Hallo! I have had a weird week. When I’m typing this I still haven’t put up all of the pictures from last weekend, but those shall hopefully go up shortly. I have not updated the Book Diary in a few days because I’m currently reading the second-to-last Wheel of Time, which is great fun! I’m also currently watching both Maya and the Three on Netflix and Gravity Falls on Disney+ and those are fun! The former of which is part of what made me think about this Saturday Note idea.
I might see Dune this weekend? That might be cool. I don’t know when I’d see Eternals, but while I like the premise, see my recent Note on Black Widow to see the thought process I’m having regarding that movie.
Maybe I've talked about this before but too bad!
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On Mythological Accuracy in Fiction
I sometimes think about this article written by one of my colleagues on ImpishIdea, back when I had colleagues on ImpishIdea. The thrust of it is that urban fantasy authors often mix up mythologies, get the originals wrong, all in trying to make it fit within patterns of mythology and fantasy creatures established by pop culture, which is itself mostly drawn from European folklore in general and English folklore in specific.
Or in short, calling fantastical creatures that aren’t from European folklore ‘fairies’ is bad because that’s not what other people would have called them.
And at the time I remember thinking it was a good article, and I think it does bring up good points. But I also think that it misses that A) in fiction, you should be able to do what you want with your underlying mythology, and B) the kind of people who just sit and call fiction inaccurate to real life are really annoying to hang out with. There’s not nothing to this school of criticism, especially when an author is claiming to stick to real life or act as if he or she is doing a ton of research when clearly this person has not--Dan Brown comes to mind. And when the author is claiming to try to represent to your different mythologies in a way clearly meant to reflect some level of accuracy, when it doesn’t--like in Angelopolis or in Tiger’s Curse--then yeah, go ahead and make these criticisms.
But this seems to be mostly “You need to be 100% accurate to the original mythologies if you’re going to use them!” and that’s… not that great a take. Because calling non-European extra-human creatures from folklore ‘fairies’ is actually not a bad thing--it gives a point of reference to readers. The idea of “other folk”, or a human-like species that lives alongside humanity out in the wilderness somewhere, and has magic or a connection to nature that we don’t, is a very common idea throughout human history. And no, they weren’t always called ‘fairies’ but it’s a good enough descriptor and gives audiences an idea of what we’re talking about even if they don’t understand the other cultures involved.
The Onyx Court series by Marie Brennan is about a faerie court nestled under London at different points in history, and one of the books set during the 1700’s has them get a visitor from the Middle East, a djinni. And he is described as a faerie, albeit a foreign one which they don’t understand very well. No, a djinni was not described as a fairy in the stories, because the culture it comes from doesn’t have that word, but it fits a similar role in the mythology and folklore that I don’t think that term is unjustified there.
[There’s actually his whole amusing thing because the English/British fae are all hurt by overt symbols of faith and religion, and they’re absolutely baffled by this djinni who is a devoutly religious Muslim down to his name.]
Likewise, I also remember for Aliette de Bodard’s Obsidian & Blood trilogy, she wrote a series of blog posts describing Nahuatl culture and religion to help make the series more accessible, and when talking about the religion followed by the people of the Aztec Triple Alliance, she describes the different gods. And someone called her out in the comments pointing out that it’s not exactly an accurate way to portray the way the people in question thought of their religion. The author agreed, but pointed out that it’s a difficult thing to accurately convey to people from mostly European-influenced culture, and this is also pointed out in the author’s notes in the books themselves. This historical supernatural murder mystery’s going to be a lot harder to tell and make interesting if we have to introduce a completely foreign way of understanding divinity to the audience.
I’m also currently watching Maya and the Three which is inspired by mostly Mesoamerican culture, and many of the deities depicted are named after beings from Aztec and Mayan mythology. Some of which are used in wildly different ways from the original stories. The main villain is Lord Mictlan, the god of war, and if you know Nahuatl mythology you’ll know that Mictlan is the name of the underworld, not a particular deity. Gutierrez did the same thing with Xibalba in Book of Life.
And I don’t care because this is a series aimed at young people that isn’t meant to teach you about Mesoamerican mythology as much as tell an interesting story with a Mesoamerican basis to it. It doesn’t have to be accurate to the myths.
“But how would you feel if they did that to your culture/religion?!”
My dude. Have you seen a horror movie in the past forty years? Most of them display an understanding of Catholicism that might be gained from scanning Wikipedia articles and half-remembered Catholic school classes. I remember there’s a Tumblr blog (notbecauseofvictories, if you’re curious) that refers to Christianity as used in fiction like Supernatural to be “McNugget Christianity”; that is to say, mashed up and processed to make a treat, but not as fulfilling as the real chicken, or even really all that close when you look at the finished product.
Thai isn’t to say that I don’t appreciate it when fiction using mythology is accurate to the myths. The Lighting Thief still has a very special place in my heart because it is one of the first pieces of fiction about Greek mythology that I remember using Hades as a character and not making him into a stand-in for Satan. Instead he’s as he was in the myths--the lord of the underworld, and not someone you want to cross, but by no means evil, and he’s more than a little stressed about all the pressure he has in running a kingdom. And Riordan’s Greek mythology books, while not always 100% accurate, show an understanding of the myths that you rarely ever see in even adult fiction. Riordan has linked to Theoi on his website quite a lot, so he knows his stuff, and just takes liberties for the fiction, or to make the story more superheroic.
But not everyone has to do this. Especially when we’re talking about mythologies that are not as well-documented as the Greco-Roman one is. Neil Gaiman has admitted he extrapolated a lot for his use of Slavic mythology in American Gods, and today a large chunk of what we see there isn’t believed by scholars, but it makes a good story so we let it slide.
Story! That is important above almost all else! Above mythological accuracy to be sure. Again, if you’re stupid and trying to tell the audience that you’ve totally done your homework when you clearly haven’t, that’s a problem. Even then, that can be maybe excused if the story’s still good. If you’re using mythology, telling the story, and making it comprehensible to the audience, is much more important than whether or not you tell each myth accurately. Obviously be respectful of other cultures, but if you’re not 100% accurate I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.
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