I love this ask because it’s such a polite way of going EXPLAIN THAT POST ELANOR
EXPLAIN YOURSELF
EXPLAIN YOUR PEOPLE
I’m not sure if you’re after the history of the thing, or the actual practice of it, since ‘tradition’ could cover either – so, I’ll give you both, and hopefully your answer will be in here somewhere. I will also include more Frightening Images of the Mari Lwyd because you can never have too many horrifying photos of ornery skull-masked winter horse demons to scare the tits off you.
Okay, so. The Mari Lwyd.
Now, the first concrete recorded incidences of the Mari are from the late 1700s/early 1800s, but as with a lot of Welsh history, that’s misleading. We didn’t write a lot of our own shit like this down for much the same reason that Egypt never mentioned where to find Punt, and the English didn’t generally travel into Wales much if they could help it. Given that it seems to fold into a lot of other older traditions, though (the Hooded Animal, the Mast Beast, etc), and those have pre-Christian roots,
I believe there’s a theory that it might have its roots in worshipping Rhiannon, the Welsh version of Epona, the pan-Celtic horse goddess. But there’s no way to be sure.
The meaning of the name is disputed. It’s generally accepted to mean “Grey Mare”. For a while some people thought it meant “Holy/Blessed Mary”, as in, y’know, the Virgin Mary, but this is no longer accepted because
“Llwyd” means grey, not white, and “gwen” is the colour normally used to also mean pure or holy; grey would be more likely to mean venerable/wise, which the Mari Lwyd ain’t;
I think there’s reference to ‘Mari’ being used for ‘Mary’ (instead of ‘Mair’) in the Black Book of Carmarthen, so at least since the 14th century, but that was likely only by poets – there’s no record of common folk using it before the Protestants came and reformed everything, so it seems unlikely that it could have been the original name; and
As far as I am aware there is no record of the religio-historical figure of the Virgin Mary mounting the donkey’s head on a stick and hammering down the door to the inn with a half-empty bottle of gin in one hand while scream-singing insults at the innkeeper so he’d give her cheese.
So, it’s generally accepted now that the connotations with Christian Marian symbolism are part coincidence and part encouraged among the clergy post-Reformation so that everyone could keep getting blind drunk with a horse’s skull and calling each other a willy. Plus, both Ireland and the Isle of Mann have very old hooded horse traditions too, called the Láir Bhán and the Laare Vane in Irish and Manx respectively. Both meaning, surprise surprise, the “white/grey mare”. Given that Wales and Ireland had a lot of historical interaction, this seems like more than coincidence.
Plus, you know, it is kind of a grey mare. Bones are white.
It did have other names in some places, mind – I think Carmarthenshire had some weird name for it, like Y March or y Gynfas-Farch, but you mustn’t ever listen to people from West Wales because then there would we be? Calling woodlice ‘pennysawls’ and claiming the word “Wi’n” is an acceptable variation of the verb “to be”, that’s where.
Anyway. Once upon a time, this was seemingly a mid-winter celebration in Wales, which then became a Christmas celebration until the Church went “You’re doing WHAT” and it became New Year instead. But, it did vary when different villages would do it. Some would do it on New Year, some at Christmas, some in that weird week in between when you don’t know if the bins are going out or not… You get the idea. These days, it’s New Year, as a rule.
Now, Europe does have a lot of varying traditions of doing this shit – google ‘mast beast’ for exciting photos. But usually, the beast is made by someone bending over beneath the sheet to make it look, you know, like the beast they’re mimicking. The Mari Lwyd stands out because, alone of all of them, she stands up straight, and is seven feet tall. She is the tallest of all the mast beasts. In a country where the average female height is 5’4", and men not much taller, that makes her fuck-damned enormous.
So, with that out of the way, let me tell you how it goes!
Traditionally, making the Mari is an important part of the whole thing – most villages would have a set skull they’d use, like, but the decoration was a week-long community affair, because as we all know, it would be creepy if you just stuck a skull on a pole oh my god. You have to put ribbons and glass eyes on it! That stops it being creepy! Obviously!
(Also, as a side note, battery-powered fairy lights have been a gift to the Mari Lwyd.)
The skulls, incidentally, were almost always from a beloved village horse who had at some point died at a ripe old age, and then whose skull was taken to live on as the Mari. Most villages knew their names, decades later. Down the Gower peninsula I think there was one account, mind, that they used to bury the skull for the rest of the year, and just dig it up in time for the Mari. But most kept it in a cupboard, like. Next to the sugar. I dunno. An important point, though – the skulls are also rigged so the person inside can snap the jaw, and incidentally, few things in this infinite and wondrous existence are as creepy and low-key primally unnerving as hearing ten of these things around you snapping in the dark, just btw, just fyi.
Anyway; you’ve spent a week decorating! (Although these days they’re kept pre-decorated.) What now?
The Mari party gathers at about midday. That’s the Mari herself, plus others – it varies who, but classically, I think they dressed up as Punch and Judy characters, those being the mischievous comedy extravaganza of the day. Then they start at one end of the village and go to the first house, where they sing Cân y Fari. That’s a bit like yelling ‘Trick or treat’, except rather than asking for sweets, they’re after delicious alcohol and cheese (side note: Wales’ relationship with cheese goes beyond Peak White Person and out the other side into What Is Wrong With You People. We have myths and folklore about it. It is Very Important.)
Now, the house holders do not want to give away their delicious alcohol and cheese, and so at this point, they begin something called the Pwnco (the ‘w’ is pronounced like the ‘oo’ in ‘book’, while the ‘o’ is short like in ‘hot’.) The Pwnco is, like… sort of like a rap battle? But sung. But that’s the idea. It’s beautifully poetic, and almost always opens with the same very nice verse, to whit:
Wel dyma ni’n diwad (Well here we come) Gyfeillion diniwad (Innocent friends) I ofyn am gennad (To ask leave) I ofyn am gennad (To ask leave) I ofyn am gennad i ganu (To ask leave to sing)
which you can hear a bit of here; I filmed that in Llangynnwyd. But, it’s very much a “So’s your FACE” type of thing. The householders tell the Mari to get straight to fuck, and then the Mari responds in kind. And they go back and forth until one side loses.
Now, if the Mari loses, she goes to the next house. But if the householders lose, they have to let her in and give her their delicious alcohol and cheese. IMPORTANT STEP, HOWEVER: if they have a bare ounce of sense between them, they first make her promise to behave before letting her past the door. Because if they don’t, HA HA all hell breaks loose, and the party do as much mischief as they can, like smearing ash on your walls and stealing your goats and mixing your white laundry in with your colours and hiding your drawing tablet pens. It is a Riot.
Anyway, once done, they leave the tattered ruins of your former house, go to the next house, and start again. More delicious alcohol and cheese!
It all got banned by the Welsh Non-Conformist Church of No Fun ever, because rival Mari parties would get blind drunk and then fight each other in the streets. It started to die out in the 50s, though some smaller villages kept it going – Llangynnwyd never even stopped. And in the last two decades it’s started making a resurgence in places like Brecon, Llantrisant, etc – tonnes of places in the belt between Vale and mountains, really, which makes me think it’s because the Folk Museum is in St Ffagans.
But Chepstow do a modern twist – the town is right on the border with England, so they do a festival of Welsh Mari Lwyd and English morris dancing combined in mid-January each year. Turns out, every goddamn Mari in the country comes to it, too, which is why this year I got to see 24 Mari Lwyds. I had NO IDEA. So, so many Maris…
It also used to sometimes get mixed in with other festive cheese-begging traditions like Calennig, but it is pretty much separate. As a final question: why do it? Well… we dunno. The purpose of the uppity skeletal horse beast is unknown at this point. Like I say, it may well have been a Rhiannon thing; given the way it got folded into some Christian things post-Reformation, it may have absorbed some form of fleeing-on-a-donkey-to-give-birth stuff. It’s hard to even nail down distribution patterns. But, something I find interesting about its distribution is that it was predominantly done in areas that either mined, smelted or sold minerals a lot. Make of that what you will.
And, that’s the Mari Lwyd.
Add the Hunting of the Wren into the mix… @elodieunderglass more Things
There’s my GIRL! There she IS! this will be of interest for people who were interested in Christmas-associated inversion traditions of the British Isles.
You remember that post about the homestuck t-shirt design contest collaborating with hot topic? And how Hot Topic are the biggest art thieves? This is recent. As you can see above, I stumbled upon Hot Topic’s website and they are selling a very popular fan art put on a t-shirt, and did not ask permission from the original artist (rismo).
This shows Hot Topic still continues their art thievery. Hot Topic are still taking art from artists without their permission. This is disrespectful and appalling.
EXCEPT YOU DID GIVE THEM YOUR PERMISSION.
BY AGREEING TO TERMS AND CONDITIONS ON DEVIANT ART.
6. Payment Unless otherwise agreed between Artist and deviantART in a writing from deviantART, the license granted to deviantART under this Agreement is royalty-free.
DeviantArt you literal piece of shit
Uh what
That’s not okay
yo okay this is REALLY FUCKING IMPORTANT and imma be deleting my DA very soon because of it.
are you fucking for real
Just a heads up for people hosting their designs on DA
Okay. I just read through the “agreement” that DA has implemented, and it is truly heinous. I will not be posting on DA anymore.
———
3. License To Use Artist Materials. As and when Artist Materials are uploaded to the DeviantArt Site(s), Artist grants to DeviantArt a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to do the following things during the Term:
a) to prepare and encode Artist Materials or any part of them for digital or analog transmission, manipulation and exhibition in any format and by any means now known or not yet known or invented; (DA can post them on their website and edit them in any way they see fit)
b) to display, copy, reproduce, exhibit, publicly perform, broadcast, rebroadcast, transmit, retransmit, distribute through any electronic means (including analog and digital) or other means, and electronically or otherwise publish any or all of the Artist Materials, including any part of them, and to include them in compilations for publication, by any and all means and media now known or not yet known or invented ; (They can publish your art in any media, use it to showcase their website or even promote certain groups without your knowledge. For all you know, your art could be promoting the KKK.)
c) to modify, adapt, change or otherwise alter the Artist Materials (e.g., change the size) and use the Artist Materials as described in Section 3(b); and
d) the right to sublicense to any other person or company any of the licensed rights in the Artist Materials, or any part of them, subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement. (They can edit, change, or otherwise modify your artwork in any way they want, as well as sublicensing it to third parties, such as Hot Topic.)
e) Artist acknowledges that Artist will not have any right, title, or interest in any other materials with which Artist Materials may be combined or into which all or any portion of Artist Materials may be incorporated. (By posting on FA, you forfeit your right to dispute any third party profits or copyright infringements upon your art.)
f) During the Term, DeviantArt’s licenses under this Agreement include the right to use any part of the Artist Materials in the promotion, advertising or marketing of the DeviantART Sites. (DeviantArt can use your art to advertise anything they want.)
g) As used in this Agreement, the term “Artist Materials” means any content uploaded to the DeviantArt Site(s) which may include without limitation Artist’s name(s) (including professional names), trademarks, trade names, likenesses, photographs, biographical materials, audio-visual materials, artwork, liner notes, and other graphical, textual, video, film or audio materials and any and all “skins,” computer-generated images or other artwork or images that Artist submits to DeviantArt in any medium or format whatsoever. (ANYTHING you submit to DeviantArt belongs to DeviantArt now. Including your drawings, your photos, videos, your stock materials, your music/audio, your written stories, and your artist name.)
Yes. THEY CAN EVEN USE YOUR ACTUAL ARTIST NAME. THEY OWN IT NOW, IF YOU ARE PART OF DA.
Fuck DA.
Burn them to the ground
Pass it around
That’s why I deleted months ago.It’s a terrible website and I hate it
Passing on the PSA. I stopped using that site years ago. If you still use it, it’s not too late! Trash that shit.
You should water mark the shit out of your stuff dear! I’ve had my designs on shirts without permission quite a few times !
Yep. Deleted over 400 drawings and photos from DA over an year ago. I used the site for over 8 years not knowing these terms of service since they don’t actually show them to you when you make an account. Sure you can find them if you do some digging but they don’t shove it to your face. Also it doesn’t matter if your art has a watermark or whatever. Like it says above they have the right to edit and modify your pics so they can just remove your useless watermarks and signatures and then use your art freely and you can’t complain because you have agreed to all of this. There is no reason whatsoever to use Deviantart (maybe if you are a stockartist that gives their shit for free lol). Leave this piece of shit site before they use you like the arrogant asshats they are.
For anyone who still uses DA, please read this.
This is relevant now more then ever because I see alot of people debating going back to DA
Lolokaynevermind.
Ver important in the light of tumblr purge. Many of you wold like to move to the DA and here is why it isn’t a good idea.
i hate this so much but this knowledge is too powerful to keep from you all.
last night @phaltu discovered that setting your font to comic sans in google docs improves writing speed and creativity by an insane amount. “no” i said and “die” but then i tried it and god. i wish it wasn’t this way. i wish it wasn’t true. i wish i could protect you all from this but it’s real.
something about this font is so disarming. something about this font lets you look past the shape of the words and into their soul. i’ve never written so much as i did last night, on my phone, at 2am, in comic sans.
if you have writer’s block. if you lack inspiration. if you need this. don’t be afraid to use it. sometimes the things we find most horrifying are also the things we need the most. trust me. let comic sans into your life.
ok so! this may actually be in part because of two different things. 1 – comic sans is a dyslexia-friendly font, and it may just be that you find it easier to process words when they are in that font because they are designed to be easier to read! and 2 – changing anything about the environment you work in can help inspiration, up to and including changing document background colour or text colour or in this case font!
I mention this because I think people forget that comic sans is literally designed to be easy to read and process for people who struggle with that, because we all make fun of it so much instead.
i gave my sister $100 for her bday, but i gave it to her in $1 bills that i folded into origami. so that’s how she pays for delivery food & now the pizza girl thinks she’s a stripper
You’re really good at origami holy sh
i learned it specifically to make these for this exact situation
Aren’t you the same bitch that gave your sister $100 dollars in nickels?
same bitch
Yeah, neither of these things happened 👍🏼
listen here my good hoe, i can’t find photos of the 2000 nickels or the 20 stars, but i did not spend weeksplanningmeticulously inconvenient birthday giftsover a period of years just to get whaled on by internet gremlins. here is some equally compelling evidence for an anecdote i was saving for later:
it weighed 68.6 lbs
This is the 100 Star. Reblog to receive cash in unexpected ways.
We do a white elephant at my work every year. Gift is between 10-15 dollars. Our new CEO gave a bag of $15 in coins. I liked her before but like her more now.
Unlike most weekends lately, as the SAD sneaks in and persuades me to try to read the whole internet in one go instead of Doing Things.
Braved town today to go to the market and buy veg, and managed to only snarl at one person, and as that person was managing to mill about pointlessly and unpredictably in the middle of the main thoroughfare and nearly walked right over me I feel that telling him to please pick a direction sir was entirely justifiable.
Didn’t go for a pint in the pub as a reward, because it was cold and starting to wet and I just wanted to go home and there is booze here, and warms, and possibly even naps. I have not yet had the booze, or the naps, but I have happily availed myself of the warms.
I have also given the stove top a sadly overdue seeing-to, which took a full 20 and more kitchen wipes than I really want to admit to. Yet again I am asking myself if really, would it be so very hard to give it a wipe every day or two so we can avoid letting it get into that state again? Really?
Apparently this would indeed be way too hard. Still, it’s done now, and it is even almost shiny. It’ll do.
Seriously tho, don’t use “but the racists are getting a pass!” while complaining that shipping communities are losing a safe and empowering place to share porn.
The most dominant shipping communities uphold racist aesthetic ideals, methodically erase people of color from their narratives and uphold white men as superior to all – and they continue to congratulate themselves for their own enlightenment while doing it.
Instead of glorifying shipping communities as empowering spaces for women, this is an opportunity to talk about what’s really lurking under that so-called subversive feminism.
After all the ugliness they’ve injected into Tumblr fan spaces, we can do better than letting them go down as martyrs. (Again.)
I mean the reason nipple is happening is partly their fault. A lot of adult, female shippers had zero problem with shipping adult characters with minors. Hell, when Big Hero 6 came out, the tags we full of racist, pedophilic art featuring Hiro and his brother. These women aren’t heroes, they’re part of the problem.
Yes, how tumblr is handling this entire this is low but part of the reason this is happening is because of adult shippers, mainly female ones.
These women aren’t heroes, they’re part of the problem.
Yup.
“Why don’t they take care of the Nazis instead of us”? – Sad fact: The amount of racist crap I’ve gotten from female shippers on Tumblr absolutely obscures the amount I’ve gotten from actual alt-righties. I’ll get some rightwing dudes mocking me now and then, but the harassment, the campaigns to take me down for blogging about racism in fandom, the false accusations, have all come from women shippers. Not all white, but all women, and 100% from so-called “subversive” shipping communities.
These are the women we create holocaust or Native American AUs without batting an eye. I’ve had female shippers send me death threats and I had one tell me I should get hit by a bus. Yeah, that’s totally feminist.
Also, these women are dangerous too. They have influence over fandom and there are tons of minors they can potentially harm. Why doesn’t anyone care? Isn’t their safety more important than this faux feminism?
Again, the reason for nipplegate is the fault of adult women who have been making fandom unsafe from the get go
I love how you both blame adult women specifically for this debacle (as if there aren’t plenty of men and teens who ship the “bad nasty things”) and not, I dunno, incompetent website moderation combined with corporate greed
This post is literally about how targeting the “wrong kind of” fiction is, historically, only part one in crackdowns against general LGBT content in fandom spaces.
And yet, somehow, women are to blame for this, and not incompetent, greedy, homophobic corporations.
But nah, think of the children, etc, and ends justify the means, I guess. Because hey, fuck LGBT people if we can punish those gross old (mostly queer) women for drawing cartoon characters, right?
Congrats on derailing a post about racism.
I blame the adult women who fly into attack mode when racism is brought up for their actions. Transformative fandom doesn’t deserve to be lionized with zero acknowledgement of its rampant racism.
Since it is being lionized across the internet in response to the Tumblr Purge, I’m absolutely going to point out its long-standing racism. If you want to make that into something homophobic, that’s on you.
So anyone who objects to your cold dead take on how “adult shippers are to blame for nipplegate” is also to blame for nipplegate, somehow?
Also, the discussion of fandom racism has been around for years, including among shippers. Talking about concerns over censorship doesn’t mean that somehow everyone forgot that racism within fandom spaces is a thing.
Nobody’s lionizing anything. People are, quite understandably, angry at corporate censorship and corporate incompetence, which almost always hits marginalised people (such as queer people, many of whom are in shipping communities) harder than those in power (which includes white supremacist blogs). That’s why people are talking about this, and that’s why people are angry.
You’re intentionally trying to twist the situation to focus once again onto fans’ faults, because you can’t bear for a moment for people to direct their anger towards the groups who actually have power and actually cause harm, or see people sympathise with folks you have a grudge against.
Blaming censorship on the victims of censorship is disgusting, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
OP you suck, and you’re exactly the reason why no one can have good discussions on how not to be racist, because y’all start defending actual censorship and homophobic pedophilia libel and blatant misogyny and make outrage for the sake of outrage, misapplying serious issues to generate excuses, because it’s more fun for you than tackling actually issues, which would require you to admit nuance exists and your “enemies” are real people who can change instead of fun punching bag toys.
Not to mention that, in actuality, where else do marginalized writers and artists even get heard of? Meanwhile, in fandom spaces, by design, literally anyone can be seen and heard if they tag well. Particularly on AO3, but before Tumblr fucked up how tags and search worked—which is entirely the fault of Yahoo’s execs and brogrammers—here as well. There are no official gatekeepers, no interviews with those already in power, not even real names and people guessing your demographics from them. Just tags and date posted. So long as you tag well and post regularly, which are skills, not inherent attributes, you got heard. I dare you to act like that’s somehow more racist than mainstream publishing.
Not that I’m a fan of idpol, but since it tends to go over well in these kinds of conversations, let me lay it out.
I’m a sex worker. I did sex work through tumblr. I’m also brown. I’m also disabled, queer, and genderqueer. If you want to place weight on these kinds of identities for the sake of firsthand accounts and primary sources, go for it. If not, you won’t need to, since the things I’m about to say are basic facts.
Fandom is racist, yes. Everything that operates in a racist context such as that of the literal world we live in is racist. But on a racism scale of “hypothetical perfect world of total equality,” and “the fucking KKK,” fandom falls a lot closer to the perfect world than traditional media does, or even can.
See, traditional media operates with limitations. The most relevant of those, for this discussion, is capitalism and profit-seeking. To turn a profit, traditional media needs to appeal to the widest possible audience. In a culture of racism, that means playing into the racism.
Fandom does not operate with a profit seeking motive. That means fanworks have the freedom to be passion projects unbeholden to cultural racism. Now, the creators behind fanworks are, themselves, racist, because we’re all fucking racist, because racism permeates our world like nitrogen. But they have no reason to pander to the worst and most dense pockets of racism.
In fact, fandom has motives to not be racist. Because, here’s the thing: fandom includes people of every race and combination.
And people like me? The people of color you dismally claim to be defending with your censorship seeking? We are motivated to express ourselves through art in a way that is denied to us through traditional media, which gatekeeps us out.
But, you sit here, and you pretend in your little ivory tower, that fandom is worse. You explicitly say, in your post, that fandom is more racist, more violent than nazis.
You say, to me, a brown jew, that I am worse than nazis.
Your claims that you are defending people of color, and any marginalized group, fall pretty fucking short, when you’re pulling shit like that.
But, set that aside. I hate that I have to say, “set aside the shocking, jaw dropping racism you just pulled,” but it’s not actually your thesis.
See, the point of your post isn’t, “fandom is racist.” The point is that fandom should be punished for that racism, even when other people aren’t.
And punishment, in this case, equals denial. It equals the exact same censure and gatekeeping that prevents people like me from publishing in traditional media.
Remember when I pointed out that traditional media is, by necessity, more racist than fandom?
By calling for fandom to imitate traditional media, you are calling for fandom to become more racist, not less.
Setting aside the misogyny, the homophobia, the queerphobia, the transphobia of your post.
This kind of thinking is extremely. Fucking. Racist.
And as someone who purports to be all about increasing the diversity of expression in traditional media, what with the url “diverse high fantasy”?
You need to do better.
Also, like, the actual KKK? The far end of my little racism scale?
They really ARE getting a pass in all this. That’s actually a true statement, and people should be fucking shouting it from the rooftops. This purge seeks to punish women for having bodies, queers for having sex, and sex workers for doing work. And yes, it seeks to punish fandoms for daring to talk about fiction.
But it leaves lynch mod organizers untouched. People who do real harm, to real victims. Victims like me, because just for reference, I’ve lived in KKK country. I’ve watched them set homes on fire and circle the yard with guns to shoot anyone who tries to leave. I’ve gone to bed each night hoping to god the next place they burn down wouldn’t be mine. I’ve watched people die in some of the worst imaginable ways.
And you sit here, and you claim that people should not speak out against that. You claim that saying that is unacceptable is somehow “derailing” a “real conversation” on racism.
As if taking the side of the worst kind of racists is somehow not racist.
So, like, until you can learn to be less disingenuous, I hope that everything you put in your putrid mouth tastes like the rot of which you are thoroughly made.
In other words?
Eat shit.
“By calling for fandom to imitate traditional media, you are calling for fandom to become more racist, not less.”
Frankenuff’s Castle 