Meta Monday: Myth and narrative

[dhampyresa]

Hi! Welcome to Meta Monday, in which I go tl;dr about stuff.

Today, I coined the term "ficframed", which is to fic ideas what earwormed is to songs. They dig into your brain and won't leave.

Well, that was an easy meta post to write.

More seriously, I'm going to answer taiyou_to_tsuki: "Since you've read a fair bit of stories based on mythology-- how do you feel about translating characters from a mythic to a literary narrative? Are there any cases where you have felt a deity/other mythical being to be misinterpreted by the author?"

I've read a lot of mythology books and books based on mythology. Most recently, Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians and Heroes of Olympus series(es?) and Joanne Harris' Runemarks series. I'm not counting things that are only distantly related to myths like the Asgardian side of the Marvel Universe, but I've read a lot of that, too.

I think the biggest mistake people can make when trying to turn myths into stories is to forget that gods aren't just humans writ large. They are that, yes, but they're not just that.

The Morrígan isn't just some woman with powers and a grudge against Cúchulainn. She is the frenzy of battle made animate.

But you must never forget, either, that it is a rare god who is god of one thing only. People are complex and gods even more so. In particular, the longer a religion has had to evolve the more its gods will have changed with it. Ancient Egyptian mythology in particular has changed a lot in the, oh, three thousand years and more it was the majority religion in Egypt. A particularly striking example is Isis going from a folk hero to a goddess in her own right. (You could also look at the evolution of the afterlife, because there's a lot more evidence of that on account of a lot of what we know about Ancient Egypt being due to being found in graves and pyramids. Also, I wrote a fic about both of those.)

Still, most gods are gods of more than one thing. And even often things that are unrelated or contradictory.

Odin isn't simply the god of the gallows, he's also the god of knowledge. Sekhmet isn't simply divine wrath made flesh, she's also goddess of healing.

Which brings me to my third point. People have believed in the gods, these gods, for hundreds and thousands of years. Some people still do. If you're going to write about them, the least you can do is treat them with respect.

I don't care if you think your religion holds the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, that doesn't give you free reign to mock other people's beliefs. Same goes for if you're an atheist.

Even if things look ridiculous to you, to the people who believe(d) they don't.

Anyway, all this being said, translating myths to a narrative also has the added problem that myths are often not narratives as a whole. The Loki who kills Balder is a sensibly different Loki from the Loki who rescues Idunn from Tjazi or the one who shoves Thor in a dress then tags along to Jotunheim. You can build a narrative that ties all of the myths of Loki together -- I should know, I've done it -- but the point is you have to build that narrative.

The myths never give you any narrative beyond the one myths you're reading. Myths care very little for consistency. Don't believe me? Okay, pop quizz: In Greek mythology, who is older between Athena and Hermes? (Seriously, if you do know, please tell me because I have no fucking idea.)

If you're going to write about myths, you're going to have to make choices and a lot of them. Which myths are true? Even "all of them" doesn't solve any of your problems, because then you have to explain how that's possible (see above about Isis and the snake vs Isis as sister to Seth, for one example).

You're going to have to make choice on symbolism and cut out part os the gods' attributes. Do you really need Odin as god of poetry if Bragi's in the room?

You're going to have to wrangle completely different creation myths, from the same mythology. In the Kelavala, the world/universe was sung into being by Ilmatar, but the sky was also forged by Ilmarinen. (And that's after Elias Lönnrot went through all the trouble of collecting and turning Finnish/Karelian myths into a narrative.)

Sure, you can just decide to not care about any of that, but then you're not really writing a narrative-formed-from-myth. You're writing myth, or you're writing something that doesn't focus on the narrative of the myths, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians/Heroes of Olympus, for example, is based on myths (Greek/Roman), but is not narrative-formed-from-myth. It's narrative-around-myth. (This is proof you can absolutely write narrative-around-myth while making some choices re:the myths, btw.)

Runemarks (and Runelight) are also narrative-around-myth. The Gospel of Loki, by contrast, even though it's by the same author and explicitly written in the same universe as a prequel, is narrative-formed-from-myth.

As for the second question, it is very easily answered.

MORGANE. The entire English-speaking world seems to be under the collective delusion that Morgane is the villain of the Arturian mythos, even though Merlin is right there.

I am utterly baffled by this. (No lie, I pretend all English-speaking Arturian mythos-related stuff either doesn't exist or hails from the mirror universe. Merlin as an unambiguous good guy. What.)

Aside from this tragic misunderstanding, there are several cases I can think of of gods being misinterpreted by the authors. Instead of naming those authors, I'm going to name the gods, which will be a lot faster and a lot easier to show similarities, because I have a theory for why this happens.

Loki, Hades, Seth walk into a bar.

These three often get cast as unrepetantly evil to oppose our unrepetantly good ~heroes~. This erases any and all nuance that could be found in their story.

Loki has excellent reasons to turn against Odin and Asgard. They banish three of his children, enslave another and, oh, turn two of them into wolves so they can tear each other apart, then tie him up with the entrails of the one who died. I don't know about you, but I'd be bitter too.

Hades is, by all mythological accounts, a complete stick in the mud, who has better things to deal with than taking over the world. (What for?)

Seth, on the other hand... Well, I'm going to point out that Plutarch is the oldest source we have that gices a complete picture of Osiris' murder and I cannot possibly the only one who thinks it's odd that a Greek is considered teh authority on something that's often held up as central to Egyptian mythology. I'll also point out that Seth is also Pharaoh's protector. Seth is a desert god, a destructive force, but destructive doesn't mean evil. It depends what you do with it. One of the things Seth does with it is fight Apophis, the serpent who would kill the sun (god).

Why are these gods cast as capital-E evil, when they're not? Because Christianity. Christianity, especially certain branches of it (Abligensians, anyone?), is very fond of imagining the world as being split in two with good on one side and evil on the other. As such, Loki/Hades/Seth often takes on the role of Satan in what is more find-and(replace Bible fanfic than myth-based narrative.

Compare, for example, the way Loki and Hermes are treated. They're both tricksters, aren't they? (So's Seth, by the way.) And yet, when's the last time you saw Hermes cast as the bad guy? Why Hades and not him? After all, Hades just rules the dead, Hermes actually carries souls to the afterlife.

My point is that you can play "pin the evil" on pretty much any god you like. Either that or the reason Hermes is never the bad guy is that he dresses far too fabulously for it.

(Only somewhat related to the above: of the three tricksters I've named -- Loki, Seth, Hermes -- all of them are arguably* some variant of LGBTQ, inasmuch as that's a label that has any sense in this context.)

(Also, I have above referred to the King of Egypt as Pharaoh, which is a misnomer. The first Pharaoh is Tutmosis III, all rulers of Ancient Egyt before him are Kings of Egypt, up to and including Hatchepsut, making her, in fact, the last king of Egypt.)

*See the comments to the dreamwidth version of this post.


Sweet Tanith, this got long!

Next week, I'll looking at AUs.

(I need some sort of meta icon.)

Comments

[alasse_irena]

Ooh, talk to me about non-Anglophone Arthurian myth? I have not encountered a great deal of it. (Also, when you say non-English speaking, what languages are we talking about? My understanding is that a lot of Arthur-related stuff comes through Welsh, but I do not actually know a great deal, and I'm aware there is French-language literature as well.)

[dhampyresa]

French! Specifically, I'm talking about the breton version of the legends I grew up with. This makes it difficult to source beyond pointing in the general direction of the breton part of my family and going "ask them!".

And then they tell you the same think they told me, which is to point at someone else and go "oh, I learned it from [someone else in the family and/or someone who is dead]" (if they even remember) to the point where it feels like the myths were always there, you know?

I remember being eight and asking my mom why Morgane was evil in this book. I have zero recollection of ever actually learning about Arthurian mythos in so many words prior to this incident, but Morgane being evil struck me as so fundamentally wrong on a primordial level that I must have, at some point.

[schneefink]

I also would like to read your thoughts on villain!Merlin!

Completely agreed on easy casting of bad guys. And on gods: I've only rarely seen gods written well, but it's often very interesting.

[dhampyresa]

Long story short: from what I remember of the legends I grew up with, there's something profoundly inhuman about Merlin in the "this dude is literally not entirely human" sense, which comes out as him having totally fucked ideas about morality.

Easy casting of bad guys makes me angry, ngl, but it is true that it's often very interesting.

[metanewsmods]

May we link this on metanews? We also post on LJ and Tumblr.

[dhampyresa]

Sure, go ahead.

[chordatesrock]

Hi, found you via metanews, flailing because I have so many thoughts on this topic and I keep agreeing with you and then you spin off in a totally different direction and then I don't, and.

This bit:

I think the biggest mistake people can make when trying to turn myths into stories is to forget that gods aren't just humans writ large. They are that, yes, but they're not just that.

I think this is really interesting in that it highlights an either/or kind of thinking, not about the myths but about The Right Way To Do Things. And, IDK, I don't think this is a mistake? I think this is someone choosing to focus on something they find interesting that doesn't interest you, or spin things in a way they like that you don't.

(Personally, I wish more people would write fic of the framing story in Gylfaginning, instead of just focusing on the story-within-the-story. I really want the fic where mortal!Loki wakes up at like three in the afternoon very hungover and asks if that stupid old king has gotten there yet and everyone's like, "you just missed him." And mortal!Loki is like, "well, did you at least name a made-up god after me?" and they're like, "Absolutely! He crossdresses and is buried deep beneath the earth to writhe in torment until the world ends!" and mortal!Loki laughs in spite of himself but then he's like, "I hate you all and I'm going back to bed.")

As for this bit...

Even if things look ridiculous to you, to the people who believe(d) they don't.

You've never met the Kemetic Fandom or the more irreverent branches of heathenry, have you? The "LOL comics and insults are the best offering" heathens are all really awesome (also more devout than that description makes them sound), and honestly I'm glad they feel the way they do. Because I'd never be able to relax and do my own thing with their myths if they didn't already do that.

Also, like. Just because some religions have super-serious devotional texts (*cough*Christianity*cough*) doesn't mean they all do. To take the only example I feel really comfortable talking about, Germanic heathenries (and, let's be realistic, that basically means Scandinavian, because Snorri Sturluson) don't really have the equivalent of a bible at all, in the sense that basically all the information still available was at the very least compiled and arranged post-conversion by Christians. And not only that, but what's there is clearly meant to be funny at least some of the time. It's pretty apparent, for instance, that the poem where Thor has to cross-dress is supposed to be funny.

They are ridiculous. And the people who believe in them know it.

But nonetheless, when you say this:

Why are these gods cast as capital-E evil, when they're not? Because Christianity. Christianity, especially certain branches of it (Abligensians, anyone?), is very fond of imagining the world as being split in two with good on one side and evil on the other. As such, Loki/Hades/Seth often takes on the role of Satan in what is more find-and(replace Bible fanfic than myth-based narrative.

I'm just like, YES. THAT. I'm so annoyed with this trend, too-- and if that's find-and-replace Bible fanfic, then it's BAD and OOC and poorly-theologically-grounded fanfic. And I'm so tired of people who just don't seem to grasp either the mythic figures or Christianity trying to make comparisons between them. Like. A figure like Loki is literally inconceivable and impossible within a Christian framework.* Within a Christian framework, yeah, everything's either good or evil-- but within a Christian framework, there's. Uh. Not much to recommend Odin and Thor, either. I mean, you *could* round then all down to the literal worst, but then you can't have any of the stories we get from Norse myth.

*A Jewish framework, on the other hand, would work better. Loki is maybe sort of comparable to Jewish Satan, even if not to Christian Satan.

And I very much agree with:

If you're going to write about myths, you're going to have to make choices and a lot of them. Which myths are true? Even "all of them" doesn't solve any of your problems, because then you have to explain how that's possible (see above about Isis and the snake vs Isis as sister to Seth, for one example).

But not so much with this bit:

You're going to have to make choice on symbolism and cut out part os the gods' attributes. Do you really need Odin as god of poetry if Bragi's in the room?

Yeah. You do. Doesn't the god of frenzy and drunkenness and poetic ecstasy and getting knowledge you were never meant to have at any cost seem like he'd have a different take on poetry than the poet who has no great deeds to his name and seems like just an intellectual? Like. They're not a checklist, any more than humans' hobbies or professional skills are a checklist.

I mean, Odin and Loki both lie and cheat and kill to get what they want, but they can coexist-- so I'd say so can Odin and Bragi.

And a minor quibble with:

Sure, you can just decide to not care about any of that, but then you're not really writing a narrative-formed-from-myth. You're writing myth, or you're writing something that doesn't focus on the narrative of the myths, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Because maybe you're writing narrative formed from a small, internally-consistent piece of myth.

And more quibbles with:

The Loki who kills Balder is a sensibly different Loki from the Loki who rescues Idunn from Tjazi or the one who shoves Thor in a dress then tags along to Jotunheim.

and

They banish three of his children, enslave another and, oh, turn two of them into wolves so they can tear each other apart, then tie him up with the entrails of the one who died.

Because, first, it was Heimdall who came up with the idea that Thor should crossdress; Loki only reminded Thor that looking girly and weak was probably less bad than actually continuing to be girly and weak because of being unarmed. And second, there is no account where both Vali and Narfi are turned into wolves, and although interpreting "turned into a wolf" as literal shapeshifting dates back to Snorri and makes a great story, it might be an idiomatic way of saying they killed one and exiled the other. /irrelevant

(Only somewhat related to the above: of the three tricksters I've named -- Loki, Seth, Hermes -- all of them are some variant of LGBTQ, inasmuch as that's a label that has any sense in this context.)

That "inasmuch as that [...] has any sense in this context" is an important caveat! Because with Loki, the concept we're dealing with is based on behavior-- a man or male-assigned person acting feminine (e.g., certain kinds of sex, magic, whatever). Whereas modern concepts of LGBT are based on personal identity, not behavior-- hence modern conceptions of LGBT make a distinction between being trans and crossdressing, and that distinction is not just how often you do it. So why is Loki a fairy*? Well, there's mention in Lokasenna of Loki getting pregnant and either literally milking cows or (if this is slang) having gay sex-- but Lokasenna seems to be shaped around an obsolete genre with its own obsolete tropes, and one of those tropes is attempting to claim that a cis man has given birth even in the absence of context that would make this plausible. So it could be true, but it might not be. That leaves one other time that could be used as an example of behavior suggesting that Loki is LGBT, and that is a reason to say he's a fairy* by the definitions used in Old Norse. And that example is Sleipnir. Now consider: they demanded that Loki fix this huge problem and blamed him for getting into this mess. There weren't a lot of good options. There were even fewer that wouldn't make it obvious that the Aesir were the first to breach the contract. And he had very little time to think. They didn't out-and-out say "turn into a horse and let that stallion have sex with you or we'll kill you"... but they didn't need to. So I find it really problematic that this coerced behavior that I would say is closer to survival sex work than anything else gets taken as evidence of Loki's sexual orientation, and I really... don't like that things he was forced into doing are held up as evidence of what kind of person he is, even when, as now, it's done by people who see nothing wrong with being LGBT and don't mean to demean him.

*Term chosen advisedly as the closest English equivalent for "someone who acts in ways that seem like a trans woman or a gay man who likes to bottom or a coward or a campy stereotype" because I didn't feel that LGBT, unmanly (a favorite translation), gay, or trans were actually accurate translations here.

(I mean, then I turn right around and ship him with Odin, so feel free to point out the hypocrisy there.)

IDK, I agree with a lot of this, especially how... squishy myths and their logic are relative to normal stories.

[dhampyresa]

Hi. I'm going to try to answer everything you said, sorry if I don't quite manage. Also, I think a lot of the things you disagree with might be because I didn't express myself properly.

It's entirely fair for someone to focus on the gods as human writ large, but I feel that ignoring the 'extra', I guess, dimension that comes with them being gods (that they're often not just characters but also props for the moral of the story, for example) can lead to missing some aspect of the original myths. I think it's a mistake not to keep these things in mind in the 'analysing the myths' part of the process of turning myth into narrative, not that it's a mistake to do so at the writing stage.

(I would definitely read that fic if anyone were to write it.)

Specific myths were not what I meant. I fully realise that myth can be irreverant, but not only is there a difference between in-group poking fun of the myths and out-group poking fun of the myths (and I would honestly suggest that anyone who does not believe in something refrain from ridiculing that thing), I was also thinking of a specific incident where I had to explain to someone that to the people who built the pyramids was not a waste of ressources because, even though the concept felt ridiculous to him, to them it upheld the proper order of the universe and prevented the end of the world (/gross oversimplification). I'm talking less about specific myths than about the underlying cosmology.


The differences between Christian Satan and Jewish Satan are part of the reason I said "Christianity" and not "Judeo-Christian framework" or similar. (I do in fact make the point that they can all be rounded down to the literal worst with "you can play "pin the evil" on pretty much any god you like". I suppose I could do an addendum doing this with all the Olympians, to make this clearer.)

That was supposed to be a rhetorical question. My meaning was more to get people to think about the attributes of the gods tahn chose one over the other. Deciding, as you did, that both are necessary to the story you're telling is as valid a story choice as deciding to chug Bragi in favour of Odin or not having Odin as god of poetry. Depends on what serves the story: having both can confuse the narrative (which isn't something you need to worry with myths, because myths have no over arching narravtive) or having both can highlight the different ways in which poetry can be poetry.

When I say "myth", I'm referring here to the entire body of myths and legend. Writing something based on a myth is not the same as writing something based on myth. Both are good and valuable and share similarities, but that does not make them the same. This meta is focused on the latter rather the former.

I'm oversimplifying a lot of the myths I refer to in order not to get bogged down in details. My apologies if that came across as me not knowing what I was talking about.

I realise it's an important caveat, which is why I gave said caveat. I was referring not only to the eight years Loki spend as a milkmaid on Midgard (like you said, it's from the Lokasenna and so spurious), but also to him giving birth after eating a woman's heart (43 in the Lay of Hyndla), which is an event I can't think of any reason to discredit on any grounds that do not apply to any other myths. I was not, however, referring to the events that lead to Sleipnir's birth as that was coercion. I neither see anything wrong with being LGBT nor meant to deman Loki in any way; he's my favourite god in Norse mythology and possibly all mythologies.

(*points out the hypocrisy*)

Thank you for taking the time to write such a long comment.

[chordatesrock]

Ooh, yeah, it seems a couple of those were just me misreading you-- in particular I'd just like to point out your claim that "it's a mistake not to keep these things in mind in the 'analysing the myths' part of the process of turning myth into narrative, not that it's a mistake to do so at the writing stage", because this breaks down a dichotomy I hadn't realized needed to be broken down until just now, but it totally did need breaking and I hadn't grasped at all what you were saying until you rephrased it.

And your account that "I was also thinking of a specific incident where I had to explain to someone that to the people who built the pyramids was not a waste of ressources because, even though the concept felt ridiculous to him, to them it upheld the proper order of the universe and prevented the end of the world (/gross oversimplification)." Yeah, see, that is not what I thought of when I thought of things that would count as making fun of myth, and I agree that you should at least understand why people think the things they think. (Or thought the things they thought.) If you can't sympathise, you can't really handle writing about it, right?

On to substantive points that aren't just "yeah, I see now".

So, I disagree that anyone who doesn't believe in a thing shouldn't make fun of it, if you are also extending the definition of making fun of things to include things more like what I'm thinking of (I'm thinking more along the lines of snarky nicknames, irreverent jokes, all that stuff, not "your entire worldview is wrong and that's hilarious"). On the other hand, that discussion would take us way off topic because the reasons for this stem from watching the misuse of similar concepts developed for social justice that end up instead hurting the very people they're supposed to protect. So, I get maybe a little twitchy about "only X can say Y" for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with the topic at hand.

The heart-eating thing: all of that is so very unclear, of course, and trying to reconcile it with other parts of the myths is not really workable. However! I don't think this incident makes him LGBT for three reasons:
1. The closest I've seen to a coherent narrative here (we need a narrative to conclude anything about Loki's desires or identity, which is what defines LGBT for us, even if it doesn't define fairy/argr for vikings) is that Gullveig shows up to try to *handwave handwave something ominous* and the Aesir try to kill her, but she revives, so they try again, but she revives (from her intact heart), and also now she's really angry, so it occurs to them to do something about that heart that she's regenerating from, so Loki eats it. Not quite coerced in the same sense as Sleipnir, but not really recreational cannibalism, either. The only motive it sheds light on is not dying, which is not related to LGBT.
2. In fact, there's nothing we would consider related to sex or gender in there at all. This is not a typical means of getting pregnant, after all. It might well make him a fairy by their definitions, but it doesn't make him LGBT by our definitions.
3. What about the argument that if he uses male pronouns and a masculine name and gets pregnant he's a trans man? Well, for one thing, this incident would be a particularly poor one to use for that argument if you wanted to make it, because getting pregnant from eating someone's heart is just as unlikely as a cis man getting pregnant at all.

(More hypocrisy: the trans guy because male and pregnant argument is one I thought of because I've made it before. :P)

And thank you for taking the time to respond to such a long comment!

(Also: I wrote Gylfaginning framing-story fic because of this conversation. Not sure if you'll like it but since its existence is partly your fault...)

[dhampyresa]

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I've somehow managed to mark several (not sure how many yet) emails as read when I shouldn't have, inclusing the notif for this comment.

It's entirely possible I worded things badly. I tend to write these posts in the evenings and all in a go, which doesn't always lend itself to being comprehensible, coherent and concise. But I do think that the dual nature of the gods is something that must be dealt with somehow. Like, Loki's story can be both "Man makes friend. Friend betrays Man. Man takes revenge." (...typing it this way I realise it works both ways with Odin and Loki) and "Man brings fire into home. Man neglects fire. Fire burns down home".

My point is less "only X can say Y" than it is "people who are not X should think before saying Y", but that's very nebulous and basically a subset of "people should think before they talk".

All good points! And since LGBT does rely on personal identification, there's no way to say Loki is definitely LGBT, short of someone somewhere becoming a prophet. (Let me edit the post to "arguably LGBT", then.)

I try to reply to all the comments I get, even if it takes me a while.

(I do like it!)

[chordatesrock]

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you.

No problem!

Like, Loki's story can be both "Man makes friend. Friend betrays Man. Man takes revenge." (...typing it this way I realise it works both ways with Odin and Loki) and "Man brings fire into home. Man neglects fire. Fire burns down home".

It very much can. Also, while we're talking myth-logic* interpretations, I'm fond of "society attempts to control things. Things include entropy. Society tries to keep entropy from happening by avoiding change entirely. This works for a while, then fails truly catastrophically." (Which is surprisingly close to my favorite story-logic interpretation: "Man gets everything. Man tries to keep everything. In trying to eliminate uncertainty he sows the seeds of his own undoing. It gets worse.")

*I wasn't going to be like "I talked about this too!" before, but it's faster to link you to Myth, Religion, Story than to redefine "myth logic" here. Though the concept is clearly not new to you.

My point is less "only X can say Y" than it is "people who are not X should think before saying Y", but that's very nebulous and basically a subset of "people should think before they talk".

Yeah, I can get behind that.

I sort of feel bad for, IDK, taking representation away or something, but on the other hand it feels really important to harp on how things like having sex to avoid death and getting pregnant by accident and choosing not to end the pregnancy don't actually define sexual orientation. So yeah. "Arguably"-- that's a really excellent word choice.

Anyway, this has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you! :)

[beatrice_otter]

The myths never give you any narrative beyond the one myths you're reading. Myths care very little for consistency. Don't believe me? Okay, pop quizz: In Greek mythology, who is older between Athena and Hermes? (Seriously, if you do know, please tell me because I have no fucking idea.)

If you're going to write about myths, you're going to have to make choices and a lot of them. Which myths are true? Even "all of them" doesn't solve any of your problems, because then you have to explain how that's possible (see above about Isis and the snake vs Isis as sister to Seth, for one example).

You're going to have to make choice on symbolism and cut out part os the gods' attributes. Do you really need Odin as god of poetry if Bragi's in the room?

You're going to have to wrangle completely different creation myths, from the same mythology. In the Kelavala, the world/universe was sung into being by Ilmatar, but the sky was also forged by Ilmarinen. (And that's after Elias Lönnrot went through all the trouble of collecting and turning Finnish/Karelian myths into a narrative.)

I think people would grok this better if more people understood that the Christian Bible includes four, count them, four distinct and different accounts of creation. (Three in the Tanakh, which we call the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible, and one in the New Testament.) But we're so used to eliding over the distances and tap-dancing away any inconsistencies that people don't even notice. (Because, of course, nothing about the Bible can be in any way true or have any kind of value if it isn't both a science textbook and a history textbook.) We today interpret them as all one story, therefore they are all one story, therefore all mythologies should be the same kind of coherent account that (we think) the Bible is.

The other thing about myths is that they're used to make a point and explore the world around us. Why are things the way they are? What is life like? What are people like? If you're going to do any serious work with any mythological or religious story, that's where you have to start: what is this story trying to teach us? And most people don't get that, they just go, oh, Zeus is a jerk and Hera is a harpy.

Excellent meta, thank you.

[dhampyresa]

Because, of course, nothing about the Bible can be in any way true or have any kind of value if it isn't both a science textbook and a history textbook.

That infuriates me so much. THERE IS VALUE IN METAPHOR (and other assorted figures of speech).


If you're going to do any serious work with any mythological or religious story, that's where you have to start: what is this story trying to teach us?

Thank you for framing this so well! It's what I was trying to get at in various places, but couldn't quite manage to word it so concisely.

[morbane.livejournal.com]

I'm a little sheepish about asking this, but - well, I've never claimed any expertise, or even really familiarity, with Arthuriana.

So why is Merlin the villain?

I have a vague recollection of him being supposed to be a devil's child, but apart from that, nothing.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

Caveat: This is the version of the legends I grew up with.

Merlin is partly inhuman, which causes him to sometimes go into wildly destructive rages, to the point where he volunteers to be put into eternal slumber by Viviane to protect others from himself. IIRC, this is after he's cause Arthur's death.

[morbane.livejournal.com]

Huh. Well, I guess the 'partly-inhuman' is related to what I recalled of his being sired by a demon.

The versions of canon I've absorbed did not mention destructive rages or causing Arthur's death, and had Viviane/Nimue/? tricking him into the slumber.

On the other hand, I have seen other canons have fun with a "Merlin awakes" storyline, and that could be extra fun if he were quite dangerous.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

Him being the Devil's son is one of the interpretations for why he's partly inhuman, another is that he's part fae.

You know, it would make for a very interesting story...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_profiterole_/]

On avait déjà discuté de cette pauvre Morgane. C'est pour ça que j'ai laissé tomber BBC!Merlin, il n'y avait même pas la moindre ambiguïté et j'en avais marre de leur moralité inversée.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

Oui, je m'en souviens. La pauvre, quand même. Qui est-ce qu'elle a bien pu énerver tant que ça pour être autant vilifiée?

J'ai vu quelques épisodes de BBC Merlin. Y avait que Gwen de bien.