gen-cowheart

[gen-cowheart]

So like... people have broached the idea of pride flags having dragons on them like heraldry, which is of course correct and just, but like... they shouldn't ALL have dragons, right? Or at least not the same dragon. Each flag should have its own heraldic beast, ideally one that relates to the orientation the flag represents.

Which begs the question of which heraldic beasts would best suit each color of the rainbow, as it were. I think the iconic four legged, two winged dragon makes sense for the main pride/rainbow flag, since dragons are often posited as, like, the pinnacle of monsters, and so feel best suited to be the one that encompasses the whole spectrum, but I'm kind of paralyzed by the options presented to pick out ones for the others.

[gen-cowheart]

Alternate take: Aphrodite thinks the is in an open marriage/polyamory type thing, but utterly failed to communicate that with any of her lovers.

I enjoy the idea that Aphrodite was actually super horny for Hephaestus. She is the god of sexuality. She is horny for everything. But! She is also the god of beauty. That means aesthetic and practical beauty as well.

In my mind, there is a furtive child of Aphrodite and Hephaestus who is the god of beauty-as-praxis, a god of architecture and product design. They would be the patron god of autism.

[gen-cowheart]

I also love that the redemption in God of War isn't tied to forgiveness, like so many other redemption arcs in media (see Zuko's). Kratos at one point literally says he doesn't care if Freya forgives him. It's honestly refreshing to see a story that says "Whether or not other people forgive you doesn't matter, only that you are a better person," it really works with the catchphrase (I'm not sure if that's the right term) "We must be better."

I like that God of War never makes it a question of deserving. Did Kratos 'deserve' his redemption? Probably not but he chose to be better in spite of that and that's what matters, so did Thor right at the end. On the other hand did Baldur 'deserve' his death? Again, probably not but he made it clear his choice was made no matter how many chances he was offered.

[gen-cowheart]

I really hope the MCU doesn't try to do Beta Ray Bill

Honestly, at this point, they can't do him justice. He story is entwined with Thor and Asgard's so much that if the MCU tried to adapt Beta Ray Bill, he'd end up a different character.

In the three origin stories for him I've seen (comic, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, and The Super Hero Squad Show) he enters the story by kicking Thor's ass, before doing the impossible and being the first person (other than Thor) to lift Mjolnir. He then goes on to earn himself a new hammer (given by Odin in both the comic and Earth's Mightiest Heroes versions, and by Mjolnir is Super Hero Squad) named Stormbreaker, and become Thor's sworn brother.

Bill is also thoroughly connected to Marvel's version of Ragnarök. Surtur destroyed Korbin, Bill's homeworld, (except in The Super Hero Squad Show continuity) and Thor meets Bill on a ship full of Korbinite refugees who are in stasis. Later on, Bill fights alongside the Asgardians during Ragnarök, before Thor teleports him away, as he doesn't wish to see Bill die and believes Bill should be with his people.

In the current comics, Stormbreaker has been destroyed and Bill wields Surtur's sword, Twilight. However even if the MCU gave Bill this weapon, I don't think it will work, as most of Bill's character development and story, happed with or alongside Thor's. I wish we could have gotten the "Ballad of Beta Ray Bill" storyline in Thor: Ragnarök instead of the "Planet Hulk" lite stuff we did get.

[gen-cowheart]

I also feel like it should be noted that what we call the "Original Myths" are just the oldest versions to actually be written down. Myths changed with the various cultures and times. Sometimes gods changed (for example Proto-Poseidon seems to have been the head god of Mycenean Greece, while Zeus is the head god of Ancient Greece), and sometimes the details changed (for example Medusa's various origins). I believe retellings of myths have been around since Christian era Rome at least.

So long as you aren't claiming that your version is the original (without sources to back it up), or that the myths said something that they actually didn't (such as Loki being a queer icon), it's fine to retell the stories.

Also how many Western stories echo stories from Christian mythology?

In defense of retellings & reimaginings

I'm not going to respond to the post that sparked this, because honestly, I don't really feel like getting in an argument, and because it's only vaguely even about the particular story that the other post discussed. The post in question objected to retellings of the Rape of Persephone which changed important elements of the story -- specifically, Persephone's level of agency, whether she was kidnapped, whether she ate seeds out of hunger, and so on. It is permissible, according to this thesis, to 'fill in empty spaces,' but not to change story elements, because 'those were important to the original tellers.' (These are acknowledged paraphrases, and I will launch you into the sun if you nitpick this paragraph.)

I understand why to the person writing that, that perspective is important, and why they -- especially as a self-described devotee of Persephone -- feel like they should proscribe boundaries around the myth. It's a perfectly valid perspective to use when sorting -- for example -- which things you choose to read. If you choose not to read anything which changes the elements which you feel are important, I applaud you.

However, the idea that one should only 'color in missing pieces,' especially when dealing with stories as old, multi-sourced, and fractional as ancient myths, and doing so with the argument that you shouldn't change things because those base elements were important to the people who originally crafted the stories, misses -- in my opinion -- the fundamental reason we tell stories and create myths in the first place.

Forgive me as I get super fucking nerdy about this. I've spent the last several years of my life wrestling with the concept of myths as storytelling devices, universality of myths, and why myths are even important at all as part of writing on something like a dozen books (a bunch of which aren't out yet) for a game centered around mythology. A lot of the stuff I've written has had to wrestle with exactly this concept -- that there is a Sacred Canon which cannot be disrupted, and that any disregard of [specific story elements] is an inexcusable betrayal.

Myths are stories we tell ourselves to understand who we are and what's important to us as individuals, as social groups, and as a society. The elements we utilize or change, those things we choose to include and exclude when telling and retelling a story, tell us what's important to us.

I could sit down and argue over the specific details which change over the -- at minimum -- 1700 years where Persephone/Kore/Proserpina was actively worshiped in Greek and Roman mystery cults, but I actually don't think those variations in specific are very important. What I think is important, however, is both the duration of her cults -- at minimum from 1500 BCE to 200CE -- and the concept that myths are stories we tell ourselves to understand who we are and what's important to us.

The idea that there was one, or even a small handful, of things that were most important to even a large swath of the people who 'originally' told the store of the Rape of Persephone or any other 'foundational' myth of what is broadly considered 'Western Culture,' when those myths were told and retold in active cultic worship for 1700 years... that seems kind of absurd to me on its face. Do we have the same broad cultural values as the original tellers of Beowulf, which is only (heh) between 1k-1.3k years old? How different are our marital traditions, our family traditions, and even our language? We can, at best, make broad statements, and of inclusive necessity, those statements must be broad enough as to lose incredible amounts of specificity. In order to make definitive, specific statements, we must leave out large swaths of the people to whom this story, or any like it, was important.

To move away from the specific story brought up by the poster whose words spun this off, because it really isn't about that story in particular, let's use The Matter of Britain/Arthuriana as our framing for the rest of this discussion. If you ask a random nerd on Tumblr, they'd probably cite a handful of story elements as essential -- though of course which ones they find most essential undoubtedly vary from nerd to nerd -- from the concept that Camelot Always Falls to Gawain and the Green Knight, Percival and the grail, Lancelot and Guinevere...

... but Lancelot/Guinevere and Percival are from Chrétien de Troyes in the 12th century, some ~500 years after Taliesin's first verses. Lancelot doesn't appear as a main character at all before de Troyes, and we can only potentially link him to characters from an 11th century story (Culhwch and Olwen) for which we don't have any extant manuscripts before the 15th century. Gawain's various roles in his numerous appearances are... conflicting characterizations at best.

The point here is not just that 'the things you think are essential parts of the story are not necessarily original,' or that 'there are a lot of different versions of this story over the centuries,' but also 'what you think of as essential is going to come back to that first thesis statement above.' What you find important about The Matter of Britain, and which story elements you think can be altered, filed off or filled in, will depend on what that story needs to tell you about yourself and what's important to you.

Does creating a new incarnation of Arthur in which she is a diasporic lesbian in outer space ruin a story originally about Welsh national identity and chivalric love? Does that disrespect the original stories? How about if Arthur is a 13th century Italian Jew? Does it disrespect the original stories if the author draws deliberate parallels between the seduction of Igerne and the story of David and Bathsheba?

Well. That depends on what's important to you.

Insisting that the core elements of a myth -- whichever elements you believe those to be -- must remain static essentially means 'I want this myth to stagnate and die.' Maybe it's because I am Jewish, and we constantly re-evaluate every word in Torah, over and over again, every single year, or maybe it's because I spend way, way too much time thinking about what's valuable in stories specifically because I write words about these concepts for money, but I don't find these arguments compelling at all, especially not when it comes to core, 'mainstream' mythologies. These are tools in the common toolbox, and everybody has access to them.

More important to me than the idea that these core elements of any given story must remain constant is, to paraphrase Dolly Parton, that a story knows what it is and does it on purpose. Should authors present retellings or reimaginings of the Rape of Persephone or The Matter of Britain which significantly alter historically-known story elements as 'uncovered' myths or present them as 'the real and original' story? Absolutely not. If someone handed me a book in which the new Grail was a limited edition Macklemore Taco Bell Baja Blast cup and told me this comes directly from recently-discovered 6th century writings of Taliesin, I would bonk them on the head with my hardcover The Once & Future King. Of course that's not the case, right?

But the concept of canon, historically, in these foundational myths has not been anything like our concept of canon today. Canon should function like a properly-fitted corset, in that it should support, not constrict, the breath in the story's lungs. If it does otherwise, authors should feel free to discard it in part or in whole.

Concepts of familial duty and the obligation of marriage don't necessarily resonate with modern audiences the way that the concept of self-determination, subversion of unreasonable and unjustified authority, and consent do. That is not what we, as a general society, value now. If the latter values are the values important to the author -- the story that the author needs to tell in order to express who they are individually and culturally and what values are important to them* -- then of course they should retell the story with those changed values. That is the point of myths, and always has been.

Common threads remain -- many of us move away from family support regardless of the consent involved in our relationships, and life can be terrifying when you're suddenly out of the immediate reach and support of your family -- because no matter how different some values are, essential human elements remain in every story. It's scary to be away from your mother for the first time. It's scary to live with someone new, in a new place. It's intimidating to find out that other people think you have a Purpose in life that you need to fulfill. It's hard to negotiate between the needs of your birth family and your chosen family.

None of this, to be clear, is to say that any particular person should feel that they need to read, enjoy, or appreciate any particular retelling, or that it's cool, hip and groovy to misrepresent your reworking of a myth as a 'new secret truth which has always been there.' If you're reworking a myth, be truthful about it, and if somebody told you 'hey did you know that it really -- ' and you ran with that and find out later you were wrong, well, correct the record. It's okay to not want to read or to not enjoy a retelling in which Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere negotiate a triad and live happily ever after; it's not really okay to say 'you can't do that because you changed a story element which I feel is non-negotiable.' It's okay to say 'I don't think this works because -- ' because part of writing a story is that people are going to have opinions on it. It's kind of weird to say 'you're only allowed to color inside these lines.'

That's not true, and it never has been. Greek myths are not from a closed culture. Roman myths are not sacrosanct. There are plenty of stories which outsiders should leave the hell alone, but Greek and Roman myths are simply not on that list. There is just no world in which you can make an argument that the stories of the Greek and Roman Empires are somehow not open season to the entire English-speaking world. They are the public-est of domain.

You don't have to like what people do with it, but that doesn't make people wrong for writing it, and they certainly don't have to color within the lines you or anyone else draws. Critique how they tell the story, but they haven't committed some sort of cultural treachery by telling the stories which are important to them rather than the stories important to someone 2500 years dead.

****

*These are not the only reasons to tell a story and I am not in any way saying that an author is only permitted to retell a story to express their own values. There are as many reasons to tell a story as there are stories, and I don't really think any reason to create fiction is more or less valid than any other. I am discussing, specifically, the concept of myths as conveyors of essential cultural truths.

[gen-cowheart]

Honestly I'd say that Elf wine (because they'd primarily brew fruits) is pretty much Ancient Greek wine, but the elves don't need to water it down. All elvish alcohols are made to get elves drunk.

However all dwarvish drinks are (low level) alcoholic beverages. This is because while dwarves are poison resistant, the water in their caves is far beyond poison with all the crap in it. So dwarvish brews include alcoholic versions of: sports drinks, coffee, soda, juice, water, magic potions, and even (occasionally) soups. Though a few dwarven drinks are made to get people drunk.

Any setting where the elves have weaker booze than the dwarves isn't committing to the bit

[gen-cowheart]

What if, instead of banning books, we added disclaimers to the next printings, akin to how forewords get added. Similarly to what happens with old cartoons that have racist content. They could have an explanation of the problem, why it is a problem (maybe), and why the author did that (ranging from “they were a horrible person” to “this was the language of the time”). Wouldn’t that be awesome.

[gen-cowheart]

CLASSICSTOBER DAY 3- ASTERION

Warning for light nudity

You know, this vase painting didn’t need to BREAK MY HEART the way it did.

Mmhhh little baby bull and his mama

[gen-cowheart]

Would this be "Multiverse of Strahd" or "Strahd and the Extended Family?"

CURSE OF STRAHD 2

THIS TIME

IT'S STRAHDIER

[gen-cowheart]

So, I know almost nothing about SCPs (and really don't care to), but I read somewhere that the only requirement that the only actually requirement for an SCP is that its weird and paranormal.

So with that in mind, what number is the Giant Floating Baby Head from Phineas and Ferb?

[gen-cowheart]

Matador and Minotaur... A very different kind of fight then your traditional bullfighting

[gen-cowheart]

What I'm hearing is that people should send asks about theories and ideas that they DON'T want to happen.

I think people should be very careful of the asks they send you. Like, this is more-so rambling into your ask box than anything, considering how many asks you have, but y’know.

People can be really excited about a theory or idea they have, they hype it up, get themselves all in on it, and then do the most foolish thing ever: send you an ask about it.

Because isn’t there some sort of thing where, if an author/show runner/etc ends up consciously or subconsciously using a fan’s theory or idea, there’s a chance they could get into trouble with lawsuits or something?

So by sending you an ask about a theory or idea, it makes it less and less probable for it to end up becoming real.

I've pointed this out many times. Yes.

[gen-cowheart]

Are the dwarves in Tolkien's works actually anti-Semitic or is that another thing that comes from Norse myths? I don’t know how much of The Hobbit was based on Norse stuff (the premise and size of Thorin’s company come from Beowulf), but two of the famous dwarves from Norse myth are famous for their greed, Andvari and Fafnir. Andvari had a lot of gold and a cursed ring, and then when Fafnir got the ring, his greed was so great that he became a dragon (probably where the concept of dragon sickness comes from), and his presence is sometimes said to have poisoned the land.

Either way, modern dwarves seem to have mostly grown past the anti-Semitic stuff.

thoughts on goblins in the DRG universe?

(I don't really like goblins as a concept bc of antisemitic story behind them)

But would be cool to see other sentient little creatures in DRG that are not dwarves

[gen-cowheart]

Funny enough, Mjolnir was actually connected with smithing, not carpentry. Ever hear about “Thor beating on his anvil?”

Despite having a hammer with him so often, you rarely see Thor doing any carpentry

[gen-cowheart]

You weren't the one I thought was joking, it was the guy above you who thought there wasn’t a union. Just felt like reminding people of the chapters.

He actually cried for like 3 hours after this

[gen-cowheart]

I know this is more of a joke post but the dwarves have a union with three chapters, it’s the discord integration feature. The chapters are Mighty Miners, Cave Crawlers, and Dirt Diggers.

ROCK AND STONE!

He actually cried for like 3 hours after this

[gen-cowheart]

Finally making that post about Loki

I hate how many people look at Loki (especially with a post-Marvel lens) and act like the Christian writers turned him from a generally heroic gender-fluid god into a Satan-esque villain. It’s like these people only read the parts of the myths that support this claim and then ignore every other myth that Loki is in.

First off with the gender-fluid stuff, he only turns into a female three or four times (one of them is theorized to be Loki but never outright confirmed). All of these times are a different race (Horse, Aesir, Jotun), and all situational. The horse is to lure away Svadilfari and stop the builder from finishing Asgard’s wall , the Aesir (never stated what race his is here) is to accompany Thor as his bridesmaid to make sure the plan works (and probably watch Thor be embarrassed by the dress he’s wearing) (Þrymskviða), another as the Aesir to learn about Baldur’s weakness to mistletoe, and the final one is to stop Baldur from coming back to life after Loki got him killed. I’m pretty sure Loki turns into a bird more often. Finally in the Lokasenna, he and Odin insult each other for doing unwomanly things, Odin doing magic and Loki giving birth to children (yes plural), and then Frigg (or Freyja) pretty much tells them to leave their skeletons in the closets.

Secondly, there is a post I’ve seen a couple times (and it is what inspired me to make this post) by @incorrectnorse-quotes where they got a message saying Loki is a faithful husband. The problem with this is that it forgets that Angrboda exists. Loki has had sex with three people that with children coming from them, and he claims a fourth. The three he has children from are; Svadilfari (Sleipnir), Angrboda (Fenrir, Hel(a), and Jormungandr), and his wife Sigyn (Vali and Narfi). He (and Odin at one point) claims to have had sex with Thor’s wife Sif. That claim is said by Loki during the Lokasenna, after Sif says he can’t say anything bad about her.

Finally while I agree that he isn’t the devil figure some make him out to be, he definitely isn’t what I would consider a good person (some people seem to think he is the nicest person in Asgard). For example, he once completely plucked out a woman’s (Sif’s) hair, for no given reason (an event which led to the creation of Mjolnir). Another example is the murder of Baldur (which we are probably missing some context to, but I’m working off the context we have), where he gets Baldur killed for “complaining about nightmares of his death.” My final example comes from the Lokasenna again, where the entire story is “Loki crashes a party, uses an old oath to stop from getting kicked out, insults almost everyone at the party (except Thor), admits to killing Baldur, then leaves.”

Also I’m not sure what version of the builder myth OSP was using, but in the version I'm familiar with the Aesir only agree to a deal with the builder (after shorting his time from three seasons to one) because of Loki’s advice, which is why they have him fix the problem.

All things considered, Loki seems to be Asgard’s resident asshole and occasional problem solver.

For a more in depth look I’d recommend this essay by Reddit user u/rockstarpirate, where he talks also about Norse gender views. (Warning it’s 21 pages)