Wait A Minute, I Might Have Read A Short Story Like That. If I Can’t Find It, I’m Writing One. If

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.

Griflet-centric Reincarnation AU following Mort Artu canon

Griflet remembers bits and pieces of his past life, mostly from Camlann, so he starts doing surface-level research on Arthuriana. Since he's the one to throw the sword in the lake in Mort Artu but Bedivere is best known for it, he becomes convinced that he's the reincarnation of Sir Bedivere.

There are two outcomes which immediately come to mind. One is that he runs into other Arthurian reincarnations. In this case, he might vastly confuse everyone, particularly if Bedivere shows up too. They might even think he's an imposter. However, they might remember who he actually was and have a laugh about the whole thing.

The other is that he never tells anyone, or only tells the people he's closest to, because he doesn't think anyone will believe him. He goes about the rest of his life secretly thinking he's Bedivere. It impacts nothing substantial, though from time to time he makes references which confuse the people around him and he's always kind of worried something will happen to his hand.

Arthuriana ask game!!

bc why not

♘ Favourite Knight/King

🫅Favorite Lady/Damsol/Queen

💚 Favorite Quest/Story Arc

✒A Medieval Text You Like

📚A Retelling/Modern Work You Like

📽Recommend a book/movie/tv show etc

💛A Sibling Group/Dynamic That IS NOT The Orkneys

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Okay Now You Can Talk About Orkneys

😤Your Most Specific Nitpick About Your Fave (anything from "Gareth would not have a beard" to "this is basically a different guy")

🥰An Arthuriana Headcanon

😏Gawain?

🥖Favorite French/du lac (Lancelot, Hector de Maris, Bors, Lionel, Galahad, ect)

👨‍👦Favorite Parent

🗡️Who Are You Betting On In This Month's Tournament?

🙏Pick A Grail Knight

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿Pick A Pelli Spawn (Percival, Aglovale, Tor, Lamorak, Aylane, Dindrane, Donar, ect)

💏Crack Ship (s)

🫂Platonic Ship(s)

#SOMEONE PLEASE DROP THE SOURCE FOR THE HECTOR ONE THAT SOUNDS AWESOME

@sanddef

It's from Cantare di Astore e Morgana (the Cantare of Hector and Morgan).

Here’s a link to a translation originally posted by lazerbem on Reddit, courtesy of Redpanda from the Arthurian Theater Discord server:

Google Docs

Cantare of Hector and Morgan

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. 

Maybe Apollo. They have a few similarities. Aphrodite might, too, and she and Apollo are both on the Trojan side.

It looks like Gawain is standing by Hector. Then again, if Hector is de Maris, that would make Lancelot Paris, Guinevere Helen, and Arthur Menelaus, so it makes more sense for Gawain to be an Achaean on Arthur/Menelaus' side.

In that case, Gawain probably has the best Achilles parallel: fighting out of a furious desire for revenge, sometimes at odds with his commander (though Arthur is the opposite of Agamemnon, at least in Morte, since he doesn't want to be fighting the war), and killed due to an injury in a specifically vulnerable place (Gawain's re-wounded head, Achilles' heel). That being said, I think the gods on the Trojan side are a better fit for Gawain than the gods on the Greek side.

If Sir Gawain could time travel and dropped into the Trojan War, which Greek God(s) would start supporting him?

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?

Morvran/Sanddef (Sanvran)

I am not only the only person who has tagged a work for Morvran/Sanddef (Arthurian). I’m the only person who has ever tagged for either of those characters on Ao3. They’re both minor knights who are known for surviving Camlann due to their appearances: Sanddef is so handsome that people mistake him for an angel and won’t fight him and Morvran is so hideous/odd-looking (covered in hair like a stag) that people mistake him for a demon and won’t fight him. (Morvran’s anppearance also plays a role in Taliesin’s origin story, inspiring Cerridwen’s actions, though Taliesin gets the awen instead of Morvran and Morvran then disappears from the narrative.) Admittedly, they’re rather obscure and the details about them are sparse, but I feel like they have potential, platonically or romantically. I’d like to think that they fight side by side at Camlann and have no idea why no one is fighting back.

Reblog and put your rare pair in the tags/comments! I want to see the depths people will go to create, for the most random two characters in the most obscure media.

And now, for the most niche poll I’ve ever posted or even encountered on this website:

In The White Goddess, Robert Graves quotes an old Irish triad as saying, “It is death to mock a poet, to love a poet, to be a poet”. As a source of information, Robert Graves is slightly more reliable than Sir Breuse Sans Pitie, and while I’ve seen references to this triad elsewhere, I can’t find an original source for it. Regardless of that, I rather like it.

(From Athletics and Manly Sport by John Boyle O'Reilly)

Words to live by: Fear Celtic Poets