#I fear my shitposting has evolved into animations now

[yourlocalabomination]

God gave me Procreate Dreams and a vision.

[not-sure-what-im-feeling]

Godsides Ref Sheet

I've been working on my own version of the godsides idea (sanders sides as gods), and this is what I've got. (kudos to @thegoldenduckie for helping! I couldn't do this without you!)

This is going to be a long post, so here:

First up we've got the characters themselves! (this does include Remy and Emile, I know that they aren't sides, but I love them)

<<•>>

Logan

God of: intelligence, wisdom, strategy, memory, time, and space

Style: like an ethereal, noble, starcore, gay ass bitch

Age (as of Thomas): as old as the universe itself

Interests: poetry, science, mathematics, astronomy, Patton

Animal counterpart (+features): Raven, he has the wings of a raven

<<•>>

Patton

God of: emotion, empathy, health, animals, life, justice (morality)

Style: dad x kid core gay x that one nice librarian you met when you were five and have never seen since that one fateful afternoon but the memory of them has stuck with you forever x flowery cottagecore dresses

Age (as of Thomas): as old as there has been life on earth

Interests: baking, cooking, sewing, knitting, hanging out with the other gods (and Thomas!), gardening

Animal counterpart (+and features): dog, specifically a golden retriever, and he has the tail and ears of one (you fucking furry)

<<•>>

Virgil

God of: fear, instinct, paranoia, anxiety, monsters, weather (especially storms)

Style: a 2005 emo, but make it fancy

Age (as of Thomas): as long as humans have been around, is our best guess

Interests: watching horror movies, baking with Patton (don’t judge, okay?), keeping up with his anonymous tumblr blog (shh, the mortals don’t know it’s him), embroidery, cosplay, shitposting

Animal counterpart (+features): spider, multiple eyes/limbs?

<<•>>

Roman

God of: creativity, love, passion, the arts, honor, pride

Style: pretentious fuck at a ren faire

Age (as of Thomas): since art could be found (wow, so fancy you flamboyant little shit)

Interests: acting, poetry, writing, cosplaying with Virgil, dnd, fashion design/putting together outfits, pottery, photography, fencing

Animal counterpart (+features): lion, has a tail, ears, mane like hair?

<<•>>

Janus

God of: deception/deceit, puzzles, riddles, tricks, theatre, outcasts

Style: Victorian-era conman outlaw (now with added capes!)

Age (as of Thomas): since the first lie fell from a human’s mouth

Interests: fucking with the other gods, chess, gardening, witchcraft, winetasting, turning into a snake at zoos to freak out mortals (remus is with him obvi)

Animal counterpart (+features): snake, has his lil scalies, snek tongue, and eye.

<<•>>

Remus

God of: creativity, sex, the abandoned, chaos, mischeif

Style: fancy, alternative, androgynous, grunge

Age (as of Thomas): same as Roman (they’re twins, what’d you expect)

Interests: fucking with other the gods and mortals (but different), pole dancing, cooking/baking, solving cold cases from decades ago because he can, acting, drawing, painting

Animal counterpart (+features): octopus… (please help, what features should he have?)

<<•>>

Remy

God of: sleep, night, dreams (kinda)

Style: he looks like the vines and only that. No joke this god came into existence thirty minutes late with a Starbucks in hand

Age (as of Thomas); the first time someone slept ig???

Interests: going for walks/drives, stargazing, listening to podcasts, chatting, drinking coffee, talking with Emile

Animal counterpart (+features): raccoon, he’s got the bags under the eyes, but he chooses not to have any other features, and those are just cause he’s an insomniac

<<•>>

Emile

God of: the mind, illustrative arts, language

Style: similar to Patton’s, but a bit more masculine(?)

Age (as of Thomas): since humans evolved their mind enough to speak words everyone knew

Interests: watching cartoons, animation, pet care, crocheting, 

Animal counterpart (+features): ram, he has horns!

<<•>>

Thomas himself is a mortal in this, but the gods have chosen someone to speak through every lifetime, and they chose Thomas. He's honestly pretty much the same as he is in the videos, though.

Ships include: Logicality (kinda going to be the focus), probably prinxiety and dukeceit, but there might be a bit of princeit. Logan acts as the "main character" seeing as he'll be around the longest, but all of them will be a focus.

That's most of what I've got for now, but I'll keep you updated as things progress.

[joanofarchetype]

A Connecticut Yankee...a kid...that's all well and good but we really don't talk enough about the werewolf in King Arthur's court

This is not a shitpost — in Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory makes mention of "Sir Marrok, the good knight that was betrayed with his wyf, for she made hym seven yere a wer-wolf". Of course, Malory lifted the tale of the werewolf knight straight outta "Bisclavret," which is one of the Twelve Lais of Marie de France. And it is...wild. There's also "Melion," an anonymous Breton lai which along with "Biclarel" is believed to have evolved from the same source as "Bisclavret". In this post we're gonna refer to the protagonist as the "knight" or the "wolf-knight" and tell a somewhat composite tale.

(A note: this takes place well before commonly established werewolf lore, which crystallized thanks to Universal's The Wolf Man. Curt Siodmak wrote all that stuff about the full moon and silver bullets in 1941 so well that our common imagination accepted it as ancient fact.)

So anyway our guy is a knight who disappears for a couple nights a week and his wife is like ?????? dude ??????? where ??? do you ???? go ??????

And my dude is like "babe I love you but I can't tell you because you won't look at me the same" and she's like "I am your wIFE you better tell me right quick or otherwise have a good nose for almonds in your oatmeal" (jk she doesn't say that because if she did he might've gotten a little foreshadowing of her treachery, but alas, our man was a sucker)

So the knight tells her he's a werewolf, and on the nights he disappears he's wolfing around the countryside and his wife is like !!!!!!!!!! on the inside but makes sure her face is only 🤔 on the outside

(Mind you, Marie de France goes into how the wife is grossed out because she shared her marriage bed with a beast, which has some interesting implications but we'll get to those later)

She starts digging about his transformation until he explains how in order to return to his human shape, he *needs* to put his human clothes back on or else he'll be stuck as a wolf, at which point wifey is 👀👀👀👀

Wifey's like, "but if ur in wolf form, how do u remember where u put ur clothes lol" and the knight's like, "no no, I retain my human mind even in wolf form and besides, I always put them under this one rock outside this cave"

now bear in mind he's never been able to talk about this to anyone so he's pouring his heart out about his deepest secret which he kept even from his wife & I know we're all pretty used to medieval repression but imagine how it must have felt to share this secret at long last 😥

So to recap:

knight: 🤵🏻🛡🐾🌕🐺🤫😅😍♥️💐 wifey: 👰🏼💭🤢🤔👀🧐💡💡👔💍🔪🔪🔪

Our knight is like "yeah so I was born this way and it's just a part of who I am and whew it's kind of a relief to finally be talking about it with someone"

Wifey nods along 🤔🤔🤔 because she's had a💡moment and is 🍳 up a plan...

so the knight has unleashed (pun intended) his secret for the first time in this life and is feeling just dandy, but what he doesn't know is his wife is already plotting his downfall with her...LOVER (dun dun dunnn)

wifey & her secret lover steal the knight's clothes when he's transformed, essentially trapping him in wolf form, get him declared dead in absentia, marry each other & take over his lands

and the royal court goes for this because at this point the whole kingdom knows about the knight's habit of disappearing for days at a time (because medieval nobles are messy gossipy bitches who live for that drama) so they just assume he abandoned her

*~*ONE YEAR LATER*~* (or if you're Malory, *~*SEVEN YEARS LATER*~*)

the king & hunting party corner the wolf-knight in the woods. knight is overwhelmed at the sight of his monarch & runs up to what for all he knows might be his oblivion to kiss king's feet at which point king's like, "THAT'S NO ORDINARY WOLF. HE SHALL JOIN MY COURT IMMEDIATELY."

the wolf-knight goes to live at court where he's basically regarded as a knight (so the takeaway from this part of the lai is that a literal wild animal had a better chance of becoming a knight in ye olden days than a peasant or a woman but I digress)

anyway so there's a celebration at court and who comes to the party but the ex-wifey's new husband, now a baron. understandably, the wolf-knight does NOT react well and attacks him, and the reaction of everyone at court at this near-mauling isn't to say "whoa whoa maybe bringing a wolf to court was a bad idea" but rather "huh, this wolf has never been hostile towards a human before so obviously this guy must've personally wronged him." which is...progressive.

so the new husband/baron/co-conspirator is all "wtf keep it away from me" and the king is like "idk man, what were you wearing? maybe you smelled like royal beef jerky at the time. seems like you were asking for it"

king & the other barons take wolf-knight to the new baron's property. they just need to figure out what's going on because they're not ready to take sir wolf to his final veterinary visit, u feel? they're attached. now get ready for this next part because it's a doozy.

ex-wifey hears about the king's visit so she's waiting with gifts & cakes & shit. the wolf-knight sees her & immediately BITES OFF HER NOSE & he bites it so good her progeny can feel it & henceforth all her descendants are — I SHIT YOU NOT — born noseless. talk about losing face.

under questioning (*cough cough* torture *cough*) the wife admits to her crimes & yields the stolen clothing, which they put in front of the wolf & he just stares at them until they realize "wow yeah sorry dude our bad" and leave the room to give him privacy

when they see the wolf-knight again he's in his human form and in Marie de France's "Bisclavret" it's expressly written that the king embraces him in the bedchamber and gives him "many kisses" (hashtag heterosexual friends doing heterosexual things)

the king restores the wolf-knight's lands and ex-wifey has to live with her ex-baron in exile, forever marked for her betrayal. some real Mark of Cain shit. (obviously this lai has a lot to say about spousal dissatisfaction but that’s another day’s dissertation)

the wolf-knight (Bisclavret, or Melion, or Marrok, or Sir Wolf or whatever you fancy calling him) not only regains his good name, but also the support of a court which now knows his secret dual nature.

something to be hated or feared, only understood and accepted. no one at court shuns him once the secret's out & no one tries to change or "heal" him of his lycanthropy.

remember when I said we'd come back to the wife's reaction? in "Bisclavret" Marie de France specifically states that upon finding out his secret, the wife no longer wishes to "lie beside him." let's unpack that a bit by exploring similar themes across folklore.

the marriage bed serves as a common motif in tales of animal transformation. ex: in "Beauty and the Beast," the protagonist has to overcome her revulsion towards her suitor's ostensible monstrosity before she can accept his marriage proposal. traditionally these stories with mysterious, beastly husbands who are secretly a true catch serve as an allegory for arranged marriage, designed to help young women process their anxieties about being passed from their father's house to that of a strange new husband.

(we should differentiate these tales from those of an ostensibly appropriate groom who turns out to be a monster in disguise such as "Bluebeard," "Mr. Fox," and "The Robber-Bridegroom," as those deserve a detailed thread of their own but also provide good thematic contrast here)

more often the Beast is kind, patient & gives Beauty the time she needs to the detriment of his own freedom from the curse. once the protagonist gets over her anxiety, she ceases to perceive her groom as just a hulking hairy beast and he can take the shape of a prince at last.

circling back to wolves! in most lore both ancient and modern, werewolves represent something uncontrollable; an animalistic second nature which threatens to literally tear through our well-mannered social façade. "Bisclavret" and its various incarnations don't do that.

if you read "Bisclavret" under a queer critical lens, you can interpret the knight as bisexual; a husband has a secret duality to his nature which he is unable to express in their current social order. significantly, he is born with his lycanthropy rather than being afflicted by the sudden, violent means through which most fictional werewolves are afflicted. it's a part of who he is, and it requires no further explanation or cure.

the wolf-knight finds freedom rather than shame in his lycanthropy, and as a result maintains both honor and control while in wolf form. unlike other famous werewolves, he doesn't function as an expression of tension between the id and the superego.

considering how often wolves are used to imply sexual violence (see also: "Little Red Riding Hood" or its medieval predecessor, "The Grandmother's Tale") this would be a fairly positive portrayal of a bisexual man.

however, his wife doesn't see it that way and is repulsed at the thought of sleeping with him again, so she commits adultery and conspires against him. so really, the crimes in "Bisclavret" have a lot to do with sex, just not sexual violence.

the king's attachment to the wolf & the way he embraces the knight can easily be read as homoerotic. there's absolutely an argument to be made about the normalization of homosocial behavior & male kinship across eras but...two things can be true. either interpretation is valid.

so what we have is a werewolf protagonist — not a villain or tortured anti-hero but an honorable man who isn't made to shed his lycanthropy at the end of the tale (tail). rather, he is accepted by his contemporaries and given a place in society to live as he truly is/ROLL CREDITS