

All stories, myths, and poems must be entered using the submissions button.

All entries must be tagged for the category they are being submitted to. Entries must also be tagged for potentially triggering content and squicks.

An entry may only be submitted to a single category.

Each person may only submit one entry per category each year.

Winners for each category will be decided by popular vote.

[heaveninawildflower]

August calendar pages from The Getty.

1) Threshing; Virgo ( Strasbourg, France, early 16th century ). Tempera colours on parchment.

2) Reaping; Virgo (Belgium, circa 1510–1520). Tempera colours, gold, and ink on parchment. Workshop of the Master of James IV of Scotland (Flemish, before 1465 - about 1541).

3) Threshing; Virgo (France, circa 1480–1485). Tempera colours, gold, and ink on parchment.

4) Threshing; Virgo (Belgium, early 1460s). Tempera colours, gold leaf, and ink on parchment. Workshop of Willem Vrelant (Flemish, died 1481, active 1454 - 1481).

5) August Calendar Page (Belgium, after 1460). Tempera colours, gold leaf, and ink on parchment.

6) Reaping; Virgo (France, circa 1410).Tempera colours, gold leaf, gold paint, and ink on parchment.

7) Saint Louis (France, 1440–1450).Tempera colours, gold leaf, gold paint, and ink on parchment. Workshop of the Bedford Master (French, active first half of 15th century).

8) Threshing; Virgo (France, 1440–1450).Tempera colours, gold leaf, gold paint, and ink on parchment. Workshop of the Bedford Master (French, active first half of 15th century).

9) Reaping (Belgium, mid-1200s). Tempera colours, gold leaf, and ink on parchment.

10) Detail of wild strawberry plant from no 5.

Images and text information courtesy The Getty.

This image is available for download, without charge, under the Getty’s Open Content Program.

[houghtonlib]

The procession of the months: the verses by Beatrice Crane; the designs by Walter Crane, [1889].

Typ 8302.89.10

Houghton Library, Harvard University,

[kumanaru]

another assignment for illustration class! we had to make on month of the 2017 calendar and I picked July! 

water lilies are one of the flowers related to that month and can mean “being far from the one they love”- so I made a bitter sweet Hadrian and Antinous moment (I sure love to suffer—) also tried a different coloring style and I must say I’m quite pleased with the result?? 

[honorthegods]

Roman polytheist observances for the month  of July—Quinctilis

Note: One’s household deities customarily receive offerings (food, honey, grapes, rosemary, and/or flowers are traditional) on the Kalends, Nones, Ides, and festival dates.

1 (Kalends) Always sacred to Juno

   Anniversary of the temple of Felicitas, the deified personification of divine favor        and happiness.

5 Poplifugia This festival day either commemorates the flight of the people during the tempest that blew during the apotheosis of Romulus, or the calamity of the attack of the Fidenii on Rome after the Gauls had sacked the city. Since this is tornado season where I live, I observe it as the former. 

This is a dies nefasti publici; physical labor should be avoided, except that which is urgent and cannot be postponed.

6–13 Ludi Apollinares, games instituted in thanksgiving to Apollo for his aid in defeating  Hannibal.

6 Anniversary of the Temple of Fortuna Muliebris (of women)

7 (Nones) Feast of Juno Caprotina (of the wild fig)

  Ancillarum Feriae (Festival of the Serving Women) More here

  Sacrifice to Consus, protector of stored grains and seeds

  Festival to the Pales, the deities who protect shepherds, flocks, and livestock.

8 Vitulatio, a festival day of thanksgiving to the goddess Vitula, embodiment of joy and life. 

This is a dies religiosus, a day of no private religious rites, no lawsuits to be initiated, no journeys to be started or new projects begun; basically, a vacation day as much as can be managed.

9 Commemoration of the first entry of Hadrian as Emperor into the City of Rome, 118 CE. Hadrian was probably proclaimed Pontifex Maximus during this visit. He took the duties of High Priest very seriously, officiating at rituals, building and restoring temples throughout the empire, and promulgating cults.

10 Memorial of the Death of Hadrian in 138 CE, at age 62. Hadrian was known for his concern for ordinary citizens, his care of the army, and his interest in the welfare of the provinces.

15 (Ides) Always sacred to Jupiter

 The Transvectio equitum was held on this day, a parade of the Roman Equestrians    in thanksgiving for the aid received from Castor and Pollux at the battle of Lake    Regillus in the fourth century BCE. Castor and Pollus, the Dioscuri, are patrons of  travelers and, since many people vacation at this time of year, offerings could be    made to them at this time for protection when traveling.

This is a dies nefasti publici; physical labor should be avoided, except that which is urgent and cannot be postponed.

17 Anniversary of the double temple shared by Honos, the god of chivalry, honor and      military justice, and Virtus, the deified personification of valor, excellence,    courage, character, and worth.

   Sacrifice to Victoria, the deified personification of Victory.

This is a dies nefasti publici; physical labor should be avoide, except that which is urgent and cannot be postponed.

18 Commemoration of the the defeat of the Romans by the Gauls at the Battle of the Allia in 390 BC, leading to the sack of Rome by the Gauls. 

This is a dies ater (day of ill-omen). Jupiter and Janus should not be named, and one should try to avoid making journeys, starting new projects, or doing anything risky.

19 and 21 Lucaria, the two-day festival of the grove. Why is there a day’s break in between? I haven’t found a plausible explanation. It is possible that this festival was held in honor of the nymphs and dryads whose trees provide welcome shade during the hottest time of year; equally, it could have been a propitiation of nymphs and dryads whose groves are thinned at this time of year to provide more light or recreational space. 

Each day of this festival is a dies nefasti publici; physical labor should be avoided, except that which is urgent and cannot be postponed.

22 Anniversary of the dedication of the Temple of Concordia, the deified personification of agreement in marriage and society..

23 Neptunalia, festival held in honor of Neptune. 

This is a dies nefasti publici; physical labor should be avoided, except that which is urgent and cannot be postponed.

25 Furrinalia, a festival held in honour of the goddess Furrina. More here. This is a dies nefasti publici; physical labor should be avoided, except that which is urgent and cannot be postponed.

30 Anniversary of the dedication of the Temple of Fortuna Huiusque Diei (the Fortune Who Orders This Day). 

This is a dies nefasti publici; physical labor should be avoided, except that which is urgent and cannot be postponed.

31 River Deities and Antinous. This is a modern festival honoring Antiious in his association with Hapi, the god of the annual flooding of the Nile in ancient Egyptian religion. It is also a day to honor and thank the many river deities of the world, especially of the river(s) near one’s home, who are the givers of drink and of life.

[undertwotrees]

Happy Father’s Day! #Ασκληπιός #Ερμής #Διόνυσος

[honorthegods]

Dark Nike by Andy Lendzion, 2012 Image source: X

Juneteenth (June 19th) is a celebration of freedom that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. On June 19th 1865, Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas to announce that the Civil War had ended, and that the enslaved were now free. 

Juneteenth is a day to honor those who suffered and those who still suffer from the legacy of slavery, to celebrate the event of emancipation, and to reflect on the work still to be done to establish unity, equality and justice.

[honorthegods]

Ponte Principe Amedeo Savoia Aosta, Rome Photograph by David Merrett, 2008. via flickr.com Source: X License: CC BY 2.0

Today, May 31, marks the first day of the Ludi Tarentini, a festival to honor di inferii, the gods of the underworld. It consisted of sacrifices, lectisternia (propititary meals offered to the gods), and games held over three days and nights. The celebration was held at the Terentum, the volcanic western point of the Campus Martius, located near the eastern end of the Ponte Principe Amadeo Savoia Aosta, and beneath, or just south of, the basilica of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini (on the right side of the above photo). The first evidence of the Ludi Tarentini is from 249 B.C.E. Because they were intended to benefit everyone alive at the time, this festival was held around every 100 years. They were revived during the reign of Augustus as the Ludi Saeculares.

It is possible that the Ludi Tarentini were instituted to cultivate the support of the gods of Taranto, a city of Magna Graecia in southern Italy which Rome conquered after winning the second of two wars. The most notable deities of Taranto were Hades and Persephone, whom the Romans worshiped as Dis Pater and Proserpina.

The foundation story to this festival focuses on a man named Valesius, whose young son and daughter became ill. When all cures failed, a voice told him to sail down the river to Taranto, where he would find an altar. There, he was to boil water from the Tiber, and give it to his children to drink. After only a short time, the condition of the children became dire, and he was forced to pull his boat into shore near the Campus Martius, outside the walls of Rome. In desperation, he drew water from the river, boiled it, and gave it to the children with a prayer. The children miraculously recovered, and Valesius learned the place at which he had landed was known as Tarentem, for the volcanic activity in the area, and for that reason was sacred to di inferii. Valesius took his children back home, and returned the next day to offer sacrifices to Dis Pater, Proserpina, and Tellus Mater, the earth goddess.

A round marble altar to Dis and Proserpina was dedicated at the spot. It was unearthed at each Ludi for sacrifices, and then reburied. The final Ludi Saeculares was held during the reign of Philippus in 248 C.E.  The festival was revived by Pope Boniface VIII as the papal jubilee, a year in which the sins of pilgrims to Rome were forgiven. The altar to Dis Pater and Proserpina was reportedly discovered during an archaeological excavation in 1886-7, it but has either been lost, or is no longer accessible.