Hello! Sorry if it's been asked before, but how do you choose which legend/story to feature in the episode? Is it just something you really enjoy, it fits thematically or are there other reasons? Thank you!
Hello! It's definitely a mix of reasons - one part is certainly stories I enjoy, but they're also very much thematic!
Also this got so long, so I apologise. I hope you enjoy it!
For example, in episode 1, Twrch Trwyth and its story Culhwch ac Olwen is one of my favourite stories, but I also think of it as an iconic Welsh story and I wanted to situate Camlann within that tradition immediately. Plus Episode 1 is Dai's episode, and Dai is both very proud of his Welsh identity and very funny. Culhwch ac Olwen is maybe the oldest comedic Welsh story so it was a good fit.
With the Kelpie - there are a lot of different variations of kelpie / water-horse stories across the British Isles. Obviously the Kelpie itself is a Scottish story, that then travels to England. Welsh 'kelpies', the Ceffyl Dŵr, are universally benevolent. Part of the reason I used this story was that it was, to me, a really interesting 19th century English version of a Kelpie story (as recorded by Katharine M Briggs - a horse comes to a church at midday and says 'the hour has come but not the man'. Later a passing lord comes by at night and the priest tries to save him by keeping him away from the river and locking him in a room in the church. When they open the door just after midnight, they find the man has drowned on dry land.)
So partly I just wanted to use that because it's such a great rescension of the kelpie story. But it's also because Morgan, whose episode ep 2 is, is so tangled in conflicting traditions about Morgan Le Fay and her own understanding of both the character and her own identity. Morgan is Welsh, and a Ceffyl Dŵr wouldn't have hurt her, but she's terrified of the English corruptions of these stories, in many ways literally haunted by them. Was Morgan le Fay a victim or a villain? How do we interepret monstrous women in medieval stories? I wanted to play with that a bit.
The Lantern Man is another situation of a great story that really inspired me - an 1800s English midlands story I found in a book called The Lore of the Land. But also that's Perry's episode, and I needed to show you why Perry's paranoia is justified, and the flip side to Dai's urgent desire to find other people is Perry's terror of the monster lurking in shadows that they're trying to protect them from. Having someone knocking at your door - that idea of a human figure with a light - was perfect for that.
The dogs were a big one for thematic reasons. This is Gwen's episode, episode 4 - normally Shucky Dogs / Black Dogs / Grimms / Church Grimms / Black Shucks are benevolent and protective. They evolved as a story from an English practice of burying a dog in a graveyard first, as there was a superstition that the first person buried in a graveyard would be stuck in purgatory between earth and heaven. The idea was to bury a dog and let its ghost shepherd souls. This evolved into stories of huge ghostly dogs as protective, territorial spirits. However over time there's a little offshoot of that story - huge black hounds with hell-red eyes haunting stretches of road and abandoned buildings, the ghosts of murdered people whose killers were never found, seeking vengeance.
So on the one hand, from a literalist perspective, over thousands of years a lot of people get murdered, especially women and trans people, and I wanted to make a point in this drama inspired by medieval literature about violence against women and queer people. But I also liked the idea of the dogs being both - both restless spirits full of fury seeking vengeance and protective, territorial guardians who were wronged. That really resonated with me as a queer woman, and I really liked the idea of both Gwen and Morgan seeing a lot of themselves in these restless ghosts.
Then finally, most recently with Gwaine and the Green Knight. First, I wanted to blur the Green Man and the Green Knight because I think of the Green Man as one of England's most iconic folkloric creatures, and the closest we have to a clearly identifiable non-Christian folk deity, essentially. There are faces of the Green Man in York cathedral! From the 1200s! And the theme of the Green Man as the living embodiment of Spring - a giant who brings green mist to everything he touches - resonates for me with the Green Knights themes of renewal and change and life. Both are some of my favourite stories.
ALSO! This is a story about queerness. It's a story about finding ways for your queerness and culutral identity to co-exist. And it's about living in the shadow of history and tradition and everyone who's come before you and not feeling good enough. Gawain and the Green Knight is so much a story about courage, and integrity, and it was exactly the journey our Gwaine needed to go on. But with the monstrous twist that this is the end of the world, and our Gwaine shouldn't need to risk his life to prove he's a good man. That queer people shouldn't need to put ourselves in real social, political, even legal danger in order to love who we love and be who we are. That that's not a fair ask of anyone.
I hope you enjoyed these ramblings! I needed to walk a little around some spoilers but yeah!
Favorite character who’s just trying their best - for the podcast ask game!
I'm gonna go with one of the more unknown podcasts I listened to within the last year and say Bell from Second Star to the Left! Very cute little pod from a couple years ago, I recommend.
Cel Cel Cel my beloved my blorbo my nonbinary icon
they are everything to me
(I forgot to color in They could pour soup in my lap and I'd apologize to them and I'm too lazy to fix it - the thing is then we would probably be caught in an apology cycle and Cel might call me Little Buddy and I would just Die)
Sugar Neighbors · Dane Terry for the song ask game
[x]
it's melancholy... i'm not partial to this kind of more downbeat acoustic stuff but i can imagine it being, like, a really good song to use in the sad scene of a prestige drama where the camera pans up while one character holds another in their arms bleeding. or when walking home and its snowing a lot and you feel kind of shitty but you know when you get home you can lie down. that's the kind of music this is. this could have been in OTGW
rating: 5/10
favourite lyric: 'holy rollers and a few scanning rogues deep in the green gum of the night'
I've just finished listening to all the episodes and I just want to say thank you for such a nice podcast. I love Dr Underwood! It really is so nice and hopeful and whimsical, even. Loved every minute of it <3
Thank you so much for brightening our day with this message! So glad you've enjoyed it! 💙
1, 14 for the rqg thing! (It'd be really cool if you published it at around 4pm gmt, if possible, to help us get rqg trending)
1. What is that one moment from the show that you will find yourself thinking back to, intermittently, for years to come?
Sasha in general... More specifically her letter because of the context of how I listened to it cause I was listening to rqg during my internship in a room full of people and that episode was when it hit me that sasha wasn't coming back ( cause I had somehow convinced myself she was) and I had to excuse myself to the bathroom to cry. I will never forget that sgfjfjdj
14. What’s a detail of the show that you always forgot, and when you’re reminded of it it always comes as a shock?
How short everyone's known each other???? Like there's 6 years worth of content it's so strange to think sasha and zolf for example only knew each other for a few months ;;
