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@hopefullydreaming

she/her | ff writer, fandom blog | book lover | 21 | ao3: hopefullydreaming

Once, in the Future

The land once known as Albion had burned. Raging wildfires scorched its earth; processions of pathetic politicians had torn its people apart and turned them against each other; the land had been united at a terrible cost to the world. For a millennia and a half, a lonely warlock had wandered this land, working magic where he could, breathing life into the defeated and teaching those who were willing to learn.

But magic was dying now. He could feel it in his bones, as the world around him raged and burned. In all his years, he had seen the worst and the best of humanity. He had seen their brilliance and ingenuity, and he had seen the terrible things which they had done to prove it. They had no need of magic now, and no need to believe it. Superstition, most people had called it. For centuries now, magic had been dismissed or persecuted and now merely ridiculed, in the name of conformity or enlightenment or civilization. It lived only in books and fairytales, in legends twisted beyond their truth to fit their times.

The warlock had borne many names. Merlin was his first and Emrys was his favourite. He had worn so many faces he didn’t know if this one was real. He was sure of very little, now. So much has changed; so much that he had fought for, longed for, had come to pass and only made the world worse.

He was only sure of Arthur.

Pros of having a brain that makes very fast associations: Good comebacks and jokes.

Cons of having a brain that makes very fast associations: that story about how you broke your foot reminded me of a fun fact about lizards.

Anonymous asked:

the biggest argument i've seen against welsh independence has always been that the welsh economy cannot afford to strike out on its own. however a independent report commissioned by plaid cymru published last year by professor john doyle of dublin city university seems to disagree. i find it interesting that the general consensus by london based economists seems to not line up with an independent study by an irish (i presume) economist who doesn't need to present the idea of welsh independence as "unattainable." anyway as that popular post on this website says, there's 3 of us and one of england lets just kick them out and make our own kingdom.

Well, here's the thing: it's true that we can't, but only in the sense that our money is currently being funnelled away to England and then given back as an allowance, and that allowance is therefore... dependent on England. So like... if we were allowed to just keep all of our money, AND they started actually paying for the resources of ours they're currently stealing (cough WATER cough) then yeah, funnily enough the financials look different.

It's like if I stole all your £25,000 a year salary and then gave you back £12,000 a year and nicked your bread. And then when you tried to move away, I went "UM, hello??? You only have £12,000 a year??? Which I give you??? You can't afford to move away from me." And then nicked your bread.

And then an Irish professor went "Actually if you keep your £25,000 a year and this bitch starts paying for the bread you very much could afford to move away."

This metaphor has gotten away from me a bit.

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come watch eurovision we got:

funky uncle squad ready to throw hands with the nearest dictator

human neon conga line

thor in a toyota

pagan wedding rituals

edgar allan poe

token boyband

tiny woman in a box

possessed barbie dolls

xena, warrior singer

matrix cosplayers

glam rock fire lord ozai

cyberpunk ninjas and modern art sculptures

and lastly, europe when the votes come in

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ik that regulus was canonically a quidditch player and that quidditch is generally regarded as an esteemed and beloved sport in the wizarding world (if only because there seem to be no other sports to compare it to) but i actually do not see the Black family as sporting-type people. i actually think they would look down on athletes especially in high contact sports like quidditch and think it perhaps just a step above pure barbarism

Working on a new project now I’m done with uni and god this feels so good to actually dedicate brain space to figuring out something new and letting my mind just run wild. The only writing I’d really been working on for the past year is Green Light, and now I’ve got something else to occupy my brain alongside it it just feels so exciting!

Anonymous asked:

Since Remus is a halfblood he would have also gotten education and general knowledge about the Wizarding world, and his lacking abilities just come from the fact that he doesn't have the same aptitude for it as Sirius and James do. For comparison: lily is completely muggle-born and only had snape as an early informant for Wizarding knowledge. She still is remembered for her abilities and genius, and also snape knew a whole lot.

People just like to make up excuses for Remus at every pass, and to play up his disadvantages ~

Hi for Chaos night lol

Well, it's afternoon here, but we'll go ahead and kick off chaos night early ;)

Yes exactly! Look, Remus is a smart, competent guy, but he's not the best. Sirius and James are, and that's canon. We know from canon that Remus is a good teacher, that students like him, that he's knowledgeable, that he's capable of advanced magic, etc. I'll admit that. But I'm tired of stories where Sirius and James are portrayed as less intelligent than Remus and that he has to help them, because that's simply not true!

Plus, I imagine Remus's smarts and competence are unorthodox. He's a feral, scrappy guy. The advanced magic he knows was probably learned in the field, and his approach to it might not be textbook. And that's also fine!

But yes Sirius and James were both at the top of their class and Remus wasn't, send tweet.

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Remus stan chiming in to say that this is an extremely canon-accurate read of all of the mentioned characters above, and I support this take with my entire goddamn chest.

Omg my post has been Remus stan approved 🥺 I am so blessed.

Aaaaaaaaaaand here’s your friendly neighborhood Remus anti chiming in to say that your tags are also accurate 😂

I had a full speech prepared about how Remus was the best at “playing school” in a “he knew how to study, he’s competent at taking notes, he really puts in the effort” kind of way, but those tags basically covered it. James and Sirius are forever getting better grades than he is and making a shit-ton of noise in the dorm while he’s trying to study so he doesn’t fucking fail this transfiguration practical, and he wants to strangle them. I also think that’s what makes him a good teacher - he struggled, and he’s mostly a practical learner who figures things out on the fly, so he wanted to give those kids a chance to succeed, too. You can’t judge a fish’s intelligence by its ability to climb a tree and all that.

So I’m gonna add something else, instead.

Remus is a sly motherfucker. He has to be; there was no way he’s going to survive if he doesn’t figure out how to lie and sneak and get away with things. So I also think he’s better at figuring out creative work-arounds to blocks he’s having. He knows he has to at least give the appearance of working hard so his teachers will give him extra credit opportunities when he needs them; he capitalizes on the pity from teachers who know his condition; he knows the soft spots of the ones who don’t know and will push on them to get a homework extension. He absolutely is going to allow his friends to do his homework for him if they offer. He figures out which charm to use on his quill so he can dictate his essays when he’s too sore to hold it after full moons. When he doesn’t know the answer, he bullshits something creative on his tests or just writes down everything he does know and gets partial credit, which drives Snape absolutely batshit insane because he’s obviously wrong, he’s an idiot, there’s something off with him, how does he have all of you so fooled? He’s resourceful, clever, and competent, but he’s not a “natural” or a genius, and his aptitude itself is middling. He’s just some dude who has to figure out how to deal with he hand he’s been dealt.

The hat sat on his head and considered sending him to Slytherin, but between the fact that coming to school at all is a huge risk, how determined he is to get through even if it’s just by the skin of his teeth, and that he’d literally get murdered there, it decided Gryffindor was a better fit, what I’m saying.

anyway just a reminder for the myth lovers out there

king arthur was welsh. merlin was welsh. camelot was in wales. the lady and the lake she pops out of; welsh. excalibur; magic inanimate welsh object. etc.

on the way to see family, i drive past a lake that in which is welsh legend, is the last resting place of excalibur.

i’m just saying in my experience a lot of these legends had been so anglo-fied in the past and it’s like, all this cool shit is celtic welsh legend.

Arthur’s wife was called Gwenhwyfar first.

Like the kraken I emerge, summoned by the English theft of Arthur

  • Arthur is a Welsh name. It means ‘bear’. He’s likely derived from a Gaulish bear god
  • In the form of King Arthur, he is an anti-Saxon mythological WELSH figure, representing the native Brythonic people of Britain against the Anglo-Saxon invaders, dating from the 500s AD
  • The version appropriated by the English in the 1100s is the shitty boring sanitised version - they did it because they were trying to compete with the romance tradition on the continent at the time but didn’t have anything of their own to romanticise
  • Merlin is called Myrddin
  • Percival is Peredur
  • Kay is Cei, and also was subject to enormous character assassination in the English version - in the Welsh version he’s much closer to Arthur’s right hand man
  • Guinevere is Gwenhwyfar
  • There is no Lancelot, no Galahad, no tedious affair story
  • There is no Camelot. Arthur’s seat was Caerllion - modern Caerleon, putting him into both the region of the Silures (one of the most fearsome and warlike of the British tribes, modern South East Wales) and the old Roman fortress, which would have been an impossibly huge Palace for a warlord at the time.
  • They all have super powers and get up to wacky hijinks involving hair care, giants, strange giant wildlife, spectral revolving/glass fortresses in the Celtic sea, and a really fucking weird chess match. Also a cloak made out of beards.
  • What the fuck is the round table

Anyway it’s particularly irritating because traditional Welsh culture and beliefs have been so thoroughly stripped away and destroyed by England over the centuries, and Arthurian legend is one of the few surviving fragments we have left to preserve. And he’s specifically an anti-English figure. So the ubiquity of the boring and appropriative English Arthur across the whole fucking world is… Well, it’s not great.

This is so interesting! Does anyone know a good source/reading material where one could get more of the original Welsh versions of the stories?

The Mabinogion, translated by Sioned Davies is your best bet! It’s got a bunch of big-ass Welsh myths in, but most relevantly it includes Culhwch ac Olwen, which is a full-on Arthurian text (plus a couple of interesting ones).

There’s a whole bunch more that’s survived in fragments, but they’re all in Old Welsh - fully readable if you speak Welsh, but obviously not much use if you don’t (I don’t know if you do or not but from context I’m guessing not lol).

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Trioedd Ynys Prydain (literally “the Triads of the Island of Britain”, though in English they’re usually called “the Welsh Triads”) are a huge collection of lists of three things from Welsh lore, including a lot of Arthurian lore. They’re not stories, but they contain fascinating allusions to stories, to whole strains of the Arthurian tradition, that we may or may not have elsewhere.

Absolutely fantastic addition, yes, Rachel Bronwich’s Triads are glorious.

This is a bit of an oversimplification. Arthur wasn’t Welsh in the sense that Wales and the Welsh language didn’t exist in the time he supposedly lived. He was a Briton. Anglo-Saxons called Britons and other non-Germanic people “waels” which means foreigner. Once the Kingdoms of England were established, the kingdom of the Celtic Britons in west west Britain was called Waelas which became Wales.

In addition to Caerleon, Arthur is also associated with the region of Lloegyr in southern Britain, which is now England. Thus “England” in Arthurian literature is a gloss for Lloegyr in the tradition of using contemporary place names for geographic regions.

Indeed, if Arthur was real, he probably had many Anglo-Saxon subjects. The Britons v Saxons conflict wasn’t as black and white as later depictions make it out to be. The Saxons didn’t arrive in Britain as a conquering imperialist force. They were scattered groups of refugees fleeing west from Attila the Hun. The more common reality was probably British kings fighting each other with Saxon mercenaries and civilians on all sides. The first few kings of what would eventually become the kingdom of Wessex had Celtic British names like Cerdic and Cynric. There is even a fairly convincing theory that Cerdic was the real Arthur, which would make him equally an English and Welsh (Briton) historical figure. (1)

The round table has been suggested to be based on the Caerleon amphitheater:

There is a dispute over whether or not Percival was derived from Peruder or vice versa or if they were separate characters who became conflated. Welsh, English, and Continental Arthurian traditions overlapped in time and influenced each other.

Lancelot, as we know him, is a French addition, but cases have been made for a Celtic origin. He could be derivative of the Irish god Lugh Lamhfada or his Welsh equivalent Llwch Llawwynnauc. Another possibility is Anguselaus or Anselaus derived from a latinization of the Pictish Unguist. (2) There’s also the Breton Lancelin.

The affair between Lancelot and Guinevere did come later, but there is precedent in her affair with Medrod (Mordred) in the Welsh texts (see Geoffrey of Monmouth).

Calling the Lady of the Lake a Welsh character is particularly egregious, given that she first appears in 13th century FRENCH Arthuriana as the foster mother of Lancelot. Attempts have been made to link her to Celtic mythology but not conclusively, and these Celtic candidates could just as easily have been conflated with her after the fact. Her connection to Excalibur comes post-vulgate.

Camelot can be identified with Camulodunum, the capital of Roman Britain (now Winchester), or Camalet, also known as Cadbury Castle, an iron age Celtic hill fort.

Arthur was not stolen from the Welsh because he never exclusively belonged to them in the first place. He belonged to all Celtic Britons, including the Cornish and Bretons, as well. Through the Bretonic tradition, he was introduced to the French, who were primarily responsible for creating the version of Arthurian legends most familiar to us today, not the English. The familiar forms of Guinevere, Bedivere, Gawain, etc are French, not English. The most famous English version of Arthur comes from Sir Thomas Mallory, who primarily sourced from the French tales.

It is the nature of myths to evolve, and there never will be a “true” version.

Additional notes:

The etymology and meaning of Arthur’s name is uncertain. It could come from arth+gwr = “bear man” or artorig = “bear king,” but it could also be a corruption of the Latin surname Artorius or the noun artus = “strength (of the sinews).” The latter is preferred by proponents of the Cerdic theory because if Cerdic is the same as the Welsh figure Caradoc Vreichvras (Vreichvras meaning “strong arm”), his name would translate into Latin as Carotacus Artus. See the first link I posted in my previous reblog for more info.

I have no idea where the “Gaulish bear god” thing comes from but neopagans like to extrapolate “forgotten deities” from every relevant figure in Celtic mythology which isn’t very helpful. When it comes to Celtic mythology, there are a lot of things we simply don’t know and may never know, and it’s important to keep that in mind.

The name of Arthur’s queen varies even in the Celtic sources. She is Gwenhwyfar in welsh, but in Breton, she is Gwenivar and in Cornish, Gwynnever which would be pronounced very similarly if not identically to the familiar French Guinevere. The aforementioned Welsh historian Geoffrey of Monmouth called her Ganhumara and Latin texts call her Guenuur or Guennimar. That’s only scratching the surface, but it’s interesting to note that Caradoc’s wife is called Guignier which could easily be another variant.

Cai is a corruption of the Roman given name Caius.

Galahad could be derived from the Welsh name Gwalchaved, but we can’t possibly be sure.

The takeaway is that you should be very wary of anyone who makes claims about the “original version” of a myth, legend or fairy tale. We don’t have the original versions and we never will. We have the oldest written versions which have already been through several generations of retelling before someone thought to write them down.

Sorry, ONE MORE THING:

It really bugs me how this post frames the Myrddin - Merlin change as another corruption from the big mean poopy head English. It wasn’t. That was Geoffrey of Monmouth again. The guy who CREATED the character of Merlin as we know him today (as in he existed in folklore but Geoffrey added him to the Arthurian mythos and gave him a backstory). He changed the spelling because Myrddin sounded too much like the French word for shit. True story.

I lied. I’m not finished. Here’s a handy list from Wikipedia of every Arthurian legend ever put to paper. Note that only about 20 of them are in English, and they all date after the Norman conquest. The English didn’t steal Arthur. He was barely on their radar before the French took over their country.

@concerningwolves this is right up your alley :D