Hey In Middle Earth Is There Any Ecological Consequences For Those Big Fuckin Eagles

Hot take but you can’t learn about paganism without also learning about white supremacy and how it uses pagan religions to push hate group agendas all over the world today. If you don’t learn about the connections between the two and how it operates, your ignorance enables white supremacists to keep on doing it and using it to recruit others. People in our community who do nothing and stay silent are literally a part of the problem, there is no opting out whatsoever. Divorcing the two makes the issue repeat itself over and over and over again.

It’s not hard to include this in your research and stay aware. It’s the bare minimum.

Edgin might not be a bard

I recently saw Honor Among Thieves, and Chris Pine’s character, Edgin, doesn’t actually use any bardic abilities. He doesn't cast any spells (except for the thing at the end which anyone could have used), the things that I’ve heard explained as bardic inspiration can be explained away through other things (Holga using the semi-melted axe could just be because it is still functional, Simon attuning to the helm at the last moment is just the “last time is the charm” trope, and Doric now trusting humans makes sense considering the shit that just happened), and any character can learn to perform and play instruments. He might just be a fighter or rouge with performance and instrument proficiencies.

Also I don’t think that Holga uses any Barbarian abilities either. Simon cast magic and notes that he is a wild magic sorcerer, and Doric uses wild shape several time.

All said though, I did really enjoy the movie. I loved the easter eggs, the things from the game (like the owlbear and mimic), and I enjoyed the plot. But I’m still not sure Edgin is actually a bard.

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.

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*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.

Watching all these social media platforms spiraling into disgust, I really think we need to consider alternatives. And I’m not really talking about finding different social media platforms, either, but rather changing the way we engage with and reach the content we want to see online.

As things stand now, we’re really just being corralled into ad-revenue pens at our own expense (i.e. being forced to see toxic content that’s terrible for our mental health but great for their engagement). It’s not for our benefit. It’s for theirs. In fact, we often get punished by their algorithms because we don’t post at their pace or share the kind of content they want.

But we’re stuck because we don’t feel like we have any other options, right? Because that’s the only way we can reach people and share our creations, right? To be honest, I’d rather subscribe to newsletters and visit personal blogs or websites. I’d rather pay modest, reasonable amounts to access a creator’s work than force them to rely on ad revenue from the more ravenous. But I don’t think we’re ready for that as a whole…

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

On this day in 2023, 'LACKADAISY' premiered on YouTube.

Happy 2nd anniversary!

Hot take: It kinda pisses me off how bad the storytelling is in Soulsborne games, and they'd be vastly improved if they just hired a Vaatividya style narrator to create an in game podcast/lore diary you could unlock through play/exploration.

Everyone shits on elf metal. Just because dwarf metal (GRANITE FORGE, UNDERBEARD) and orc metal (URROSH GROGAG, TUSK) are widely renowned and pioneers of the genre and style as a whole doesnt mean we all need to collectively bash LAST KING ELIANDOR'S DIRGE FOR THE FALLEN LEAVES PARTS IX-XXII

I feel like it should be noted that primary weapons are usually weapons that cannot be stores, like polearms.

How many weapons is it practical for a fantasy character to carry?

Assuming no magic is involved, the answer might be more than you’d expect!

Patreon - everything else

I had a fantastic time working with Jack Stockdale-Haley of Jack of All Blades! It’s a huge testament to his skill and patience that we were able to get these clips despite my complete lack of stage combat experience!

For more clips from these sessions, art references, archery tutorials, and more, please consider supporting my Patreon