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.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-08 07:12 pm (UTC)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.