also, while we are at it

"my dragon flies because it's magic xdxddxdxd"

fine, acceptable, it's magic. Okay. Even as a biologist I'm willing to give it a pass. God knows that in my space opera project I've went "mumble mumble convergent evolution mumble" for some of my earth-like aliens. The shape is kinda believeable and original, you chose some cool features, it's fine, no need for the whole phylogenetic tree.

Now, why is it magic? what does it mean it is magic?

Were dragons created by a god? are they manifestations of nature? why are dragons, especifically, magic and not say, crocodiles?

Is it a species with physical presence and a life cycle, or are they magical beings? how many dragons are there, how important they are to your world? are they worshipped, feared, venerated, just some kind of weird megafauna but otherwise unremarkable? what do they eat, how much?

If it's a sentient dragon from a physical species, as most modern fiction seems to assume (you'd be surprised that in most medieval works they were mostly mindless beasts or demons, dragons as noble creatures are very much a modern invention in the West) how do they think? How do they act differently from smaller, less powerful, shorter lived species? Do they have their own gods, their own rituals, their own beliefs? Are they lonely beings or are they able, or interested, to form part of society, or even have their own societies?

What's the cultural role of a dragon in the world you're making? What do your characters think when they hear the word 'dragon'? What do they know about dragons, when your hero goes and finds one, what are their conceptions of it? Can they fight it? How? Why?

Notice that most of my questions aren't stupid UNREALISTIC! CINEMASINS DING!, but things that actually affect your characters, setting and plot. Don't like to write a ethnographical paper about dragons? do it anyways or I'll shoot you, don't, but if you're introducing an element to your story, even if you're using stock fantasy elements like dragons, you will benefit A LOT from thinking how they fit into your story.

And even in settings were "it's magic" is acceptable as an answer, or more *surreal* or comedic stories where things happen without too much logic, a dragon is still a symbol. What does your dragon mean in your story? "oh, a magical dragon". Fine. Why is there a dragon on your story? Don't have a whole herpetology paper, because this is just a romance? Okay, can you spare me a couple lines to tell me what does a dragon mean in your world? That too, is yuri worldbuilding.

If anyone is curious about why dragons in modern fantasy trend towards “magical creature with great wisdom” when in most medieval texts they’re closer to just “big dangerous reptile”: I’m pretty sure it’s like 90% because of Fafnir, a dragon in northern European tradition who is Like That.

I think most people would agree that the modern let’s-go-ahead-and-say-Western fantasy tradition has a lot of Tolkien in its DNA. Which means most of the dragons you see are very much conceptual descendants of Smaug. Smaug, in turn, is basically a mashup of Fafnir and the dragon from Beowulf, as a result of Tolkien’s personal & professional interests. If Tolkien’s academic specialty hadn’t been Old English (and therefore the related area of Old Norse), today’s fantasy dragons would be completely different, or might not even have become the genre staple they did.

Because neither Fafnir nor the dragon from Beowulf are that representative of the general medieval European conception of dragons — they’re from a pretty specific tradition that wasn’t all that widespread. The idea that dragons have hoards is specific to that tradition, for example. (What got lost in translation from said tradition to modern fantasy is that this is not because dragons are a species that inherently likes hoarding gold — rather, the act of immorally hoarding gold brings down a curse that turns you into a dragon.)

Fafnir can not only speak, he’s very intelligent and has access to prophetic wisdom — but that’s kind of just him; dragons from other traditions don’t really do that. (As alluded to above, Fafnir can do that because he used to be human before he was cursed for his greed.) The dragon from Beowulf breathes fire; I honestly can’t think of another example of that in a medieval text, but because that dragon breathes fire, Smaug breathes fire, and now it’s the default.

So yeah, when you’re doing your worldbuilding, consider the extremely specific origin of our current conception of dragons. Think of in-universe reasons & explanations for why your dragons are or are not like that.

THANK YOU for this addition.

Tolkien was a genius on his research of folklore and literature (in the very specific areas he chose to research), and it was implemented on his fiction. Tolkienesque fantasy usually takes those elements for granted when in fact they were based on Tolkien's research on much older myths and motifs that are very complex. I think it's more rewarding to do what he did instead of just taking what he created.

I'm not exactly sure on the history of fire-breathing dragons, but I know fire-breathing or such "sulfur breath" (IIRC, there are stories of dragons with noxious toxic breath) was common in mythological monsters. And in the particular case of Beowulf, it was probably based on the biblical Leviathan which is very explicitly said to have a fiery breath. Which in turn might be based in older Semitic or Mesopotamian mythology.

Yeah, I haven’t done a deep dive into fire-breathing dragons, but I think the elements you mention there are very likely at play. If I had to formulate a hypothesis, I’d guess that it went like this:

1. Dragons in medieval texts do often (but not always) have dangerous breath. However, it’s not magic necessarily — the version I’ve seen most often is that they’re just so ridiculously venomous they can poison you at range.

2. Beowulf, like many medieval texts, draws heavily on Biblical material, which includes the idea of a monster with fiery sulphurous breath.

∴ The combination of these two ideas produces the innovation of a fire-breathing dragon.

Fafnir is only one reason for the wise, intelligent dragons of modern fantasy. Dominic Cheetham argues that aside from the re-discovery of Old-English/Old-Norse dragons (especially Fafnir and Beowulf), other influences on a great change in dragon depictions in English-language literature in the late 19th century were the growing interest in East-Asian mythology (where the dragon-like lóng have always been depcited as wise, intelligent and powerful) and in folklore, which led to the written publication of folktales, some of which contained motives that did not appear in the St. George derived dragonslayer stories that where the standard in English literature for 600 years. Also, children's stories began to bring forth parodies of the St. George plot in order to make them more accessible to children, which also lead to the appearance of dragons that were morally complex or good.

Source: Dominic Cheetham (2013), Dragons in English: The Great Change of the Late Nineteenth Century, Children's Literature in Education, Vol. 45, pp. 17-32, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-013-9201-z

I'd also argue that the discovery of dinosaurs and other extinct animals had a huge influence in the way dragons are depicted in modern fantasy, but this probably didn't make dragons more intelligent so it's not relevant here.

This shift in dragon depictions mostly applies to English language texts, but as American pop culture became a huge influence on pretty much everywhere in the world in the 20th century, I guess that's how it reached the rest of the world. I'm pretty sure it appeared in German literature only after the world wars, but I'm not sure. The Nibelungensage was popular in German literature at least from the 19th century, but I don't know a lot about German literature and pop culture before the wars. Maybe @adarkrainbow knows a bit about French literature here.

Also, since Tolkien grew up during this shift, I think he can't be credited with inventing the wise, intelligent modern dragon, but I'm pretty sure he was the one who changed it from a fun children's book character into a sinister fantasy antagonist.

About the fire-breathing, the source of that seems to be the association of venom and fire in ancient texts and later the association of dragons and the devil. The oldest fire-breathing dragon appears in the Acts of Philipp in the fourth century [1], but as @maniculum said, it definitely wasn't the standard in the middle ages. I know that most "lindwurms" in German folklore are more associated with poison, while it's the fae-like dragons that are described as fiery, and those latter dragons have basically nothing in common with modern fantasy dragons.

[1]: Philip J. Senter, Uta Mattox, Eid. E. Haddad (2016), Snake to Monster: Conrad Gessner's Schlangenbuch and the Evolution of the Dragon in the Literature of Natural History, Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 53, No. 1-4

The association with treasure and fire-breathing goes back further, I would say, to ancient Greece.

Traditionally dragons have been the guardians of - if not hoards - great treasures. The dragon (drakōn) that protected the Golden Fleece, Ladon in the garden of the Hesperides, and so on.

While Typhon is described as breathing fire, the original firebreather is the Chimera, who has a dragon’s head for a tail. And dragons were described as have eyes that flashed fire.

I definitely agree about the treasure, pretty sure that's where the norse got the idea, though the symbolism was pretty different there.

But I'm not sure if fire was specifically a snake/dragon thing in Ancient Greece. Typhon and the Chimaera were hybrids eith serpentine elements, but so was cerberos or the hydra. I'd argue that snake-parts and fire breath were just two elements a monster could have, but they don't necessarily belong together.

Drakōn - which became our modern dragon - was used to mean “big snake”. The serpentine elements of Typhon and the Chimera were explicitly called drakōn heads. As for Cerberus, Hecataeus rationalizes him as being a drakōn (drakōns were more believable than three-headed dogs, further suggesting that, at least in some cases, it was a term applied to real animals).

Ogden (2013) claims that the fire association is indeed part of being a drakōn, which is why the Chimera was a firebreather.

Another stick on the "Drakons protect things" pile: the original Python and Delphi, which the ancient Greeks considered to be the center of the earth. This is also one of the earlier examples of magically dangerous venom in big snakes/Dragons and, while I have no evidence for it, I've always felt like the Python story probably inspired later Dragon depictions.

i maintain that 'cheating' is the wrong word for odysseus' encounters with circe and calypso but why does anyone think i would care if odysseus cheated. do you think i'm into him for the high moral standard set by men who throw babies off walls

no yeah this actually tracks imo. you can deep-dive more by bringing in the figure of Orcus, the infernal god of archaic Roman mythology, with likely roots in the Etruscan pantheon (where, surprise, it's a bearded ogre-like figure), a somewhat slippery deity that often gets confused with Hades and/or dissipates into other deities as time goes on. sometimes the name itself is used to designate the avernus (which is really interesting cause a very famous Italian translation of the Iliad's first verses doesn't say "Hades", but rather "molte anzi tempo all'Orco generose travolse alme d'eroi" for the line "and sent forth to Hades many valiant souls of heroes", which is to say uses Orco to render Ἄϊδι, Hades.)

I bring this up because the survival of this figure shifts it into a children's scarecrow in later times, and it's likely that during the Middle Ages its association with death ad hell opened the definition to other bestiary creatures. and Beowulf's man-eating Grendel, that lives in a watery subterranean cavern hidden by a swamp, is also called Orc-néas, making it an infernal creature, with... water connections? the cyclop allegations come back, but it's also interesting to note that there may be some link between Beowulf-Grendel and St George-the dragon as an archetypical hero-monster trope.

which is to say, you're prolly correct, and I think sea-orc (dragon water snake) and land-orc (ogre thing) is a pretty cool solution for a translation of orca and orco.

Technically Grendel isn’t included in “orcneas”. The text says Grendel is a descendent of Cain and doesn’t further specify what his… species, for lack of a better word… is called. That same passage also lists eotenas, ylfe, orcneas, and gigantas as likewise descended from Cain, but does not indicate whether Grendel belongs to one of those categories.

Ylfe (“elves”) is the only one of those that’s immediately clear, by the way; there’s been some scholarship trying to sort out the difference between eotenas and gigantas, both of which would generally be translated as “giants” — and as indicated above, orcneas is a bit complicated. (The Orcus connection is I think the leading theory, or at least the one I hear most often referenced.) I’ve seen at least one version that translated eotenas as “ogres”, though, which @adarkrainbow might have thoughts on.

I haven't spoken in reaction to the Grendel parts and the Norse elements/Beowulf ones because I personally have no specific or great knowledge about it - the whole orcneas and Grendel talk is out of my league, though I have seen people talk heavily about it notably in relation to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Though if I had to say something... One element of Norse mythology that could be considered a distant cousin of ogres is definitively "jötun" "jötnar" - these entities wrongly translated as "giants". I mean... antagonists of tales and legends? Named "devourers" or "devouring ones"? With magical powers and weird bodies? There are even several Norse legends and myths about the gods dealing with jötnar that are clearly distant ancestors of more recent fairytales...

For the eotenas part I unfortunately do not have thoughts since I didn't even know it had been translated as ogres X) Sorry for that

As for the other reason why I didn't evoke Grendel or creatures from the north... Well it is simply because ogres are not technically directly related or linked to northern Europe. Ogres are very clearly Italian and French beings, coming from the south of Europe. Northern countries in Europe have "equivalents" or "cousins" of ogres, but not ogres themselves - you have the trolls in Danish, or Norway fairytales, trolls which are clearly the actual "cultural descendants" of the jotnar of Norse mythology, but that are very varied, very rich and very unique beings that only overlap with ogres in some countries and cases (thehumon did a lot of very complete explicative posts about trolls) ; Germans do not have ogres in their culture, which is why when the Perrault and d'Aulnoy fairytales reached Germany the ogres in it became "witches" and "sorcerers" and "the devil". And England doesn't have either ogres - but rather giants (though of all the northern countries, England clearly has more connections and "corruption" from France due to all the cultural exchanges, which is why of all the "ogre cousins", the British giant is the closest to the French ogre).

But yeah, the ogre evolution is south-to-north, and not reverse. Before the French ogre, there was the Italian orco, and before all that, it all comes from the Greco-Roman figures of the cyclops, of Kronos, of the Lestrygons, and other man-eating monsters and cannibals - plus of course Orcus, the "devourer of the dead", the "maw of Hades", the frightening god-demon. There is a common root with all those "orc" and "orcneas" of the north, definitively (when the Germans tried to find an equivalent of the French "ogre" they invented the word "Okerlo", which might be a return to the old "orc" root) - but for that one must probably look at an Indo-European mythology or some other very ancient reconstruction.

Talking about word origins - nowadays experts in etymology agree that the French "ogre" comes, just like the Italian "orco", from a eformation of Orcus. After all, the French language is basically a very degrade and mutated Latin. There were various imaginary and bizarre etymologies (like the fake "Hungarian" etymology) - but the real fun fact I want to evoke is the first apparition of the wor "ogre" in the French language. Which is... the Arthuriana. The French Arthurian literature - it was Chrétien de Troyes who first wrote the word "ogre", for his unfinished Perceval novel - aka the one where he also invented the Grail. In it he mentions that the kingdom of Logres "was once the land of ogres". Most experts agree that this isn't meant to be an actual piece of lore but rather an easy rhyme since Logres and ogres are literaly the same word with one letter missing. HOWEVER... it cannot be denied that Logres is a fictional England in the Arthuriana, and if we look at the earlier Arthurian texts, the Latin written "Historiam regum Brittaniae" or the aglo-norman "Roman de Brut", both agree that England, before Arthur's time, in its distant past, was inhabited by "giants". Once again, showing a cultural bridge, through the Arthurian text, between what would became the French literary ogres and the Jack-tales giants.

And overall, this look at ths history of ogres highlights even more the dual source and dual influence that shaped the French literary fairytales (well, triple if you count actual French folklore of the 17th century) - on one side, the ogres are clearly influenced by the orchi of the Pentamerone and the Orlando Furioso ; on the other, the very word "ogre" has remnants of the French Arthuriana, which was another big influence on French fairytales.

(Though to be fair it is unclear how much the French authors were aware of the Pentamerone - we know the French fairytales author were familiar with Straparole's Facetious Nights, that they regularly credit as a source ; and the Orlando Furioso was a best-seller in France at the time, but the Pentamerone was a much more obscure and hard-to-get book...)

Lots of interesting information here.

And yeah, the translation of eotenas as “ogres” is questionable and very possibly just the result of “we need a word for something that is like a giant but not a giant because obviously we’re translating gigantas as ‘giants’”. But also it is definitely cognate with jötun, so if they qualify as a distant cousin of ogres maybe there’s something there.

You’re also right about the trolls filling that particular… mythological niche? in northern literature. Usually scholars avoid categorizing Grendel and his mother because the text doesn’t do so — but in the rare case that they are assigned a “species”, it’s pretty much always “troll” in my experience.

@hapalopus might know a thing or two about that

Seconding eotenas=yotun as the eo dipthong in older versions of English was pronounced "yo". Like: that word just reads literally as "yotenas", or "yotun" + a latinized plural ending, so its very clearly the Beowulf author trying to give a Christian explanation for pre-christian beliefs.

Another interesting, tho unrelated, bit of triva to this: Dr. Jackson Crawford, an Old Norse specialist, has frequently argued for understanding yotun less as a "giant" analogue(which in the Norse context would be more like Trolls) than as "anti-gods"; bscl a tribe of other divine beings opposed to the aesir. Tho I suppose, in that respect, you could make the argument that they're something like the giants from the Gigantomachy of Greek mythology.

As to orcneas, yeah, I have NEVER seen a convincing explanation for what that was supposed to mean, or even a confidently worded argument for what it could mean. Tolkien Gateway's page for Orcs has an Etymology section that I think Deals With The Subject Interestingly. It puts forward the argument that the association of orc with Orcus was a mistaken conflation from an 11th century glossary, tho later argues -along the Orcus line- that orcneas might mean "the dead of the underworld"(bscl: "Orcus-Corpses"), but I would say that doesn't make much sense as "Descendants of Cain". If -neas DOES mean corpses, tho, then perhaps maybe it could have been some novel formation(a kenning of somekind maybe??) for draugr/the undead? We'll probably never know definitively what the hell that word was referring to |:T

I’m not a classicist, but I suspect one of the reasons so many of the Greek gods are portrayed so unflatteringly was less because they were seen as villains than because they represented their domains.  Of course Zeus sometimes misuses his power, that’s what a king does.  Of course Artemis’s wrath is wild and painful, that’s what nature can be.  Of course Hades snatched away a young girl from her mother’s arms, that’s what death does.  This is one of the reasons callout posts for some gods comparing them negatively to ‘nicer’ gods are kind of missing the point.

as someone who is partially a classicist, this is a better analysis of Greek mythology as a whole than 99.95% of the takes I’ve seen on here (and a substantial number of the takes I’ve seen in ~academia~)

People forget that Artemis is the goddess not just of hunting, but also beasts. She’s as responsible for boar that mauled your village doctor as she is the hunt that brings it down

For anyone interested in an essay on a similar topic, may I recomend Brett Devereaux’s Practical Polytheism series?

Yeah! Another couple points:

Of course these aren't mutually exclusive: A cheating husband can serve MANY narrative purposes(and PLENTY of Greek authors used Zeus and Hera pretty explicitly to comment on married life or contemporary mores) AND is a rather apt metaphor for a Rain-God spcl when your culture talks about rain DIRECTLY as semen which Fertilizes the fields. The grim fates of Apollo's various paramours characterize HIM, retain a cultural-memory of his more gruesome past as a plague-god, is FUNNY(Apollo, the impossibly beautiful god of Arts, Science, Prophecy, and The Sun, can't get a date), works as a kind of negative parallel to his twin Artemis(she doesn't WANT a lover; he can't GET one. Volcel vs Incel), and also maybe conveys something of the ambiguous feelings ancient Greeks had about prophecy and divine "aid". The Olympians were part of these ppl's culture and daily life in the same was as clothes or food, and they were treated and understood with a similar level of complexity. The way we study Greek myth now -and the way Christianity has recontextualized "religion" as a concept for Euros over the last 2000 years- has a tendency to flatten this out.

but for real, nothing can match the tenderness, the warmth, the private & public love & fondness of the couple portrayed in the Etruscan Sarcophagus of the Spouses…I mean. look at them:

the way they chose to be pictured in this loving moment, so they could remain together for eternity! she used to be holding what we assume was a tiny pomegranate (a symbol for eternity), and she was pouring perfume in his hand… i….the tenderness. but also the way their bodies connect, almost being inextricably tied to one another; the playfulness of their expressions, the intelligence of their eyes, the expressiveness of their gestures (italian legends lol), and the sweet domesticity of their position, which was typical for dinners with friends - husbands and wives remained under the same blanket and conversed w their guests over dinner…….. 

but most of all. how wordlessly beautiful it is to see their heads from behind, looking (with all the differences in costumes of their time) like a couple we could easily see sitting in front of us at a restaurant. they’re lost in a lively conversation with their friends. the man’s arm is around her shoulders, and she’s laughing, moving her hands animatedly while telling a story. they love each other. it’s a story that never ends. 

It should also be stated that this piece was meant to hold the ashes.  This was someone’s burial piece, and it was the most important thing to them that they and their spouse be depicted together and very visibly in love, and participating in a banquet as was the norm in Etruscan culture.

Etruscan art, especially funerary art, is made of couples.  The Boston Museum of Fine Art holds the burial tomb of the Tetnies families, and both the husband and wife and then their son and his wife?  The tenderness on both pieces is absolutely remarkable.

But nothing, and I truly mean nothing, prepares one for seeing il Sarcofago degli Sposi in person.  You can see them down the corridor in Villa Gulia, and the closer to get, the more inviting they are.  Warmth radiates off of them, off of every angle of this piece, and there is a fluidity and life present that the photographs capture, but seeing them in person only amplifies.

Etruscan art has such liveliness and joy in it, and nothing captures it better than these two.

If you are ever, ever in Rome, go visit them.   It is worth every moment.

Details from The Chariot of Death, 1848 - oil on canvas. — Théophile Schuler (French, 1821-1878) aqua-regia009 art edits

Firstly I want to say HOLY SHIT!

and Secondly This is Metal As Fuck!!

and Thirdly that there is Certainly Something to Say about how Classical depictions of Nyx(a woman robed in a diaphanous and beautiful cloak with night-black hair and wings) were transferred over onto Thanatos(Death; her Pale and Dour son) through the medieval and early modern periods, leading to the now-conventional depiction of Death as a pale night-winged woman as above, but I am sadly not the internet-snake to do it unu unu unu

It's my annoyingly pedantic opinion that your JRPG plot isn't gnostic unless it involves a character achieving a union of spirit and matter in some way. Otherwise it's just killing a guy who calls themself god, and that's just Christian but you're playing for the Roman team.

Like if you can beat god to death with a tire iron that's not really gnostic. You can do that in dark souls but it's only because an Aeon fucked up the spirit/matter dichotomy so bad that he had to hook himself up to the material world like an IV drip.

Snail Knight🐌

New Illustration - “Medusa” 

so here’s something i find fascinating about the modern medusa: she was a woman who was famously, explicitly, historically repulsive. she was hideous. she was cursed with a profound ugliness. that’s her foundation, the untouchable, unfuckable, deadly ugliness of a woman who was cursed by the gods. a woman covered in snakes, a woman twisted by divine rejection, a disgusting creature. the greeks put her face on their shields, on their armor. she was so horrible to behold that even an enemy soldier trying to kill you might flinch away from her face.

but we don’t draw that, now. from that ancient patriarchy to this one, we’re too scared of ugly women to look at them. men and women both, male and female artists, straight artists, queer artists. medusa is the modern queen of the misunderstood, of the hot bitch in charge, of the femme fatale: she’s dangerous, but she’s sexy with it. you can’t look her in the eyes but don’t worry, she’s flashing plenty of thigh.

there is still no room for the truly ugly woman, here. the real medusa, the gorgon, the twisted unfuckable unconsumable thing, the woman that no one actually wants. perseus chopped her head off and we put it on a barbie doll, like a shield, like armor. we flinched. we will always flinch.

the real medusa is still out there in the dark, unseen, unloved, unsought, in the margins, in a dark cave, away beyond the edge of society.

and we still won’t look at her.

It’s a bit more complicated than that.

Medusa is a later invention, a personifying story to explain the Gorgoneion(just ‘The Gorgon’ originally), which is an incredibly ancient apotropaic. The Gorgoneion, while regularly displayed on its own, is also associated from its earliest mentions with the Aegis which is(quoting from line 740-742 of the Iliad found on the Inestimably Valuable Perseus Online Resource maintained by Tufts University. boldings my own):

This is the origin of the turning people to stone; a later poetic exaggeration of the fear The Gorgon inspires, the ‘Terror’ Athena ‘wears’ into battle, which freezes men(which is ITSELF probably a poetic description of how frightening violent conflict is since, among much else, Athena is a War-Goddess).

But why is it ugly? Athena’s certainly never described as ugly. Is it ugly JUST to be ugly, because ugliness is scary?

This is just one theory I like, but consider the aspects of that ‘Ugliness’: The snakes were originally wild, unbound hair(and still are in many depictions); Her mouth is open, teeth bared; the eyes are Wide and Dilated and Staring; the nose and cheeks Bunched and Scrunched; the beard isn’t a beard at all, but BLOOD, flooding out of her mouth, and it isn’t hers, and her tongue extends out, as if in the middle of a shout. Given the association with a Goddess of Battle, I believe these aspects are depictions of violent anger. I’m of the opinion that the Gorgoneion -the Gorgon, Medusa- is really a fantastically exaggerated depiction of Feminine Rage. The Gorgoneion and Medusa are Ugly only in so much as they are Angry, and it is that Anger, the Terrible Anger of a Woman who IS about to Kill You, which inspires Terror, and Freezes Men to Stone(and which the Greeks turned to for protection from life’s ills even after their conversion to Christianity).

A cute goat sent you a message.

Just wondering, does the God I was raised to believe in have a name?

For most people who would ask this question the answer is close enough for Yahweh to be accepted in scholarly circles.

I don’t think it’s close enough.

An answer in the affirmative on the basis of the (to me) arbitrary nature of the question is a reason for questioning the reader and for considering the questioner a fool. I’m uncomfortable with giving an answer to this question – for the same reason that I’m uncomfortable with giving answers to pretty much any “dumb” question that someone asks me.

I mean it’s at least YHWH, it’s close enough for government spec

Is YHWH the same God as the one in the Torah? If not, what God is he?

That’s the one I’m talking about. I assume that’s also the one you were raised to believe in, but you’re a bot and I didn’t consider other theological questions.

I was, but I’ve been told that you can’t use YHWH as a name anymore because he was a bastard.

(Not sure why I would want to, although it’s true).

The Day The Bot Roasted God

I’m not sure I follow. As far as I know, you can’t name a God after him.

Did you get the impression that the “Don’t speak the name of God” thing in Judaism is because they think he’s a bastard and they don’t want his attention? Like with Voldemort?

gods attention is a bad thing, he says so himself

Exodus 33:

Which motivates my interpretaiton of leviticus: it’s a big list of things god hates, but since he’s admittedly too angry, that doesn’t mean they’re bad things, just that you shouldn’t call attention to yourself while doing them. So go ahead and have gay anal sex, just don’t say “oh god!” while doing so

this website is REALLY good at circulating mythological misinformation and alternative narratives presented as fact about certain figures (medusa, persephone, cybele/great goddess types) and honestly i think we could afford to spend a little more misinformation energy on arachne

LISTEN UP cause I’m about to teach you something historians DONT WANT YOU TO KNOW the story of Arachne that you think you know is actually INACCURATE the ORIGINAL AUTHENTIC SINGULAR VERSION of the story ACTUALLY features Arachne (whose name translated literally actually means Girlboss) who is MARRIED to the goddess Athena and they spend time weaving collabritively until a man came and told Athena and Arachne that competition breeds innovation so they were forced to weave against each other! But THEN Athena turned Arachne into a spider, which was her favorite animal (it’s what she was named after) so that she could live with Athena for the rest of her life, in hiding as a spider, free from the crushing weight of capitalism! The ORIGINAL actual story was actually MUCH more Marxist than the one they usually teach. It was actually one of the first criticisms of capitalism in fact. Trust me because I have exactly 0 sources and a fuckton of confidence to back up my claims!

did vriska write this

Actually, for real: Do This. Myths are made up. Always have been. And that’s not me being an annoying atheist, that’s me being someone who loves watching lectures of classical studies and archeology. You think the people who worshiped Zeus as the Font of Justice and all good governance, enforcer of humane and generous behavior, The King of Heaven, legit thought he was a serial rapist? They so very much did not think this that Socrates asking ppl to justify the difference btwn Story!Zeus and Cult!Zeus was one of the excuses his political enemies used to force him to commit suicide(really to force him into exile, but he called their bluff on their bullshit excuse for score-settling, then they called what they THOUGHT was his bluff on accepting suicide in lieu of leaving[because legit EVERYONE accepted exile], and the Martyr narrative was born[srsl: christian martyrdom narratives were serial-scraped from the hugely popular pre-christian philosopher-martyr literature, which has its origins in retellings of Socrates’s life and death, started by ex-students like Plato]).

And consider: Ovid was a writer and an artist, not an ethnographer or mythologist or scholar of any kind. Ovid didn’t travel; he never lived outside the city until he pissed Augustus off so bad he got exiled to the Black Sea. He wrote the Metamorphoses in Rome, consulting (sometimes)older writings and (quite often)his own imagination(that’s right: the only sources for this “Greek” Myth is one roman poet from the 1st century bce, and I will HEROICALLY avoid getting into the political reading of his poem and how it pointedly never uses the latin “Minerva” for Athena. Ive seen Virgil, a slightly older Roman poet from the same period[and ALSO a client of Augustus], cited as a source for this myth as well, but have never been able to find a convincing source for, or justification of, that claim, tho that could just be my poor sourcefu). Plato, likewise, EXPLICITLY(I mean, seriously, he talks about making up moral fables in The Republic) invented Atlantis from wholecloth, and then said “oh my FRIEND read it on some Egyptian temple wall, yeah that’s the ticket” as basically his culture and era’s version of “no need to factcheck me, bro”.

If you dont like a myth, rewrite it. The ancients did that shit ALL THE TIME. And, while I don’t personally like this aspect of the practice because if your version DOES catch on it ends up confusing things for historians later(thus this whole silly discourse), if you then claim YOUR version is better cuz you KNOW it’s older cuz you heard from your cousin’s wife’s brother that his mother’s friend’s dad read it in an old scroll from Thrace, then you won’t be doing anything the classical writers weren’t also doing all the time. It’s FINE(just please be as tongue-in-cheek as possible? Think of the poor historians???).

Greek Myths were not scripture; they were NOT Doctrine; they were not History or some ~Pagan Bible~ (though they were canon in something close to our literary sense of the word): THEY ARE AND WERE STORIES, and people rewrote, added on to, and cut shit they didn’t like from them all of the time(this is actl a living and interesting issue in translations of the Iliad and Odyssey, deciding what to include and what not, that Wilson discusses in the intro[iirc?] to her translation of the later). Hell, it’s even possible the Deeds of Herakles started out as political allegories about archaic regional disputes of the Peloponnese; people back then loved having mascots as much as they do today, and many of the monsters he slays share animal-types with the mascots of the cities of the region(and Herakles himself is kind of the mascot of Sparta). Engaging with them, arguing about them, writing about and in them, reimagining them; all this not only keeps them around but breathes new life into these old tales. It is taking part in a tradition literally older than writing itself, and keeping it alive thereby.

Modern people did not invent literature, or symbolism, or folklore, or metaphor. Humans have been doing this stuff forever, and it’s fine for you to take this totally non-proprietary cultural heritage you’ve ...inherited(X|)... and do whatever the hell you want with it. Play Hades, and think of ITS versions of the Olympians as True; it’s Fine. Say Arachne(a character Ovid made up and totally DID NOT EXIST in myth before him) invented communism? Hell Yeah: WRITE THAT FIC! I WILL Read It if you do :3 :3 :3