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My thoughts on King Arthur: King Arthur is vicious on the battlefield. Later in his career, his army does battle with the Roman Emperor's. Arthur smashes his sword into the Emperor's head so hard it cuts through the helmet and down to the teeth. He unites his country by conquest. The only person who could really deal with him was Lancelot, who defeated him pretty easily in a tournament battle. He's also a fuckmachine that nailed every woman he saw as "passing faire." When Merlin warns Arthur that a newborn will be his undoing, he orders the death of all newborns. This might be referring to a Bible story (I'm not a Christian so I have no clue), but... gently caress. In court, King Arthur is... boy-like. He sends his knights on the Quest of the White Stag basically for fun. His reaction to the Green Knight's challenge to his court is basically "This gon be good." The Arthur/Lancelot/Guinevere love triangle, from Arthur's point of view, is something to be avoided. He loves Lancelot. And, depending on the teller, he loves Guinevere. He knows that if he accuses them of going behind his back, he'll shatter the Round Table. Rather than trying to find a solution, he chooses to ignore it. While it's sad to see him suffer in silence, it's also a view of how ineffective he is as a king. My view of Arthur is that he's a mix of a well-meaning child and a violent psychopath.
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Feb 16, 2019 05:20
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TerraGoetia posted:My thoughts on King Arthur: See, I feel like this is why you're supposed to gently caress Danse in Fallout 4.
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Feb 16, 2019 05:24
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A lot of the tales have Arthur be told by Merlin that a bastard he sired will come back to destroy him, so Arthur orders all the newborns in a region to be cast out to sea in a leaky ship, and spends a while feeling really bad about it. Naturally this backfires, and some years later we get Mordred. The Great Pendragon Campaign also throws some interesting curveballs there in that Arthur has three sons, two of them coming to light before Mordred (he got really horny after winning a really big battle, and was probably literally a teenage boy at the time), though both of them end up dead before things come to a head. (Sir Kay is unwittingly responsible for one of them, hence why he disappears from the story towards the end) I look at King Arthur being one of those stories that are also mythologies where every retelling can pick and choose elements and change things to suit the sensibilities of the age and the story they want to tell this time, while having major recognisable elements to keep things familiar. Like Transformers, or Batman. That's probably its biggest strength. Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Feb 16, 2019 |
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Feb 16, 2019 05:38
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TerraGoetia posted:When Merlin warns Arthur that a newborn will be his undoing, he orders the death of all newborns. This might be referring to a Bible story (I'm not a Christian so I have no clue) That's basically Herod the Great killin' babies when someone says Christ is Comin', except this time the baby is actually bad!
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Feb 16, 2019 05:40
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Arrhythmia posted:That's basically Herod the Great killin' babies when someone says Christ is Comin', except this time the baby is actually bad! Funny thing is Mordred being Arthur's bastard son is apparently a retcon, one which clearly turned out to be a lot more interesting than him dying to some random knight.
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Feb 16, 2019 05:41
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Ghost Leviathan posted:The Great Pendragon Campaign also throws some interesting curveballs... This game sounds like a really fun source of Arthurian stories and you should definitely post more about it.
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Feb 16, 2019 05:45
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This video's a bit twee, but it gives a solid run-down of how the Arthurian canon developed and the reasons why. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_jgF-S746o For instance, it talks about how the courtly love tradition that Lancelot/Guinevere exemplifies was a result of cultural cross-pollination between Europe and the Islamic world. All the courtly love ideas can be traced back to Islamic or Arabic literature and philosophy, and were introduced to de Troyes' France by way of troubadours, returning Crusaders and Reconquista fighters, etc.
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Feb 16, 2019 05:56
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13Pandora13 posted:This doesn't clarify anything though, if someone isn't real but is named after someone who was...was the original person not like...real...then? There was maybe a dude named arthur, but if so he didn't do any of things the legends say he did.
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Feb 16, 2019 21:23
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TerraGoetia posted:This game sounds like a really fun source of Arthurian stories and you should definitely post more about it. Unfortunately that's about all I can remember right now. I do recall the book outright says that the timeline of Arthur's conquests is basically ripped from William the Conquerer. And it takes a lot of inspiration from The Once And Future King's time screwiness where you start out in the last days of the Roman Empire's influence in Britain, and by the end there's Mordred's forces using cannons and arquebus wielding mercenaries. (this is a game where part of the mechanics are having kids and playing as them when your original knights retire or die) Of course, the big final battle is against a ridiculously big random encounter list of all kinds of soldiers and mercenaries from all over Europe and beyond that you keep fighting down until only one player character out of literally everyone remains alive. I gotta say, as a way to end campaigns it has to be one of the best.
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Feb 17, 2019 05:42
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I had a beautifully illustrated storybook as a kid about Excalibur and to this day I can't find it anywhere. All I remember is that the artwork was a dark blue palette and Morgan Le Fay had these long spooky shadow arms reaching into a window to grab the sword from a sleeping Arthur. Wish I could remember more except that it must have been published in mid 80s and my memories of it are like a fever dream. I wish I could see it again because it's been like an itch I can't scratch for decades.
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Feb 17, 2019 07:34
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the bits and pieces of pre-christian pagan (celtic? in this case) culture and the spooky goth witches and elf women in a lake and giants and grouchy time traveling demon wizards are like my favorite things in any story and this one is chock full of that stuff the part with the guys with swords calling each other handsome for 700 pages and all the adultery-incest gets tedious
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Feb 17, 2019 09:03
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also lancelot=goku
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Feb 17, 2019 09:04
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Goku does not cuck, he is a happily married and faithful man Terrible husband and father but still
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Feb 17, 2019 09:10
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Lancelot doesn't power up or train, either, he just is preternaturally ordained by god to be the best.
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Feb 17, 2019 10:18
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I like the Once and Future King version where he's spent basically his whole life training to be a knight to the exclusion of all else, explaining quite a lot.
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Feb 17, 2019 10:25
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SpaceAceJase posted:I had a beautifully illustrated storybook as a kid about Excalibur and to this day I can't find it anywhere. All I remember is that the artwork was a dark blue palette and Morgan Le Fay had these long spooky shadow arms reaching into a window to grab the sword from a sleeping Arthur. Well, if you do find it, for the love of God don't scan it and share it with other people. The condition of mass market consumer goods such as books is far more important then that people read them.
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Feb 17, 2019 16:48
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The Protagonist posted:holy poo poo i just had a flashback from the sword in the stone cartoon where merlin polymorphs the protagonist and he keeps getting assaulted by aggressive female animals i feel like we let this one slide by, i'm like 90% this isn't a fabricated memory, especially in light of the op and what with their sometimes questionable motives and established, checkered past
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Feb 17, 2019 19:16
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The loving french ruined a good Germanic epic. Film in the 1100s.
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Feb 17, 2019 20:37
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Guinevere was played by Lena Headey. Pretty neat.
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Feb 17, 2019 20:57
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Feb 17, 2019 21:15
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BUG JUG posted:The loving french ruined a good Germanic epic. Film in the 1100s. King Arthur is celtic
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Feb 18, 2019 00:52
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this is really good and informative thread i have never read the original stuff, just the works based on it many things are more clear now, thanks everyone
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Feb 18, 2019 01:50
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Oh neat cool hai I did a king arthur megapost thing in Book Barn a while back: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3617881
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Feb 18, 2019 02:09
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:King Arthur is celtic What's your point? (The Arthurian cycle is the French attempt at creating a Germanic style myth by welding a Celtic tale onto the sort of saga style being developed in Iceland at the time)
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Feb 18, 2019 03:12
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BUG JUG posted:What's your point? (The Arthurian cycle is the French attempt at creating a Germanic style myth by welding a Celtic tale onto the sort of saga style being developed in Iceland at the time) Ah the middle ages. When everyone was obsessed with Icelandic culture
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Feb 18, 2019 05:41
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TerraGoetia posted:My thoughts on King Arthur: Ah, yes indeed.
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Feb 18, 2019 06:03
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TerraGoetia posted:My thoughts on King Arthur: A lot of rich people are actually kind of like this
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Feb 18, 2019 06:06
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BUG JUG posted:What's your point? (The Arthurian cycle is the French attempt at creating a Germanic style myth by welding a Celtic tale onto the sort of saga style being developed in Iceland at the time) I'm not sure the French were even aware of the Icelandic sagas at the time. It's possible but I've never seen that connection drawn directly before (might just be my own ignorance there of course)
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Feb 18, 2019 07:04
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Excalibur is an awesome King Arthur movie. There is a few vids on youtube of Adam savage from mythbusters going to England and hanging out with the dude that made the armor for that movie and then they make a set together. Is pretty cool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vib1-V8ArzM&t=1232s
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Feb 18, 2019 07:13
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oh neat cool hai Thanks! Hieronymous Alloy posted:I'm not sure the French were even aware of the Icelandic sagas at the time. It's possible but I've never seen that connection drawn directly before (might just be my own ignorance there of course) They might have heard sagas from the Vikings who settled in Normandy. But I have no idea if the sagas left a lasting impact. Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 09:38 on Feb 18, 2019 |
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Feb 18, 2019 09:35
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Salty Josh posted:Guinevere was played by Lena Headey. Pretty neat. It messed me up to remember that she was Gorgo from 300 so I guess she just really likes playing queens
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Feb 18, 2019 13:37
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That’s a horny book OP!
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Feb 18, 2019 17:58
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I hate to harp on this but there's a real wee-bey-finds-out-shorty-be-a-cop moment here that is the Venn diagram intersection of the sword in the stone cartoon movie, furries and trashwheels
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Feb 18, 2019 18:01
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What's a trashwheel
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Feb 19, 2019 05:32
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I wonder where you can draw the pins and red string between this and Disney's Robin Hood
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Feb 19, 2019 05:39
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Feb 22, 2019 07:19
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Malory's seriously like 'Of course back in those days a man and a woman could spend the night together naked BUT THEY DEFINITELY DIDN'T gently caress' with what I presume is supposed to be audacious sincerity given he wrote most of his stuff from prison.
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Feb 22, 2019 07:22
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That comic is pretty good.
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Feb 22, 2019 10:09
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Like how many goddamn times is Lancelot going to have to save Guinevere from getting burnt at the stake? I'm starting to see why they have versions where Arthur openly hates her. Though I'm wondering if it's either a recycled script or variations that sprung from the same story all getting canonised like how comic books that recycle the same plot with different characters end up with all of it canon.
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Feb 25, 2019 07:56
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I read through le Morte d'Arthur for the first time a year or two back. Before that, my only familiarity with Arthurian legends was through pop-culture osmosis. I was, uh, very surprised. There’s absolutely no sense of internal continuity. Plot points are brought up and then promptly discarded and barely a page goes by without encountering something that directly contradicts something from earlier in the story. For example, at one point Lancelot kills two giants who are using a castle as their base. After freeing the locals, they reveal that the castle is Tintagil, where King Arthur was conceived. Okay, fine. The problem? The next thousand pages or so are about Tristram, whose uncle King Mark lives in Castle Tintagil. There’s no indication that he recently came into possession of it or that there were ever any giants there. The impression is that Mark has always lived in Tintagil. This sort of thing happens all the time; at one point Mallory contradicts himself in the same sentence! I understand that King Arthur stories come from a variety of sources, but I would think the whole point of the book would be to meld them into a single coherent narrative. I guess not. Nobody ages. Characters are going on strange adventures despite being old enough to have grown children and grand-children. The instance that sticks out to me the most is King Mark. As a child, Mark’s nephew Alisander swears vengeance on Mark for killing his father. Alisander grows up, becomes a knight, fathers a child of his own, and dies. Alisander’s son grows up, becomes a knight, and ultimately kills Mark, who should by all rights be a decrepit old man by this point. In most modern adaptations, the Lady of the Lake is usually portrayed as some sort of supernatural entity; a fae creature or a water elemental or something suitably eerie and mysterious. Apparently she's just some random chick who happens to live in a lake. No explanation. She promptly gets her head chopped off in her second appearance as a result of some family drama that is never expounded upon and that's the end of that. Or is it? Apparently she was just one of the ladies of the lake and there are others running around, including the one who gets involved with Merlin. That one (named Nimue) is actually a pretty cool character who is criminally under-used, but her relation to lakes is completely superfluous. There’s also a bit where King Arthur fights a giant who has split a woman in half with his giant dong. That was strange.
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Feb 25, 2019 19:01
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