And Now, For The Most Niche Poll I’ve Ever Posted Or Even Encountered On This Website:

I can remember, a few years back, getting in a taxi with my grandfather in New York City. He’s one of the kindest, most courteous to strangers people I’ve ever known and was able to establish a good rapport with the taxi driver until the taxi driver put his subtly Jewish name and face together and started blasting a radio channel saying that “all Jews are donkeys”. Even then, even in New York City, you could turn your head and there was antisemitism.

In middle school, I had been spat at and called slurs—but only after I told the other students that I was a Jew. My father’s Scottish surname and ambiguous appearance give me the option of invisibility. I’ve never chosen to hide who I am, but it’s also not immediately obvious, and that made a difference even before the current horrific spike in antisemitism.

Non-Jews, yes, it really is a serious problem. It really should go without saying at this point. It should have gone without saying an incredibly long time ago, but my cousins are receiving death threats and there was a pogrom in California and a twelve-year-old girl got raped and the people doing these horrific (that word doesn’t seem strong enough but I can’t think of a stronger one) things still somehow think they’re in the right and all I can do is try striking metaphorical matches in the dark while knowing the matches are almost certainly dead and that even if they light it’s unlikely that anyone will open their eyes whose eyes weren’t open already.

Jews, stay strong. We will survive this. I hope.

"Ashkenazi" doesn't mean "white-passing." My mother's husband has pale pink skin, blue eyes, and light brown hair. And he is INCREDIBLY visibly Jewish, even before he opens his mouth. His hair is a super curly mess and his facial features are very, very obviously Jewish. When he says anything at all, you can tell that he's a New York City Jew. No kippah, no Magen David (though that might change soon), but his appearance is JEW.

I have been living in fear every day since October 7th. It never occurred to me before then to be afraid for my mother and her husband because of his visible Jewishness in New York City. Yeah, if they were driving through Alabama or something. But in NYC? If someone had suggested it to me, I'd have laughed.

Now I just want to cry.

Obscure Arthurian text which everyone should read #1: The Story of the Crop-Eared Dog

This is what happens when you mash together a revenge quest, a slasher movie, a buddy road trip, a bildungsroman, a fantasy epic, and a shaggy dog story and set it in medieval times. Because there aren’t many Irish Arthurian texts, whether Bhalbhuaidh, the protagonist, is meant to be Gawain or Galahad is controversial. His name and titles could point to either and his life situation seems more like Gawain’s, but I will refer to him Galahad because I find the idea of a Galahad AU where he’s pagan and gallivants around with a prince who was turned into a giant dog and lost all qualms about murder along the way entertaining. It starts when Arthur, who inexplicably holds the title of King of the World, convenes a hunt in the Dangerous Forest on the Plain of Wonders and the mysterious Knight of the Lantern does what any antagonistic knight worth his salt would do: gatecrash and ask for violence. It gets less normal very rapidly from there. Abhlach the druidess is at least as awesome as she is wicked, Galahad may or may not have a magical music-making sword, and the fact that there’s an Island of Naked Monks is never given any explanation because it’s only mentioned in passing when the dog tells Galahad he killed them all. 

Yeah, it’s a fun read.

Here’s a link to the translation I read:

Internet Archive

The story of the crop-eared dog; the story of Eagle-boy : Macalister, Robert Alexander Stewart, 1870-1950 : Free Download, Borrow, and Strea

207 p. 23 cm

Ghosts can take the form of large fuzzy animals. One lived at Merlin’s for a while.

Galahad has mugged a senior citizen.

King Alastrann of India might technically have usurped the post from a dog whose parents were previously human and his brothers.

Ector de Maris has hooked up with everyone in Morgan le Fay’s friend group (separately) at least once.

Once, Tristan killed a dragon, stuck its tongue down his pants, and was severely burned.

A war involving Arthur’s warriors destroyed a third of Ireland.

Gawain became the Emperor of China.

Arthur is in fact king of the entire world.

Lancelot got married four times, once while still married (he ended up going back to his third wife and they died old and happy).

When Lancelot first met Gawain, he mistook Gawain for God.

A few things which are “canon” somewhere for people who are worried they’re stretching it too far

Arthur was killed by a giant cat. 

Arthur killed the cat.

Arthur didn’t fight the cat. Kay did.

Kay and Bedivere use salmon as taxis. 

Lucan is half giant, half lion. (This Lucan, Lucano in the original Italian, is evil and not related to Bedivere). 

King Arthur raided the land of the dead.

The human knight Caradoc Briefbras has three half siblings: a dog, a horse, and a pig.

A large portion of Arthur’s troops was killed a while before Camlann by his nephew’s attack ravens in self-defense. Arthur and said nephew were playing chess at the time and neither did much to stop it.

Merlin retired peacefully and went to live in the countryside with Taliesin.

Wherever Arthur walks, plants die. They don’t grow back for years.

Arthur had a spunky (half?) brother who died in battle after making a mysterious oath.

Dagonet is more or less able to run the kingdom when Arthur is gone. His biggest error is overspending on mercenaries.

Guinevere has an evil almost identical twin half-sister.

Hector beat up all the best knights except for Galahad while possessed by a demon.

Gawain plays tennis.

Gawain has used a chessboard as a weapon.

Near the start of his reign, Arthur left Lot in charge of the kingdom and went on a quest with a sassy parrot.

Gawain or Galahad succeeded Arthur as king. 

Crop-Eared Dog Quotes No. 2: Lanny beat up over 7,000 knights and Arthur has the healthiest priorities (not)

Like any decent gatecrashing antagonist, the Knight of the Lantern demands battle, which shouldn’t be a problem, because Arthur is (inexplicably) the King of the World and

not more were the plants through the floor of the world, or joints in a human body, or days in the year, than the active warriors and very valiant knights in the household of that powerful king: that is to say, there were twelve knights of valour, and twelve knights of activity, and twelve knights of the Round Table, and twelve knights of counsel, and two hundred and two-score knights of the Great Table, and seven thousand knights of the household…

but…this happens:

{T}he Knight of the Lantern bound them all save only Galahad de Cordibus, who was a young, beardless boy, on that spot. And he goes straight back by the same way, after leaving the king and his people tightly bound in that fashion, and he pours a dark mist of druidry behind him, and they were thus till the setting of the noonday cloud, and to the rising of the sun on the morrow. Then the king spoke to the household, and thus he said:

"A pity is this thing which has happened to us," said he, "for were the ladies and women of the Fort of the Red Hall to know of our being like this, they would make the mischief of a mock and jest of us, and publish our despite and our weakness over the whole world, and to doomsday and the world's end would never again be beside us…"

One knight has just beat up all of his knights, even though there are well over seven thousand of them, and Arthur’s big concern is that the ladies of the court will laugh at them.

I have been working on a project with something similar to that as the premise for a while now, though my Taliesin's not as genre-savvy and the timelines he goes between are all either medieval or of my own invention/amalgamation, not from modern retellings.

It would be cool if he bridged retellings as well, and that could make an excellent fic. What I'm writing is a bit different from that in flavor and I do hope to ultimately publish it.

Anyway, I see your vision and laud it.

Do you think there's potential if you can use Chief Bard Taliesin as The Fourth Wall/Meta Guy™ of Arthuriana?

As in, Taliesin - as a supernatural storyteller, arguably superior to the prophetic Merlin - being an almighty observer of ALL continuities of Arthuriana, able to know who is who, what happens in what version, and just being able to jump in and out of the different storylines whenever he wants.

One moment, Taliesin is hanging out in Caerleon-on-Usk, performing for Lucius Artorius Castus and then teleport on over to laugh at Monty Python!Arthur and co. getting owned by the killer rabbit.

In another scene, Taliesin talks about the different versions of the Grail Quest to Arthur and Peredur, giving comments about what he likes and doesn't like about each one, while expressing how he's annoyed with the French writers obsession with Lancelot and Tristan. Also, Taliesin gets to talk about all the different love interests of Lancelot and Gawain to French!Lancelot (who's in complete meltdown) and Welsh!Gwalchmai, who's like 😎

Taliesin predominantly hangs out with Merlin, his tutor Blaise and fellow aspiring bard, Sir Dinadan, inside Magic Treehouse!Morgan's Treehouse but every once in a while, Taliesin gets into an adventure and then brings along whatever character he needs, from Sir Segurant and Culhwch to BBC Merlin!Merlin and Fate!Artoria.

arthurian characters tier list... I feel like I forgot someone

(tier list here)

I normally don't like Tennyson's narrative around the female characters due to his framing of them being the source of all the faults in Camelot.

But there's a part of this story that often catches my attention and its Guinevere's rejection of Arthur:

Like, I can't help but dig idea that Guinevere rejects Arthur because of his virtue. As if his holy character actively irritates her.

If I was writing, I would take it further and outright imply Guinevere is some kind of demonic being. If Tennyson can get away with turning Arthur into a mysterious, divine entity that Merlin found instead of being born of Uther's misdeeds, then I don't see why I can't apply that to Gwen.

Welsh Myth already provides the idea of Guinevere as a Fae/Giantess so I would just present her as a "Reverse Persephone" -

Guinevere is actually a mysterious girl who came up from the "Kingdom beneath the Earth", "a daughter of a Colossus of Old" and is reared as ward of one of Arthur's vassals. Arthur, being taken by her beauty, took her as his wife. "And so, the Worthiest and Most Righteous King on Earth married a she-devil, the fairest of all her race, and made her his Queen."

The reason she finds Arthur repulsive is because she's a "primal spirit" who was born deep underground and can't stand the presence of someone so "Heavenly", so divorced from "the touch of the Earth". Camelot falls into "sinfulness" because Guinevere is in fact a physical avatar of all Materialism and Worldly Values, both good and bad.

And instead of Guinevere repenting of her actions, I would just take a cue from E.A. Robinson and have Gwen reject Arthur to the very end:

And if Arthur and Guinevere ever meet again, Guinevere could go as far as threaten to eat Arthur - "as is the habit of my kind, says the Queen" - especially if Arthur starts posturing about his (Victorian) morals and being chaste for her.

If there was a way to present Guinevere as a proper Anti-heroine or compelling villainess without the usual sexism/misogyny, this is how I would do it.

She's not so much an actively evil force as she is simply incompatible with the "Blameless" Arthur and indeed, the marriage's eventual failure was inevitable.

But for a time, while the marriage endured, Camelot was the place where the Spiritual and Material meet as fellows and prosperity ensued.

I'm a big fan of Madoc ap Uther, although I haven't written much about him yet. Here are some of my thoughts on him, not all of which are characterization-related but hopefully will be helpful:

He's described as "protector of happiness" (in "Madawc Drut", Marged Haycock's translation), which I find really interesting, as well as "a citadel of prowess/through feat and jest". Protector of happiness could be referring to his humor entertaining people, to his martial prowess keeping them safe, or both. (The same goes for the title itself: "drut" could mean bravery or foolhardiness but could be related to "drúth", Old Irish for jester).

Either way, it sounds like a sort of a duty, like this is something he feels obligated to do, which is obvious if he's a warrior but says a lot about his personality if he feels obligated to make jokes and keep others happy. Maybe there are some citadel walls around his inner nature and emotions; that might be a stretch in terms of literary interpretation, but potentially interesting in terms of characterization.

He seems to be very well-liked and seen as a merry fellow, but he definitely has a serious side: "before {he} was slain / he pledged himself by his hand", which is rather cryptic and suggests a sense of duty as well as a dire circumstance.

He was the son of Uther but didn't become king, so he could be Arthur's older brother who was killed before Uther died or a younger brother who didn't succeed Uther because Arthur was the eldest son (which would suggest that Arthur was raised by his biological parents). He could also be a younger brother who was the heir but was killed before Uther died (if Arthur was raised by Ector/Cynyr), but he is Eliwlod's father, so he was old enough to have children at the time of his death, which makes the last option seem less likely.

Skene's translation of "Marwnad Madawg"/"Madawc Drut" is much longer and says that he was killed by "Erof", but Haycock claims that that's the result of multiple poetic fragments which were on the same page being mashed together and that that bit is actually part of a lost poem about King Erof, AKA Herod, being dragged down to Hell. I think her translation is generally considered more reliable (and seriously doubt that Madoc was killed by King Herod, though that would be interesting).

He might be referred to as "{t}ransgressing" and "a famous leader" in a poem along with other heroes like Bran, Arthur, and Alexander the Great, but Madawg/Madog/Madoc is not a rare name. There are at least two different Madawgs mentioned in the Black Book of Carmarthen (ap Maredudd and ap Gwyn) who definitely aren't him and one who might be him but might not. As it is, the only pretty-certain references to him are "Madawc Drut" and a brief mention in Arthur's dialogue with the eagle. This is just about all the information we have to go off of, so my fondness for him comes entirely from "Madawc Drut", which is, unsurprisingly, from The Book of Taliesin.

Do we have any Madoc ap Uther/Madawg ap Uther fans out there? I'm trying to combine him with the more "continental" legends bc I think it'd be interesting but I'm wondering if anyone's written him before or has some characterization thoughts?

Fun fact: the musician who sang “Puberty Love” in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Of course, he’s also the drummer for Pearl Jam, but it’s less entertaining when you put it that way.

Dagbert Endless’ mother should look like this.

Mermaid’s Face by David Delamare (American artist, 1951-2016)