Christmas Eve At The Grave (1896) By Otto Hesselbom ❅ New Year’s Night (1984) By Sergei Andriyaka

Manifishing

men should grunt and moan more

Chapter I: Death foretold. Lechior, an ancient warrior of olden tales believed to be cursed into the body of a beast as punishment for his pride, was doomed to a certain death from the moment his human body morphed into the body of a creature. On the dreaded day, his corpse became a blessing for one lonely and strange, forest-dwelling hermit.

(A first little snippet of the story of my ocs. I'd like to finally reveal it in a few parts, as I've been working on it for a very long time and wasn't sure whether to post it. Excuse my shitty writing - it's just trying to set some mood.)

Wozzeck - Alban Berg

One of the cool “inventions” of the 19th century were Geissler’s low-pressure gas tubes, very similar to today’s neon tubes. They soon became a toy to have at any self-respecting high society party.

Hello tkluts people, a thought has appeared…

Conseil is a Flemish man in the mid 1860s working for a French Academic. He is said to be in his 30s meaning he was born in the 1830s and I’ve been researching some 1800s Belgium history rendering me very very suspicious of Pierre.

Idk, anyone else think about this?

Jimmy Wright, Ice Bear

Amazing

A quick comic strip I made some years ago. I've never really tried comics. For a long time I thought it would be too difficult for me ! How silly I was, this way to tell stories is the best one ever. :')

My story Libertatem is not about 20K, but it fills the blanks before and AFTER 20k :) But I wanted to illustrate a scene from the book, just to challenge myself first, with a part of the story which is not mine :)

Since then, my designs changed a little bit, especially Pf Arronax.

Sometimes I try and research the science of behaviour patterns and social dynamics to help guide my stories forwards realistically but it always ends up in me just writing from my own life and venting randomly!

This fills me with so much happiness!

PLEASE TELL US ABOUT Y DDRAIG TRAWS!

Certainly! I'm more than happy to oblige.

First though I'm gonna need to tldr: the history of Y Ddraig Goch before we get onto the (accidentally) canonically trans part.

A brief history of Y Ddraig Goch:

(The modern Welsh flag)

Y Ddraig Goch first appears in the tales of the Mabinogi (Charlotte Guest version) in the tale of Lludd and Llefelys where it is fighting a white dragon. The fight is also described/expanded upon in the c. 829 AD text Historia Brittonum (attributed to Nennius) - where the red dragon represents Wales and the white dragon represents the Anglo-Saxons. In the story the red dragon triumphs over the white. Of course, Geoffrey of Monmouth also covers the story c. 1136 in Historia Regnum Brittaniae in which he introduces the concept of the red dragon heralding the arrival of King Arthur.

Geoffrey of Monmouth claims Arthur used a banner featuring a golden dragon. But we also know the accuracy of Monmouth can be questionable at times. Owain Glyndŵr did use a banner with a golden dragon called Y Ddraig Aur - raised in 1401 at Caernarfon - Glyndŵr chose this banner as a nod to the supposed banner of Arthur and his father.

Later on the Tudor monarchs (being a Welsh family) adopted a red dragon on a white and green background in their heraldry. Eventually Y Ddraig Goch on a white and green background became the official badge of Wales in 1800. The design became the official flag of Wales in 1959.

Y Ddraig Traws:

Now for the thing you're all here for -

So, as outlined, the history of the dragon as a national symbol of Wales goes back a long way. If we're just talking post-1959, there's some interesting implications for Y Ddraig Goch's depiction.

This is what the Welsh flag (and Y Ddraig Goch) looked like in 1959 when it was officially adopted as the flag of Wales. It looks broadly the same as the first flag and has some common features - such as not having a penis (or, as in the correct heraldic terminology - a pizzle). Meanwhile, in the arms of the Tudors (specifically Henry VII)

(Tudor dragon with pizzle) vs (dragon on the flag of Cardiff - pizzleless)

the penis is almost always included. So much to the point that the present royal family still includes the penis. While pretty much 0 depictions of the dragon in Wales include a penis. So you could interpret this as the dragon is seen as male only by the British royal family and as female everywhere else (which kinda implies that at some point the Tudor dragon had an mtf transition in Wales and she keeps getting misgendered by the royal family every time she is depicted in (mostly) England).

So much to the point that in 1995 this pound coin was made by the Royal Mint featuring the pizzle on the dragon with all four feet touching the ground as opposed to standing up (passant rather than rampant).

But in Wales you'd be hard pressed to see a pizzled dragon anywhere. Ergo, we can only conclude Y Ddraig Goch is trans and she transitioned in Wales and keeps getting misgendered in England.

[note: This is mostly tongue in cheek - but I do think it's fun to extrapolate that the Welsh dragon is trans because of the differences in depiction between Wales and England. Like many things Welsh, it is misrepresented by England and the idea of the Welsh dragon being misgendered only in England is, I think, a good metaphor for a whole lot of English treatment of Wales.]

Unrelatedly, there is a gay Welsh flag held at the National Museum of Wales which has a very wonky dragon which I find very endearing.

(cleaned up version I made)

So much so I made it an emoji in my Welsh bilingual LGBTQIA+ Discord (requirements for joining are - be 16+, either speak or are learning Welsh and identify as LGBTQIA+ in some way. Dm for link!).

(triaist ti 'you tried' emoji)

~ Completely unrelatedly ~ never forget the time someone was trying to homophobic to me by suggesting that I was disrespecting all the soldiers who died 'for the Welsh flag' by making it rainbow colours and not red - arguing that any change of colour of the dragon was disrespectful. Reader, my bus pass at the time for Mid Wales Travel had a purple dragon on it.

Konstantin Korobov (Russian, 1985) - Sharks (2023)