“The Best Clockmaker on Mars”
Homtail, the liger. Freehand inProcreate on iPad with Apple Pencil. 2023.
the appalachian murder ballad <3 one of the most interesting elements of americana and american folk, imo!
my wife recently gave me A Look when i had one playing in the car and she was like, "why do all of these old folk songs talk about killing people lmao" and i realized i wanted to Talk About It at length.
nerd shit under the cut, and it's long. y'all been warned
As a fellow lover of folk in general, and murder ballads specifically, I would love to offer some other recommendations for woman-friendly murder ballads. Most of these are very modern, but they are in the spirit of the ballads I grew up loving.
The River Knows-Molly Tuttle (A woman who knows she's in a murder ballad turns things around)
Caleb Meyer- Gillian Welch (A woman gets assaulted and kills the man who attacked her)
Old Time Angels- Po Ramblin Boys (The women killed in murder ballads get vengeance)
Griesly Bride- McKain Lakey (A man who thought he'd married a sweet young girl has an unexpected wedding night)
And a selection of more classic ones (plus one modern) that are less happy for their female characters, but no less beautiful. I am sticking to female singers here, because OP is right that their versions usually hit better.
Well Below the Valley- Saya Novinger (This one is dark. Incest, child murder, and guilt abound)
Darlin Corey- Meredith Moon (The life and death of a moonshiner named Corey)
The Highwayman- Loreena McKennitt (A woman and her outlaw lover are killed by British soldiers)
The Cruel Brother- Maeve Mackinnon (A woman is murdered by her slighted brother on her wedding day)
Banks of the Ohio- Dolly Parton (A man recounts how he murdered his lover)
my niche interest! hello, I also have a lot to say about ballads!
Hm I'd like to suggest that folks not take these trends as hard rules, indicating omnidirectionality. I tend to think of ballads as open ammunition being tossed back and forth in the gender wars of oral tradition, flipping back and forth between viewpoints as different singers find ways to make them say different things.
Ballads were hardly a misogynist monolith-they were written by a range of individuals over a wide range of years, and many started out (far as we can tell) carrying women's voices, or have older variants that told more complete and often more empowering versions of their tales that may contain acts of violence against women but that could not originally be condensed to just that feature. Not as a rule by any means, but they're definitely a sizeable number of songs.
Some start out more feminist and lost their teeth over time, and some start out misogynist and gained more feminist frames. It'd be interesting to graph them all out over a timeline and see what trends emerge but also very difficult given the spiderwebbing of variants dating from different periods and going in different directions and the subjectivity of what counts as feminist or the reverse.
Anyhow here are some examples of songs that, far as I can tell, started out fairly feminist long before the 1940s:
Lady Isabel and the Elf Night: dates at least to the 17th c. Very similar to Pretty Polly and Omie Wise (okay also many others) plot wise but when Lady Isobel's courting lover reveals all the other women he's killed before, she kills him instead. Also there's often a parrot.
Fair Annie, an adaptation of Marie de France's late 12th c lai Le Fresne more. Where Annie, the mother of seven of her partner's children, is told to step aside, put out the welcome mat, and feign maidenhood so that he can marry someone new and wealthy. Upon the new bride's arrival she asks who Annie is and why she's crying, then reveals "Oh, we're sisters! Which means you can totally have my dowry and I'm not marrying that pos, you are, don't worry, I'm going the hell home." (emphasis mine but that's basically it)
Broughty Wa's, a Scottish song about outswimming your kidnapper while he sinks like a stone in your wake, known only from Amelia and Jane Harris, sisters who contributed to Child heavily and learned their repertoire from their mother who in turn learned them from "an aged nurse". more
Lady of Loch Royan: most versions of Lord Gregory, as it's known more often today, are the sad tale of a new mother knocking on her lover's door in the rain asking to be let in, only to be turned away by his mother who tells her to jump in the sea, which she does and he wakes up and runs after her, but too late. The two very similar likely oldest versions are an Appalachian variant recorded by Jean Ritchie and the version aggregated by Sir Walter Scott in 1802, unlikely to have been contaminated by knowledge of each other, indicate, "we have here a truly remarkable instance of a unique version of a ballad appearing in two widely separated places 150 years apart" (source), which should serve to underline how often the Appalachian versions might well be the closer-to-original surviving versions of these songs rather than remaining English and Scottish ones, and how difficult they are to date.
Anyhow most of the modern versions of this I hear are highly truncated, just sad Annie crying sweet memories outside of Lord Gregory's door then going off to drown, but the Sir Walter Scott version has her building a ship, meeting with robbers, breaking fairy charms, and being mistaken in her rain-soaked rage for a witch, warlock, or mermaid. I mean she still dies right soggily in despair (or in given how mad she seems in this version, possibly spite), but that's something, surely. more
And not a child ballad but I want to note that the Pretty Polly linked above (there are a bunch of songs by that name, including Lady Isobel, confusingly) is descended from a longer murder ballad called The Cruel Ship's Carpenter/ The Gosport Tragedy, which in it's fuller form most often ends with Polly's ghost appearing and tearing her killer into three pieces.
Ballads <3
*Also might I ask if it's a typo on Twa Sisters going back to the 10th c rather than the 17th I've heard more often, or if I might learn more about that early source? I'm very curious (maybe the related folktale type goes back that far or farther?) Off the top of my head I think Judas is the earliest Child ballad in the 13th c so if there's an earlier one I'd love to know.
We all know the results of the election, and the events that happened on Martin Luther King Jr Day.
I acknowledge this. I cannot say “not my President” unless somehow I change my citizenship. I am not interested in doing such. He won the popular vote. I don’t like it, but it’s still better than the Electoral College.
The number of people who didn’t vote at all outnumbered the votes for any candidate.
This concerns me.
I wonder why so many people chose not to vote.
Voting, whether for a candidate I don’t personally like, or even for a 3rd party is still more important in my eyes, than not voting at all.
The apathy of not voting concerns me.
The same apathy that doesn’t value art, or music, and would pawn of writing emails on AI.
I understand how one can feel like things don’t matter… but it always matters!
Voting is one of our most sacred rights as United States Citizens!
So please, be active, be attentive, vote! Do it local, do it national, but be part of the system we fought to have!
Will it mean the candidate you like wins? Not necessarily. Not any more than taking your pet to the vet for annual checkup guarantees he will never get sick, or that having home insurance means you’ll never have a housefire.
Life will never be 100% in anyone’s favor… nor will it be 100% against them.
Taking Buffy to the vet annually means they might catch an illness in time, and get him on meds to keep his life good.
Homeowner insurance won’t replace the belongings memories lost in a housefire, but it can help one get back on their feet.
Voting is like that.
It’s not a magic bullet. It’s a personal step. A foot forward. An active choice to say “I’m not gonna sit on my ass and do nothing.”
Even if one never gets involved in advocacy for a cause, never writes a letter, calls a congressperson, or joins a march, it’s still important to vote!
A vote says “I care.”
Whether one cares a little, or a lot, that is -always!- better than indifference.
I feel cheated. no one on Reddit told me that tumblr is a serotonin factory. Keep liking and reblogging my posts please thanks
Just don't fly too close to the sun.
Throw me to the sun and I’ll get it pregnant
he understands the website your honour
Cheers to those who are ‘naturally insulated.’
Make sure you wear a hat, gloves, and be careful in this weather. The wind has teeth.
“Sometimes loneliness needs company; a chance to be lonely together. Waylon Smithers and Dewey Largo know this all too well.”
______
A fanfic by Chequroot, inspired by the art of Garrett-Strangelove (http://fav.me/dber95h).
Writeober 2020 #21: Dragon
How to Care For Your Pet Human
Congratulations! You’ve made the decision to adopt a human. Humans are excellent pets – intelligent, loyal, longer-lived than most other pet animals, and hypoallergenic, producing far less dander than the average mammal or bird. But they can be a challenging pet to care for as well. Here’s what you need to know to keep your human healthy and happy!
Committing To A Human
Like any pet, a human wants a forever home it can stay in for its entire life. Unlike most pets, a human can live for close to a century, if well cared for. It’s a big commitment! Make sure you’re ready for it.
Humans are incredibly intelligent, and if you do not provide sufficient enrichment, they will find it… one way or another. Everyone’s heard a story about a dragon who left their human alone in their lair, only to find the human gone after they returned. There are very few predators that are dangerous to a human, so if you don’t smell that another dragon has invaded your lair, and your human is missing… they found a way to escape whatever enclosure you had them in, and they may never return. Don’t let this happen to your human!
Humans are also incredibly social. If you’re not willing to take on more than one human, you must find a petsitter when you nap. The isolation of being alone while you’re asleep for a year or two may kill your human – and, of course, humans need food and fresh water every day, so you’ll need to make arrangements for them to be fed while you’re sleeping. We also recommend strongly that if you cannot care for more than one human, you frequently bring your human for play dates to a friend with a human, or a human rescue center.
Most breeders and rescue centers will be able to tell you if your human has the trait of “introversion.” Such humans are valuable and may cost significantly more, because introversion allows a human to be left alone for much, much longer than the average human. An introverted human can get all of their social interaction from you, as long as you provide enrichment for them to entertain themselves. You’ll still need a pet sitter when you sleep, but you don’t have to take them on frequent play dates. Other humans without the trait will be stressed by the lack of human companionship even if you interact with them frequently. We strongly recommend that in general, if your human is not introverted, they will be happiest with a human companion or two. Because they’re low-allergenic and they’re (for the most part) very clean animals, and because they enjoy socially sharing food, most dragons find that it’s easier to care for multiple humans than it is for just one!
Some pics I made a few years ago for an orca race I wanted to make for my 5e homebrew debut, but since the whole OGL stuff happened, I lost drive to make it a 5e thing and decided to just show all this here and now.
I made this race, the Orcoda as I called them, to fill a few niches: for those looking for aquatic races, for those looking to play something a bit heavier set and for those looking for more furry races to play as.
Maybe I'll make a PF 2e version of this race once I figure out the systems for that game.
Dear OP,
I love your Orcoda! I hope you create more lore for them.
My brain is inspired to make a cold-ocean campaign setting now, using northern merfolk (the chubby type), Orcoda, and other such races.
Doodling tonight. Fat studies of mythical beasts. I figured, why stick with the human bodytype?
Presenting the Fat-Tailed Centaur and Fat-Tailed Dragon, because why not?
