#reimagining myths

[dorothygale123]

Today we're gonna be doing some creative interpretation of the myth of the 10 suns (like we did with Sun Wukong becoming the Monkey King a while ago), start to finish, and I'm gonna try to include as many elements from different sources as I can.

So to begin with, the 10 suns are just sick and tired of their mother, Xihe, smothering them. She's too overprotective and refuses to let more than one of them outside at a time, and even then only with her direct supervision on a very set course. So they decide to indulge in a little teen rebellion and all go up into the sky before their mother comes to collect them one morning and immediately decide that teen rebellion is the best and they're never coming down.

Their parents, Xihe and the current ruler of the cosmos Di Jun, try everything in their power to convince them to come down because they're causing the mortals on Earth to suffer, but they don't care and keep partying up in the sky. Eventually, Di Jun thinks that if an authority figure can't convince his sons to come down, maybe a friend will, so he calls up Hou Yi. Hou Yi, being the caretaker of the suns and the god of Riyue Mountain, is the obvious choice. He knows the 10 suns very well and is a good friend to all of them. Surely nothing could go wrong if he was in charge!

Except....

When Hou Yi goes down to the mortal realm to scope out the situation it's bad. Like, really bad. He meets up with a mortal man, Shen I, who had been tasked by the human emperor to deal with the suns with his bow and arrow (somehow), and the ypung demigod Erlang Shen who is pissed beyond reason that his mother died in the heat of the extra suns. The three of them go along to try and talk the suns down, with Hou Yi giving Shen I some very helpful archery tips and becoming good friends with both younger men. He convinces them to let him try to talk it out first, which they reluctantly agree to.

They eventually reach the suns and Hou Yi tells them about all the horrible things happening down on earth because of their behavior, but they refuse to listen. Enraged at his mother's killers being apathetic to the situation they created, Erlang starts throwing mountains at them. He manages to hit a few, but most fly up too high out of his reach and refuse to come back down. This leaves Hou Yi and Shen I no choice but to take their bows and shoot down suns until only one remained in the sky.

With the crisis solved, Hou Yi leaves his mortal friends and goes back to the Heavenly Court, where Di Jun and Xihe are furious. Hou Yi tries to explain the situation, but they're too beside themselves in grief and rage to listen. So, instead of sharing the blame with his two friends, Hou Yi takes all the blame for the incident himself and is punished alone. They strip him of his immortality and banish him to the mortal world. His wife, Chang'e, tries to intercede and have them reconsider but is only sentenced to join her husband in his punishment for her troubles.

Down on earth, Hou Yi is horrified and wracked with guilt that his beloved Chang'e has been reduced to a mortal doing menial tasks and condemned to an eventual death, so he decides to do something about it. He travels all the way to Kunlun and the court of Xiwangmu and explains his situation. She feels really bad for him and wants to help how she can, but she only has one pill of immortality left. The other one had been scooped up by this mortal kid named Shen I, and he was long gone by now. By the time Hou Yi found him, he would have already taken the pill. Disappointed but not hopeless, Hou Yi takes the remaining pill and returns home.

Back at the house, he tells Chang'e the situation and insists she take the pill but she refuses. She's his wife and any life she lives, mortal or otherwise, will be at his side and nowhere else. Hou Yi does his best to try and convince her, but she's stubborn and eventually they decide to put the matter to rest until a later date.

They end up making a life in the mortal realm, with Hou Yi becoming a well respected figure in their community for his archery skills. He takes on several apprentices, including a young man named Feng Meng. He accidently lets it slip to his disciple that there's a pill of immortality in his house, and Feng Meng gets a very dastardly idea. Waiting until Hou Yi was gone, Feng Meng attacked Chang'e when she was alone and demanded the pill. Struck with the choice of regaining her divinity and being separated from her beloved husband for eternity or allowing her killer to become a god, Chang'e takes the pill herself and smites Feng Meng in all her divine glory.

However, she is now unable to stay in the mortal world. Going to find her husband, she explains what happens and they have a tearful goodbye before she ascends into the heavens once more. However, she was unwilling to rejoin the divine court that had banished her husband in the first place, even if Di Jun had stepped down in shame for his sons' actions. So she goes to the moon instead, wanting to be just that little bit closer to her beloved.

This isn't quite the end, though. You see, Erlang and Shen I had been having their own adventures in the intervening years and had become gods themselves. Finding out what had happened to their friend and his wife, they were horrified, especially Shen I who had walked off with the pill of immortality that would have allowed Hou Yi and Chang'e to stay together. He feels even worse because his wife had ended up stealing the pill anyway! (Then she turned into a toad) Both of them end up swearing to assist Chang'e in any way they can in honor of their friend who protected them from Heavenly punishment and was doomed to a mortal life in their stead.

SUCH DRAMA! I love it! What about you guys?

Sh*tpost Masterlist

[deadhaven]

One of my favorite kennings for Loki is "farmr Sigvinjar arma", which translates roughly to "the cargo of Sigyn's arms". Add a little Gustav Klimt to the equation, and you have an idea that's been plaguing me for months.

[laurasimonsdaughter]

Red drops fell onto the frozen earth. Dripping off the knuckles of Demeter’s shaking fist, the pomegranate crushed between her fingers.

"You tricked her." Her voice was barely a breath, but it was in every howling gale sobbing in the barren trees.

Hades, lovesick, pained yet unrepentant, met her eyes without a word.

"So be it." The parched ground groaned under Demeter's feet, but she did not hear it, her eyes fixed on Hades' stoic face. "You took my child from me, then take all to keep her company. I shall not nurture earth she does not walk upon."

For the first time, Hades started back, but Demeter was turneding away from him already, casting her sunken eyes to the heavens.

"I will be deaf to their pleas, like you were to mine!" her voice screeched, and breaking, shuddered on: "And there won’t be a parent among them, even as they curse my name, who can swear they would not have done the same..."

Silence fell. And the wilting earth wept. Until a voice came from the dark like a song and Hermes, swift-footed, emerged from the mouth of Hades.

"Six seeds, dear uncle, sweet aunt of mine. Only six out of a whole fruit..."

His smile was winning, but his cunning eyes were wide. As wide as the as the vast fields, ploughed to breaking in human desperation, that stretched lifeless past every horizon.

"Six seeds...six months..." He looked from the lord of the dead to the mistress of the harvest. "Six months above, with her loving mother, six months below, with her faithful husband."

The very breeze held its breath as hope and fury mingled in Demeter's eyes and Hermes bowed, his knuckles pale around his winged staff.

Hades stood, silent, and then quickly stepped, allowing Hermes to pass. And behind him, led up the endless steps of Hades, came Persephone. Dressed in rayments as fine and dark as the night.

"Mother!"

It was a commonplace cry. Cried by every fledgling tumbled from the nest, every cub turned around in the woods, every child lost in the dark. But the whole world breathed as Demeter answered.

Hades averted his eyes, Hermes grinned at the sky, and holding her daughter once more, tears finally welled in Demeter's frozen eyes. Raining down upon the earth, where grass began sprouting between Persephone's feet.

[shiversdownyourspleen]

As someone who has always been more surface-level into Greek mythology and reading it piecemeal, suddenly getting unreasonably invested in it thanks to a twinkified Odysseus and a kickass concept musical is absolutely wild

[lavaflowe]

Drawings for Chpt 1 of

By @xxtheturtlefromhellxx !!

Overall I love this fic to PIECES, more art is coming for it🙏 but seriously the way they write the characters is so good and YOU SHOULD GIVE IT A READ🫵

[fortunaestalta]

[dani-musings]

ANNOUNCEMENT: ✨I’m so happy to announce that my short story inspired by the Norse Myths has been accepted for publication in The Mythic Circle by The Mythopoeic Society! 🤩

This tale about Loki and Sigyn that I wrote is really special to my heart and I can’t wait to share it with the world! ☺️♥️

Here’s a moodboard that I made to capture the story’s aesthetic and aura and here’s a short blurb:

the story’s blurb: Sigyn, the wife of Loki & goddess of mercy & loyalty, considers whether she is being admirably loyal or foolish for staying by her husband’s side. If she stays, she loses the future of her eternal life. If she leaves Loki, she risks losing him forever.💔✨

I’ll keep everyone posted about this publication and when & where you can get your copy! 📚

Thank you all for your support! 🥰 My (published) author adventures are just beginning! 🌟

~Danielle🪽

[i-am-trans-gwender]

The Bible is more enjoyable now that i'm an atheist. Instead of giving me strict rules to live by it's instead a cool mythology similar to Greek and Norse myths that I can reimagine.

[deathlessathanasia]

Hardly restraining her tears, she said What way out is there left, for me, possessed by the pain of a strange and monstrous love, that no one ever knew before? If the gods wanted to spare me they should have spared me, but if they wanted to destroy me, they might at least have visited on me a natural, and normal, misfortune. Mares do not burn with love for mares, or heifers for heifers: the ram inflames the ewe: its hind follows the stag. So, birds mate, and among all animals, not one female is attacked by lust for a female. I wish I were not one! Yet that Crete might not fail to bear every monstrosity, Pasiphae, Sol's daughter, loved a bull, though still that was a female and a male. My love, truth be told, is more extreme than that. She at least chased after the hope of fulfilment, though the bull had her because of her deceit, and in the likeness of a cow, and the one who was deceived was a male adulterer. Though all of the world's cleverness were concentrated here, though Daedalus were to return on waxen wings, what use would it be? Surely even his cunning arts could not make a boy out of a girl? Surely even he could not transform you, lanthe?

Ovid's metamorphosis' iphis and ianthe

This always made me so sad and wishing I could hug that poor despairing lesbian (forgive the anachronism) and let her know there's nothing wrong with her. 😢

[nikinikori]

What if I told ya'll I did a reimaging of the most iconic couple in Greek myth? And that I also reimagined their story in a Modern-Fantasy type genre bc why not—

[mercymornsimpathizer]

something very bizarre about how, to some people, a feminist narrative is one where misogyny doesn't exist

[luchia-a]

A little something i've been working on...

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

Not RRverse, but I decided to post this after leaving it untouched for 5 months (it was a school assignment :3 )

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Finally picked up The End Crowns All by Bea Fitzgerald (I pre-ordered it but wanted to finish my current read first) about two seconds ago and have already audibly gasped at the character art inside!!!

(As a side note, I met Bea Fitzgerald last month and she’s so lovely and she wished me a happy birthday and said she liked my top I’m actually never gonna recover it was amazing, I met Jennifer Saint at the same time and she was also so wonderful and she also wished me a happy birthday and she was kind enough to sign all the books I brought with me, which was literally everything she has published so far, even though two of them I had literally bought as signed copies and she said no don’t worry I’ll just sign another page so you can still have a dedication in them(!!!!) anyway the point of this was that I hope I get to meet either of them again, but for this post Bea Fitzgerald because it would be amazing to be able to ask her to sign the End Crowns All as well)

Anyway, damn this has been a convoluted post (I’ve even cut some tangents out oops) but the point is I’m starting The End Crowns All today and there are possibly thoughts to come; I will tag everything with spoilers

[metanarrates]

so, in essence, they come up with the option that would consume the least probability (probability is, after all, just a mechanic reflecting how easy it would be for a potential reader to suspend their disbelief) and then make it happen. this is a FASCINATING approach to a prophecy in a story

[dani-musings]

I’m gonna keep promoting:

My Norse Myth inspired story about Loki & Sigyn is now published by The Mythic Circle, in the latest issue, #46!

Thank you to all of you for supporting the magazine and me! 🥰

Happy Reading!!! 💚✨