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margridarnauds · 4 years

Note

Rip idk if I accidentally sent my last ask too early or it it got deleted before I sent it but anywho,, if you’re still bored and wanting to talk about Celtic lore, I’d love to here about grainne ni mhaille or Brigid of tuatha de danann? Alternately, what’s one of your fav stories?

I was in the middle of typing up a response and apparently SOMETHING happened to it because it totally disappeared on me.

ANYWAY,

I can talk about both of them, to different degrees.

Gráinne was one of my first Irish research interests (Thank you The Pirate Queen, you…..interesting piece of media). That being said, I am VERY rusty when it comes to her, the main takeaway that I have being a very visceral reaction to the words “Anne Chambers” because…..suffice it to say….I have Things to say about her scholarship and the occasional sloppiness thereof, but I don’t think I brought my copy of her book on Gráinne with me, the school library is closed, and I generally don’t like to utterly eviscerate something without having it on hand. But I can say that her treatment of Donal O’Flaherty was bad, based purely off of wish fulfillment and her own attachment to Richard Burke, and that my personal reading of their marriage, which I will admit is just a READING, is that Donal and Gráinne actually had a fairly egalitarian marriage.

Think of it.

Gráinne, if we believe the legends, and the legends of her early life are very in keeping with what we know of her adult life, was truculent enough that she cut her hair short just to get on a ship. She was defiant, spirited, and ruthless to the core. (The woobification and victimization of Gráinne is something that is ANOTHER post, given that I feel like it does her a MASSIVE DISSERVICE). Donal….would have HAD to have known what he was getting into. And Donal was TÁNAISTE OF THE O’FLAHERTY SEPT. And, as I’ve discussed….that was not necessarily something he got just because his daddy was chieftain. That was something that was AGREED on. He was not a weak man, he was not a coward, and his cognomen was Donal AN CHOGAIDH, Donal OF THE BATTLES. But he seems to have fought his wars on land, Gráinne on sea. Together, they would have been one badass pair. In terms of NAMING, look at the names of their children. Owen - Same name as Gráinne’s father. Murrough - A common O’Flaherty name. And Margaret - Said by some sources to be the same name as Gráinne’s mother. And what was the name of Owen’s son? Donal. Now, there could be a NUMBER of reasons for this naming pattern, it could be nothing. But, what I believe at least is that it shows a certain level of cooperation between the two of them. I am NOT claiming it was a great love story, but I am claiming that what little evidence there is (and there can only be so much), indicates a certain level of respect, especially given that Gráinne, in general, was not the sort to tolerate fools.

Chambers also claimed, incorrectly, that Donal killed his nephew, but a quick reading of the sources would have shown that it was his cousin, ALSO named Donal who did it. The patrynomics don’t lie on that one; it was Donal mac Ruari, “Donal of the Boats”, not Donal an Chogaidh who did it.

But. Gráinne. I love talking Donal, but this is about Gráinne.

Something that I feel really does get underplayed, probably in service of making her a Perfect Feminist Heroine™ (I am a feminist, don’t get me wrong! But my idea of feminism centers around the idea that women can be as fundamentally flawed as men, they can have the same quirks, the same corruption, and they do not have to be perfect, long suffering, soft, or forever victimized) IS that ruthlessness and pragmatism that really underlines her character. People play up her attacking her son Murrough as some kind of righteous fury against him for talking to the English while conveniently forgetting that Gráinne herself spent most of her life alternatively appeasing and attacking the English. She was not a Nationalist, she wasn’t a patriot. She was, however, a survivor, as were MANY of the Irish nobility at this time. Another example of a survivor from this period was Iníon Dubh, probably one of my favorite women in Irish history (though she herself was Scottish by birth), who did try to bargain with the English for the life of her son Hugh Roe by giving over some Spanish survivors of the Armada to English authorities. People (CHAMBERS) try to pin Murrough with the worst faults of his father, but I honestly think that, at his heart, he was more his mother’s son than perhaps even she would be willing to admit.

(Also like. The entire thing with Risdeárd an Iarainn? I have read the marriage tracts, I have a friend who does law stuff. None of us can think of ANYTHING in the Brehon laws that would allow for a “Marriage” like the one described. Only thing I can think of that’s SIMILAR is the Teltown marriages. Acting like it’s a common Brehon law thing gives it a veneer of legitimacy that I strongly doubt. The oral tradition COULD be lying to us, I’m willing to say that there might be gaps in our understanding of a law, or Gráinne could have actually done it without….how shall we put this…..the usual degree of sanctity and security that we tend to assume, given that what the law said on marriage could be very different to marriage in reality. Tl;dr: She MIGHT have catfished him. Or. The 16th century Irish equivalent. But like. Catfished where you’re actually married and have a kid with one another. Or the story could be a complete fabrication, like I FIRMLY believe Hugh de Lacy’s story was. Who knows?)

Anyway, as payment for listening to that rant, have some of Sir Richard Bingham Whining, right from the horse’s as-mouth. I of course meant. Mouth.

I could read this all day. Cry, Bingham, cry harder.

Don’t think too hard about the fact that one day I might actually be in charge of a classroom, please.

Brigid I can hopefully talk about less, to some extent, given that we know comparatively little about her. Throughout this, I’m generally going to be calling her Bríg, since I’m talking about her in a mythological context and that is what she is called in Cath Maige Tuired (which is my all time favorite, baby text, answering the third part of your question), though she is called Brigit in Cormac’s Glossary.

So…what do we know about Bríg? Very little. But she is also an endlessly discussed figure, with the evidence being pored over again. And again. And again. A lot of the arguments have been discussed by Mark Williams in Ireland’s Immortals, the curious fact that, she is described in UNUSUALLY specific terms in Cormac’s Glossary, being described as a patroness of smiths, doctors, and poets, and there being three sisters named Brigit, one for each function.

At the same time, however, she only really appears in one saga, the aforementioned Cath Maige Tuired, where her role is purely to keen over her son, Ruadan, that she had via her relationship (past or present, it’s kind of left ambiguous) with the former king of the Tuatha dé, Bres. It is a genuinely poignant, heartwrenching scene, a kind of rare moment of pure humanity in a text often saturated with descriptions of blood and gore and sex of literal superhuman proportions. And in all of this, a woman grieves for her son, inventing keening and giving us a reminder of the HUMAN element of war, the mothers, the wives, the women who are left to grieve in the middle of the fighting. Which, in a text that tends to be fairly misogynistic and skeptical of women’s voices, is actually intriguing. (Bríg is also associated with a lot of DARK SHIT in this section as well, such as night whistling, which is absolutely fascinating to me given that we tend to think of her as this kind of healing, sunshine and rainbows figure and this shows a distinctively different look at her.) There is also a Dinshenchas story, Loch N-Oirbsen that mentions her inventing keening for the loss of Mac Gréine, which COULD (underline COULD) indicate that the story might have pre-dated CMT, replacing the figure of her brother with her son. Or possibly vice versa; CMT influenced quite a bit of the mythological literature.

I believe that it was Elizabeth Gray in her “Cath Maige Tuired: Myth and Structure” who pointed out that Bríg’s situation in-text is reminiscent of what many women would have dealt with during the period, their hearts torn between their fathers and, perhaps, more to the point, their fathers’ peoples, and the husbands and sons they had with the Norsemen. (Though I have…..certain doubts as to whether we should take it for granted that Bríg was WITH Bres at the time of Ruadan’s death, and all things considered, I do also question whether the entire episode was an afterthought, given that Ruadan doesn’t appear in ANY of the other lists of Bres’ children, nor is the story of his death represented in the Dindshenchas, indicating a certain lack of popularity. Nor do I believe it turns up in the early modern redaction of CMT).

This episode is one that I don’t really talk about all that much, mainly because people tend to treat it as a way of slamming Bres, or using Bríg’s grief as a battering ram against Bres, and that is something that, as the unofficial president of the Bres Fan Club….obviously rankles me. Just a bit, and is honestly one of the key reasons why I generally don’t discuss Bríg. Suffice it to say, like with Gráinne and Donal, I don’t really believe that that relationship was quite as unbalanced as people might interpret it, not the least because, in Cath Maige Tuired, a key trait of Bres’ is his dependence on the women of his life, especially his mother. Which….could create an AWKWARD situation, yes, but definitely doesn’t lend itself to the image of Bres being a tyrant at home as well as politically.

If they did split apart, it would be more because of Bres’ actions as king, such as his attempt at executing her father or the general treatment of poets under his reign, which, as a patroness of the poets (IF we assume that there is continuity between her appearance in Cormac and CMT, which is not inherently a given; assuming continuity in Irish Mythology is always a tricky subject because individual scribes often went their own way with this sort of thing) she would presumably be opposed to. But, of course. This isn’t really expanded on, Bríg is MASSIVELY underused in this text, and all that I really have are speculation (on an academic level) and headcanons (on a non-academic level.)

In terms of the connection with the Catholic saint of the same name………..many people have come up with ideas, I don’t believe it’s something that will ever get resolved. I do think that many things we TEND to label as definitively part of the goddess’ traits tend to be overstated, however, with some of them being found in other Saint’s Lives, or having a similar event in the Bible, which, to an ecclesiastical audience, would be familiar. I feel like it can be very easy to get overzealous in that, because of course it’s a very, very natural thing to want something solid for someone who we KNOW was very important, yet have very little real info on. In some redactions of Lebor Gabála Érenn, Bríg is described as the mother of the Trí Dé Dána, “The Three Gods of Skill,” Tuirill, Brian, and Cet, with Bres as the father. These three are notoriously elusive and difficult to pin down, not the least because they tend to be merged with Brian, Iuachar, and Iucharba, the Sons of Tuireann, but John Carey, in his article “Myth and Mythography in Cath Maige Turied” has suggested that, given Bríg’s identification as a patron of poets, her mothering of these three “Gods of Skill,” and the close connection she has to Bres and, through him, to figures like Ogma that the whole lot of them + The Dagda, Elatha, etc. are part of a “Pantheon of Skill,” which is essentially a cluster of gods renowned by the literary elite. So, there is that. She was definitely an important figure, given……Brigantia.

While I do not like drawing straight lines between Gaulish figures - Welsh figures - Irish figures, I will say that it seems like, at the very least, they share a common linguistic root. It does seem, judging from Caesar’s description of the Gaulish “Minerva” as being a patron of crafts, and given Bríg’s penchant for multiple crafts, that that is the figure being described, or at least someone who followed similar lines (This was argued by Proinsias Mac Cana in Celtic Mythology, pg. 34), since doubtless things would be different across geographical boundaries. (Welsh and Irish Mythology, despite having certain similarities, are distinct, I can’t imagine how much different Gaulish Mythology would be, if any of it had survived.) Something I do find interesting is that, while Mac Cana notes the Gaulish Minerva as a figure beloved by the lower class in particular, the Bríg we see in the Irish tradition is very associated with the upper class, the men of skill. But, then again, all of these written works would have been commissioned and written by and for that same elite, so it might not be that surprising at all. The oral tradition might have been very different, and perhaps the saint reflects that more. Or perhaps not.

In terms of the connection with the Catholic saint of the same name………..many people have come up with ideas, I don’t believe it’s something that will ever get resolved. If you can get your hands on Mark Williams’ Ireland’s Immortals, I think you’ll find that most of what I say re: this topic (and….a lot of topics in general) will be echoed in there. I do think that many things we TEND to label as definitively part of the goddess’ traits tend to be overstated, however, with some of them being found in other Saint’s Lives, or having a similar event in the Bible, which, to an ecclesiastical audience, would be familiar. I feel like it can be very easy to get overzealous in that, because of course it’s a very, very natural thing to want something solid for someone who we KNOW was very important, yet have very little real info on.

In terms of what I believe her function was….as hesitant as I am to apply a function to ANY member of the Tuatha dé, given how tenuous the evidence is and how it can kind of miss the forest for the trees in terms of literary analysis, I believe the bulk of the evidence, such as it is, rests on her association with the crafts, specifically as found in Cormac’s Glossary, with all the limitations thereof. I won’t say “No, you can’t worship her like that” to a modern pagan, I wouldn’t WANT to, because my relationship with these figures is not the same as a religious relationship. That is NOT my place. And that, if we are to take them as religious instead of literary figures, they might very well appear to different people in different ways. That being said, on an academic level, I do believe, at present, with the understanding that my views can definitely change and I am not infallible, that there is little to no evidence to suggest that she was a fire goddess, a goddess of spring, a fertility goddess, or a sovereignty goddess. The association with keening, outcry, etc., seems to also be more solid, so there COULD have been some association in there. Generally speaking, my main focus isn’t so much what a figure WAS so much as what was done with them afterwards.

…For what was meant to be a quick note, that was very long. And tragically, I had no memes pre-prepared for this one, so I went back a month on a friend in the department’s Facebook and found this.

I am willing to talk CMT if anyone WANTS to hear me talk about it, since it is my all time favorite myth, as well as….ANYTHING else, both the stuff I’ve discussed in this and anything else relating to the field, but I think that for this particular post, I’ll cut you free, with the hope if not the confidence that at least 1/3 of what I’ve written is vaguely coherent.

#irish mythology #celtic mythology #gráinne ní mháille #grace o'malley #long post #localbeeking

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diyunho · 7 years

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The Joker x Reader - “The Angel of Death”

As the Messenger of Death, your fate is to decide who lives or dies. If you spare a mortal’s life, you can either curse or bless them, or do nothing and let destiny determine the outcome. Tonight is a very bad one for Gotham: a lot of souls on the verge of dying. And you are here to sentence them all.

The ambush went incredibly wrong; the gangsters knew about the stakeout and the mob boss detonated the explosive with everyone in the building: cops and henchmen alike. So many humans on the verge of dying.

Your black wings stretch, gently stopping their movement as you walk over rubble and ashes. You firmly hold the Silver Sword, the only thing shining in the darkness: one side of the weapon is engraved with the curse of the underworld, the other one with its blessing. Only nothingness surrounds you, the glowing white orbs in your eye sockets assessing the aftermath of the carnage.

You halt by the kingpin and bend one knee to bring yourself closer to him. Only souls trapped in between, waiting for the judgement can see you. Your uncanny presence makes him shiver with fear, the pool of blood he’s lying in sizzling as an outcome of the powers bestowed upon The Angel of Death. Your long, ghostly hair touches his shoulders as you decide on his faith:

“You created enough damage. I have a lot of work to do because of you. I am not forgiving when it comes to this. STOP BREATHING!!” your voice echoes in his mind and your ethereal lips touch the man’s forehead: the Kiss of Death. His heart stops and you get up, searching for the rest of the mortals.

Bruce Wayne is not very far. The Batman armor is very strong, yet not enough to protect from such a violent blast. His wounds are fatal, but you linger on top of him, debating.

“I…I remember you…” he kind of smiles, half gone and delirious. Bruce thinks he’s hallucinating since there is no way you are besides him again.

He saw you a long time ago, when he was a child and fell into that accursed cave near the Wayne mansion. He almost died but you spared his life; you didn’t curse or blessed the little boy, you just allowed him to go on.

You have a weakness for lost souls; he is definitely one of them. The goosebumps on his skin alert you it’s time for a decision.

Your sword touches his chest, the piercing words lingering in the heavy air around you:

“I curse you with life, never to find peace unless you keep on fighting. It is your doom and your salvation.”

Bruce groans in pain and falls in a deep daze, but his broken body will survive because you said so.

Commissar Gordon is under a crashed wall, struggling to breathe, barely conscious, which is why you are here.

“Who…who are you?” he manages to whisper, thinking this is a dream. Poor humans, they never recognize The Angel of Death and the blissful contradiction it brings.

Your huge, heavy wings go around him like a misty curtain; James slowly blinks for a few seconds before passing out from the loss of blood. The verdict is quick to follow:

“You did a lot to save the rest. I tend to be forgiving towards those who strive to save others for the greater good. You can go on. BREATHE!!”

You don’t curse or bless him, but the man is allowed to continue his mission on earth.

So many to judge after the slaughter, but it needs to be done: all the policemen and gangsters are taken care of one by one, no other choice but to obey your will.

**************

There is another soul waiting for The Angel of Death: in the Arkham prison, The Joker is fading away. One of the doctors secretly switched his medication, injecting him with a new experimental drug instead of the usual one–just to see what it would do. Who would care anyway; they are all crazy in there, unwanted criminals, forgotten by the rest of the world.

The drug reacted as a poison in The Joker’s body. He was returned to his cell immediately after the therapy, lights out and silent confinement as a punishment for his attitude; that’s why nobody realized he is not well.

So much stillness in the air… and the human cannot move anymore. His eyes are pinned to the ceiling: a small stream of blood makes its way down his chin, dripping on the cold floor where he collapsed, almost unconscious at this point.

The Joker moans in pain under the paralyzing pressure of his organs failing one by one, his dying body responding to your touch: he gets the strength to turn his head and gaze upon you, the enormous, black wings fluttering without any sound.

“It’s… it’s you…” he stutters, remembering the only thing standing out from his horrible childhood:

He saw you that day, a long time ago when he was 10 years old and his father gave him such a beating it nearly killed him. As if it wasn’t enough, the cruel parent tossed his son down the stairs afterwards, ignoring the faint cries for help. His father wanted him dead and left him there, running away God knows where with his tramp. But The Angel of Death decided the young boy should live; you didn’t curse or bless him back then, but he was granted life.

Oh, how fast they were to diagnose his rant as crazy talk every time he mentioned The Dark Queen in the therapy sessions. A hopeless case, screwed up beyond repair.

“My… Queen,” he gasps for air, wanting to touch the Silver Sword; he is so feverish and drained that his hand falls back to the side, while the sentence resonates in his mind:

“You suffered and made others suffer. It’s time to let go. STOP BRE…” and The Joker’s heart slows down, waiting for the end of your command. Your lips are close to his forehead, awaiting the Kiss of Death.

But you have a weakness for lost souls; he is definitely one of them. It’s very rare for you to change a judgment in the last moment, still you need to do it. You get up, the heavy blade rests on his chest, the decision taken:

“I bless you to feel emotions again. You will know sorrow, regret and love; it will be your ruin and redemption.”

The Joker’s body relaxes, immersed in a dreamless nightmare; he will survive because you wish it.

******************

Years went by like they were nothing for you: The Angel of Death is not confined by time or space. Your task is to do Death’s bidding for eternity and it will never change.

Busy again in Gotham: things got worse and worse on Earth in general; this city is no exception. After sentencing mortals to life or death all night, you find yourself kneeling by a familiar human.

The Joker was driving his Purple Lamborghini towards the penthouse when he got ambushed by the police and attempted to escape. He was speeding on the streets of the damned town that made him who he is, when he lost control of the car and smashed into a brick wall by Liberty Street. The impact was so strong that he flew through the windshield and landed in the ditch nearby, every single bone in his body broken to pieces.

“T…The…Dark… Queen,” the mortal mumbles, in shock from so much pain and internal bleeding.

You lean over to look into his eyes which makes him regain a bit of concentration.

“You…you’re so… beautiful…” he coughs, wanting to touch your face but can’t: his limbs are fractured. No human could withstand such forbidden transgression anyway, yet he still attempted: The Joker never forgot about the Dark Queen, the only thing in life he was certain it was real and not a figment of his twisted imagination.

“You had enough,” the judge passes the outcome of his fate. “STOP BREATHING!!” and the Kiss of Death puts an end to his misery.

His heart stops and a faint smile lingers on his lips: after being tormented for so long, you finally have pity and give him peace. The King of Gotham is finally free and The Angel of Death decides one more thing:

“Wait!” you order the soul as it prepares to leave. “Stay with me!”

From time to time, you like to keep strong spirits around you, especially lost souls. And you have a weakness for lost souls.

******************

The Angel of Death is only seen by those on the verge of dying, forever cursing or blessing mortals allowed to go on. The souls awaiting judgement can see one more thing lately: a silent, Dark Shadow to your right, wings blacker than night and blue orbs lightening the abyss.

The apparition never says anything, but sometimes you turn towards it and ask for its opinion even it’s no use—only you can decide:

“Cursed with life?”

Its head nods a yes and the Silver Sword touches whomever you are judging, passing the sentence.

The surreal glow surrounding you while doing this gives the Dark Shadow enough courage to whisper in your mind:

“You’re so beautiful My Queen…”

Also read: MASTERLIST

http://diyunho(dot)tumblr(dot)com/post/153664676321/joker-x-reader-masterlist

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fossadeileonixv · 4 years

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Monday Milan Musings

That was fun, huh?

- Pioli nailed his tactics on Saturday. No doubt about it. With Lazio this season there are 2 things to worry about: Immobile in the box and the width and crossing generated by their wingbacks. There was no Immobile so that wasn’t an issue. Without that concern and with Lazio essentially playing a 4-6-0 with 6 mids the midfield became a jumble. To counteract any width Pioli had Theo and Conti hang extremely deep, never allowing Lazio to get deep and wide. A+ for you coach.

For anyone wanting to drop 50-100 million on SMS, they might want to know that Kessie has owned him in every matchup. OWNED HIM. He did it again Saturday. SMS tapped out in the 67th minute.

Kessie was my MOTM. In case you were wondering.

Here is some other excellent reading about the game that really illustrates well what I’m talking about:

https://thelaziali.com/2020/07/06/lazio-vs-milan-statistical-analysis-serie-a-2019-2020/

- There’s been a lot of ball busting of Pioli and his team selection for every game. I for one think he’s got it down perfect. There’s a game every 3 days so rotation is key. If you don’t rotate you are gonna be dead on your feet. Look at Inter. They already look burnt out. By my count Pioli has used 21 different players over the 5 games since we came back. He’s used 23 of 25 possible subs. As a coach during this stretch I think you actually have to map out the games, who’s starting and what subs you expect to use. Write it down. You should also probably tattoo a big number 60 on your hand as well. That’s when you need to start making changes. You can’t wait for minute 80 or 85 like you might during the season. Pioli has nailed this approach so far. Conte is completely lost and it shows.

- Has anyone else noticed that we seem to be in excellent physical shape? I don’t know what happened over the break but it’s clear our guys took fitness very seriously. It’s like they all went on the Body by Clarence Seedorf program. No one looks sloppy or overweight. The best example is probably Kessie. During his time off he transformed himself from what I would describe as ‘just an athlete’ to a guy that looks like he takes exercise and nutrition very seriously. Sure he’s taken a leap on the field with his play but I think a big part of that is how well he’s taking care of his body as well.

- Here is the table since the restart:

JUV ATA 12

MIL 10

NAP 9

SAS 8

INT BOL CAG 7

LAZ SAM 6

BRE 5

UDI FIO VER 4

PAR TOR ROM 3

GEN 2

SPAL 1

LEC 0

- Lastly I made another appearance on the CalcioConnection Pod this morning. Nothing like sharing the airwaves with a Laziali and Interisti after this weekends results. Let’s just say there were 2 really long rants and one guy that was just sitting back sipping his coffee. Jerry and Alex do an excellent job and I’m blessed to be invited on. Tune in!

- Big game tomorrow. Oh boy.

Cheers,

Lisi

PS: This post was brought to you by 2 cups of black coffee and the soundtrack was provided by the man in black himself, Johnny Cash.

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spaceorphan18 · 7 years

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SO’S GLEE EPISODE RANKING: NO. 32

I started a Full Glee Episode Ranking between seasons 5 and 6 over two years ago now (!!!). My opinions have changed somewhat since then (retrospect is an interesting thing), and I need to include the thirteen season six episodes I neglected in my original list. With the two year anniversary of the show being over a few months away, I thought I’d count down to by posting an episode every day. I’ll tag using: glee episode rankings

Here we go…

32. The Break Up (4x04)

Written by: Ryan Murphy Directed by: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

So - I flipped the order of this one with No. 30 because god, this episode fucking sucks, and I have to do three of them, and I’m going from hardest to least hardest. Wait - SO - why is it so high then?!?! Here’s my thing about this episode - I think it’s an incredibly well crafted, emotionally turbulent, and incredibly effective for what it is. I think Ryan Murphy set out to break all of our hearts - at once - and he succeeded on an unprecedented level. Interestingly - this is more of an objective ranking than a personal one. I’m not a huge fan of this one - and I’ve only been back to it a handful of times.

So - we all know what happens in this episode, but breaking it down a little...

First off, there’s the newbie stuff - which I don’t think should even been in the episode. It wastes precious time from the heavy things that matter. Also - Will and Emma conflict. Seriously - if you’re going to throw them in here - give them some real conflict.

Brittana - Man, these girls had by far the most mature break up, and I’ll admit, it’s kind of sad to watch, even if I don’t ship it.

Finchel - This is the good stuff here, tbh. This story is fantastically told - and maybe I can tolerate it because I’m kinda happy they are breaking up, but there’s something very real here about a couple who has meant so much to each other at one point in time, and now they are different people on different paths. Idk - I feel like this was heartbreaking and good tv.

Klaine - I still hate the Klaine break up. It’s not because they’re breaking up, or because of the cheating. I hate it because out of the three couples, they got the short end of the stick. They got a couple of songs, one not very good scene and a metaphor for a break up. And it pisses me off. If you’re going to break them up, give them a goddamn real scene to do it in - don’t just drift off and leave it hanging and then next episode be like, oh yeah, not dating. **grumbles - but saves bigger rant** FWIW - I actually like the Loser Like Me break up stuff better (yes, I know I’m weird)

The thing though about the episode, the reason why I do have it so high, is the production. The music in this is fantastic and so, so heartbreaking within the narrative. It’s some of the best music, and best use of a theme in any episode ever. It sets the tone - and the tone doesn’t let up at all - and /that/ is what makes it a heartwrenching drama - outdone only by The Quarterback.

High Points:

Brittany and Blaine at the beginning. My heart is already breaking for them.

The little bits of Finn and Kurt dynamic in this episode - it’s the last time that they’re on screen together in the series, and I’m sad that it’s this episode, but I’m glad we have it.

I can’t believe I’m going to say this - but the Finchel narrative in this episode is spot on.

I can’t say that it’s really a high point - but Blaine and his psyche around this time - it’s so effectively heart-wrenching. Poor bb <3

Callbacks...

Everything in this episode is so well acted though...

The Brittana Break Up scene

The Finchel Break Up Scene

The Klaine Bre---OH WAIT THERE WASN’T ONE

Low Points:

The Klaine stuff is stupid. (Okay, most of it’s not - and as an aside - there’s some really interesting stuff going on here - and the transition from fairy tale romance to real romance is really good and interesting and is an arc for the rest of the series, and years later - I’m not against a break up story, but still the execution....)

The Jarley stuff is incredibly out of place and jarring. It wasn’t needed for this episode.

Why couldn’t Will and Emma break up?

The other problem I have - which isn’t really about this episode specifically, is that the follow up is unsatisfying, too... Finchel is the only one who get a hefty narrative. Brittana is going to be ignored completely until, idk, season five, and Klaine gets to be Finchel’s kid sister - paralleling Finchel’s story, and not getting as meaty things to do - which would have made the impact of this episode more meaningful.

Music:

Barely Breathing: Blaine and Finn are absolutely heart breaking. Not a huge fan of this song, but I think it highlights their headspace really well. I still wish we would have gotten more Blaine headspace, but ah well.

Give Your Heart a Break: Okay, so Brody was kind of unnecessary here, too, but I kind of love it, tbh.

Teenage Dream Acoustic: Fuck this song. (Actually, this is one of my favorite songs of the show, and I love every time Darren sings the slowed down version, and his version here is perfect, so perfect and awful and amazing, and heartbreaking but still...)

Don’t Speak: You know - I hated this song when it was first on the radio. It’s so, so damn depressing. So yeah, let’s add Klaine breaking up to it. (FWIW - it’s very well done between the four of them.)

Mine: Santana is gorgeous and this song is beautiful.

The Scientist: Fuck this song, too. This song makes me want to cry.

Final Verdict: This episode sucks but it sets out what it needs to do in a very effective and heartbreaking way.

#glee episode rankings

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margridarnauds · 5 years

Text

greenwitchpinkcrystals replied to your post “It turns out that every time I see “Danu” listed as an “Earth...”

Why

So, first off, let’s get this out of the way: This is not meant to affect ANYONE’S religious or spiritual practices. If you have a relationship with any of the Tuatha dé that doesn’t fit a given analysis, I’m not going to be the one who says “No, that’s wrong.” That’s YOUR relationship and your belief system, and I’m not going to touch that. That is NOT my place.

What I’m talking about is purely on an academic level, reading the original medieval texts, and I will say that what I’m about to say, while I think it LEANS towards what I believe the academic consensus is, is not holy writ either. I fully admit that, if it came down to assigning myself to EITHER anti-nativist or nativist, I would probably class myself in with the anti-nativists, AKA The Party Poopers of Celtic Studies, as you’re probably going to find out soon.

On a more simplified level, there are three figures from Irish Mythology who I do NOT like discussing simply because they tend to elicit very strong reactions from people when Commonly Accepted Truths are questioned: Bríg, the Morrigan, and Danu. All three of them tend to activate my fight or flight response when they’re brought up (and, most of the time, my option of choice is FLIGHT.)

Point 1 (AKA “In Which Rachel Rants About 99% Of The Over-Generalizations of the Tuatha dé Into a Given Function”)

it’s nearly impossible to concretely assign almost ANY of the Tuatha dé to a function. They aren’t really...a PANTHEON like that, if you look at the texts. They’re an ever-shifting cast of figures loosely tied together by a sprawling body of texts, poems, and genealogies who, while they MIGHT have had a pre-Christian past, are being primarily used as literary figures. And it’s nigh impossible to tell where the one begins and the other ends, especially since the Tuatha dé SHIFT depending on the text (and sometimes even in the same text!)

One of my favorite examples is Lugh. Generally regarded as one of the best figures of the Tuatha dé, the hero of Cath Maige Tuired, master of all skills. A GOOD GUY, right? Except...in Sons of Tuireann, he brutally manipulates the deaths of three men simply because he decided that he wanted to have his cake and eat it too. And in the Dindsenchas poem Carn Ui Neit, where he kills Bres. And in How the Dagda Got His Magical Staff, where he kills Cermait for sleeping with his wife. And the main text where he’s a Shining Hero, Cath Maige Tuired, is generally accepted by scholars these days (most notably John Carey and Mark Williams) agree that the text primarily comes out of a 9th century context and is meant to be basically a bolster for the literary elite in light of the Viking invasions (the Fomorians come from Lochlann “Land of Lakes,” which can either mean “Norway” or “Norse occupied Scotland” in a medieval Irish context). It’s not that Lugh is NOT a pre-Christian figure, because the figure Lugus with Gaul is...pretty indicative that there’s SOMETHING, but we have no idea WHAT. And, really as far as the Tuatha dé are concerned, there are probably...less than five figures I would SOLIDLY say we have any evidence for worship for and an idea of where they MAY have fit. Give or take one or two depending how I’m feeling on a given day. (Obviously, some people, even on the more skeptical side of things, can be more or less generous than me; I’m just a naturally very suspicious person. The ‘less than ten’ thing should not be taken as any indication of a consensus here.)

Basically, they couldn’t even agree on how these guys were supposed to behave, much less give them a FUNCTION. Their powers, what and who they’re associated with, etc. all is variable, and it’s impossible to tell which figures were genuine pre-Christian figures and which ones were literary figures who were invented to serve the purposes of the time. (Also, there are some figures who are highly associated with the literary elite but who...don’t pop up in any of the folktales that adapt the same stories, which leads me to suspect that their MAIN association was with the literary elite and they didn’t have any real influence out of that. See: Bres. I WANT my special boy to have been a Big Figure who was worshipped and respected, but the evidence, to ME at least, strongly suggests that he was a figure strongly associated with the literary elite who was tacked on as a villain to Cath Maige Tuired.)

So, my tl;dr here is that, really, it’s hard to assign a “mother goddess” or “Fertility goddess” to the Tuatha dé because, simply put, there is no way to assign that kind of specific function to almost ANY of the figures of the Tuatha dé. How they’re depicted really depends more on what the individual scribe wanted to convey rather than consistently associating them with ONE thing, and even in cases like Cormac’s Glossary, which DOES give a FEW of them functions, it’s....shaky at times, as we’re about to deal with. There are figures who ARE mothers, but it’s hard to really say that they’re...THAT associated with it. Generally speaking, the designation seems to be given to female figures in the text mainly because...they couldn’t think of anything else to apply to women? Ditto for “Fertility”. (See: Bríg. There is no reason to assume that Bríg had ANY association with fertility, and yet it’s a claim I see regularly trotted out.)

Point 2 (AKA “Okay, but what about DANU? Who IS said to be ‘Mother of the Gods?’”):

Even by the usually-shaky standards of Irish Mythological continuity, (D)anand (not Danu in any of the medieval texts) is...strange, as far as her background. Not in a “There are like ten layers of literary stuff lightly sautéed on top of a Pre-Christian background” way, but in a, “Holy Shit, they REALLY created a goddess out of nothing, didn’t they?” way. The tl;dr is that, INITIALLY the Tuatha dé Danann were...the Tuatha dé. Just “Tuatha dé.” Which translates out very, very roughly to “God-Tribe.” Which WORKED but also, unfortunately, was the same term used for the Israelites in the Bible, which caused Confusion understandably.

And, well. I’m going to let Mark Williams explain the rest, since he’s the man with the PhD (Also, if you have ANY interest in how our current conceptions of the Tuatha dé have been formed, I HIGHLY recommend this book. It’s a VERY solid, accessible book that doesn’t bog itself in academic jargon and instead tries to create something that can be read and enjoyed by anyone, and unlike me, he’s very open as far as the possibilities):

This tangle indicates two things: first, the origins and developments of the mysterious Donand are not fully recoverable, and secondly the idea that Irish paganism knew a divine matriarch named Danu cannot now be maintained. The compilers of ‘Cormac’s Glossary’ may have been quite correct that there had once been a goddess called Anu or Ana associated with the Paps mountains, since it beggars belief to think that the pre-Christian Irish would not have associated so impressively breasted a landscape with a female deity. On the other hand it is suspicious that so important a figure as the glossary’s ‘mother of the Irish gods’ should go unmentioned in the early sagas, teeming as they are with former gods and goddesses. This raises the possibility that Ana/Anu may have simply been a local Munster figure, less familiar or even unknown elsewhere in Ireland.

Michael Clarke foes further, and suggests that the lofty description of Anu/Anu in ‘Cormac’s Glossary’ may itself owe more to medieval learning than to pagan religion, and result from a monastic scholar musing learnedly on the goddess Cybele, mother of the classical gods...He also quotes Isidore, Irish scholars’ favourite source for the learning of Mediterranean antiquity, who describes Cybele in striking terms: “They imagine the same one as both Earth and Great Mother...She is called Mother, because she gives birth to many things. Great, because she generates food; Kindly, because she nourishes all living things through her fruits.”

This, as Clarke notes, is so close to the Irish glossary entry that it is hard to avoid the suspicion that the ‘personality’ of the goddess Ana-’who used to feed the gods well’-has been cooked up in imitation of the classical deity. That Clarke’s analysis may be right is suggested by a distinctive oddity in the ‘Ana’ entry: While traces of the activities of divine beings are constantly detected in the landscape in Irish tradition, nowhere else is a natural feature described as part of a divinity’s body. This is rare even for the better-attested gods of classical tradition, with the signal exception of the great mother-goddesses of the eastern Mediterranean, of whom Cycle, the ‘Mountain Mother’, came to be the most prominent. Ana/Anu is simply not on the same scale or plane of representation as síd beings like Midir or Óengus, and it is telling that the Paps of Ana were imagined (by the early thirteenth century at the latest) as a pair of síd-mounds, the separate and unconnected dwellings of different otherworldly rulers.

(Ireland’s Immortals, pg. 189-190)

So, just as much as it’s hard to assign a function to MOST of the Tuatha dé, it’s even harder to really....SAY whether Ana actually existed prior to a certain period of time. She definitely wasn’t called “Danu;” that form of her name is never used at that point.

Was there a figure who was “Mother to the Gods?” I don’t know. Maybe there was! Maybe she was the Great Mother Goddess of the pre-Christian Irish! I’m not going to claim to KNOW one way or another until we invent time machines and I can properly go back in time to shake an answer out of Cormac in person. But it’s impossible to know and the evidence is scant at best, definitely not worthy of the press she gets. I wish I could tell you. I really do, even if the answer was something that I personally wouldn’t like. But then, we wouldn’t have a field, either.

#greenwitchpinkcrystals #long post #irish mythology #i tried to make this as short and succinct as possible and i still failed #whoops #danu #celtic mythology

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