#knights knights knights!

[katabay]

PERCEVAL THE UNHAPPY, THE MISERABLE, THE UNFORTUNATE, THE FISHER KING!

Perceval, de Troyes (trans. Burton Raffel)

ALRIGHT alright. so previously I did an illustration that explained the premise of all this, that it's inspired by the narrative choices that Bresson made in his film Lancelot du Lac etc

to dive in more into it (because this is something like derivative fiction. I'm putting concepts into a blender and seeing what comes out of it): the setting is haunted by the previously existing narratives that started cannibalizing each other until it regurgitates itself into the more well known narrative beats, and something else about the invasive rot of christianity and empire mythmaking into settings. it's an intertextual haunting, if you will! and this scene takes place during the grail quest narrative, but the temptation of Perceval plays out differently.

in both Chretien (and Wolfram's) Perceval narratives, what 'wakes' Perceval up (in more ways than one. desire and self actualization in one go!) is seeing knights, something his mother tried hard to keep him from. so instead of the temptation of lust & etc in the Morte narrative taking the form of a lady, it takes the form of a knight. the temptation to renounce one's faith to serve something else remains.

so Perceval still stabs himself, but instead of continuing on the grail quest in the shadow of Galahad, he becomes the narrative's Fisher King because his earlier state of being as a the grail quest hero is creeping back into his marrow. it was waiting for an opening, and stabbing yourself in the thigh is one hell of a parallel!!!

that wound isn't going to heal buddy, and the state of the setting will now be reflected on your body. sure hope that Arthur hasn't like. corrupted the justice of the land or anything. that sure would suck for your overall health.

all the red in this sequence is because in de Troyes' Perceval, Perceval takes the armor of the Red Knight and becomes known as the Knight in Red.

and now for the citations, which I will try to order in a way that makes sense!

Seeing Knights For The First Time

Perceval, de Troyes (trans. Burton Raffel)

The Temptation of Perceval

Le Morte Darthur, Mallory (modernized by Baines)

The Fisher King, and Perceval The Unfortunate

Perceval, de Troyes (trans. Burton Raffel)

On Perceval and Gender, etc.

Clothes Make The Man: Parzival Dressed and Undressed, Michael D. Amey

On Wounds

Wounded Masculinity: Injury and Gender in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur, Kenneth Hodges

The Red Knight

Perceval, de Troyes (trans. Burton Raffel)

On Arthur and the Corruption of Justice

The Failure of Justice, the Failure of Arthur, L.K. Bedwell

[brother-emperors]

foundations of rot

arthur with the corpse of dinadan because dindan's my favorite, but also it could be lamorak. the eyes are obscured and the corpse cannot speak except to represent the (gestures at the decay of law and desecration of bodies) happening, so you know. either one. maybe both! all the blood from these bodies are saturating the ground and eventually the whole setting collapse inwards/cannibalize itself etc etc

The Failure of Justice, the Failure of Arthur, L.K. Bedwell

society6 | ko-fi | redbubble | twitter | deviantart

[perseusapologist]

Merlin: Knowledge and Power Through the Ages, Stephen Knight

[ghoul-haunted]

Merlin: Knowledge and Power Through the Ages, Stephen Knight

[traveller-of-the-knight]

*ok, but what is Jake's stragle?*

[cemeterything]

i know that when a book describes dragons picking up their riders they probably mean scruffing them by the neck in their mouths like a kitten, but i always imagine something like this

[atissi]

i don't really like when people say dungeon meshi is accidentally good autistic representation, because while i understand not wanting to make conclusions without explicit confirmation from the author, there's always the weird assumption that non-western authors somehow don't know about things like neurodivergency/queerness/etc. (on top of the assumptions that east asian authors are somehow more naive or oblivious to "western" social issues).

given that dungeon meshi started being published in 2014, it's not really a "work belonging to its times"—it's as contemporary as any other media we discuss on this site, which means it should be fair to assume it engages with contemporary topics (and at the very least, you shouldn't say that the representation is accidental with so much confidence)

but anyways, the chapter "perfect communication" in ryoko kui's "terrarium in a drawer" is some of the most straightforward autistic representation I've seen, and from now on I'm going to assume that laios's character writing is absolutely intentional in that regard:

[the-only-highlander]

i figured yall would appreciate this photo

original instagram post from vinnikolaus

[dat-soldier]

hello kitty

[pupkou]

trans people i’m happy you’re alive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i’m so glad you’re here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! keep doing your best!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[itsbrucey]

Big fan of sun motifs in characters not necessarily being about positivity and happiness and how they're so " bright and warm" but instead being about fucking brutal they are.

Radiant. A FORCE of nature that will turn you to ash. That warmth that burns so hot it feels like ice. Piercing yellow and red and white. A character being a Sun because you cannot challenge a Sun without burning alive or taking everything down with them if victorious.

[katabay]

SUBTEXT

so I've focused in on Perceval and Bors before, and I've done Perceval and Gender (for more on this specifically, see: Clothes Make The Man: Parzival Dressed and Undressed, Michael D. Amey) and did a whole comic that leaned into some subtext™ on temptation, but actually let's throw out the subtext! let's bring Augustine into this!!

Perceval, de Troyes (trans. Burton Raffel)

introduction to Confessions, Augustine (trans. Sarah Ruden)

so for perceval a knight is both the gender he wants to perform but also something that is expressly compared to god, and if god is a lover that seduces. well. does this not also apply to knights as well?

Homosexuality in the Renaissance: Behavior, Identity, and Artistic Expression, James M. Saslow

and while galahad might be the obvious choice, I think perceval's relationship with bors during the grail quest narrative is more interesting. it's not god that transforms perceval, it's the sight of knights for the first time. something in here specifically is incredibly intriguing to me, but there's a different text I need to finish reading to fully form some thoughts on it.

le Morte d’Arthur

and finally! tentatively. I think I might slowly start turning this idea I had a couple years back into a fully formed comic. we'll see! I had most of it blocked out, but halfway through reading augustine's confessions, I think was when perceval finally clicked for me as a character in a later narrative cycle setting. I think I might have to spend a lot of time doing some visual research first because my god I cannot consistently draw armor to save my life......back when I lived in new england, there was a museum with a wonderful medieval armor collection I could visit.....alas.........I will have to hit the books (literally, I have a collection of books on medieval armor but this is apparently the one thing I can't visualize properly in my imagination. save me, museum collections, you're my only hope)

⭐️ credits for the collage panels! (all open access or public domain, etc.)

-Saint George and the Dragon -Saint George and the Dragon (different one lmao) -Pages and Knights, Frontispiece for "The Man at Arms" -Cloisters

⭐ if you like my comics and have a couple bucks, I have a tip jar (ko-fi)!

⭐ and other places I'm at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app

[brother-emperors]

I remember you posting a Sir Kay art semi-recently (and I forgot to ask then, whoops) but do you have any Kay Thoughts or any sources you particularly like that are about him?

I have been looking at this ask every other day since it first appeared in my inbox trying to come up with something other than, 'he makes me sad,' but oh my god he makes me sad

I don't have any sources or texts on him (YET, I've been meaning to read Cei and the Arthurian Legend, Linda Gowans) beyond Caitlin R. Green's Concepts of Arthur and the usual collection of Arthurian texts, but there's such a weird sense of. displacement coming from him.

like. even with Percival, who has been removed from his Grail-Quest-Fisher-King origins, there are still elements of it haunting the larger story. but Cei is just. aughghghghh. what happened to his character is sad!! there isn't even a haunting of the original Cei left in the later Kay! I was watching La Légende du roi Arthur and Kay is literally so useless to the plot!! what is the point of having him there!!!! leave him in his grave if this is what he's going to be reduced to!!!

in a way it makes Arthur feel lonelier and less reachable as a character. there's that post going around of tiktok comments about siblings, something in there reminds me of what happened, in the narrative trend, to Arthur and Cei. I'm looking at Arthur and wondering if he knows to miss his brother or if he just feels the absence.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

𝔪𝔞𝔨𝔨𝔬𝔫

[heroicangel]

being knightcore doesn't mean you have to be pro-monarchy. you can just swear your undying fealty to your best friend or your crush or something

[the-punforgiven]

Rolling up to the knight's guild in a chainmail brayette and low-cut mail chausses watching my fellow knights visibly fluster under their helmets as their gaze follows up to my maille voider scandalously worn without a breastplate