kills with gaze, snakes for hair, could be hot or not.
No I didn’t. I IGNORED that episode. I’m sure we can all agree
:: pulls out battle axe, starts casually honing its edge ::
that it was a mistake from start to finish and should never be spoken of again.
:: chops head off captive bonobo ::
Right?
This. I didn’t realize it was synonymous with Medusa for years and so still think of the DND monster first.
Cheese.
Another for the D&D monster.
(Petrfying breath, BTW. It’s from the Elemental Plane of Earth).
Barring other context, snake haired women who turn people to stone, they’re so ugly.
Other details can be layered on that, or, in particular contexts I can accept other things (the love child of a bull and a disco ball in D&D, beautiful other than snakey features in SO many context, etc), but that’s the basic, immediate reaction to hearing the word.
I’ve never played D&D. Oak’s post is honestly the first time I’d ever heard of such a use of the word gorgon.
I thought Medusa was a gorgon but necessarily representative of her breed so I just went with the petrifying looks since I figured the snake hair was optional.
The more typical Gorgon-type (in the ‘pretty except for being snakey’ mode) is called a Medusa in D&D. (And the males of the species are a different monster who look a bit more human and have slightly different powers.)
I grew up reading Bullfinches Mythology, so the classic Medusa springs to mind first.
Woman with snakes for hair. But she might be shaped like a boat.
[grammar fascist]
I’m sure you meant Bulfinch’s, so I’m going to pretend that’s what you typed.
[/grammar fascist]
Also, I’m not sure I remember Professor Bulfinch including the bit about the wings & the taloned hands, but those attributes date from antiquity.
This for me too. Snakes for hair, serpentine lower body. Second choice would be a woman with snake hair, although that version I tend to picture as being beautiful except for the snakes.
Normal woman, snakes for hair, her gaze turns people to stone.
I think of that movie Small Soldiers. They’re actually called gorgonites, but that was the first thing I thought of.
Man, we really need to get CalMeacham in this thread-- He’s one of the foremost experts on the gorgon in mythology. And I’m not sure he’d have checked off any of the options in the poll (his answer would be more like “it’s a death’s-head”).
As for me, I’m aware of the D&D version of the gorgon (which IIRC comes from some medieval bestiary), but the first image that comes to mind is a snake-headed woman.
And you missed an opportunity for the snarky none-of-the-above option: “How should I know? If I’d ever seen one I obviously wouldn’t be typing this”.
Another vote for the stone scaled bovine monster from D&D.
:mad:
Leave the jackassery to me, perfesser. Do you see me propounding on Maxwell’s equations in GQ?
A woman with a serpentine lower body sounds more like a lamia to me.
Well, maybe she’ll post here too.
Wasn’t Gorgon Batman’s police buddy 