Hoo boy, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League game is out, and, uh, looks like it’s a doozy. They really did it. They really thought a great way to spend your money/time was to develop a looter-shooter at the tail end of that bandwagon, in which you kill beloved superheroes turned into homicidal villains by the Plot, including one who was the main character of the previous four games over the last decade and voiced by a beloved, recently deceased actor. That’s certainly… A Choice.
In good news, though, I read Act of Oblivion this week, which was astoundingly good. Go check it out if you can.
I thought about this Note after a Friday Fun Fact.
Fantastic Religious Weirdness
I didn’t come up with that title, though, it’s from TV Tropes.
Something I think about sometimes is the religious leanings of mythological creatures. There’s a lot of ink spilled on humans in fantasy settings, and how they deal with religion. There’s less of that ink about fantasy creatures, and what their stances on real-world religions are. Sometimes it comes up in that a fantasy race in a full fantasy setting has a religion, but for the most part I don’t see it written about in things like portal and urban fantasy. Which is a shame, because it really should come up. Historically speaking, writers have been thinking about it for a long time.
As a side note: I should say that it’s much more common in science-fiction, though. For whatever reason, it seems better at handling these questions. I can’t really formulate why though, at least not on short notice.
Another side note: this does come up a bit with vampires and demons, I guess? Most of the time, with vampires, it’s trying to come up with how we deal with the cross/crucifix thing while the author trying to not say that Christianity is definitively true. I got nothing here, other than do what works, though recognize the lore you’re working with, built off of the novel Dracula, does make the assumption that God’s power hurts the undead.
Moving back to straightforward portal/urban fantasy, though, I’ve noticed this really disturbing thing popping up in modern Christian circles, claiming that obviously, aliens are clearly demons we should kill because until the 50’s, everyone knew that the only intelligent beings were humans, angels, and demons. I wouldn’t even call this viewpoint ‘traditionalist’ because it’s not historical. In the past, medieval Christians didn’t think humans were alone in the world as a species. The obvious answer to this is faeries, though there’s also tons of other weird ideas about what lived out there, like satyrs, centaurs, dog-headed men, people with their heads in their chests, and guys with one massive foot. And along with those myths, thinkers were asking and trying to explain how they fit in their view of the universe.
For instance, there’s a story about Saint Anthony of Egypt wandering in the desert, in which he encountered a centaur and a satyr. The centaur doesn’t speak the same language, though he tries to offer directions before running off. The satyr offers praise to Jesus, leading Anthony to throw shade at the city of Alexandria–after all, how is it that there are people there that worship pagan idols, when even this nonhuman in the wilderness is aware of, and honors, the Christian God. The obvious answer is that this is some sort of fable or morality story (and to be clear, it’s easier ot read it that way), but I think it’s worth noting that in recounting this, Saint Jerome says that satyrs are totally real, and you can see a preserved corpse if you go to Antioch.
I’m not saying that this story is true. I don’t think it is. I’m not saying Saint Jerome is an idiot. I don’t think he is, either, he was repeating something that he thought was reliably told to him. My point is: religious scholars in the past believed in nonhuman creatures, and had stories about how they might figure into God’s plan.
Most modern fiction seems to ignore this idea. Religious folk tend to either consider nonhuman creatures demons, like whackjobs today freaking out at the slightest (and I want to reiterate factually unconfirmed) hint or idea of aliens, and nonhumans are incompatible with human faiths.
This is dumb.
I mean, yes, there could be in-story reasons for it. I think Onyx Court by Marie Brennan does a good job, because she’s basing her faeries off of traditional European ideas, where even though they’re not evil by nature, and no friends of Hell, the faeries are driven off by church bells and certain Christian ceremonies and rituals–hence they’re very supportive of the Reformation, as it does away with a lot of those things. There’s an interesting twist in one of the later books, though, where they meet a faerie from a far off land in the Middle East (a djinni), and not only does he not have issues with religion, he’s an openly and devoutly religious Muslim. Which also goes with traditional Muslim beliefs that djinn also can follow religions like Islam or paganism, because as creatures with free will they can choose what religion they follow.
There are also discussions in the novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell about where faeries fit on the path of salvation. It’s relegated to the footnotes, but there’s a lot of confusion! The faeries don’t know either! And not exactly being bastions of rational thought (it’s suggested that faeries are possibly all insane if measured by human standards, though still very powerful), they’re not very good at working things out. Can they be Saved? Is it worth trying? And heck, this is a setting where Heaven and Hell are implied to be absolutely, definitely real–the Raven King’s prophecy mentions that he has enemies in Hell who honor weapons used against him as holy relics.
And really, people keep acting like faeries, and belief in them, are inherently pagan ideas. Well, okay, if they are, do faeries worship pagan gods? In Norse mythology, Freyr was revered by the light elves, so does that hold true for faeries in your story? If they’re Celtic, do they worship Irish gods? Gaulish ones? Welsh ones? And how does that worship manifest?
I am fascinated by these ideas. I’m not saying that if you write a fantasy story, that the orcs should be Christians, or anything like that–although that certainly sounds interesting. I want to know how these things interact, though. How do scholars square these ideas with each other? How do fantasy creatures feel about human religions? How do humans feel about the idea nonhumans being in their religions? And this doesn’t just apply to Abrahamic religions!
Orcs raiding people in Odin’s name! A Buddhist Tengu! An elf that’s a Presbyterian preacher! A Muslim giant! Huguenot gargoyles! What do nagas think of Christian missionaries? What do djinn do during the Crusades? Or heck, whenever a religious character runs into a nonhuman character, have this character try, in dialogue or in narration, to fit this into his or her religious understanding of the world.
I don't know, maybe I’m just obsessing over this idea because I have a cool idea for a character in a story that’s a dragonborn Orthodox Christian missionary (and seen as a weirdo by everyone around her). I want to play with these ideas! And I want to see more authors deal with questions like this in fantasy fiction.
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