“The only Hebrew version of the perennially popular Arthurian legends was written in northern Italy in 1279. […] The 13th-century Italian Jewish translator’s literary methods are as fascinating as are the Arthurian stories in Hebrew dress. The scribe not only translates from Italian, [..] he also changed and Judaized the story. The scribe’s manner of Judaization is evident at the outset of the romance; the apology itself is filled with terms from a familiar Jewish world. Instrumental to the Judaization of the Arthurian romance are the scribe’s choice of plot (the seduction of Igerne by the king, with its parallels to the David-Bath-Sheba story), additions and omissions, use of language, and treatment of certain passages to stress Jewish ideas. For instance, the feast at which Uther meets Igerne is described in the Old French sources as a Christmas feast. In the Hebrew version, the statement “Then the king made a great feast for all the people and all the princes” (based on Esth. 2:18) conveys the aura of a Purim feast. Another example of such transference of concepts occurs when the translator takes the talmudic word tamḥui (“a charity bowl from which food was distributed to the needy”), with its uniquely Jewish associations, to describe the grail, an overtly Christian symbol. The constant use of well-known biblical phrases reminds the reader of religious literature and produces the effect of biblical scenes in the midst of the Arthurian narrative. In this fashion, then, the text and the language interact in polyphonic fashion.”
Holy heck, I considered myself something of a King Arthur buff and I had no idea about this! Does this mean after all this time I can imagine a Jewish round table?
most iconic things shane madej has said in buzzfeed unsolved
“yeah, that rings a bell or two, that shakes a tambourine.”
“let me spin you a yarn, that you shan’t soon forget. I’m being eaten alive by crabs right now.”
“I’M STRAAAANGE, AND OFF-PUTTING !”
“I’m disrespectful, but I’m talking to dust and cobwebs.”
“HOW DARE YOU DISPOSE OF MY BODY”
“Cops in the 70s were like, oh you just killed someone ? You got 20 bucks ?”
Everything he said on Goatman’s Bridge.
*imitating a man claiming to be D.B Cooper on his deathbed* “I have something to tell you…… I’m the phantom of the skyyyyyyy”
*laying down on a pentagram* “ROCK N ROLL, BUCKAROO”
“Look I’m not here as a doctor. I just wanna see some of this crazy shit.”
“You better watch out or Yankee Jim will give you some taffy. Some folks say they hear him playing a jolly little kazoo tune in the middle of the night.”
Another thing that confuses me about the ‘butch/femme are lesbian only terms and m-spec women shouldn’t use them’ thing is that I’ve been seeing queer men use femme for like, a really long time?
Same. And it’s… telling that not a single word about them, that I’ve seen anyway, has been said by the “they’re for lesbians only” crowd. Like. If they are lesbian-exclusive words, shouldn’t gay men using them be just as in the wrong as multispec women?
I would ask why it is I haven’t heard a single word about that, but… I think the answer is pretty clear. (Hint: it’s multispec antagonism.)
It’s also just a complete lack of understanding of where the terms butch/femme came from. I can’t yell enough about how people need to look up Polaris and learn about the whole fascinating history of the cant that gave us butch and femme in the first place.
I mean, “Stone Butch Blues” shows men and women identifying as femme in Buffalo, NY’s bar scene in the 50s, but of course some random exclusionists on Tumblr.hell can go off, I guess.
Stone Butch Blues is actually set in the 1970s, but otherwise you’re dead on. 🙂
Hell, there’s a book on my shelf with quotes describing men as butch that go back to the 40′s (so what’s that whole “it came out of 50′s lesbian bar culture” thing again?):
Like most of Derrick’s partners – among them the “butch number” in charge of the electricity generator – Fred marries and raised a family after the war [WWII] was over.
[…]
The New Zealand Pictorial drew 1955 to a close with tales of this new urban phenomenon. Like the Observer some eight years earlier, the Pictorial managed to moralise, inform and titillate all at the same time:
“Homosexuals have a strict code of their own and on no account will they sexually associate with women. Oddly enough they fight among themselves like kilkenny cats [sic]. For this reason a group of homosexuals is always controlled by the “queen bee” whose word is absolutely final. Others in the sect are “marthas”, who dress as women; “arthurs”, who adopt the normal male role, and “butchs” who stand in either way.”
[AN: this was written by straight people, and as such may not be accurate terminology, but it also stands as evidence that these terms were widespread enough for straight people to notice them.]
[…]
One avid party-goer wrote about this in-between time of evening in “The Night Is Young and We’re So Beautiful”, an unpublished 1966 story about his Auckland social circle:
[cut for length] “The more discreet or nervous would exit hurriedly and linger not. They would attempt an air of “How ever did I get mixed up with this lot when I was really drinking in the side bar with all those butch sporty types?”, and rush to their transport looking neither to right nor to left. “
– from Mates & Lovers: A History Of Gay New Zealand by Chris Brickell
Also, there’s a claim that floats around sometimes that butch and femme mean different things for lesbians because they relate to gender identity and expression. That’s a cool claim! It also goes for gay men:
Many stereotypes of gay men presume some form of cross-gender identification and remain prevalent even though the past two decades have seen a large-scale “butch shift” among gay men in Western communities.
[…]
“Butch is to straight-acting what camp is to effeminate – it’s like taking qualities that we consider masculine and over-emphasising them.”
“Butch can be camp in a way. It’s almost like it’s an exaggerated, overblown, unrealistic version of masculinity – you know, it’s not real.”
While butch is taken to clearly be a performance and generally a self-conscious and entertaining one, straight-acting is ambiguous in the same way as camp.
[…]
“When I first came out I actually got quite camp in both my speaking style and my movement style and then sort of when I decided that was actually really dumb, I swung back and got sort of completely butch in both and now I think I’ve sort of settled somewhere in the middle somewhere and I’m quite comfortable.”
[…]
Interviewee: I think camp’s making a parody of the masculine stereotype [whereas butch] is trying to be the equivalent of what straight men should be, like really tough, macho.
Chris: Do you think it sends it up or actually values it?
Interviewee: I don’t know, I think both to an extent. I mostly think it values it.
[…]
The interview accounts discussed here suggest that, rather than attempting to dismantle the taxonomy that incorporates butch, camp, effeminate and straight acting, gay men are refining that semantic space by introducing a new dimension of authenticity to the available distinctions.
– from “What it means to be a gay man” in Queer In Aotearoa New Zealand (2004), by Chris Brickell and Ben Taylor
And as a bonus, some comments on gay men in film by Vito Goddamn Russo:
To make matters worse, it was just about this time (1969) that gay men, themselves buyers of the American dream, rejected the sissy confessions of The Boys in the Band, opting for the macho drag of Joe Buck instead of fuzzy sweaters and teased hair, in order to prove that homosexual men could be just as butch as anyone else. (Which is true, of course, but why bother?) Instead of recognizing and destroying the worn-out myth of the real man, faggots adopted the solution of the traditional male. Just as Marion Morrison changed his name to John Wayne, they jumped on the bandwagon and became part of the parade. […] George Schlatter’s Norman, Is That You? (1976) may have been the first pro-gay fag joke. Schlatter combined what looked to be good intentions with a production that only a hack could love and a solution that nobody could believe. The short-lived Broadway comedy about the parents who discover their son’s lover and gay lifestyle on a weekend visit went on to become a big dinner theater hit, and it is easy to see why: it plays both ends from the middle, refusing to make any comment on the situation for fear of offending someone. The black lover is butch, obviously the “husband”; the white lover is nellie, obviously the “wife.” Just like us, George!
– from The Celluloid Closet
Butch and femme are very important terms to lesbian history, I’m not arguing against that. But it hacks me the hell off to see the claim that they’re only for lesbians because that’s an active denial of my history and culture as a bi man. Plus, there are gay men out there right now with “no fats no femmes” in their grindr bios; try going and telling them that it’s a lesbian only term lmao
Thanks for adding all the citations! This is very good reference material.
the bureau is in shambles because no one can remember what happened at the New Years party. However, there are a number of clues:
Merle’s bed is full of potted plants.
Taako is sprawled across Kravitz, who is laying on top of the kitchen island, both of them are still soundly asleep. Taako has a party hat on.
Carey and Killian are in the rafters of the bureau auditorium, covered in glitter.
Lup and Barry woke up in their bed, which is a good start, but the bed is inside the bureau elevator.
Magnus isn’t wearing a shirt – typical – and is laying in a pile of hundreds of empty champagne flutes, the majority of them are pristine and unused. He’s covered in grass.
The bottom of Lucretia’s dress is torn, and the strip of fabric is tied around her head. When she wakes up and rubs her eyes, she feels herself smudge black eyeliner decorating her cheeks like warpaint.
Davenport is nowhere to be found. Seriously, where is Davenport?
There’s a story here that needs to be uncovered, but for now, everyone’s just blaming Avi and sleeping in.
New Year’s was somewhat of an uneasy affair at the Bureau since the IPRE regained their memories. The end of the year for the crew more often than not meant the end of the world, and though they’d spent more than a decade on Faerun, a century of running for your life is a hard habit to break. So, when he notices that Agnus is having a hard time staying awake for midnight, Magnus proposes a game to keep them all occupied:
Hide and Seek.
The first couple of rounds go pretty quickly, with everyone agreeing to stay close to the THB’s rooms; the third round only lasts a couple of minutes with Angus as the seeker. So, with midnight still an hour and a half away, they decide to make it more difficult. They expand the hiding grounds to the entire moon base and make Lucretia the seeker.
(If she gets a little competitive and borrows Lup’s eyeliner to show she means business, well, they’ll chalk it up to the Cheer Wine and whatever Avi’s been passing out in tiny bottles. It’s not like everyone else is sober anyway.)
Taako is the first one found. He’d pulled Kravitz into the still-closed Fantasy Costco, which was being used as storage until the Bureau could tempt Garfield to come back (without the demanded exchange of blood). At first he’s determined to win and stacks boxes in front of the glass sliding windows so no one can see inside – or, more accurately, he wheedles at Kravitz until his boyfriend does it for him. But when one of the boxes topples over and reveals leftover costumes from the MidSummer Harvest Festival, he can’t help but launch and impromptu fashion show.
Lucretia finds them about fifteen minutes later by following the sounds of their giddy laughter, walking into the abandoned store to find them falling over each other, consumed by giggles. When the couple admits defeat and stumbles back to their rooms, Kravitz is wrapped in a feather boa and Taako is still wearing a party hat.
Lucretia targets Lup and Barry next, expecting them to also be too distracted by each other to focus on the game. She nearly catches them several times, exclaiming once that they can run, but they can’t hide.
That gives Lup an idea.
She and Barry retreat to their room and, after a little trial and error, manage to enchant their bed to that it will teleport to a new location every three minutes. All they have to do is lie back and let the magic do the work. (They’ve already fallen asleep by the time the bed gets stuck in the elevator.)
Merle’s approach is a little more crude, but no less effective. He nabs as many plants he can from around the base, piling them around his bed to form a screen. When he hears Lucretia approaching, he makes kissy sounds against the leaves and laughs when she quickly slams the door shut.
Carey helps Killian climb into the auditorium rafters, insisting that no one ever thinks to look up. It would have worked too, except Lucretia makes it her business to know each of her employees, how they think and how they act, and she knew Carey would be drawn to the highest spot on the moon base.
They ignore her demands to come down. She has no proof she found them so long as they stay up there, right? Lucretia considers summoning a gust of wind to knock them down, but dismisses the thought on the slim, slim chance either of them would get hurt. She instead shoots glitter from the tip of her wand, throughly marking them as found, and exits to the sound of their sputtering amusement.
Magnus ditches his shirt during the game’s first round after knocking back two mini bottles Avi had shoved into his hands, complaining he’s too hot. He throws Agnus over his shoulder as soon as the real game begins and declares that they’re going to be partners for this one.
He stumbles out into the quad and puts Angus down when he almost drops him after tripping over his own feet. He takes Angus’s hand and lets the junior detective–who Magnus would always argue is the smarter of the two of them–lead him to the best hiding spot. When Lucretia passes by the window of a building just in front of them, they throw themselves into the grass and try to blend into the shadows. Magnus keeps shushing Angus with a finger to his lips even though she’d never be able to hear them inside.
(And if Magnus doesn’t brush the grass off his chest when they finally stand because Angus giggles every time he looks at him, no one has to know.)
They end up at the Fantasy Costco and peer at the costume pieces scattered around the floor. Magnus knocks over a box seconds after they enter and hundreds of plastic champagne flutes spill out. Neither of them are awake enough to put them back and instead build a box fort around the pile, huddling inside their horribly obvious hiding spot, satisfied and content.
When midnight comes, all of the IPRE are in different parts of the base. They hear the clock chime twelve, heralding in the new year, and each of the seven birds has to bite down on a wash of anxiety. But they look around at the home, at the family they’ve built, and the feeling ebbs. They have no way of anticipating what the future holds, but each new year to come feels as secure as this moment, it can’t be so bad.
(One thing they do know for sure, when they wake: Davenport definitely won.)
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