The Gordian Cycle

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)