Your Worldbuilding Needs Weird Myths

okay have you actually thought about how strange some myths are aphrodes Springs from the white foam of Uranus's genitals fully formed or the world is on the back of a turtle or the world is born from the body of a dead God their bones becoming the mountains their flesh the trees and the whole universe is made from water and held together with duct tape or what about the legions of those who join my patreon down at the link in the description below or pick up my books on writing a World building volumes 1 to 3 if you love this video you'll love this book or read my book a catalog for the end of humanity with a ton of amazing world build the Legends I've heard of those demig Gods unbelievable okay calm down the reality is a lot of these stories aren't all that different from like God creating Eve from the rib of Adam we're just used to that one but there are reasons we tell strange stories about how the world came to be take a look at these two very different Chinese creation stories about how humans came into existence in one story The God panu builds the sky higher and higher for 18,000 years until eventually he dies and the world comes from his body body but the humans grow from the fleas in his here in contrast in some Han kazak and lahum myths humans were sculpted by the gods from mud or wood or perhaps bamboo or other plants mixed together except one variation of this is that the nobles were made from quote yellow Earth while the peasants were made from Red Dirt mythology isn't just an attempt at pseudo history which is often how we approach it in writing fiction fantasy and sci-fi more importantly they're also about passing down a moral social or philosophical commentary about us and the world and we use metaphor and storytelling to do that as a way to make the complex simple and memorable these creation stories are both quirky but they each say something different about humanity and the world and when we use metaphors sometimes they can be a little weird especially when we're not used to that kind of imagery you could say the first myth is aimed at explaining our relationship with the Divine disembodied or did Gods show up a lot in creation stories Hindu atic Norse Babylonian Chinese some Inuit so many more it's no surprise they keep showing up in the stories we tell as well of the 100,000 kingdoms by MK Jimson Final Fantasy 14 or the neight Chronicles where a city is built into the skeleton of a Godlike creature podo Street Station by China maville which writes beneath the Towering bleached ribs of a dead ancient Beast lies the city of New Cruzan fantastic book by the way but more importantly these images keep showing up because visceral metaphors can be a powerful statement like the death of a god it can speak to how truly beautiful things can only come from sacrifice or that in creating something in art we need to give a part of ourselves to it it can signify sacrificial love or the old order giving way to the new that something needs to die in order for something to come in its place but on the other hand saying that we are the fleas on the body of a dead God can speak to our insignificance to our parasitic nature we are only feasting on the corpse of something far greater we are but an afterthought perpetuating ourselves by taking from something else God's death can be a parallel to our own mortal lives an assurance that All Things Must Die and that death is a natural part of life even for the gods themselves and yet beautiful things may come from it like us the death of a God can be the death of what they represent Justice order sameness it can be used to explain the lack of something in this world maybe in a desert World which was once green the god of water was killed thousands of years ago after all killing a God is tantamount to killing the very World they represented and upheld did Gods can be used to explain why places or items or weapons or even humans are special because they contain something of that dead God they Echo some higher existence and in fantasy and sci-fi that might even be true in ink jimson's the 100,000 kingdoms there's this goddess of death a Nea who is killed and only her heart remains of her known now as the stone of Earth it looks barely like a lump of dirt but some people are able to use it to gain great power to regenerate damaged flesh even revive themselves from Death In Other Stories the Majesty of a mountain range is explained by being the spine of a dead God or the beauty of gemstones how special and rare and precious they are is explained by being the lift over blood of a God in another Chinese myth gemstones are actually the bone marrow of panu the reality is we don't necessarily know what people entirely intended in telling the story what meaning they took from it about fanu and humans what did fleas mean to them in the day what did hair mean to them in the day which parts of the story about panku did they emphasize or minimize are they referring to some kind of other imagery and what knowledge did people from the day have that we might have lost a lot of history is educated guest work at layers of meaning to these stories that we have to infer from other sources and historical context cultural and metaphorical meaning which may not have survived even if the belief or the scripture did especially if the story was only written down centuries after the belief began or we can't tell where myth ends and history begins like hypothetically if panu was the founder of their civilization it would change how we read this metaphor these layers of complexity can be really fun to play with in your story and believe it or not the Elder Scrolls like yes the one that has Skyrim not particularly that game but the rest of the series actually has some amazingly deep mythological law like listen to The Creation story of the yudin as sakal ate itself over and over the stronger Spirits learned to bypass the cycle by moving at strange angles they called this process the Walkabout a way of striding between the world skins rupar was so big that he was able to place the stars in the sky so that weaker Spirits might find their way easier see the yudan Homeland sank beneath the waves Atlanta style ages ago meaning much of their civilizational memory was lost and with that a lot of the context and meaning for these metaphors we've got here what does it mean to move at strange angles what does the name rtica mean in the original language and what are we actually describing in him placing stars in the sky to guide others much of the cultural memory required to understand these references and stories was lost when yakuda sank leading to this strangely disembodied mythology which says something about how the yakans view the nature of reality but we only have part of the picture especially when you add in the hints that the udans might be from a previous Universe maybe and that there's real fictional history and fictional mythological history being mixed in together here because a lot of the time we are actually talking about real historical events of some kind the yakuda mythology is on some level true alternatively these stories aren't so much metaphorical as they are real attempts at naturalism at understanding How the Universe came to be but it's really hard to know where that line always is and our genuine attempts at naturalism can still betray a worldview a belief the sun revolves around the earth might be people truly trying to figure out how the universe works it doesn't have to be a metaphor but maybe it still tells us something about what you think of our existence here we are special but you can do a lot with this kind of World building leaving disembodied myths whose metaphors have been lost to time but hint at some great a picture whose commentary only makes sense in a particular cultural context or whose linguistic metaphorical meaning only makes fully sense in the original lost language with the line between historical event and naturalism and metaphorical truth all get blurred Ursula kigin Cur this feeling fantastically in her Earth Sea Stories there are all these organic creation stories from different cultures like the twin gods or rituals like the long dance stories like the myth of making which has recounted in this ancient song that people remember but we don't really know where it fully comes from we have these odd lines of scripture and all this religious iconography and we have these sayings people use but we don't entirely know where they come from especially because of the many ways things can be changed attitud removed or lost in mythology Earth seeing the Elder scores is full of amazing stuff like this and guess what the yakans even have their own dead God called sip whose death is deeply tied to the creation of the mortal world I focused on the dead God because it's such a powerful Motif but it is by no means the only one there's the primordial Waters the global flood the fall of Man mankind being created from clay the war for creation the great world serpent the list is endless these stories keep turning up in different mythologies sometimes because they can reflect a shared historical experience like some historians think the flood myth might be something like this but sometimes because the metaphor itself is so evocative for The Human Experience all life depends on water so it's no surprise the primordial ocean keeps showing up think on how gimon describes the primordial Waters in the ocean at the end of the lane like the dark sea water the laps beneath the wooden Boards of an old Pier I would stay here for the rest of time in the ocean which was the universe which was the soul which was all that mattered I saw the world from above and below everything spoke to everything and I knew it all there's this deep sense of an unknowable infinite of a depth from which all else Rises and in which we can lose ourselves no wonder We compare it to space but if we're thinking about worldbuilding mythology I think it's important to note that a lot of these motifs are specific to the Earth human experience like in Dune water is so precious the fan can barely conceive of an ocean and water can hurt their Godlike sandworms in their world building the primordial Sands might be more likely than the primordial ocean so consider Which experiences might be Universal for your fictional species or civilization or planet and which historical events might have been adapted into different religious stories to be remembered in different ways and while this creation myth about humans and fleas might have been about exploring our relationship with the Divine yours might be about something different maybe about human nature in Elden there's a creation myth that is aimed at explaining the problem of evil of suffering arguing that everything was once the same all part of this thing called the one great but it was fractured into everything that is and in being fractured came difference and identity yes but also suffering and sin this fracturing theme is even echoed in the plot centered around the shattering of the Elden ring there this constant sense of breaking down from something greater being the cause of suffering now the second myth about humans being sculpted from mud or wood or yellow Earth does something fascinating but before I tell about that I need to tell you about something which is even more interesting today's sponsor who is me look at me look at me I'm the sponsor now which is so damn cool to say because I've been talking about word building and religion and mythology and fiction for years now and I took all of the discussions that we've been having together and I put them into these easy to read easy to reference books which have thousands of extra words tons of extra detail and stuff that I could just never fit into these videos everything is expanded way bigger deeper in these books when more accessible and easy to use when you're writing and World building because sometimes videos aren't volume 3 is the best volume yet I mean that like truly genuinely but all of them stand on their own they cover completely separate topics and so if you want you can just pick the book that covers the topics you want to talk about if it's anti-heroes or hard magic systems or polytheistic religions or World building cities or writing dialogue they absolutely all work together so you can pick up the entire set highly recommended I've sold about 120,000 copies of these so far which is amazing thank they're an incredibly important part of what I do but of course I am also an author I've been publishing short stories and fiction and poems and magazines for a long while and if you want to read those some of them are down below you can pick up my book at catalog for the end of humanity where mythology actually plays a big part in some of these stories if you like these videos then there is literally nothing more on brand than these books that I can wholeheartedly get behind and recommend and I'm so fortunate that I able to do that thank you for making it financially possible for me to sponsor my own stuff like this it is not a dream but a myth come true you might say so this other myth speaks of the Gods making humans from a bunch of stuff but the Nobles are made from yellow Earth while the peasants are made from Red Dirt why mythology is sometimes about philosophy sometimes about history but sometimes it's about politics this is transparently trying to justify the social order that the Nobles are literally made from bitter quality stuff so they deserve all the power and wealth there's actually a really interesting version of this in Brandon Sison Stormlight Archives this is in a world where people are divided by eye color into to light eyes and dark eyes with ranks like a car system in between the dominant religion verism has this whole theology right but part of it tries to explain away this cast system as natural the light eyes are chosen by the almighty to rule and how they're always Noble and just or there's another line saying the bit your blood is a light eyes the more innate Glory you had already just like that Chinese myth the Nobles are just made of bitter stuff morally and physically and I'm going to bet that neither of these myths started like that I know I know this makes me sound conspiratorial but this time the conspiracy's real the Curious Thing is in Stormlight there is actually some historical basis for believing lighter eyes is somehow associated with power I won't exactly spoil how that is but it does show how history and metaphor can blur again just in a different way because politics can warp our understanding of both both the metaphor and what it means and what the history actually was is something part of the mythology because it's what people believed about themselves in the world or is this version warped by other social factors and do people start accepting that new narrative after a time like many dark eyes and Stormlight do people try to force history to fit their Theology and your theology is shaped by your understanding of History all of which can lead to some strange metaphors so consider what Phantom myths of previous beliefs might still be hanging around and how different social factors might introduce new interpretations or change the original myths to fit something else but this does hint at another reason that myths especially creation stories can sometimes end up being a little weird religious syncretism this is where religions combine mix their stories characters and therefore their metaphors and meaning we like to think of Mythology as the expression of like a single culture a single story Greek mythology Egyptian mythology Norse mythology especially when we're writing it creating it for our stories but uh no this mixing happens all the time think of those Central and South American Celebrations which blend Catholic and pre-christian American imagery and beliefs Dune does this with the zenone Freeman the Elder SCS does it with the time Earth SE 2 but when World building it's fun to think of religious syncretism in terms of cultural Exchange I think of trade roots and power dynamics syncretism might imply an extensive history of trade like an earth sea happening organically but it can also be calculated it can be political maybe the powers that be want to integrate a people into their Kingdom and one way to do that is to say hey your religion can fit with ours you can believe what you want but it's it's it's got to mix in right it's going to mix in with ours somehow like in A Song of Ice and Fire there's an ironborn King who says Hey the Drowned God he's an aspect of the stranger who's part of the faith of the seven and that caused some conflict how religions mix can explore the power dynamics between different groups of people whose gods are reduced whose stories are minimized but if you're mixing characters and stories then it can also muddy your metaphors what does it mean to interpret all of the stories of The Stranger through the light of the Drowned God what does it mean to blur the history of one with the metaphor of another some of the weirder elements of Mythology might be attributed to religious syncretism that we don't even really know happened cuz that's so long ago bottom line you end up with these three things intention real philosophical beliefs history and sociopolitical factors what we can call layers of abstraction from the original story now this is not to say the mythology becomes less real or authentic because the changes to these stories can reflect real things new beliefs but it can explain some of these little quirks which can do wonders for your world building and this is to say nothing of whether the myths were taken down correctly or interpreted correctly or passed down right which even in a fantasy world where the gods are definitively real would still happen sometimes the mythology is less important than the layers of abstraction which tell us about your world through how the myths are changed obfuscated minimized expanded the truth is even in a fantasy book mythology is still a story we tell about ourselves to ourselves especially creation myths and with that comes so much Humanity it's no wonder religious and mythological imagery shows up so much in sci-fi these stories are deeply concerned with where we came from what's our significance what is the nature of reality and history in purgatory mount a future race of immortal Godlike humans come across a mountain in space built not unlike Dante's portrayal of purgatory from The 14th Century the story asks how do we atone for our sins when we have become technologically all powerful and separated ourselves from death and pain or there's ianm Banks's surface detail where there's this whole civilization who have built a digital artificial hell as a way to punish and control their population whether God or Humanity creates such a place the existential ethical questions remain the same what is our relationship with with this mortal world and how should we rationalize good and punish evil mythological narrative tropes can bring thematic depth to your world building and characters things like comparing people to Prometheus or civilization to Atlantis let's say other civilizations might mythologize us or our technology or we mythologize them as a way of understanding them in turn betraying an understanding of God or reality in fact there's a civilization in purgatory M which does exactly that to these Immortal humans in the end mythology is weird because people are weird weird but it's also wonderful because people are wonderful and even if we can't understand mythology as an easy bullet point list we can this video first myths aren't just the teams at pseudo history more importantly they're about passing down a moral social or philosophical commentary second motifs like the dead God primordial waters flood myth and otherwise are often reflections of either a shared experience or some common Touchstone even if they are an attempted naturalism these images can resonate with what it means to be human third visceral metaphors can seem strange when we lack the full context to what they mean historical cultural or otherwise disembodied myths can be a fascinating piece of World building fourth myths can sometimes reflect political Dynamics justifying the social order or reinforcing a particular interpretation of History this often happens with religious syncretism but it can also muddy the metaphors and meaning even further fifthly our theology impacts our understanding of history and our history impacts our understanding of Theology and sixthly science fiction features a lot of religious imagery in part because it seeks to answer the same questions mythological tropes can also add thematic depth to your world building not just realism stay nerdy grab my books they're awesome and I'll see you in the future and as a reward for getting this far this is Darcy say hello to Darcy this is not my dog I just lost my cat um but we are house sitting for someone this is a very sweet dog who only ever once cuddles and does that a lot she's very very he he's very sweet yes say hello Darcy in the comments come on be a good comment farm for me be an engagement Farm that's what that's what you're here for for for

Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 120,122

Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, worldbuilding, greek myth, myth, mythology, aphrodite, zeus, posidon, hades, norse, egyptian, athena, ares, elder scrolls, stormlight archives, stormlight, dalinar, kaladin, shallan, lighteyes, darkeyes, vorin, religion, scifi, chinese, creation story, noah's ark

Id: gwXHNxafPJc

Length: 20min 15sec (1215 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 22 2024