here lies trans-cuchulainn, 2017-2024. while they were here they had strong opinions about cú chulainn, parchment, and the necessity of irish-speaking vampires. they still have strong opinions about these things, they're just doing it somewhere else now. you will know them by their words and by their deeds.
Red de Opleiding Keltisch/Save the Bachelor Celtic!
i interrupt my usual nonsense to invite anyone who cares about celtic studies as a discipline to sign this petition to save the BA in celtic at utrecht from being completely obliterated due to budget cuts. it's one of the only places in continental europe that you can study this course and its loss would be enormous
there is also a broader petition circulating on behalf of humanities in general since these cuts will devastate multiple depts, but as celtic studies is a small field it will need all the help it can get to reach a substantial number of signatures so i figured i would share this one in particular
#rip trans-cuchulainn#but also respect for the siaburcharpat con culaind reference
honestly i should've changed the url to siaburcharpat-con-culaind bc what is this but a phantom chariot of my past self, a dead guy talking, a ghostly remnant--
however oidheadh-con-culainn is more my brand and i must confess i do enjoy the imagery involved. the violent death of my old blog. trans-cuchulainn is dead and i killed him and then took his head as a trophy. etc
I’m American & ive always called it a cheese grater…
when i say that my unanswered asks are often just random responses to my viral posts i mean it. this one's from 2021. incomprehensible without context. also honestly why do people feel the need to come into your inbox and personally inform you of their opinion on your post, that's what comments/reblogs on the post itself are for
asks i meant to get around to but didn't and now it's been several years and it's actively awkward. most of these are questions about medieval irish / looking for resources
responses to my viral posts that are so confusingly worded i can't tell whether they're agreeing with me or insulting me
responses to my viral posts that are definitely insulting me but in a way that was *just* funny enough that i considered posting it with a witty comeback except i never came up with the witty comeback
screenshots of things that make me lose the will to leave with the caption "i feel like this is your brand". i can't tell if this is trying to deal me profound psychic damage but thanks i hate it
five different asks about the same piece of tangentially medieval irish-related media
incredibly earnest oversharing in response to a personal post i made, which i couldn't answer publicly because it was somebody else's life story, but it was anon so i couldn't answer privately, so i just left it there forever
got an email notification about an ask on this blog so logged back in to answer it only for there to be absolutely no trace of this message in my inbox, rendering it impossible for me to answer it
so anyway. not only am i not actually here, but tumblr is now eating your messages, so this is definitely not a useful place to be sending your questions to, and you should come and find me elsewhere and ask me there instead
it is kinda funny coming back here and looking through my inbox trying to find this phantom ask and seeing like three back-to-back messages about the miracle of sound's cu chulainn song because i just started ignoring those after i'd answered about five of them lol
nothing personal but i can assure you that i had been sent that song by about four people on three different platforms within a week of it existing and then people continued to ask me about it for months and i was just like. look. i don't know what more i can say here. it exists. it's not my vibe but i'm not mad about it. moving on
got an email notification about an ask on this blog so logged back in to answer it only for there to be absolutely no trace of this message in my inbox, rendering it impossible for me to answer it
so anyway. not only am i not actually here, but tumblr is now eating your messages, so this is definitely not a useful place to be sending your questions to, and you should come and find me elsewhere and ask me there instead
Now that I am a Real Grown-Up Academic (tm), I have been trying to find a way to support my students and the general public by making medieval Irish literature more accessible to people who, be it a lack of time, disability, or any other factor, find sitting down and reading the original texts challenging.
What I settled on was creating a Podcast where I sit down and read out of copyright translations of Irish legends which I have called Guth: Reading Irish Myths and Legends.
If that's all you need to hear, you can go check it out right now! It is on Spotify (here), Podbean (here), and YouTube (here), and should be on Apple Music in the coming weeks. Alternatively, it is embedded here:
For those of you who need a harder sell, or want to know more about it, check out below!
So, why Guth? Well, I have encountered several different Podcasts and YouTube Channels out there which are doing something similar, recording audio of them reading medieval Irish legends. While several of these are quite cool, there are issues.
In terms of more benign issues, to get around the issues of copyright, people in these alternatives tend to retell stories, and while that is very cool as an example of something like an oral tradition, it means the stories are often being altered and changed by a non-expert audience. Elements that are not very important are being given great importance, areas that are very important are cut, and sometimes things are incorporated from other texts to make an unspoken composite (or, alternatively, sometimes people cut a section of a text out and retell it independent of its broader context).
These aren't bad, but, it means these other Podcasts and Videos aren't really suitable for my purposes of supporting my students and giving people access to the actual stories.
In terms of the big problems, there is at least one Podcast on a similar topic being presented by someone who I have reason to suspect is faking having a PhD. Further, there are at least two people putting out content like this that are actively forging content and passing it off as authentic who just so happen to also be Fascists. So, not ideal.
I hope Guth can serve my students and interested members of the public by providing a solid academic perspective on a text. Each episode I open with a discussion of our manuscript sources and the date of the text (a lot of other pieces out there will describe tales as 'ancient', when in actuality they're a 14th century scribe just vibin'). I then read the text exactly as it is translated, including using reconstructed Old Irish pronunciation for all the names that appear in the text. Lastly, I conclude with a brief discussion of secondary scholarship I think is particularly relevant for the interests of the public.
All of that to say, I hope people enjoy Guth, and that it can serve people who are interested in the actual medieval tales rather than the various retellings that are circulating out there.
90% of the time when i see reviews and posts saying "this book needed editing" i don't think the reader have any idea what editing actually entails. usually this is actually code for one of several "problems" with the book:
it's too long, or it's slower paced than this reader's preference. they believe "editing" would mean making it shorter
it has a heavily descriptive style, which the reader doesn't like. they believe "editing" means paring every sentence down to hemingway-style prose with no adverbs
it doesn't follow the very rigid "save the cat" style 3-act story structure, disrupting the reader's sense of narrative tension. an editor, they believe, would've made sure it did
there were a few typos or formatting errors, and they believe it's the editor's job to catch these (it's not, it's typically the proofreader and the typesetter who have responsibility for that kind of thing)
and finally, most often:
the author had different narrative priorities than the reader, who thinks an editor would have made the author change their priorities.
the thing is, there are actually issues with editors in trad publishing being overworked to the point where things aren't getting the thorough, thoughtful editing that they need to be the best version of themselves. there are plenty of badly-structured, poorly-researched, and clumsily written books out there. moreover copyediting is typically freelance and perhaps because of that, this is the area where i see the largest number of issues: continuity issues, grammar issues, factual errors etc that someone should've spotted and didn't.
but this is not typically what people's "this needed an editor" reviews are focusing on. most often it just means they didn't like the book and they've decided editing is an all-powerful force that would have transformed it into a book they liked. but that's not how it works. and disproportionately what this comment means is that the book doesn't match what current fashions have decided is The Correct Style to write in
"this book needed an editor" if it's traditionally published, it had one. like. by definition. it was an editor who bought the book. that doesn't mean the editor did a great job but they definitely existed. there were probably at least two (acquiring editor who does the dev edits; copyeditor who does copyedits), and the proofreader, and a bunch of other people besides.
also i think people think editors are the ones who like. implement the changes. but they don't. they give comments and recommendations and ask questions and the author is the one to act on them. the editor will not rewrite the book. they will not fix the problems themselves, they will highlight the problem and the author will figure out a fix for it, or they will decide they don't agree that it's a problem and leave it as it. and a lot of the sentence-level style stuff is entirely on the author so if they don't have an ear for the rhythm then nobody's going to fix that for them. editors do a lot less than people seem to imagine they do, tbh
anyway
for reference—
structural/developmental edits: is this chapter in the right place and does the plot make sense and is the characterisation consistent and effective
line edits: is this sentence in the right place and is it as stylish as it could be
copy edits: is this sentence grammatically correct and consistent/factually correct within the story/its world and do the spellings follow the publisher's stylesheet
proofreading: are there any typos in this sentence and was the formatting preserved correctly when it was typeset
sometimes I bitch about the bad editing in a novel and what i usually mean is the copyediting was shitty and slapdash (i.e. there are a bunch of continuity errors, the grammar is poor, etc). sometimes i will bitch that a book is badly structured, or too long, but i know it's at least as likely that was the author refusing to listen to the editor as that the editor didn't suggest changing things. sometimes i feel bad for the author because it's clear they NEEDED some help that they didn't get and/or were rushed to meet a publishing schedule that prevented them doing what i know they can do based on their other books. (and god. publishing schedules and deadlines are a whole other issue.) the point is, you gotta be precise in your bitching. what's ACTUALLY wrong here?
incorrect use of the term "parchment" would largely fall under copyediting, unless the story revolves around hasty notes scrawled on entire sheets of parchment, in which case you'd probably want to deal with it earlier – line edits, perhaps, so you could rejig that plotline to use more realistic writing surfaces
if not caught before then, the copyeditor should def catch it, though
i will say that in most cases, historical accuracy/plausibility is totally on the author. it's pretty rare for editors or copyeditors to fact-check unless it's something they already know a lot about – if something strikes them as unlikely/surprising, they might look it up, but for the most part, they are not working on the kind of schedule that permits them to duplicate the author's research. you get very occasional unicorn copyeditors who are super experienced with a time period so they might get deployed but mostly it's on the author. especially nowadays with punishing freelance deadlines and copyedits getting turned around super fast
(this goes for all kinds of accuracy tbh: authors writing in cities they don't live in, depicting hobbies they're not experienced with, medical stuff, anything that requires specific expertise/research – though you're perhaps more likely to get a copyeditor with certain kinds of expertise than others)
this can be quite stressful for the authors knowing that nobody will double check their work and the pressure is on to get it right! it's quite easy for small details to slip through the cracks because if the author didn't catch it, nobody else was going to! but it's also something debut authors might not know to expect bc you hear people singing the praises of their unicorn copyeditors who catch that a bus route is anachronistic or whatever, and they think "I don't have to be super thorough with the details, bc somebody else will notice and I can fix it then". and 9 times out of 10 nobody else notices until a really pedantic reader notices. RIP
came back to tell you that i'm reading a fantasy novel by an author whose previous books i have really enjoyed and there was just one line -- one fucking line -- where she uses parchment as a synonym for paper (as in, the same object is described as both, and behaves like paper even when being described as parchment) and my kindle annotations just say NO
(and obviously like. it's fantasy. but a) it's fantasy grounded in history and b) why use the word parchment at all when you've just used the word paper therefore telling me that paper exists in this world. why did you feel the need to use a different word, which is not in fact a synonym but a different material used for similar purposes. carelessness that's why) (and no copyeditors know what parchment is to comment on this. apparently. starting a campaign to give publishing employees an education in historic writing surfaces)
Are you the "I have strong feelings about parchment" Tumblr user? If not, I feel like I saw you might know who they are. I was going to put parchment in a fic, but then I was like "no, I can't do that without asking the Parchment Person first because I don't want to get it Wrong."
...no, but I know the post you're talking about, and I too have strong feelings about parchment, esp because I've worked on it before.
I took an illumination course while getting my illustration degree and did an "H.M." in the style of a medieval manuscript on a small piece of the stuff.
Parchment is not paper. It's cured calf or pig skin.
It's thick, and HARD like non-corrugated cardboard. If it's been stored in a roll, it does not want to unroll. If it's been stored flat, it does not want to roll. It's got the same texture as skin, because it IS skin, and you have to account for that while working on it. It smells like rawhide. It actually takes ink in a really interesting way- there's a half-second to blend of fix something before it actually sinks into the parchment, but it doesn't bleed once it's in there. It also never comes back out. It's not bright white like paper, almost a buff color, and white stands out on it.
Fascinating stuff. Actually pretty fun to work on, but it's definitely a medium for highly polished and important pieces (like illuminated manuscripts), not for casual note-taking (because it's MAD EXPENSIVE to make)
I should go hit up the local art stores and get different paper-and-other-art-media samples to demo for everyone for fanfic purposes because they are VERY different things that have different purposes, prices, origins, and societal connotations, all of which can be used in your writing.
One of the things that pisses me off most in fiction is people using parchment to do homework on, or crumbling up a piece of parchment because of a mistake. You could get AT MOST 8 pieces of parchment, similar to a standard piece of paper, out of one sheep. More likely 6. One sixth of a sheep. That then has to be processed. It would be analogous to throwing away an old iPad because it has a typo on it.
The very word, palimpsest, shows you that parchment was valuable enough to scrape off and reuse, sometimes until it was worn thin.
You would use slate or a wood panel or even write on stone and wipe it off for anything that was practice. Parchment is for more permanent work.
The world CHANGED when paper became readily available. An entire type of government was created because of paper. (Chinese bureaucracies arose because of their early development of paper. Bureaucracies that kept the wheels turning regardless of the regime changes of the higher echelons. Records and commerce rolled on because of paper.)
Parchment is not paper. We live in a world of paper and cannot imagine how valuable its predecessor was.
i was gonna be like "don't follow me for parchment bitching i'm not here anymore" but actually maybe i should segregate my parchment bitching into a specific space that's already been blocked by all the relevant people, much to think about
Are you the "I have strong feelings about parchment" Tumblr user? If not, I feel like I saw you might know who they are. I was going to put parchment in a fic, but then I was like "no, I can't do that without asking the Parchment Person first because I don't want to get it Wrong."
...no, but I know the post you're talking about, and I too have strong feelings about parchment, esp because I've worked on it before.
I took an illumination course while getting my illustration degree and did an "H.M." in the style of a medieval manuscript on a small piece of the stuff.
Parchment is not paper. It's cured calf or pig skin.
It's thick, and HARD like non-corrugated cardboard. If it's been stored in a roll, it does not want to unroll. If it's been stored flat, it does not want to roll. It's got the same texture as skin, because it IS skin, and you have to account for that while working on it. It smells like rawhide. It actually takes ink in a really interesting way- there's a half-second to blend of fix something before it actually sinks into the parchment, but it doesn't bleed once it's in there. It also never comes back out. It's not bright white like paper, almost a buff color, and white stands out on it.
Fascinating stuff. Actually pretty fun to work on, but it's definitely a medium for highly polished and important pieces (like illuminated manuscripts), not for casual note-taking (because it's MAD EXPENSIVE to make)
I should go hit up the local art stores and get different paper-and-other-art-media samples to demo for everyone for fanfic purposes because they are VERY different things that have different purposes, prices, origins, and societal connotations, all of which can be used in your writing.
oh hey @the-genderman i'm the person who was bitching about parchment (i'm reformed though i'm trying to be nice about it now), check out my tag "parchment problems" for resources and info!
Okay Tumblr Hive Mind, does anybody have a certain level of familiarity with mid-18th century ceramics from Germany/France/Montbeliard? I have a couple of items that are unusual, and am looking for help with ID. They could be 20th century local "hippie/rustic" ceramics (Canada) but I want to confirm that they're not older pieces from the colonial period that I haven't encountered before. Please message me if you think you can help!
jacobvanloon
janainaart
titsay
izzy806
origamiaround
