Why Mythology Doesn't Make Sense
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 มิ.ย. 2024
- READ MY PUBLISHED WORK + GET ON WRITING AND WORLDBUILDING VOL III linktr.ee/timhickson reviews are insanely valuable!
Thank you patrons - without you, I wouldn't be able to do the work I do. / hellofutureme (come join the Discord/writing workshops!)
FREE DISCORD / discord
INSTAGRAM: / tim_hickson_hfm
TWITTER / timhickson1
A WIZARD DID IT MUG store.nebula.app/collections/...
EMAIL hellofuturemeyt@gmail.com
GOODREADS / 18990222.timothy_hickson
SECOND CHANNEL tinyurl.com/ybhtz42g where I put extra notes for videos, vlogs, board game reviews, and other stuff from my life
POSTAL ADDRESS (if you're kind enough to send me a letter or something!)
Tim Hickson
PO Box 69062
Lincoln, 7608
Canterbury, New Zealand
Script by meeeeeeeee
Video edited by Lalit Kumar
The artist that designed my display pic! serem01.deviantart.com/
The artist who design my cover photo:
- raidesart.deviantart.com/
- / raidesart
- / raidesart
Music by Epidemic Sound: epidemicsound.com/creator
Stay nerdy!
Tim
Legends speak of those who get On Writing and Worldbuilding or my book! linktr.ee/timhickson will you be one of them?
~ Tim
Wow
Do you have a bunch of references for the media footage used and books referenced? I'm in love and would like to deep dive first hand!
No offense, I don't know if it's the editing but you really speak too fast and the constant gesturing doesn't help
One of my fanfics explores how the message of mythologies shift as they're passed down. The main character quickly learns the story of the Witch Queen, a powerful, evil pagan figure who created the Key Stone which gives the bearer a boost in witchcraft power, and once seduced and brought the downfall of a king, with the cursed cat beast Yami being implied to be the king in question. However, later revelations reveal that this isn't true at all: the real Witch Queen was a young girl from ancient Egypt who was a magic prodigy, and her relationship with the king is also much more wholesome than the tales implied - they were childhood best friends with a side of mutual pining/courtly love going on, and she actually died trying to save him. Word of her sacrifice and how much she meant to the king got passed around over the centuries, and so she was called his queen (although they never married) and then conflated with the goddess Isis, who was then conflated with the goddess Hecate during the Ptolemy era, and then as Christianity took over, she - as a personification of everything "wrong" with a woman, strong-willed, magically gifted, and of equal status to her husband - was demonized into the Witch Queen. The main character, as a reincarnation of the original girl, inherits the powers and domains of all of the figures she was conflated with: all of Isis's powers after gaining Ra's true name and her designation as protector of the king, Hecate's domain over arcane arts, and leadership over all Witches and power over dark magic from her title as Witch Queen.
@@balabanasireti false. just listen better
You know, something many writers miss while creating their own mythology is there always make it too clean.
They remove anything that can be controversial, problematic, nonsensical, or just weird. But myths are weird for a reason.
Not only are pass down from a culture way longer we where born and we often lack the context on why there are told that way, but there are meant to make you think, see things in very different ways and be more open minded about the strangest of ideas, and makes you wonder about impossible things otherwise you never thought before.
Is a open book on how people view the world itself.
As a mythology writer myself I always try and have a couple of nonsensical/downright contradictory things. It's always fun thinking of mythical explanations for things, and then coming up with ALTERNATE variations on the same story!
To be fair, they are likely like that because humans are very moral 😇 fanatical, so censor and alter their own mythology to support whatever morals they happen to have.
It's hard to understand what you're trying to say thru your writing (I assume you aren't a native English speaker), but no, myths *aren't* meant to make you think and see things differently and be open-minded. In fact, usually quite the opposite. They're meant to tell the listener "Here's an answer, now stop asking me silly questions."
@@jursamaj Not in all mythologies. Sometimes the myth is to teach you a sometimes unintuitive lesson to expand your thinking.
@@jursamajthat’s a relatively recent cultural trend (that is thankfully on the decline).
Political leaders didn’t always have authoritarian regimes that needed to be propped up by an imperial “dominance over others” or a nation-state’s “motherland” mythos.
During times where rulers weren’t dependent on an all-encompassing national/ethnic identity to control instead of govern, there wasn’t a whole lot of pressure on religious groups to justify the rulers’ divine right to rule.
This is not to say that myths always/often served the purpose of teaching critical thinking, but your characterization of myths constantly serving the same general cultural purpose of propaganda is too hasty of a generalization.
The more mythology you look into outside of “canon”, the more you realize that our stories are more varied and strange than we originally imagined
The concept of a Mythological Canon is pretty specific to Christianity; many religions are pretty okay with multiple, contradictory versions of core stories.
The real problem is passing on the myth in a coherent manner. The very same bible has dozens of different versions often contradicting each other.
@@stefanozucchelli5410 different versions cause of different translations don't talk nonsense do some research first obviously the original language the Bible was written in is old as hell so obviously there will be different translations
@@Shadow-Astro69 That was a very roundabout way of agreeing with the guy.
@@contentsdiffer5958 it isn't the same thing
When you try to explain the unexplainable you generally get some insane solutions.
This is a great comment 😂
Like Dark Matter?
@@animalia5554weird thing to take a stand on...
Who tf mentioned Dark Matter? Are you like, trying to disprove science because people are shitting in how mythology was created?
Those are extremely different methods and concepts.... Whats the play here?
@@darkhobo I meant how Dark Matter was an idea to explain how the universe seems to be expanding more then it should , but there's new math suggesting other possibilities
@darkhobo wow, that was super aggressive.
Weird things in mythology make more intuitive sense when you're working with the context of the original culture. For example, in Aztec mythology, why was one of the previous worlds destroyed by Jaguars? It's because when you are living near the jungles of Southern Mexico, jaguars are these terrifying creatures which come out of nowhere and kill you. For the Aztecs, they are these terrifying primal monsters who appear out of nowhere and bring about sudden death. They didn't view them as just another animal, but as a herald of the Gods, of the primal force of nature itself. So it makes sense that such a supernatural force could be responsible for destroying a world.
tbf aphrodite just popped up as an adult because she resembles adult love, so it makes sense she was never a kid
From a certain part that is related to her sphere of influence.
A lot of myths probably originated in something like a joke or at least with humor. "So what happened to Uranus's stuff?"
"Hmmmm, well, funny you should ask...."
Tell that to the ancient greek
Yeah the idea of the god of sex ever having been a kid is disturbing so I never questioned her appearing fully grown
@@acadiano10 not really. Most myths either start out describing real life events or from symbolical stories that lose their symbolism as time goes on.
For instance aphrodite was originally a war god that had her domains split into various different gods. And the idea of her spawning from the foam at the sea might have been symbolic retelling of her cult arriving at mainland Greece.
Many of the gods were born as adults and Aphrodite isn’t necessarily “adult love” as such
Studying and being an avid fan of mythology is exactly why I'm so frustrated so many stories these days feel like they're just cheap knock offs of each other and how the stereotypical dragons, elves, orcs and castles fantasy setting has became so overused it effectively lost all magic.
Mythologies from around the world have so many ideas, settings, creatures, magic systems, societal influences that could be a jumping off point for so many unique worldbuildings with unique plots, yet people just always default back to like a handful of plots and world we've seen a million times.
Sure ripping off mythology doesn't make your story "original" either, but at least it's unique and can feel fresh in this oversaturated market of clone trend chasers.
Not to mention so many fantasy writers write with an obvious focus on making an epic. Rather than creating a mythology that feels mythological...
Real it’s honestly disappointing if I ever make a story I’ll do my best to make it unique and amazing
But the question is, is that what the writers want? You're talking about uniqueness but considering how popular these stories are, clearly alot of people genuinely like it so i don't think you can just pass it off as trend chasing.
@@hadrianhexe9603 You're missing the point. I'm not saying the fantasy setting itself is wrong or people are bad for liking it, I'm saying it's been so universally overused it squandered attempts to tell a unique story.
A comparison like the gaming industry. There's nothing wrong with shooter games or the people who enjoy shooter games in themselves, but if the market is so oversaturated with shooter games all trying to do the same thing while any other genres of games, games that tries to be be unique or break the formula is considered "unmarketable", that's an issue.
Shooter games are allowed to exist, but they shouldn't run the monopoly of the entire industry.
@@oboretaiwritingch.2077 I'm not talking about that, which is a valid because diversity is needed, i'm talking about the fact you're speaking as though these things are created because the creator is chasing a trend and not because these are stories they love and influence them.
Myths/beliefs being used as political tools has so many historical examples, like how many rulers used religion to give legitemacy to their rule (kings being direct descendants from gods or being worshipped as gods in flesh).
Also considering how many early civilizations started in valleys of large rivers, it's unsurprising that the flood myths are very common, it is likely a shared common human experience across the world.
I love how, even among established lore, there are headcanons (stories we share with each other that haven't been verified by the authors). We make mythology outside of stories. Lore is more than what others say. It's what we believe about what we observe.
Hello Darcy!
Myths are like rumors. By the time you learn of them, they've been twisted so many times. In Avatar, the characters get to watch a play about their adventure. The play is probably based on military reports and rumors that have been twisted to glorify the morals of the fire nation.
During the God’s War before time began, a powerful water deity invaded the Sky, which is why it is water coloured rather than sun coloured. Glorantha has the best invented mythology.
Wonder how rain works into that. Perhaps echoes of battles fought over the dominion of the sky. How the colors of the sky can shift being seen as the active struggle for dominance before being overtaken again. Perhaps the darkness of night is an armistice as the moon rises to gain power raising tides once again to bring the ocean back to the sky.
Which mythology is not invented?
Man, I have been balls deep in Glorantha for the last month and it keeps showing up wherever i turn aroumd.
@@D.M.S. Oh, come on. Most religions grow organically, we’re talking about artificial ones built for fiction. It’s the difference between French and Klingon.
@@Dakarai_Knight When the upstart king of the air gods murdered the Sun, aka Emperor of the sky pantheon and natural overlord of all creation, the Sun went to the Underworld (aka Hell), which in turn drove almost all the darkness up to the surface world. Well almost. Some darkness invaded the sky, and although the Sun was later resurrected and restored Night still rules the Sky half the time.
As for rain, that’s an Air/Water thing, not a Sky thing. He/she is named Heler and is the deity of rain, mist, sheep and magical gender swaps. The king of the air gods (yeah, the same one) found Heler inside a big water dragon he had to slay on a quest to defeat the god of drought.
Google Glorantha. It’s wild. And about a mile deep.
Aww... I'm sorry for the loss of the kitty... cute puppy though
I like the idea of a sci-fi story set in the far future universe that treats our modern understanding of science as a myth. “Early humans believed that, at the beginning of time, all of the stuff in the universe was concentrated into a single ball. And that ball was so hot and so dense that it exploded, and that explosion was so great, it continued for billions of years, and the universe continued expanding and expanding. Eventually, it was big enough that stars and solar systems and even galaxies gathered together within the expanding universe, and civilizations grew within those galaxies. Early humans wondered if the universe would ever stop expanding, or if it would just keep growing forever. Of course, we know better than that now.”
Sounds like a pretty good creation myth, right?
It is a creation myth, though. I don't say that just because I believe it fictional; from a cultural perspective, it is a creation myth (and remember that all cultures think there own myths are true).
I couldn't keep up with the author's pace, but up though chapter 300 or so (and this probably continued) the "First Contact" webseries leaned into this hard.
Might be worth looking into if this trope tickles your fancy. You know you've got the right one when you find the one with the sentient praying mantis people that have a cultural mania for ice cream and Really Nice Hats (it makes sense in context, promise)
Dude, Asimov literally had already written that in Foundation and Earth.
Fun fact: As a separate example of religious syncretism, we know for a fact that Odin did not originate from Norse myth, but rather, he hails from proto-Germanic myth, where he was called Wotan/Woden. The Nords (meaning, for those who don't know, the people from Scandinavia, not referring to the people from Skyrim) took such a liking to him them when they made contact with proto-Germanic tribes that they brought him back, where he possibly supplanted Tyr.
What's funny about religious syncretism is not only has it happened several times throughout history (The Romans are perhaps the biggest perpetrators of it and it's deeply fascinating to research), but it's also happened a lot more recently than people think. Namely where Satan and Lucifer are concerned, as despite being commonly associated as one and the same being, that's only a recent interpretation; Satan comes from comes from Hebrew "ha-satan" (literally "the satan") and the term essentially means "accuser" or "enemy", as it pretty much refers to the entity's divinely appointed duty to try and tempt humanity away from Yahweh/God and into sin.
Lucifer, on the other hand, has weirder origins. The word "lucifer" means "the morning star", "light-bringer", "Shining one", or "the planet Venus", depending on whether you're going by the Latin or Hebrew interpretation, but in essence they all refer to the planet Venus itself, who's journey across the our sky inspired the motifs of a heavenly host being cast out for the crime of reaching for the highest seat in heaven. At one point, he was even a god himself in Greco-Roman myth.
About Odin, wasn't it more that it was Germanic people that brought him with them when they decided to live in the Nordics? Have heard both hypothesis.
But yeah, Satan is an angel whose job it is to be the advocate of heaven. More or less. Nothing worse. Him and Lucifer having the reputation they have today is certainly some interesting reading. Especially with Lucifer most probably not even existing as a character until much later. Humans being humans do what they always do - combine two completely unrelated things.
@@Elora445So Satan and Slugworth from Willy Wonka serve similar functions?
The romans Famously integrated not only conquered nobility into their society but especially conquered Deities into their own Pantheon, or equal them to some of their own Deities.
A big reason why the Romans lasted so long, roughly 2200 years from Kingdom to Eastern Empire, was their adaptability.
Also keep in mind that the Romans didn't "conquer" deities -- they subverted them. One of the things that the Romans did was perform rituals to convince their opponent's deity that they were their friends, and they'd really like being Roman.
Except for Ba'al Hamon. That guy was a jerk.
The Persians did something somewhat similar but much more pluralistic. Consistent with typical polytheistic worldview which saw different gods as sovereign over different physical territories, they believed that if they were going to rule a vast empire of many foreign lands that they needed to respect and appease the gods of those lands. They not only gave extensive religious freedom to conquered peoples, but they also provided funds for the upkeep/restoration of cultic sites and made efforts to make sure that the priestly classes were fulfilling their duties to their gods.
Speaking of Sanderson and religions, the character Sazed from Mistborn is extremely interesting within the context of religions. He preserves all knowledge of past religions first out of a sense of cultural preservation, assuming that other cultures are like his own Terris, and seek to recover their lost history. After he has a crisis of faith, he does come to acknowledge the internal inconsistencies, though later comes to understand how each religion preserves some type of knowledge, even if it looks like there is probably only one religion. THEN we get a wider Cosmere scope and come to understand that each religion might not simply be a creative take on the same history.
Personally I found Sazed's knowledge lacking, which might be a reflection of the fact that Sanderson himself was still growing as an author at the time. There are many belief systems in the real world that are very different from the ones Sazed was evaluating. For example, in Hinduism, "Brahman" is the universe and everything inside it, and is itself divine. In Buddhism, the Buddha claims "life is suffering", doesn't claim himself to be divine, and simply leads people to goodness. And these are the two biggest eastern religions. For a character to claim to have knowledge of the vast majority of religions, and to see all of them fall into the "good God vs evil God" bucket was disappointing.
@@PristinePerceptionsI don't know if you haven't finished the series or not, but the good God vs evil god is very much a part of the Mistborn storyline, it's not meant to be a reference to any real world religions.
SPOILER ALERT "Hero of Ages"
It's more a clue to help the readers learn about the two very real and very powerful gods that actually inspired all those religions in the first place.
@@alexandergraham1281 I have finished Era 1, yes, and am midway through Era 2. And I am generally aware of how the divinity is supposed to progress after Era 2. I am not against the Good vs Evil trope - it's fairly common, and very compelling. I was just miffed that a character who claimed to have knowledge of even obscure religions, goes through all of them and has a full blown crisis of faith, was limited to variations of just a few religious ideas. Many older religions even reject the notions that religions are supposed to instruct you, or that there is one truth, or the concept of Evil. A bit more complexity in Sazed's research would've elevated Sazed's character much more, I think.
@@PristinePerceptions Well, considering what is happening elsewhere in the Cosmere, it makes sense that those religions are missing from Sazed's collection of knowledge.
The major reason for this, is an implication that the original creator of the Cosmere died around the time of the Lord Ruler's betrayal, which is such so happens to also be right when the Knights Radiant abandoned their role.
Preservation and Ruin both died because no one knew that it was possible to contain both of them without having them die and need replacing.
Your writing and world building books are good. The first one helped me a lot with fight scenes.
Interesting with the Religious Syncretism, when Alexander the Great ‘conquered’ Egypt, a large source of tension was the clash between the Macedonian-Greek Pantheon and the Egyptian Pantheon. To help justify their conquest, and ease tensions, Alexander (it’s told) says that the Pantheons are the same but simply appearing as different aspects - that the sun god appears as Helios to the Greeks, but as Ra to the Egyptians, etc. It helped blend the religions together, and set more of a stability for the Ptolemaic Dynasty of Egypt by imprinting that shared religious identity.
Thought this’d be an interesting help for world building bits
Heh. I'm watching this a few hours before DMing another session of a D&D campaign where it has been revealed so far that:
- The natives of the New Land believe in the same gods but depict them differenty than the Empire.
- Dragons hide among mortals.
- The god of the forest might be dead?!
And this video reminds me that I definitely should read your books which I already have next to me 🙃.
Note to self: add dogs and cats to the setting, including a dog named Darcy. Or a dragon 😮
@@DominoPivot Why can't it be both? A Dragon polymorphed into a Dog called Darcy. and he kinda likes it cause of the ear scritches :)
I'm literally doing the same thing, cleaning while listening to this, getting ready to DM. Helps get the creative juices flowing.
Also might steal the "same gods, different depiction" thing lol
I'm building up a world/mythology, in which every god of life (or asociated domain) is a diferent aspect of a single primordial god. They thing of themselves as diferent people (gods), but are aware they're part of the same whole. None of the believers know this, of course. There's even a culture, that worships two separate aspects of this primordial god (they have diferent gods oversee human and non-human life).
This is one of the things that made me love Dune so much. The viewer can put together how the Fremen’d culture came to be just by looking at the world, even having to read wikis or anything.
I love, love, love mythology; it's one of my biggest hyperfixations, and it truly fascinates me how stories change and evolve just like people. Terry Pratchett said in Witches Abroad, "People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact it's the other way around." That's why I get really frustrated when people get dismissive of the effect that fiction, and stories in general, have on reality. The stories, tiny stories and huge stories and in-between stories, we tell ourselves and each other every single day, changes our reality, our perception of the world. Reality is molded, shaped, by every single individual's perspective, and with all of these perspectives continually colliding with each other, no wonder the world is in such a mess, and why people are becoming more and more divided, families are fractured, politics are more polarized than ever, and arguments are treated as a matter of life and death. Just taking a few seconds to think, 'why do I think this way?', or 'where did this story come from?' or 'is this my own viewpoint, or is it from someone else?' can be, literally, world-changing.
Also, The Ocean at The End of The Lane is one of my favourite books of all time. So nice to see it get mentioned here.
Went to watch this on Nebula (cause I heard yall get better pay from there) and couldnt find it. Not sure if thats me not knowing how to uae it properly or something 😅
Ah shoot I didn't hit publish! Thank you for reminding me
~ Tim
One thing to note is that mythology is not intentional but emergent, and does not always correspond like lowercase histories do with capitalized History (narratives vs reality). This is because mythology is a collection of stories aggregated together, maybe formally interpreted and canonized later on by institutions of religion and politics.
Using Indian mythology as an example. The Ramayana has many different versions in different parts of the world and slices of society eg. the Tamil one vs the Jain one vs the Indonesian one. The Mahabharata probably arose from the Rg Veda story of the Battle of the Ten Kings as a core, collected with many other Puranic legends, retold by traveling and court bards, until compiled into the form we know today. Krishna the god was originally a collection of folk tales about several different groups of figures: 1) the playful baby Krishna 2) the playboy teenage Krishna 3) the heroic young adult Krishna and the Vrishni heroes and 4) the adult all-powerful wise Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita. Later on, Vaishnavas formalizing Vishnu as the chief of the Hindu pantheon would even go further to say that Krishna is actually the main form, and Vishnu and other avataras are secondary.
Anyways my point is that myths are often like stories told to children, remembered by them as they grow up and begin to take them more and more serious. Not that they are told dripping with allegory and intention in the first place. There may be some level of symbolism, but not the amount by the time they are canonized by institutions. And also thus they are not rooted in reality like historical narratives may be rooted in actual historical events. For example, the Vrishni heroes probably didn't exist. They were just a fun set of stories to listen to.
I have an alien species that is from a planet with two suns, no water(when someone says water they think it's sand), live in caves beneath the surface, have a metal shell(similar to pangolins or armadillos), and eat metal or rocks, as a result of that they have no eyes and see heat and sound, the material they eat causes their 'plates' to change colour/shape, and that is a quick way to see which caste they're apart of, the more colourful, the higher up they are
Hello, Darcy! Thank you for comforting HelloFutureMe in this tough time... we all love both of you!
Always a good Saturday when there's a new Hello Future Me video!
I've unfortunately taken a multi-month break from writing my fantasy novels because of my mental health and living circumstances, but watching your videos and coming up with my own mythos and short stories has rekindled my passion and understanding of how much I use creative writing to parse through my own human experience. Thank you for all of your hard work and I'm excited to read your Writing/Worldbuilding series!
I’m so sorry for the loss of your cat, Tim….
And hello to Dossy (I hope I spelled his name right)
Isn’t this the second cat he’s lost as well? 😢
This feels like it could turn into a collaboration between your channel and another great channel that deals with mythology, @creganford!
I am so sorry for the loss of your fur child. We recently lost our Binx in November to a sudden aneurysm. But losing him allowed us to open our home to another kitten, and I wouldn't trade little Jiji for the world, despite many misgivings from his older sister, Sweetie. 😅
... This made me think about the Androids in Nier: Automata. Like myths would mean less for them because of their memory retention (cause obviously androids) but how would an Android who tries to be an author would write about myths (post Ending-E I mean) about their gods about their creation, their destiny.
On point 6, a recent video on sci Fi put it really good: "any sufficiently speculative science fiction is indistinguishable from theology"
I am so sorry for your loss 😢 and thank you for such an insightful vid, I feel it will definitely help my writing skills 🙏
That's why I decided from the start to make my myth have multiple contradictory records, split off deities from the same one, "canon foreigners," storylines that go nowhere, and such. Studying Norse mythology really helps in the matter.
I love the myth/folklore of the Mananganal which is a vampire-like creature which splits in half at the waist at night. It's top half flying around feeding on the living.
It’s easier to spooky-fly when you can unload half your body weight 🧐
Sorry for a second comment, but when you bring up Perdido Street Station at 2:10 I had to mention a hilarious description I read of China Miéville's writing, namely that he "plays with the English language like Yo-Yo Ma on a cello." It was in the context of a short description of PSS too.
I love your videos. I learn so much about how people write and why we write. I also get a glimpse into the minds of other people by the characters they create. Your video on the psychology of Azula was one of the videos that really got me hooked on watching more of your videos.
One of my favorite quotes is from American Gods (the show). Paraphrased: Worship requires fear of the gods. And fear of the gods requires a certain level of F***ed up.
The world is pretty messed up, and doesn't always make sense. So the stories we make reflect that
What an amazing video! Great work! Lots of fun but also great ideas thought on and takes about :)
Sorry for your loss, I love your videos!
Hello Darcy,
I very much enjoyed this video it is thought provoking. I just started actually writing my story and I am currently tackling this very subject. So perfect timing.
Thank you
I think Dune would have deserved a little more attention in this video, because I find it very interesting how the Bene Gesserit intentionally create myths within other cultures to play out for them hundreds of years later. Imagine an organisation that foresighted that it prepares whole planets to make sure their agents are seen as sacred upon arrival. That really shows how powerful the Bene Gesserit are and it raises interesting questions
Hello Darcy! Also this was a great video and mythology is often something I get stuck on in worldbuilding for my own stories so I'm glad to have some more advice!
Owl House: The islands are the corpse of a Dead Titan, and their magic is just wielding the Titan's residual magic held in it's corpse.
You see a lot of modern readers expecting ancient mythologies to be internally consistent and have definite "canon" versions, something they just were never designed to have.
Awesome video, as always!
Recently, I (while researching a term from KM Weiland's new book) found out that a lot of mythology from the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Bible is actually there because of poetic devices that make the stories easier to remember. I was researching the many uses of a chiasmus, and that device is all about keeping the story "hooky," and reenforcing certain images for retention. Marketing for the ancients I guess!
Myths are such a fascinating well to draw from.
Coming up with mythologies and evolving stories and rituals is one of my favorite things to do in world building. Something you didn't mention which I also like to inform my mythologies with is doublets - two versions of the same story that had split and evolved by different cultures in different directions then coming back together. Sometimes the people try to make sense of the differences when they merge the stories back. Other times they see it as two completely different stories which leaves the culture with one more mythological story than they had before. Cool stuff
Hello Darcy 😍 Sorry about your cat, too. I hope that cute little teddy bear is bringing you some comfort.
What an amazing video! Great work! Lots of fun but also great ideas thought on and takes about :)
But… man I’m glad you have Darcy to help give you some 4-legged love and affection
i like how in dragon age, clues about elven history can be found in the murals of elven ruins. not because they depict history, but because they depict myths which reveal the way the elves understand and relate to certain figures and events. makes for good fan theory videos.
The most amazing view into the minds of ancient peoples and the way they likely understood their own mythologies that I've encountered was in Poetic Diction by Owen Barfield -- a contemporary of Lewis and Tolkien and a fellow philologist. Totally helped me understand why the world of Lord of the Rings feels so special.
Hello Darcy! How cool that you’re able to sponsor yourself now!
"All hail the great Darcy, whose licks brought joy to the world." First line of Darcy's Prayer, chapter 3, chant 11, Jazzfurryist Bible of 5674, third edition, revised.
Hello Darcy!! And great content as always ❤️
I lost my kitty three weeks ago so sorry for your loss. Great video!
Dionysus is a good real-life example of how myths can change over time based on society and politics (see OSP's old video on him, for example). A god's entire personality changed to fit a new society and structure.
Also, hello Darcie! I had missed Momo was gone :( I'm sorry for your loss. I've been here long enough to remember Lord Mishka. It never gets easier, but it's nice having them in our lives and knowing we made theirs as good as we could. And in your cat's cases, they will be forever immortalized in your videos, as they rightfully deserve!
Something I see very few writers capture, but I think the City of Stairs books by Robert Jackson Bennett capture beautifully is the emotional toll of witnessing something supernatural. In those books, confrontation of the supernatural isn't just encountering something undiscovered. It's encountering something that fundamentally cannot be. Bearing witness to it feels like im going a little insane as a reader. There's something very Raw Myth about that experience.
Hi, Darcy! Thank you for taking the time to cover this topic!
I'm so very sorry to hear about the lost of your cat mate. May she forever be with all her other comrades that have gone before her
Hello Darcy!
Also, while we don't know exactly what the Slavic creation myth/myths were, we do have some stories that seem to be echoes of one (there's an example of those disembodied mythologies) and it seems like a common element there is the idea that the first people were made from *basically* a sweat rag that one of the gods threw away
Regarding syncretism: consider for example, rome.
Janus: the indigenous roman religion
Jupiter: the religion imposed by the colonizing Greeks, with the local accent shifting Zeus from Diys to Iius
Julius Caesar: the consul who sought even more power, exalted to postmortem godhood in a move to prevent further strife
Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte: the syncretic persona taken by a Corsican officer who seized the throne as the French Republic promised to unmake itself
I kinda love that very random lucidity at the beginning. Thank you.
Darcy has sophisticated views on the Epicurus' Trilemma and the Omnipotence Paradox.
Hello Darcy and great video!
Helloo Darcy. I loved your two most reccent books.
I'd love to see an analysis of the world building of different games like Dungeons and Dragons, Exalted, Elder Scrolls, etc!
Big hugs. I'm sorry about your kitty. ❤
Hello Darcy! Thank you for giving Tim cuddles and love when he needs furry care most ❤
hello darcy!
also, i just.... love coming up with mythologies for fantasy worlds. i just wish i wasnt so insecure about my creativity haha.
Hi Darcy, and a cool look at a complex topic
The puppy is adorbs! Deepest condolences on your cat.
Unsolicited Review for his Wirting and Worldbuilding books: Not only do I own all three books and enjoy them immensely, I am also buying them for other writers to read. Mine are...marked up.. a lot. I make a lot of notes and tags to go back to parts. Great for both a new writer and people who have written for years and may be looking for inspiration
about a week ago I had a discussion with a history professor about the value of mythology and religion.
they where dismissing it as sacred texts dont convey pure truth. So this sentence: Myths arent just a pseudo history but a moral and social system. And I think dismissing this 2nd part is genuinly selling them short. Just recently being introduced to Maori culture really reminded me of that. The natural wonders they experienced are woven into their myths and gives them a devine connection. It shows how a culture interacted with their suroundings
Yes. My Maori culture is the closest in thought to how the Ancient Greeks, Ancient Minoans, and Ancient Egyptians operated and lived within the world and saw it, too.
It is also not of divine, but of simply seeing the natural world as part of our existence. The Ancient Civilisations I listed are unique in that they share this view.
They were never peoples with separate systems of purposes like today. Which is an indication of where things have gone very wrong.
You will notice, that the changes in how humans see the world first start occurring with the Ancient Romans in clear ways. They show the complete opposite of all of that; they saw the natural world as a need to dominate and fear, and other cultures as an enemy.
Only the gods were kept, and only if they saw equivalence. Any gods that were totally different were eliminated.
Elder Scrolls alone would be a great setup for a video on comparative mythology and syncretism - or how we try to make contradictory stories fit togehter.
Its one of the massive strengths of the deeper lore
Skyrim has some good and wacky lore in there too
Hello Darcy....cuddles are always good. love mythology though as a whole and what it means for us has creatures of habit and progress.
Hello Darcy. And yeah, it's really interesting how mythology works.
Presumably because ancient Humans needed to explain a lot of phenomena and just thought of the most interesting or "believable" crap.
iirc ancient Greeks once believed Sight was beams coming from the eyes. That sounds believable... for an ancient Human specifically. Or a really dumb modern one.
True 😅
~ Tim
I never thought I was superman the whole time
Not that far off. Sight is beams coming into the eyes.
@@satgurs It's conceptually similar but the physical mechanisms required to have sight be "beams coming from the eyes" are so vastly different compares to "beams coming into the eyes" that that's probably reason one why the Greek didn't discover optics. They may have otherwise, although their glassmaking techniques weren't much to write home about.
I mean, you're confusing 'dumb' with 'ignorant' here. The emission theory doesn't stand alone, and it exists because it was using many pre-existing theories about the nature of the universe to attempt to explain how vision works. Oddly, the intromission theory relied on many of the same sources which posit the existence of internal and external fires and "like is known by like".
Of course, it's also way simpler to explain how light works (wave/particle duality and all) than how vision works, because that's not just about light, but the eye, brain and mind, too.
I love how differently writers write about similar mythology! Sometimes a small change can make a whole difference!
Or for example I am a big fan of stories where mythology is very alive in the world life!
That remind me that I think You would love the world builing in that aspect from both "Kemono no Souja Erin" (Beast player Erin, both for the anime or original novel) and "The twelve Kingdoms"! (Books for that one are hard to find nowadays legally but the anime is still a pretty good adaptation!)
I think mythology is weirdd because....we have no idea what's going on beyond the veil ( or the past ). So, we crafted speculations and connect the dots. But, each every beliefs are different, just like religions does. And that's what i kinda like about it, everyday, new perspective. My personal mythologies favorite would be Greek, Norse, and some Japanese.
0:00 one of the biggest reasons is context. A lot of people don’t understand a lot
Of ancient mythology cuz they don’t know enough about the history and culture and norms to know what is/isn’t significant about these stories.
Perfect example is hades and Persephone, the most important part is Demeter and Persephone being reunited.
The favorite story I wrote for any Nanowrimo is an animal-based setting, where instead of picking certain species for protagonist/antagonist roles, both sides are different factions of the same species separated along a moral line (as self-described _by_ the protagonists). Except when you try to analyze this line, morality actually has very little to do with it at all...
I love writingg fictional syncretism. It can offer insights on what cultures value, what are considered core aspects of a divinity, tell about social structures, and reveal a lot about a society's values.
Hello Darcy! I'm very sorry to hear about your cat, Tim.
I'm fascinated by the 'Grain of Truth' in such tales. Like, if a man were a Village Roofer in Ancient China, his only child, when very small, may have thought he was "Building the Sky". If he died, the child, so small, may have perceived the event in a way.
What if he'd died by violence? the child was the only, or one of a bare few survivors; perhaps all the children who'd hidden successfully; now forced to fend for themselves; eventually thriving.
how might that child, now an elder, pass that tale on? _especially_ if he were, or had become later, a poetic sort? or what if it was recorded by a scholar who was poetically inclined, then spread it from there?
I absolutely love your books about world building some of the best I've read and I've read a lot 😂
Engagement for the world building awesomeness that is your work. Comment for the puppy. Same same, but different.
Me screaming "Yes! I think about that _all the freaking time_ and have been looking out for a satisfying answer since childhood!" at your opening line.
1:20 What is this footage from, with the giants walking thru the fog?
It is a scene from "The Green Knight" (2021)
@@bobfunkmeiser9506 Ah. Weird looking movie.
16:52 Where are these beautiful timelapse scenes from?
And hello to Darcy. Such a cute dog.
Love, Death & Robots, if I remember correctly.
Hey Timothy, thank you for your videos and passion. I was wondering if you or if you have come across anyone speaking/writing deeply on kishotenketsu (eastern story structure). ☺️
"Dying god" stories can also represent a diferent socio-economic group rising to power and their prefered god replacing the prefered god of the previous ruling goup with the previous one dying.
yeah, diferent generations os primordial supwepowered supernatural beings are a recurreing motif in diferent mythologies (like titans vs Olimpic Gods or Giants vs Norse Deities or between norse deities the conflicts between Æsir and Vanir)
@@irinaiturri I was thinking how the whole point of Osiris dying in the Egyptian mythology is to explain why Horus is now the new main god.
But what you you mentioned is also likely a reflection of cultural shift.
Darcy seems chill
"I'm the sponsor now!" is very good.
Will volume three be available as an audiobook?
What I like for some fictional mythology, is how their stories are truer than the ones that arose in the real world.
I.e. the Aztecs believe that the land was created from the remains of a primordial crocodile-fish-amphibian being called Cipactli. But it’s not completely dead as it tries to comeback to life unless provided with sufficient blood offerings.
Contrast this with Arceus from Pokémon, which created most other Pokémon, including very real Physics concepts such as spacetime, or abstract human feelings such as emotion, willpower and knowledge. Arceus can be a benevolent deity who will help anyone, or a vengeful being who seeks Judgment on the humans who double crossed him (Arceus and the Jewel of Life)
Hey Tim, did the shield Spell give you the minimum of AC 4? Or would give you that on top of other modifiers, such as Dexterity?
First Dead Astronauts and now Perdido St? Is Tim on his New Weird arc?
So, so sorry to hear about mistress Momo... 😢Sometimes our furry compatriots are taken far too soon, but it's good to hear you have a sweet new friend for the moment. ♥
Hello there, Darcy, what is your favourite brand of bbq sauce?
10:48 he shouldve had a bb gun next to the books...