#tristan is butch bc i say so

[dungeonsdragonstdelinquents]

gilmore girls but all of rorys love interests are butches send post

[queer-ragnelle]

favorite queer retellings/interpretations of arthurian legend

hello anon!

this simple question has a complicated answer if only bc some authors seem to have created queer stories unintentionally! & i like them! i'll include quotes from my suggestions below a cut as there will be some mild spoilers but that may help you decide what stories suit your tastes as they vary a lot. you can also just go ahead & assume kay & agravaine are always queer (bc they are, not accepting crit) which makes narrowing down the list difficult for me.

TL;DR: Camelot 3000 Mike W. Barr & Brian Bolland, Exiled From Camelot/Trial of Sir Kay/Hunt for Hart Royal by Cherith Baldry, Spear Nicola Griffith, Guinevere/Morgan/Morgawse by Lavinia Collins, The Queen's Knight by Marvin Borowsky, Arthur Rex by Thomas Berger, The Road to Avalon by Joan Wolf.

Camelot 3000 by Mike W. Barr & Brian Bolland: reincarnation story with transman sir tristan coming to terms with his gender & sexuality so he can accept isolde's love for him & reciprocate. it's really beautifully written imo plus the art is so 80s & my exact cup of tea. it's dated in some of its handling of the subject matter but i think it was done thoughtfully for the time.

Exiled From Camelot, The Trial of Sir Kay, The Hunt for The Hart Royal by Cherith Baldry: the way baldry writes is overall my favorite ever but her kay is unparalleled he is everything to me. unequivocally disinterested in women (without misogyny, very important note). codependent on gawain if not fully in love with him the crown style. lots of hurt/comfort, kissing, holding & worrying over each other. they exchange a ring for god's sake. in exiled it says ragnelle was the only woman for gawain (based) but after she passed he's all kay's basically so this checks all my boxes. love wins.

Spear by Nicola Griffith: butch perceval pulling bitches chapter after chapter it's glorious. ends up settling down with nimue. bonus throuple arthur/guin/lance with a very sweet moment with lance talking to percy about them both. no homophobia (external nor internal) to be found its very enjoyable. beautiful prose. audiobook was wonderfully narrated by the author, which is how i read it, thus i've written out a quote here:

"Secrets may prove a burden. So...Lance, my mother is indeed Merlin's sister but I am not Merlin's sister's son." Lance frowned. "I don't understand..." "I am not his sister's son." His eyes stretched wide. He reassessed the line of her jaw, the size of her hands. She nodded. Then he reassessed how she and Nimue sat with one another. This time, Nimue nodded.

Guinevere, Morgan, & Morgawse by Lavinia Collins: these aren't my favorite (did gawain really dirty, deal breaker) but the fact is they have multiple explicitly queer characters including: kay, lancelot, morgawse, agravaine, isolde, dinadan, etc. plus there were several poly scenes including one with guin/lance/kay, another morgawse/lot/visiting king/queen swinging. wild all around everyone is sleeping with everyone no character is unaccounted for. be warned these books are extremely graphic in every conceivable way. queer solidarity in the face of homophobia is a theme throughout. kay punches phobic urien & agravaine "saw nothing." shh its fine urien sucks. this hilarious convo between agravaine & morgawse kills me.

The Queen's Knight by Marvin Borowsky: an interesting retelling in which mordred is a grown up warlord right from the outset. he also happens to be queer. mind this came out in the 50s & contains pederasty, but mordred does later have a loving tragic relationship with fellow knight calogrenant (yay crackships<3), which others were aware of & helped conceal (kay, for example). agravaine is also queer, he only joins arthur's forces bc lancelot asks him to & continues to fixate on him for the whole book. typical.

Arthur Rex by Thomas Berger: so this book is super homophobic. but it's so homophobic that it circles back around to being pretty queer bc berger saw queerness everywhere, apparently. but the green knight is purposefully queer, so the kissing game's gender-role-reversal/bisexuality....escalates. david lowery wishes. both gawain & arthur are pretty homoromantic with lancelot to the point the narrative calls attention to it & then no-homos their closeness. agravaine appears to be queer too. he's the only unmarried brother (claims to be in love with guinevere but i don't buy it), he wants lancelot so bad he gets all tongue tied & stupid around him...wrecked.

The Road to Avalon by Joan Wolf: what's this? agravaine again? so in this version, lancelot is named bedwyr (inspired by mary stewart's quadrilogy) but he's lance in all but name. anyway agravaine constantly beefs with guinevere for his attention...& loses. plus it's implied agravaine slept with lamorak before his mother which is hysterical. (my fave crackship is thriving<3) agravaine topples the empire for a much older straight man. it would be funny if it wasn't so sad. let's give it up for problematic jealous slutty queers.

these are just the retellings i have read & liked. there are more on my retellings list but those were suggestions from others i haven't gotten to yet with the exception of dishonorable mention to the winter knight by jes battis. it has gay gawain & his bestie transgirl bi kay in that but the writing style was unbearable to me unfortunately i'm so sorry i just didn't like it. anyway thanks for the ask!

[brandybradyrandyandyndy]

Got tagged by @official-lauchzwiebel

Thanks for thinking of me!!! :-)

So...

1. What are you currently reading

Rico, Oskar und der Diebstahlstein by Andreas Steinhöfel; Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg; and still Twilight bc I couldn't get myself to pick it up again since the last time I was asked this question 🥸

2. Best movie I've seen in the cinema last year?

Honestly? Actually Puss in Boots - The Last Wish. I immediately fell in love with the animation when I first watched the trailer and when I went to see the whole movie I was completely carried away by the story too! I love this movie so much. Kitties and puppies 😭😭💞

3. What do you usually wear?

In the summer? Button-up/t-shirt + shorts + funny socks + crocs

In the winter? Sweater (with something collared underneath) + high-rise jeans (in any color with any leg width except skinny jeans) + funny socks + docs or crocs boots + the purple winter jacket I got from the h&m men's section only a few weeks ago but I've been wearing it non-stop bc it's exactly the kind of jacket I've been looking for for years and I finally have a cool functional winter jacket in my favorite color!!! 😩🤌💜💜💜

4. Star sign? Celebrity etc. you share your birthday with?

Leo, and I share a birthday with the episodes Eclipse Lake from The Owl House and Wishmaker from Miraculous Ladybug 😌

If we're going with real celebrities like singers or actors.. I was born exactly one day before Tristan Göbel :-)

5. Do you go by your name or nickname?

Depends. My close friends and family mostly call me Lenny, but I always introduce myself to new people with my birth name.

6. Did you grow up to what you wanted to be as a child?

Even as a child I never knew what I wanted to be and I always wrote "weiß ich noch nicht" in that empty space in the Freundebuch, so basically yes bc I still have no plans but now I'm studying languages 👍

7. What's something you're good/bad at?

I'm pretty good at crafty and creative stuff like crocheting, sewing, drawing and all that. Also learning new languages comes pretty easy to me, but I'll probably withdraw this statement after I've gotten back the results from my uni exams that I have yet to write...

Something I'm really, really bad at is being consistent with something. There's always something I'm forgetting and when it comes to important stuff like uni I often can't get myself to even open the uni website on my laptop as if I was paralyzed. Ahaha, anyway on to the next question...

8. Dogs or cats?

See, I'm the person who claims that they like both. And y'know I do like both. When I see someone walking outside with their dog I'm the one excitedly squeaking: "SCHAU MAL EIN HUNDI!!! :-)", but when I see a cat I get even more excited and in my head I'm like: "!!!!!!!!!!!!" bc I don't want to make too many loud noises and scare it off (you know I wanna pet that kitty!!!)

9. If you draw/write, or create in any way, what's your fav picture/line/something you created this past year?

The tiny Sendung Mit Der Maus-Maus I crocheted :-)

10. What's something you'd like to create content for?

Tough one. First of all gzsz bc I'm basically the only funny fanartist they have. I mean I've seen some artists drawing realistic portraits from screenshots but that's why I say I'm the only funny one out there. Anyone can redraw a screenshot but I'm the only person willing to draw Maren and Katrin or Michi and Tobias kissing, so even if my sketches look messy and I post so inconsistently that I'll never get more than 3 notes on something I still think I'm doing a more valuable job than people who redraw something that's already happened only for the sake of flexing how realistic their artstyle is. (It's a different story tho if the redraw is stylized!!! There's so much personality to stylized art!!)

So... To come back to the original question. Gzsz definitely, maybe some crossovers like my ml au as well shhshshss, Miraculous Ladybug in general, also Osomatsu-san or Owl House and all that stuff I'm currently watching. Tschick. Yeah.

11. What's something you're currently obsessed with?

Just scroll through my blog for a while.

Besides that? Crocheting. I love that you can do it while watching something, so I feel like I'm doing something useful even while watching AWZ 😩

12. What's a hidden talent of yours?

Nobody peels mandarin oranges and clementines like me! I always peel them in a spiral pattern and almost never fail!! 😤💪

13. Are you religious?

Nice try Gretchen. I'm not gonna answer that.

14. What's something you wish to have at this moment?

Right now at this exact moment? Nothing really. Bin grad wunschlos glücklich, als hätte ich ein halbes Erdbeermarmeladebrot mit Honig verzehrt und würde mit leerer Gedankenblase irgendwo rumliegen und den Rest meines Tages genießen 🍯🍓🍞

Tagging @tofufei @midnightxxcrisis @9puppiesdrowninginapool @jofngve and of course everyone else who wants!!! 😸💕

[ofcaliginous]

THESEUS “TRISTAN CIRILLO,” who strongly resembles JARED PADALECKI, has been spotted in Pandæmonium. The CISMALE is a THIRTY-FIVE/UNKNOWN year old GREEK DEMIGOD (SON OF POSEIDON) – ORIGINAL WEREWOLF HYBRID, and has been in Pandæmonium for TEN YEARS. I hear they’re BRAVE & CLEVER and DECEPTIVE & HEAVILY BURDENED. If you’re lucky you may catch them working at OVERLORD SURPLUS as an OWNER.

theseus is the “mythical” king and founder-hero of athens, who went through similar trials like perseus, heracles, and etc. he’s considered the greatest athenian hero, and the king who managed to politically unify attica under the aegis of athens.

his “father” aegeus was one of the primordial kings of athens and his mother, aethra, a princess of troezen, who also happened to be one of the og werewolves, not that she ever triggered the gene to know that. 

but in actuality, his mother arranged for aegeus to be possessed by poseidon per athena’s instruction due to a prophecy, making theseus’ father poseidon. 

he was raised by his mother in her land until he was old enough to claim his birthright and sent off to athens & king aegeus.

along the way, he went through six labours, subduing ogres and monstrous beasts.  

upon reaching athens he was tasked with capturing the cretan bull, which he did and sacrificed to the gods. 

then he went through the whole thing with the minotaur, labyrinth, and ariadne, and yada yada. 

he kept his promise to marry ariadne and only left her behind bc he found out she was already married to dionysus. he’s still a bit bitter over that.

due to his “father” dying he became king upon returning to athens and quickly united the area.

had a run-in with the amazons and married & had a son with either hippolyte or antiope. but he grew bored over time and moved onto ariadne’s sister, phaedra, who gave him two more sons after they married but that ended in a whole other ordeal with his son wrongfully cursed and killed and his wife dead from grief or bc the truth came out.

sometime later he traveled to the underworld with his bud pirithous, who wanted to marry persephone. needless to say, that didn’t end well and they were captured and doomed to eternal punishment until he was saved by heracles who happened to be in the area. he managed to gain persephone’s forgiveness and was able to leave the underworld. he tried to save his buddy too but no such luck.

following that he returned to athens to find someone else had taken over so he bailed and hid out on an island where he was supposedly killed.

no one saw him again until the persian wars, when athenian soldiers claimed to see him in battle and that he was responsible for their victories.

since that he’s kinda roamed from place to place.

may have run with butch cassidy’s gang back in the day.

nowadays he goes by tristan but will answer to theseus with those who know who he really is.

the legend of tristan and iseult/isolde may or may not draw from his life, as well.

[yotd2009]

right now i'm finishing up the ✨mystery piece✨ that i originally meant to finish in like, 30 minutes, but i need something to work on after that and i'm incapable of making decisions on my own without the influence of my tumblr followers and if no one points me in the right direction i'll end up drawing none of the above SO my options are

- my isotristanmydes agenda (isolde x tristan x palomydes á la medieval literature)

- my isotristanmydes agenda but pride themed

- that one part of the byelorussian tristan where isolde keeps warning palomydes that a knight is drawing closer and raising the stakes until she basically says "yeah there's not 5 knights but there's 1 tristan and he'll kill you if you stay" and it's a good scene

- that other part of the byelorussian tristan RIGHT before palomydes gets sent to super mega turbo hell via tristan's sword (he asks him to be his worst enemy again in the most homoerotic way possible then gets injured, shows up one more time, dies offscreen and is mentioned like,, twice in the next two pages then never again)

- that other part of the byelorussian tristan where galahad realizes he beat up his father and tristan and gets sad and embarrassed and then just DIES from it

- last byelorussian tristan one i prommy but that one part where galehot asks tristan to join his marriage (to lancelot)

- the hnoc piece i literally started reading med lit for and planned out in november

- voice cracks piece i've had planned since february

- y'know how narcissus enters seaside by leaning against a doorway? well-

- narcissus... but i have something specific in mind i can't quite put into words...

- two of my fucking. udad ocs (the butch and femme ones, specifically)

- gerrymike as an apology to my tma followers who are still here (i have,,, something very specific in mind)

- statement givers indulgence (jordan kennedy. i am talking abt jordan kennedy)

- mike crew specifically bc i miss him <3

- an actual fucking icon with daughter dooley on it

- the binding of horned head ft. no children by the mountain goats

- the boy (ogoa)

- sarah avery and annie messer from that one scene i think abt every day of my life

- how i think a meeting between daughter dooley and the dead queen would play out

- vera blevins right before she made a run for it

- railroad man genvy (hey, at least i'm not haint thirsty)

- self portrait to feel better abt myself (i'm embarrassed just to say it)

- that mermaid from early last month. you know the one. she's nice to draw.

[qzwrites]

so it occurs to me that i’ve done a lot of character building for the wilkins and stables who aren’t zach and tristan and posted like, none of it, so:

The Wilkins Girls

Tricia, mom

(all the drawings i’ve done of her are old as hell and never got scanned, sorry)

probably actually the one i’ve developed the least. to be fair to me, the whole point of most znt stories is that she is working all the time and so they have to take care of the kids. whatever plans and dreams she had basically got tanked when her husband got himself killed and left her with three kids and a baby on the way. she did manage to pay off the mortgage (and the car, which was used and therefore less impressive) with the insurance money, which was some burden off her back. not enough for zach to not start working literally as soon as he could to help her. she worked two jobs pretty much from her husband’s death to zach graduating and working full time. in main continuity she never remarries, but she might if it would offer more stability for the kids. (for instance in the prince’s plaything, her expy married a merchant who proposed to her basically because he offered to send her girls to school, which wasn’t available where they were living)

Sonja, oldest sister

She’s Fashion and popular. She does okay in school. She’s very good at getting people to do what she wants. Isn’t as into sports or athleticism as Zach or Nina but would absolutely have died to be able to afford dance lessons. She probably never mentioned this to her mom or Zach until she was in high school, because she didn’t want them to stress about the money. She is a pro at thrift shopping and redecorating on a budget, and probably more or less took over both the interior decorating and the wardrobe maintenance so they didn’t “look poor” when she was like, ten. Kind of doing an aimless middle child thing; goes to and later drops out of community college bc she doesn’t really want to study anything. Classic Bi Girl “didn’t realize other girls didn’t feel that way about girls” story but with zero angst about it. (She also blames her bad example brother bc he didn’t realize he was bi and definitely led her to False Expectations of how straight people relate to members of their own gender). Thinks she’s not into commitment but really just not into monogamy; it will take her so long to realize this.

Nina, middlest sister (i mean technically she and sonja are both middle children, but she’s the middle of the girls)

Sporty and athletic and a little tomboyish, but that does not mean she doesn’t like to occasionally Glam the Fuck Up. One of the better athletes at her school and high-key bitter when the boys’ sports teams get more attention even though they’re not as good. If she cared at all about football, is exactly the kind of person who would fight and rail about title ix to be allowed on the football team and/or coach a bunch of other girls to put together a girls’ football team. Her main sport is basketball. This is also where she meets the first and thus far only boy she dates. They do the classic sitcom arguing thing, yet people never assumed they “actually” liked each other, at least not where Nina could hear it, because jfc if there is anyone who will hold a grudge and hassle you for the rest of your life, it is Nina Wilkins. God help you if she’s angry enough to get her siblings involved. Anyway, the boy is just one of the only people who immediately gets that whatever bullshit comes out of her mouth in an argument or on the court doesn’t actually Mean anything to her. She’s competitive but not actually trying to be mean. It probably helps that literally everyone assumed she was gay bc she’s kind of butch. She has no idea how to flirt.

(once a dude tried to spread a nasty rumor about Nina and Sonja wrecked his social life so completely that he ended up transferring schools. she got literally everyone to ostracize this guy and dragged out all sorts of fucking receipts going back to grade school. Zach was like “why didn’t you tell me! I would have beat him up!” and Sonja was like “no one had to be beaten up for me to ruin his life”. Zach was like “I think Sonja might be a monster???” and Tristan was like “that’s my girl :,)

Meredith, the babiest sister

Meredith just wants to read everything in the entire world and be left alone. Her primary form of social interaction is sitting in the room reading while the rest of her family does shit. She does exceptionally well in school. When teachers start getting on her case about extracurriculars to look good for college, she starts writing book reviews for the school newspaper and volunteering at both the school and public library. Mastered very young the art of paying attention to multiple things; even if you think she wasn’t paying attention to what was going on around her, she was. She’s very opinionated (like the rest of her siblings lmao) but much quieter about it. She won’t fight you or yell or talk shit about you, she will just ignore you. It’s not even pointed. Most people don’t know if she hates them, even though she dislikes plenty of people. Fairly well-liked even though she’s not sociable, since she is quiet and thus people project whatever they want to see/hear. Probably gets into the least trouble of any of the kids. Kind of likes Tristan more than her actual siblings. Probably also queer but doesn’t talk to anyone about it. The only time I’ve ever written her into any sort of relationship is with a college guy she met at the library while she was still in high school. She’s not the youngest by so much (she and Nina have the same gap as Nina and Sonja) but she’s the only one who never knew their dad and the only one who’s naturally quiet, so she does feel a little left out sometimes. That’s probably part of why she likes Tristan so much; he’s the only other one sitting quietly and calmly at family functions.

Probably when her first scathing high school book review was published people were like “oh look! mary is a wilkins after all! she just prefers to tear apart books instead of people”

The Stables

Meredith, mother

[i don’t know if i’ve ever drawn her actually lmao]

look i’ma be real with you, I know nothing about her. She’s been ill and largely bed-ridden, or dead, in most of the stuff i’ve written. her husband left her and the boys when Rhys was still an infant, and she kind of. wasted away. she was utterly devoted to this man and he didn’t even say anything, just bounced. she has no idea why. she probably didn’t start getting really sick until Tristan was in high school. I have no idea how she provided for the boys bc she was definitely living that housewife life. she didn’t need to work bc her husband was a lawyer, and then he left. she did become good friends with Tricia Wilkins, and they kind of mutually helped each other out, first with the boys, and then in general. Meredith couldn’t drive after a while, and definitely loaned Tricia the car when her used POS broke down. She’s sweet and people liked her a lot, even when she got sick and sad and was always a drag, because she was that nice when she was well. They probably got lots of help from neighbors right after Gary left. She’s a good cook and has a nice singing voice.

Rhys, younger than Zach and Tristan but older than all the Wilkins girls

Rhys has got lots of the same abandonment and trust issues that Tristan does, but he doesn’t have a Zach to act like his emotional backbone. He’s also just not as stoic as Tristan. He gets drunk and calls Tristan to pick him up, crying, a lot in high school. Had a big crush on Sonja for most of childhood, but she was never interested. He also harbors a lot of Guilt that Tristan couldn’t like go to college or do what he wanted bc he had to take care of Rhys, even though he’s five years younger and couldn’t really control things like. capitalism. He plays guitar. He actually learned at a friend’s house in middle school and never told his family until someone gave him their old guitar and he just came home like “hey i’m going to be a musician”. he’s not actually good at any other part of music, he just likes playing guitar. He’s also bi and didn’t really think about it until after Tristan came out and he was like “wait. okay. how do YOU feel about boys”. He’s also pretty into video games. Most of Tristan’s disposable income probably went to keeping Rhys in relatively current video games. Rhys likes to make dark jokes about shit that actually bothers him, but he’s careful not to do it around Zach because Zach goes Full Dad and is like “wanna talk about your feelings, bud” and like, no, Rhys only wants to allude to the fact that he has feelings, he doesn’t really want to talk about them any more than Tristan does. Rhys doesn’t know what he’s doing with his life. He’s probably the kind of person who will feel like that no matter what he does or how long he does it.

(you may note that mrs. stable has the same name as mrs. wilkins’s youngest child. mrs. stable also would have named tristan “tricia”. these are coincidences but they joke that it means they were Meant To Be Friends.)