Prompt #246

hello all i am back on my child ballad bullshit

and a playlist with all the available results here:

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The Ancient Library by Hilary Purnamasari

Jack-o'-lanterns have such a grab bag of lore, i love it

Fire, of course, has a long history of offering protection from evil forces. During the Celtic festival of Samhain (from which many Halloween traditions originate), the veil between worlds was considered thin, and ritual bonfires reminded the spooks to stay on their side of the lane.

Many a lantern has protected the lonely traveler on a dark moonless night. But lanterns can be dangerous too—especially the supernatural ones. in certain folklore 'jack-o'-lantern' was another name for will-o'-the-wisps, atmospheric ghost lights (or as legend has it, lost souls) that appear above bogs and lure unwise wanderers into sinkholes.

Then there's the 18th cent Irish folktale of Stingy Jack, a mischievous fellow who tricked the Devil twice, exacting a promise that hell would never claim his soul. So Jack goes on his cheerful way, and dies (as humans are prone to do), and ends up at the pearly gates. Now Heaven, it turns out, doesn't want a damn thing to do with him. So Jack jaunts on down and goes knocking on the gates of hell—only to have Satan slam the door in his face! How this leads to Stingy Jack being doomed to wander the earth carrying a hollowed out rutabaga lit by an ember of the flames of hell, I couldn't tell you. But that is how the story goes.

Whether the legend of Stingy Jack inspired or fueled or was created-by the gourd-carving practice, by the 19th cent, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh alike were annually carving jack-o'-lanterns out of turnips & rutabaga & beets & potatoes, and lighting them up to ward off Jack and other wandering spirits. Immigrants carried the tradition to North America, where pumpkins were indigenous and much easier to carve.

And so the modern Jack-o'-Lantern was born!

Not that gourd lanterns were anything new. Metalwork was expensive, after all, and gourds worked as-well-as and better-than-most crops when it came to carving a poor farmer's lantern.

As for carving human faces into vegetables, that supposedly goes back thousands of years in certain Celtic cultures. It may even have evolved from head veneration, or been used to represent the severed skulls of enemies defeated in battle. Or maybe not! Like many human traditions, jack-o'-lanterns evolved over multiple eras and cultures and regions, in some ways we can trace and others we can only guess at. But at the end of the day, it makes a damn good story, and a spooky way to celebrate—which is as good a reason as any (and a better reason than most!) to keep a tradition going.

In conclusion: happy spooky season, and remind me to tell yall about plastered human skulls one of these days 🎃

srcs 1, 2, 3

In case you don’t know this story, the Norse gods wanted a wall around Asgard to protect themselves and a jotun only known as The Builder offers to make it in exchange for Freya, Sun and Moon. Freya gets rightfully pissed and refuses (no word on Sun or Moon’s feelings about this), so Loki turns into a female horse and lures The Builder’s horse away, causing all work on the wall to stop. Because he can’t finish the wall The Builder has to leave without Freya, Sun and Moon. Loki disappears for 9 nine months and returns with an eight-legged foal (yes, he had sex with the horse and got pregnant. I know you all love that part). The end.

For some reason people often leave out that The Builder wanted Sun and Moon too, and English translations often translate it to “the sun and moon” as if he wanted the heavenly bodies, but no, he wanted the goddess and god responsible for said heavenly bodies. He absolutely intended to have sex with all of them which is why a lot of translations leave out Moon because ew that’s gay.

Freya didn’t want to marry a Jotun, let alone as part of a god damn harem me thinks.

I'm seasoning your supposedly cishet couple, making them bi4bi and/or t4t, maybe throwing in some aspec identities for extra flavour.

Sick Prompts 1

Angry sickies: 

1. “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me… I was fine this morning.” 2. “Leave me alone.” 3. “Don’t touch me again unless you want me to puke on you.” 4. “Can you shut up? My head is killing me.” 5. “I told you I didn’t feel good, and you made me come here anyway.” 6. “This is ridiculous, how are you not sick and I am?”

Sad Sickies:

7. “Please don’t leave me in here alone.” 8. “It hurts so bad… please make it stop.” 9. “I think I need to throw up…” 10. “Is there any Pepto left?” 11. “Can you just sit with me until it’s over?” 12. “My stomach really hurts, I don’t think I can make it tonight…”

In-Denial Sickies:

13. “I don’t get sick.” 14. “I have a stomach of steel.” 15. “It’s not a fever, I’ve been in the sun…” 16. “I’m not going to throw up, for the last time.” 17. “I don’t think it’s food poisoning. We ate the same thing, and I don’t feel bad at all.” 18. “It’s just allergies.” 19. “I don’t get sick on rides/in the car/on boats (specify)”

Tactile Sickies:

20. “Will you rub my back?” 21. “Can you feel my head to see if I have a fever?” 22. “Will you play with my hair?” 23. “I’m freezin’, can we cuddle?”

Don’t Touch Me Sickies

24. “Don’t touch my stomach right now.” 25 “Please stop touching me… I’m so gross.” 26. “You’re making me hot, I can’t sleep…” 27. “Your hands are freezing, don’t touch me.”

Queasy Sickies

28. “I don’t know what I was thinking… I shouldn’t have ordered that.” 29. “Um… I think I need a bin.” 30. “I think I’m going to be sick soon.” 31. “Something’s messing with my stomach.” 32. “My stomach’s bothering me.” 33. “I don’t feel so hot.” 34. “Ugh, I think I should probably get to a bathroom.”

Sniffly Sickies

35. “Can we get actual tissues instead of these paper towels? My nose hurts.” 36. “I can’t breathe.” 37. “I’m freezing and sweating at the same time…” 38. “Please don’t look at me.” 39. “My head’s killing me…” 40. “My throat hurts so bad I can’t even drink water.” 41. “Do you have a cough drop?”

My Fav Drunk Sickies

42. “Um, I think… I think I had too much.” 43. “What was in that? I don’t feel great…” 44. “I think I need’ta sit.” 45. “I need to get out of here, I’m gonna throw up.” 46. “I just need to eat something and I’ll be ok.” 47. “It’s not fun anymore, I’m dizzy…”

Caretakers!

48. “Just relax, you’re going to be fine…” 49. “Calm down, you’re going to make it worse.” 50. “Well, just take care of yourself then, if you don’t want me touching you.” 51. “Do you think you can stomach some water?” 52. “We need to get this fever down.” 53. “Do you want me to rub your back/stomach?” 54. “Don’t cry. Where do you hurt?” 55. “Keep your head in the trashcan until you’re done.” 56. “If you don’t stop soon, we’re going to the ER.” 

Fly agarics

The House of Thorns by Cristi Balanescu