Something I've Noticed While Studying Jewish History Is How Immediate It Feels. It Isn't History, Not

Gonna post this thing from comments because it’s too beautiful 😭🙏🏻

*Arthur and Merlin sneeking around the castle at night* uh yeah we’re doing.........poetry

Leon: uhhh ok...I’ll leave you to your...poetry... *leaves*

Arthur to Merlin: YOU DUMB FUCK NOW HE THINKS I LIKE POETRY

Meanwhile...

Leon to Gwaine, Percy, Elian, Gwen, and Mordred: yeah they’re definitely fucking

*Elian hands money to Gwen*

Everyone agrees that if Merlin and Arthur were together, the entire kingdom would know and everyone would be chill with it, and I have no problem with Merthur (I mean have you seen the way they look at each other), HOWEVER I do think it would be a million times funnier if everyone assumed they were together (because Merlin totally gets mistress treatment) and they actually weren’t. I just think that would be really, really funny.

Random linguistic worldbuilding: A language with six sets of pronouns, which are set by one's current state of existence. There's a separate pronoun for people who are alive, people who are dead, and potential future people who are yet to be born, and the ambiguous ones of "may or may not be alive or aleady dead", "may or may not have even been born yet", and the ultimate general/ambiguous all-covering one that covers all ambiguous states.

The culture has a specific defined term for that tragic span of time when a widow keeps accidentally referring to their spouse with living pronouns. New parents-to-be dropping the happy surprise news of a pregnancy by referring to their future child with the "is yet to be born" pronoun instead of a more ambiguous one and waiting for the "wait what did you just say?" reactions.

Someone jokingly referring to themselves with the dead person pronouns just to highlight how horrible their current hangover is. A notorious aspiring ladies' man who keeps trying to pursue women in their 20s despite of approaching middle age fails to notice the insult when someone asks him when he's planning to get married, and uses the pronoun that implies that his ideal future bride may not even be born yet.

A mother whose young adult child just moved away from home for the first time, who continues to dramatically refer to their child with "may or may not be already dead" until the aforementioned child replies to her on facebook like "ma stop telling people I'm dead" and having her respond with "well how could I possibly know that when you don't even write to us? >:,C"

can i just say that i am so proud of every single person reading this?

it may sound preachy but these past few months have been pretty tough on the majority of people,,

and while some people have been fine with quarantine, others have struggled and that’s PERFECTLY OKAY!

not everyone can deal with constantly being at home with their family, or constantly by themselves,, some people can deal with the workloads that they were given and others can’t,, and no matter how you dealt with it,, YOURE SUPER VALID!! don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!

here’s also a reminder to drink some water and have a snack! take care of yourself!

A glass that pushes cat off of counters

Happy Halloween!!! Love spooky month <3

holy shit i just took a look at the wikipedia page for “Jack-o’-lantern”

this is literally the first picture

you can always tell who has 0 critical reading skills/has never known or known anyone that’s experienced trauma when they complain that the ages for the characters in SOC are unbelievable. like, the entire point of them being so dark and so mature at such young ages is because all of them have gone through things that have forced them to mature. in some way or another the adults in their lives have failed them.

wylan’s dad abused him, jarl brum used matthias’ pre-existing trauma from having his family die against him, kaz was failed by both pekka rollins (scamming 2 lost kids in a city, what a piece of shit) and to an extent jordie due to his naivete & irresponsibility (kaz even admits this). in a sense zoya failed nina by being so harsh on her nina had little qualms about running off from her, colm forced jesper to hide an important part of himself for so long it basically irreversibly changed him for the worse, and inej was absolutely failed by tante heleen, who stole her innocence at a painfully young age. all these factors forced the main characters to grow up fast even when they didn’t want to.

and as someone who has experienced trauma at the hands of people who were never supposed to hurt them, who were supposed to do the opposite and be there for them let me tell you: that shit forces you to mature. because you realize then that the people who look after you aren’t doing that, so you need to look after yourself. you become your own parent, but something is always off with how you raise yourself because it was never supposed to be that way in the 1st place. you adapt to whatever circumstances you need to, its hardly even living. kaz became ruthless because he knew you had to be to survive, nina knew that her beauty and powers were considered her strongest assets in the barrel so she made them seem like they were who she was, etc etc.

(also, and this is small but still important imo: you can see the main characters really act their age once they all interact with colm fahey. nina giggling that jesper is in trouble, jesper tattling on nina to matthias, the kaz/jesper fight being broken up by colm, etc.)

TL;DR if you think the SOC kids are too young to be acting how they do you need to: gain some critical complex reading skills and also read further in the book to understand why these characters are the way they are, and see them act their age.

If you ever need cheering up, just think about immortal Merlin taking all his newly resurrected friends on a road trip around the world to show them all the culture and technology they've missed while they were dead, taking them to each of the places he used to live and all the major historical sites he's been.

Think about Leon insisting on driving whenever possible, and no one except maybe Gwaine having the heart to tell him that he is a terrible driver.

Think about Arthur invoking his status in order to get shotgun rights, and always grumbling because everyone else takes turns stealing the spot from him.

Think about Gwen packing a big DVD binder full of movies for them to watch during the long hours, but accidentally spills her lemonade on it and then cries a little while Merlin awkwardly comforts her.

Think about Percival and Elyan constantly bickering in the back of the van because Percival keeps stretching his legs into Elyan's side and Elyan keeps elbowing Percy in the ribs, meanwhile Lancelot is just awkwardly pressed against the window with everyone else's luggage piled on his lap.

Think about them all getting pulled over because their van shouldn't be able to fit that many people, and Merlin is most definitely sitting on Gwaine's lap, but Merlin uses magic to Jedi-hand-wave the cop into letting them pass.

Think about Lance quietly doing sudoku in the back seat, until Gwaine gets a hold of it and writes "69" in all the squares with permanent sharpie.

Think about the car breaking down, but they don't wanna wake up Merlin and ask him to use magic to fix it because he hardly ever sleeps anymore and the poor guy could really use a few winks, so instead they spend the next four hours scratching their heads over how the hell to fix a radiator.

Think about them going to the beach and going to art museums and eating at crusty roadside diners, throwing french fries at each others' heads and watching Percy get sad because the napkins won't hold shape very well when he tries to fold them into origami dogs.

Just...think about the Round Table going on a road trip.

til chopsticks (the piano tune) was written by a teenage girl

I’m the original question asker, but I couldn’t find a way to tag joyousgard in a comment so I’m reblogging from them to say thank you. This answer is so encouraging, thank you so much for writing this out. I’m super excited to dive deeper into Arthuriana now :D

Hi! I’m a teen, and I’m really interested in Arthuriana, but I’m not in a position to take college courses on it or anything at the moment (hoping to in the future tho!!!). I’m trying to read and annotate SGatGK, but I have a host of executive dysfunction problems (and starting college) that make it difficult. My question is, how do I make sure I don’t seem like I’m pretending to know more than I am when I tell people about it (I just get so excited!!)? And at what point can I say I know a lot about it (this one is just to motivate me to finish the book lmao) ? Anyway, thank you for reading this :) your master list of the texts is very useful :)))

Firstly, I’m so glad my list had been helpful!

Secondly, PLEASE do not worry about this. You don’t have to pass a test or read a certain number of texts to be able to tell people about a cool thing you are excited about!! Arthuriana is so vast, no one can know anything. Theres so much I don’t know and tons of texts I haven’t read yet, which is awesome I think! Theres so much out there!

As far as being a self proclaimed “arthuriana knowing about-er” goes, like, youre reading medieval literature for fun. you are already beyond general knowledge of arthuriana!

Also, you dont have to read tons of texts to enjoy arthuriana or engage with it! You dont have to read quickly, read untranslated, etc if that isnt what is fun/doable for you. I read a lot but i also really struggle motivating myself to read when im doing it because i feel like i *should*, not because i enjoy it and am interested. so go at your own pace!!