The Gordian Cycle
A downloadable book
What were the deeds of Morgan Red-Maw in exile, and what was the cause of the destruction of Arsiyyah?
Not hard to say, that.
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This is a tale of monstrous cyborgs in violent struggle against each other, fuelled by a relentlessly destructive honour-code; and of one who chooses to make war on the world that created her. It is written in my best imitation of the style of the Ulster cycle of medieval Irish legend; the genesis of the idea came while I was reading and falling in love with those stories, and started thinking there was a lot of interesting overlap with Shotaro Ishinomori's Kamen Rider, and someone should really write something about that. Then I read the excellent Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright:
https://thaliarchus.itch.io/cosmic-warlord-kinbright
Which helped me realise that you can just write something in an archaic style if it speaks to you, and so here we are. Along the way it's picked up a lot of other influences, most notably Mad Max, Devilman and later Kamen Rider entries like V3 and OOO (I'm sure you can spot some others); but I'm very indebted to Thaliarchus for Kin-Bright's example, and I hope I will be taken as the flattering sort of imitator.
Anyway, the Gordian Cycle is also about the most voracious morally dubious transgender warlady I could dream up with all my self-indulgence, so this one goes out to all my fellow sickos.
Currently consists of only the first story, The Exile of Morgan Red-Maw, but I have a second half-written and the rest of the saga more or less planned out. Whether I'll actually write it all out depends on how long I can keep my attention on a single project, but I'm having a lot of fun with it so far.
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(Cover image: Hunting scene from the base of the east face of the 10th-century Kells Market Cross)
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Development log
- My Sources and Where to Read/Watch Them2 hours ago
- Style & Acknowledgements4 days ago
Comments
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oh my stars someone, went and wrote something that somehow feels even more *laser targeted* at me and my interests than even Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright.
i've read The Táin (primarily the Carson translation, with some dabbling in the Kinsella translation) and enjoyed it alot, and I would like to know, how would you recommend reading the rest of the ulster cycle?
Thank you for your kind words! Nice to meet someone possessed by the same thing.
And it's...tricky! A lot of translations are outdated or hard to get, and it can be hard to tell retellings from translations (and there's nothing wrong with a retelling, I'm kinda doing some here, but when they advertise themselves as authentic...)
I'm gonna do a dev-diary blogpost about this soon, but you can find a lot of medieval Irish texts here--just, again, often quite old translations, and shorn of any real context or indication as to how they relate to each other:
https://celt.ucc.ie/publishd.html
For a slightly more coherent experience, I would recommend the story that I gleefully steal from for this, Mac Da Tho's Pig, as an entry point:
https://iso.ucc.ie/Scel-datho/Scel-datho-text.pdf
And then if you can find a copy of Jeffrey Gantz's Early Irish Myths and Sagas, that contains a couple other good ones, The Intoxication of the Ulstermen and Bricriu's Feast.
And I should mention, this ongoing podcast by a highly-qualified Celticist scholar in fact covers some of these exact stories in audiobook format, along with some really useful explanations:
https://www.youtube.com/@Guth-Podcast
thank you!!
you basically have convergently evolved the brainworm i had while reading the tain, where we were daydreaming a fergus mac roich or cu chulainn like character, one that is so bombastic and hedonistic and unrepentantly horny and problematic, as a Big Dick Energy trans girl, except u actually went and wrote it instead of just daydreaming about it like me and now *i* get to enjoy my brainworm come to life, and it is the most irish mythology thing i have read in a while besides actual irish mythology
(we feel like alot of stuff that cites irish myth as an inspiration frequently feels like it bears very little resemblance to actual irish myth, which in our experience reading what we have, irish myth kinda feels less like "celtic earth goddess matriarchy mysterious fae in lush forests" of pop culture and more like a long series of extremely irreverent yet oddly compelling Dudes Rock slapstick moments, underlaid by a deep attention to geography and moments of genuine, honest, intense feeling). the image of a gleaming sunbright army of motorcycles across the martian landscape just slots in so well with my mental model of the feeling of the world of the tain, if it were transported to the distant future. the cyborgs, the hounds, they have the same kind of characteristic grotequeness that cu chulainn has.
i love the way this story displays the same layered nature of stuff like the tain, different "strata" of stories. the translator's notes are great, and also the usage of little stock phrasings common in medieval irish manuscripts like ni anse/"not difficult". i hope we get to see some songs/poems and especially some rosc-like passages in future chapters, that stuff was so compelling to me in the Tain, even tho i know major aspects of it were lost in translation
(excuse my lack of diacritics, my laptop cant type them)
Honestly, I want to put this comment on a plinth. You Get it. I feel so seen, and am so glad to hear I captured the essence of it for you. Everything just seemed to synthesise so well!
I am...honestly not very confident in my ability to write lyrics or poetry (and especially rosc, which are considered pretty fiendish in the scholarship I've read) that stands up to any scrutiny at all. I agree it would absolutely complete a work like this, and am considering it for the second installment, but if done poorly would detract more than it would add, so I'm not sure if I'll go for it.
(And oh hey, my current keyboard actually doesn't like diacritics either, something I keep meaning to fix.)