trans-cuchulainn

[trans-cuchulainn]

okay but how old is that text and why does it immediately make me think of the circularity of ? idk something but the idea of cú chulainn being fer diad's charioteer before laeg is cú's and the possibility of switching of roles and growing into something you once served and understanding the position the other is in. different angles and perceptions in this totally fictional headspace of mine but it sure is tasty (sadly don't know the texts well enough tho. but i would love to write a tragic character-driven poem about the charioteer and the love for his hero, growing and changing and forming new bonds and understanding the position of the other. maybe seeing the role of the hero and becoming it and understanding what that means. how you think this will and and how inevitable it is. i love you but i can't change this road we're on. anyway. as i said, i don't know the texts well enough, but i like this idea)

RIGHT

It's one of the independent versions of Comrac Fir Diad, preserved in a manuscript from the 1610s (I'm not sure if there's been any linguistic dating of the text itself, so I don't know if it's the same age as its manuscript or older). So, fairly late, obviously, but earlier than many of the manuscripts of CFD. The word used is ara, which can just mean attendant, but is far more commonly used to mean charioteer, including within this text (to describe Láeg and Idh). Every other version of CFD that I've looked at uses forbfer or similar ('serving-man') to describe Cú Chulainn's subservient role during their training, so this divergence is... fascinating.

It's funny, actually, because when I wrote To Run With The Hound in 2018 (the draft I will be cannibalising to write a new book with for release in 2027), I actually did have Cú Chulainn occasionally serving as Fer Diad's charioteer during their training together, so that they could get up to Chariot Shenanigans together; I had no idea there was precedent.

Anyway, the group chat has been yelling about this somewhat. It is JUICY. So much potential for doubling and mirrors and role swapping and progression and FEELINGS.

#comrac fir diad

[trans-cuchulainn]

Hello Tumblr, how would you feel if I told you there's a text in which Cú Chulainn used to be Fer Diad's charioteer

#feral actually #which is how i have been feeling about this for a week now #comrac fir diad

[trans-cuchulainn]

i just KNOW if Irish had a thou/you distinction that láeg and cú chulainn's dialogue would be absolutely off the charts with fraught slippage between them

#and i would be extremely not okay about it #sadly for these purposes however irish does not #and as far as i know never did #i don't think it's a thing even in old irish #cu chulainn/laeg

[trans-cuchulainn]

FJSJFJAJFJAHFOSJHDJAJDHAHDJAJDHA

#i remember encountering this joke in 2017 shortly after learning enough from my jewish flatmate to find it funny #and having to immediately show it to her #she enjoyed

[trans-cuchulainn]

Submitted by an anon.

reblogs for bigger sample size appreciated

polls can be submitted to this blog via asks or submssions

#i make a point of only following people who consistently tag fandom stuff #and i blacklist so many things #if they're consistently not tagging i've already left

[trans-cuchulainn]

#lost media but it's like. cin dromma snechta

[trans-cuchulainn]

fellas is it gay to swear yourself to another man and then never once part from him, day or night, until he pulls out the spear that wounded you and begs you to leave him to die alone in battle so that at least one of you will survive to take the news back to your shared home and his (your) wife,

#cu chulainn/laeg #oidheadh con culainn

[trans-cuchulainn]

i am also not sure if i like how this book approaches gender but i'm willing to wait and see where it goes with it. and with the disability stuff too, don't get me wrong, it's not to the point where I'd DNF it for that, but. complicated feelings.

#néide has opinions about books #it treats gender abolition as something that has to come with physical/biological changes to the population #like it couldn't happen as long as sexual dimorphism existed #idk. it is an interesting approach to gender but one i'm not 100% down with yet

[trans-cuchulainn]

i guess the tension for me is that disability has been traumatic for me so i can't be like "stop treating disability as traumatic, this is inaccurate" when in fact it is deeply accurate sometimes. but also at the same time... lots of things are traumatic? and you live. and you find new ways of living. and i guess it is frustrating when the outcome people fear is the new way of living (mobility aids, medical equipment, medication), rather than the loss itself. bc that's not the trauma, that's the healing. you're fearing the wrong thing

#painblogging #néide has opinions about books

[trans-cuchulainn]

having complicated feelings about how my current read approaches disability and it's very tied up in my own feelings as someone with chronic pain who would take a cure in a heartbeat but also doesn't see my recent wheelchair acquisition as a tragedy

i am neither in camp "disability is purely social and I'm proud to be disabled" nor in camp "disability is purely medical and is a tragedy to be cured" because let's be real. "disability" is too many things to put neatly in a box like that. the fact is that an accessible world wouldn't make being in pain all the time fun, even if it might make it easier to cope with that. we should make the world better and continue working on medical research that might make my fucking body actually work one day

so now we're on the same page you can see why i have complicated feelings about a story in which a former dancer sees an outcome that might leave them unable to walk and therefore "in a wheelchair" (a turn of phrase not quite as grating as "wheelchair-bound" but with a similar lack of agency) as the worst possible scenario. because i was a dancer and not dancing is pretty fucking tragic for me actually and knowing I was losing dance made the whole experience of injury-turning-into-disability much worse. and also the chair is not the problem, stop making the chair the problem, it's not a symptom, it's not a condition in and of itself, it's a tool ahhhh——

like. becoming disabled has been pretty fucking traumatic for me over the last eleven years actually! i get it! and also at the same time there's something uniquely unpleasant about your life – your actual human existence, your everyday reality – being somebody else's worst case scenario, essentially torture, possibly worse than death kind of situation

especially when the bit they focus on is the bit that signifies you accepting your body's limitations and finding a way to do stuff another way, and not the part where you wake up with your hip literally not in its socket, or whatever. my wheels are a pain in the arse sometimes but they are the improvise/adapt/overcome part of this situation (not in an inspo porn kind of way). they are not the symptom or the condition to be feared

#néide has opinions about books #painblogging

[trans-cuchulainn]

basically this just boils down to stop treating sex repulsion and/or disinterest as something people automatically grow out of and stop treating asexual people as perpetual children, but like, specifically focused on the kinds of stories being told and created and the assumptions underlying how they're pitched

also re last post i think a crucial part of treating your ace friends like you actually respect them is not acting like non-sexual content and child-friendly content are the same thing. which also means not assuming all stories and media aimed at adults need to contain sex (@ creators, take note). because it's shitty to be an adult and find that there is nothing out there written for someone like you and everyone's suggestions are always for children's media. there's nothing wrong with kidlit etc but sometimes, you know, you're an adult, you want stories that reflect the fact that you're an adult, and you want acknowledgement that adulthood and interest in sex are not synonyms. and likewise when you are writing non sexual content for an adult audience it sucks to have people assume it's meant to be for kids and to expect it to fulfil a purpose it wasn't made for

#just because some of us change over time doesn't mean the sex repulsion was immaturity #asexuality

[trans-cuchulainn]

occasional posts from users

#occasional posts and a shitton of whatever the rest of this is

[trans-cuchulainn]

also re last post i think a crucial part of treating your ace friends like you actually respect them is not acting like non-sexual content and child-friendly content are the same thing. which also means not assuming all stories and media aimed at adults need to contain sex (@ creators, take note). because it's shitty to be an adult and find that there is nothing out there written for someone like you and everyone's suggestions are always for children's media. there's nothing wrong with kidlit etc but sometimes, you know, you're an adult, you want stories that reflect the fact that you're an adult, and you want acknowledgement that adulthood and interest in sex are not synonyms. and likewise when you are writing non sexual content for an adult audience it sucks to have people assume it's meant to be for kids and to expect it to fulfil a purpose it wasn't made for

#basically stop patronising adult asexual people and treating them/us like perpetual children #even within kidlit it's like up to age 14 you're allowed to prioritise friendship #and then after 14 it's all romance #(with exceptions obvs) #asexuality

[trans-cuchulainn]

I know there’s a lot of posts about asexuality on how “some asexuals still enjoy erotica content and can find interest in sexual topics”, some of which are framed a bit too much like a blanket thing applied to all aces. I think it’s important to recognize some aces are like that sort of content, but it’s important to mention that not every ace person is like that.

Some aces are sex-repulsed (or sex-negative) and that’s completely okay too. It isn’t necessarily related to trauma either, some people just find the idea icky for whatever reason, the same way some people like lentils and some don’t. Some aces don’t want to discuss sex, some aces don’t want to be exposed to sexual topics, and it’s really important to respect their wishes too. If you consider yourself an ally to aces, you need to accept not only these that may be willing to engage in NSF*W content, but also those that have set clear boundaries on how they DON’T want to have anything to do with it!

I’m just growing a bit weary of people trying to paint asexuals as “more likeable” by saying all aces still can enjoy that sort of content. There’s a huge range in the spectrum, and it’s important to accept all the flavours- sex-positive, yeah, but also sex-neutral and sex-repulsed.

#i used to be completely sex repulsed and uninterested #my feelings have changed but my previous feelings are not less important because of that #in fact i think they are MORE important #(the more sexual content i was unwillingly exposed to the less i wanted to see it. agency was crucial #and because i had that agency i was in a position to allow my feelings to change in a way that was comfortable to me) #but my feelings changing doesn't mean other people's will necessarily #i have a very complicated and fluid relationship with my asexuality. not everyone does #this is why i always want more stories without sex (and more stories without romance) #you can't have that agency if everything you watch and read is forcing it on you #and people deserve to have it whether those feelings last a week or their entire life #asexuality

[trans-cuchulainn]

Able bodied people cannot spot a small step to save their life I swear.

That “threshold” that’s two and a half inches high — that’s a step!

That “curb cut” on the granite pavement that’s three inches off the road— that’s a step!

I’m getting really fed up of being told that places are totally accessible just to find my only options are mild whiplash injuries or not getting in at all.

#yeah since i started using a wheelchair i've been discovering first hand how shit all the dropped kerbs are #they're dropped enough for me to roll when trying to go past them #but not enough for me to actually get up them. okay. #also it's fuckin embarrassing every time i get stuck at one tbh

[trans-cuchulainn]

how to find literally any post on a blog in seconds (on desktop)

there are so many posts about ~tumblr is so broken, you can’t find any post on your own blog, it’s impossible, bluhrblub~

I am here to tell you otherwise! it is in fact INCREDIBLY easy to find a post on a blog if you’re on desktop/browser and you know what you’re doing:

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant. every single post, every single time. in chronological order starting with the most recent post. note: it will not find #croissants or that time you made the typo #croidnssants. for a tag with multiple words, it’s just /tagged/my-croissant and it will show you everything with the exact phrase #my croissant

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant/chrono will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the exact phrase #croissant, but it will show them in reverse order with the oldest first 

url.tumblr.com/search/croissant isn’t as perfect at finding everything, but it’s generally loads better than the search on mobile. it will find a good array of posts that have the word croissant in them somewhere. could be in the body of the post (op captioned it “look at my croissant”) or in the tags (#man I want a croissant). it won’t necessarily find EVERYTHING like /tagged/ does, but I find it’s still more reliable than search on mobile. you can sometimes even find posts by a specific user by searching their url. also, unlike whatever random assortment tumblr mobile pulls up, it will still show them in a more logically chronological order

url.tumblr.com/day/2020/11/05 will show you every post on the blog from november 5th, 2020, in case you’re taking a break from croissants to look for destiel election memes 

url.tumblr.com/archive/ is search paradise. easily go to a particular month and see all posts as thumbnails! search by post type! search by tags but as thumbnails now

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio will show you every audio post on your blog (you can also filter by other post types). sometimes a little imperfect if you’re looking for a video when the op embedded the video in a text post instead of posting as a video post, etc

url.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/croissant will show you EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant, but it will show you them in the archive thumbnail view divided by months. very useful if you’re looking for a specific picture of a croissant that was reblogged 6 months ago and want to be able to scan for it quickly 

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio/tagged/croissant will show you every audio post tagged with the specific phrase #croissant (you can also filter by photo or text instead, because I don’t know why you have audio posts tagged croissant) 

the tag system on desktop tumblr is GENUINELY amazing for searching within a specific blog! 

caveat: this assumes a person HAS a desktop theme (or “custom theme”) enabled. a “custom theme” is url.tumblr.com, as opposed to tumblr.com/url. I’ve heard you have to opt-into the former now, when it used to be the default, so not everyone HAS a custom theme where you can use all those neat url tricks. 

if the person doesn’t have a “custom theme” enabled, you’re beholden to the search bar. still, I’ve found the search bar on tumblr.com/url is WAY more reliable than search on mobile. for starters, it tends to bring posts up in a sensible order, instead of dredging up random posts from 2013 before anything else

if you’re on mobile, I’m sorry. godspeed and good luck finding anything. (my one tip is that if you’re able to click ON a tag rather than go through the search bar, you’ll have better luck. if your mutual has recently reblogged a post tagged #croissant, you can click #croissant and it’ll bring up everything tagged #croissant just like /tagged/croissant. but if there’s no readily available tag to click on, you have to rely on the mobile search bar and its weird bizarre whims) 

#also if you have your blog hidden to search engines it affects the indexing i think #and don't put hyphens in multi word tag searches. put spaces #yes i know it used to be hyphens but they changed it. spaces. it will change them into symbols #hyphens won't find it #e.g. search '/tagged/cu chulainn' not 'tagged/cu-chulainn'

[trans-cuchulainn]

Via thepiggypotatoes

#cute tag #:)