Deceptacon

• Mythology
• "Mama, I'm Satan'
• How we perceive crime...
• Potential of the horror genre in a TV environment
• What defines art..
• Heroes and Villians (some even of the 'super' nature)
• The New Media (Twitter, podcasts, etc...) and the future of how we get the news
• Michael Vick
• The constructs of family (continued)
• The Dead Weather - Horehound
• The Fiery Furnaces - I'm Going Away
• The Fiery Furnaces in general...

Sorry that I've been missing the past couple of days, it's been ridiculously busy at work and things with my school project are starting to heat up, so it's go go go all the time for me, at least has been the past week or so. Probably will keep up going forward as well, so if I miss a day, I promise - I'll catch up...eventually.

On to today's post - mythology. I've always been fascinated with mythology...and I'm not discriminatory either, all mythology is great, from the more respected ancient mythologies from the Greeks or Romans, to the stories stemming from the dark ages resulting in vampires and werewolves, to modern things such as comic books or urban legends. Perhaps it's just my fascination with storytelling and open ended characterization, but what we as a people have done with these stories...in particular the mythical creatures from the dark ages, just astounds me. Ask a 100 people characteristics of vampires and you're likely to get 100 different variations on a very similar definition and the beautiful thing is, they would all be right in some sense. Because these things don't exist (at least, to our knowledge) in the sense that they are told in these stories, there is no true definition of thier being.

I think the one questionable aspect of all mythology is that there's a sense of impossibility to it and I'd like to come up with my own mythology based on actual exaggerations of reality. For instance - Superman's ability to fly...how is he able to fly? He shows no aerodynamic qualities, no propulsion system, no visual clues as to why he can fly...he just can. I have all sorts of questions about Superman, which is why he's my least favorite of all the 'super heroes' - he has only one weakness, an element which isn't even on this planet (but somehow is always in the possession the enemy). He's not even portrayed as a human, but as an alien. The whole concept of the escapism that comes from these super heroes is that we can envision ourselves out, saving the world...but we, as people, all have weaknesses and mortality and thus, can form no emotional attachment to such an invincible force, even when he is in seemingly dire peril.

I think I'm getting into my super heroes (and villains) post, but that's okay...I'll continue because it's even more interesting how these things have evolved over time.

Originally, mythology was formed as a kind of explanation of why we are here and how things are how they are (all religions **cough cough**). Eventually this explanation of the unexplainable turned into an explanation of the darker side of our own personalities. By projecting our darker sides onto creatures of the night, we could pride ourselves on being pure of thought and action. As these projections took on a life of their own and became stories of stories of stories, they became something separate of us and really came into an existence of their own. Eventually, these mythologies were able to build on each other, thanks to the world getting smaller and smaller, and eventually, with added ingenuity from creative minds throughout the past two centuries, we were able to build up our own mythologies and storylines. Some of the best fantasy stories of our time, namely Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter are built almost entirely on mythologies, but then given an added depth by creating their own mythology as well. I question the legitimacy of things like the Twilight series (besides the serious lack of character construction) because it seems that all of the preconceived notions we have of vampires, werewolves ("shapeshifters") have been thrown out for the convenience of the storyline. Instead of building mythologies off of other mythologies, it seems that the mythologies have been reconstructed to fit into a cheap romance story...but that's an argument for another night.

Anyways, I love mythology of all shapes and sizes, especially mythical creatures. What are your favorite mythologies?

Nathan out - ta.