This May Be The Greatest Wikipedia Page I’ve Ever Encountered.

I‘ve been wondering about something. Last year, I found out that being asexual was a thing, not just a quirk of mine… then realized that five of my friends already privately or publicly identified as such. Consider that: asexuals are estimated to make up about 1% of the population yet account for about 40% of my friends. Is that just a weird coincidence, are ace people more likely to gravitate toward each other (due to their likely disinterest in certain topics of conversation or general vibes or goodness knows what), did the experts significantly underestimate how many asexuals there are, or some combination of the three? I suspect it’s the third but I’m not sure to what extent each thing is a factor. Any thoughts?

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?

Being overly invested in the lives of mildly obscure Arthurian characters is like “If you ship Caradoc with anyone other than Guinier or Dinadan with anyone at all then so help me I will go rampaging through the countryside like Lancelot, Tristan, Merlin, Roland (no, not Roland, Roland is a Paladin, to heck with Roland), Dagonet, Yvain…”

I just thought of something which might be really obvious. In the Morte d’Arthur (which I, admittedly, still haven’t read in full), Palamedes and Safir side with Lancelot against Arthur. When I first read that, I thought it seemed slightly random. What just occurred to me is that it makes a lot of sense through the lens of Tristan and Isolde’s death, assuming Palamedes that has made his peace with them and that they’ve already died. Lancelot and Guinevere have some notable parallels with Palamedes’ late friends, and he’s doing what he can to save them the way he couldn’t Tristan and Isolde.

…as he should be.

I forgot the name of Maimonides-

So I searched up "Jewish philosopher with opinions" and he was the first result.

Fun fact: Assuming you don’t count Tancred, there is no proof that Dagbert ever successfully drowned anyone.

Palestinians see Israel as a colonial project that tore them away from their homeland and Jews see Israel as a decolonial project that brought them back to their homeland and we can sit here and argue about who is “right” for 7 billion years or we can hold two narratives at once and recognize that the strip of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is a homeland for both Jews and Palestinians so we need to find some common ground and a way for both groups to live their freely

Metaruu’s Headcanon Ask Game

Send in a character or characters and an icon and I’ll give you…

🏳️‍🌈 A sexuality headcanon

🏳️‍⚧️ A gender headcanon

😇 A headcanon about their religion/lack thereof

🧸 A headcanon about their childhood

👻 A headcanon about what scares them

🎶 A headcanon about music

👽 A headcanon about a weird quirk of there

💤 A headcanon about their sleep

🦾 A disability headcanon

💝 A headcanon about their love language

🫂 A friendship headcanon

💔 An angsty headcanon

🪢 A headcanon about their family

📓 A headcanon about their hobbies

👗 A headcanon about their clothes

🔪 A headcanon relating to fighting/violence

🌟 A headcanon about their desires/wishes

🥇 A headcanon about what they’re best at

🍫 A headcanon about food

🎭 A headcanon about what they lie about

❤️‍🔥 A romantic headcanon

💄 An appearance headcanon

🖕 A headcanon relating to anger

😺 An animal related headcanon

😬 A headcanon about the worst thing they’ve done

😭 A headcanon about the worst thing that happened to them.

😶 A random headcanon!

💚😏🗡️ <for arthuriana ask game =)

Favorite quest/story arc:

That’s a tough one. Basic as it is, one of my favorites would have to be the Grail quest. It’s been told in so many different ways, it has so much potential for interpretation and reinterpretation, and if you look around, its influence is everywhere in pop culture. I also really like Galahad, Percival, and the Grail Heroine (though reading T. H. White left me with an anti-Bors bias I’ve never been able to shake).

Gawain: 

The way I got into Arthuriana was a seventh-grade GVC assignment where I had to write an alliterative paragraph, drew “G” out of a hat, started writing about Gawain, never got to a stopping point, decided to write a novel, decided I had to do research for the novel…you get the idea. He isn’t my all-time favorite, but I like Gawain. I find his revenge quest interesting when it’s done well, but I think that it’s become too ubiquitous. There are so many stories about him and there’s so much more to him than the man in The Once and Future King whose main traits are “angry” and “Scottish” (though I do love it when he calls Galahad “yon lily laddie”).

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

I think it depends on which canon it is and who’s in town. If I could choose from every Arthurian character I know of, I would say the Knight of the Lantern, hands down. At the start of The Story of the Crop-Eared Dog, he defeats and ties up everyone on Arthur’s hunting trip who he thinks is worth fighting—which adds up to well over seven thousand knights—in one afternoon. Later on, he’s defeated by his older brother Alastrann (who’s in monster-dog form), but when their father dies, Alastrann becomes the King of India, and he can’t very well casually jaunt over to the far end of another continent when he has a country to run. The Knight of the Lantern also returns to India, but he has unparalleled magical powers and less responsibility, so he could probably swing by for a tournament.

Thanks for the ask!

"What's the deal with Taliesin?"

A somewhat lengthy ramble about the most powerful (or most arrogant) character in Arthurian legend

On the one hand, his powers exceed Merlin’s—Merlin describes himself as “second only to Taliesin” (in “Ymddiddan Myrtin a Talyessin”), and Taliesin claims to have profound knowledge of the cosmos dating back to Creation (he says poetic inspiration was created at the same time as fresh milk, dew, and acorns). He knows everything and can shapeshift into pretty much anything, if the catalogues he gives are anything to go by. He survived being swallowed alive, being thrown in the sea ("Ystoria Taliesin"), and (it seems) going on a raid of the Otherworld during which all but seven of Arthur’s many warriors died ("Preiddeu Annwn"). Then or at some other point while he was in Annwn, he pierced 8,000 men with spears he got from Heaven ("Cad Goddeu"). That puts his casualty count above that of anyone else I can think of in Arthurian legend (They fall "by the hundred" to Bedwyr--"Pa Gur"--but by "forty score hundred" to Taliesin). For all we know, he's indestructible; from what he claims, he's omniscient.

On the other hand, he sometimes seems like Sir Kay Xtreme Bard Edition with Extra Arrogance. In The Book of Taliesin, he has a really bitter (one-sided?) feud with other scholars and monks (some variant on "pathetic men of letters” appears many a time), who he accuses of ignorance because they don’t know the answers to various questions he never gives the answers to himself, and he loses or alienates everyone until the only person who visits him is a dude named “Goronwy, from the dales of Edrywy” ("Cad Goddeu"). Not much is known about this Goronwy, though it’s been speculated that he’s the speaker in “Claf Abercuawg”, in which case he’s an ailing societal outcast and probably couldn’t get anyone to talk to him except Taliesin. There’s a strong pathos to this—time, and maybe hubris, came with a fall, leaving him somewhat like a washed-up starlet or a burned-out wunderkind, abandoned now that he’s no longer the shiny new thing.

On the third hand, which I don't have but Taliesin could probably manage if he felt like it, much of this is from his point of view, and we have no way to prove he's telling the truth. When he tells his own origin story, he claims that he was Frankensteined together by enchanters at the dawn of time. This flatly contradicts "Ystoria Taliesin", so either there are multiple canons for his life story, he's talking as the Awen rather than as himself (in which case he's still contradicting himself--he also says it's a creation of the Lord), or he's lying about some of it. Why he would want to is anyone's guess, since he is quite powerful regardless.

If we don't take Taliesin at his word about his ability to kaiju battle giant toad monsters ("Cad Goddeu"), or take it with a grain of salt, then what are his accomplishments apart from self-preservation and repaying a life debt to Elphin? I am by no means an expert on him, but in what I've read, he does almost nothing in anyone else's story. It's almost like, apart from one or two times, he isn't able to find a way to use his powers for anyone else's good.

Then again, what is his primary power? Shapeshifting seems obvious (too obvious). He uses it for self-preservation (which is valid), for the heck of it (maybe), and/or for really dubious ends (see "Angar Kyfundawt" if you really must know, but trust me, you don't want to). Fighting is a less talked about ability of his. He can cause a lot of destruction (according to himself). It's not really clear what he fights for, though the various legendary kings he hangs out with are probably implied. Then, there's...

...the Awen. Inspiration. Poetry. He can do poetry, and he can do it very well. That is what he boasts about the most, and his boasts seem pretty justified. He’s Taliesin Ben Beirdd, Taliesin “Chief of Bards”, not Taliesin “the Shapeshifter” or Taliesin “Best of Warriors”, even though he may be both of those things. Shapeshifting only benefits him, and he's seen the horrors of war more than most people: his close friend Merlin killed his own nephew in a battle. When Taliesin fights, he kills terrifying numbers of people, maybe without full control (whether he's fully cognizant while he's using his powers is an interesting question which I won't get into right now). Perhaps that's why he doesn't interfere with others' adventures much: he is too powerful to do less harm than good for the people around him and for the narrative tension. Or maybe he just doesn't feel like it, or he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or they just don't want him there anymore, or his role as a teller of stories is more important than his role as a person in them.