Titans and Gods.

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Mark N
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Titans and Gods.

Post by Mark N »

After reading this comic for some time the way Paul treats myths has gotten me thinking about the Titans and Greek Gods. In the real world the myths behind them come from the Titans being an explanation of earthly phenomenon. They were the darkness and the light, the wind and the air etc, The Gods were the personification of human emotion and action, Gods of War and Love. Hate and Compassion etc.. If you remove the myth about them and look at them as living beings you can see them more clearly. In Wapsi they are alien beings (Other dimensional beings are still alien to Earth) that have evolved differently than anything on Earth. They seem to have been involved in human evolution and some seem to truly care what happens here. They even have a reason to collect the souls of the dead. Most of the mortal para-normals may even be the hybrid children of theses beings.

Sorry, the thought was eating at me for a little while now and I just had to vent it.
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Re: Titans and Gods.

Post by scantrontb »

Mark N wrote:After reading this comic for some time the way Paul treats myths has gotten me thinking about the Titans and Greek Gods. In the real world the myths behind them come from the Titans being an explanation of earthly phenomenon. They were the darkness and the light, the wind and the air etc, The Gods were the personification of human emotion and action, Gods of War and Love. Hate and Compassion etc.. If you remove the myth about them and look at them as living beings you can see them more clearly.
yep, i agree, now we just need to figure out WHO is the one that keeps throwing snowballs* at Monica, like an older brother would do to his younger sister...


*: ok, OK... so an entire mound of snow that completely covers her isn't a snow BALL... but it COULD have been!! we never really got a clear picture of it before it impacted her and the ground...
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Re: Titans and Gods.

Post by GlytchMeister »

Mark N wrote:After reading this comic for some time the way Paul treats myths has gotten me thinking about the Titans and Greek Gods. In the real world the myths behind them come from the Titans being an explanation of earthly phenomenon. They were the darkness and the light, the wind and the air etc, The Gods were the personification of human emotion and action, Gods of War and Love. Hate and Compassion etc....
Don't forget about Prometheus and Epimethius (Forethought and Afterthought, respectively) and Zeus and Poseidon (Lightning/storms etc., Sea/Earthquakes etc., respectively)

The Ancient Greek Mythology is really screwy. It's horrendously disorganized, and the family tree of everyone involved is so tangled is looks more like a Family... Jackson Pollock. The things they did would be illegal even in the deepest backwoods of Alabama. *shudders*
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Re: Titans and Gods.

Post by Catawampus »

scantrontb wrote:yep, i agree, now we just need to figure out WHO is the one that keeps throwing snowballs* at Monica. . .
Skathi?
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Re: Titans and Gods.

Post by Grantwhy »

Catawampus wrote:
scantrontb wrote:yep, i agree, now we just need to figure out WHO is the one that keeps throwing snowballs* at Monica. . .
Skathi?
Know how much it annoys Monica, and taking into account the Timey Wimey(tm) nature of the Wapsiverse, I would not be surprised if it was Shelly :D (or some version of her)
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Re: Titans and Gods.

Post by bmonk »

GlytchMeister wrote:
Mark N wrote:After reading this comic for some time the way Paul treats myths has gotten me thinking about the Titans and Greek Gods. In the real world the myths behind them come from the Titans being an explanation of earthly phenomenon. They were the darkness and the light, the wind and the air etc, The Gods were the personification of human emotion and action, Gods of War and Love. Hate and Compassion etc....
Don't forget about Prometheus and Epimethius (Forethought and Afterthought, respectively) and Zeus and Poseidon (Lightning/storms etc., Sea/Earthquakes etc., respectively)

The Ancient Greek Mythology is really screwy. It's horrendously disorganized, and the family tree of everyone involved is so tangled is looks more like a Family... Jackson Pollock. The things they did would be illegal even in the deepest backwoods of Alabama. *shudders*
One explanation of part of the family tree (especially Zeus and his manifold mistresses and children) was that each locale had its own goddess, who naturally was paired up with the all-Father there and had a kid or two--which meant when they collected the stories from Athens and Ephesus and Sparta and eleventy-dozen other little cities and regions, Zeus ended up with a lot of lovers.

But that's only part of the explanation.

In general, the gods were supposed to be the personification of human and natural forces, raised to a higher degree--but in practice, they often lowered their actions to the worst of anything humans would do.
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Re: Titans and Gods.

Post by Mark N »

bmonk wrote: In general, the gods were supposed to be the personification of human and natural forces, raised to a higher degree--but in practice, they often lowered their actions to the worst of anything humans would do.
I always looked at it more as the worst any human COULD do. The would do is another matter entirely (and believe me humans are capable of some dark lows).
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Re: Titans and Gods.

Post by jwhouk »

I refuse to Godwin this thread.

But you catch my drift.
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Re: Titans and Gods.

Post by Boxilar »

GlytchMeister wrote:
Mark N wrote:After reading this comic for some time the way Paul treats myths has gotten me thinking about the Titans and Greek Gods. In the real world the myths behind them come from the Titans being an explanation of earthly phenomenon. They were the darkness and the light, the wind and the air etc, The Gods were the personification of human emotion and action, Gods of War and Love. Hate and Compassion etc....
Don't forget about Prometheus and Epimethius (Forethought and Afterthought, respectively) and Zeus and Poseidon (Lightning/storms etc., Sea/Earthquakes etc., respectively)

The Ancient Greek Mythology is really screwy. It's horrendously disorganized, and the family tree of everyone involved is so tangled is looks more like a Family... Jackson Pollock. The things they did would be illegal even in the deepest backwoods of Alabama. *shudders*
Well, you gotta remember for several thousand years, what we call Olympian Myth was somebodies religion. As such, it actively grew and changed as more stories were added and new personalities were added to the mix that had to be explained as fitting into the already existing stories, so you ended up with a contradictory mishmash of conflicting origins and story events by the time everything got written down and codified. People at the time accepted it.

That's just the way it was. It was only after the fact, long after the Olympians stopped being venerated as Gods at the head of a religion and became objects of curiosity in mythology, that people started worrying about all the contradictions.

Kind of like the DC universe before the Crisis on Infinite Earths, or Star Wars after the prequels came out.
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Re: Titans and Gods.

Post by Atomic »

As Mark N pointed out, the Titans account for earthly phenomenon and the Gods were emotions, for the most part anyway. Looking back through our eyes at the compilations of myth and legends regarding them reminds me of the early astrologists struggling to account for planetary movements using a Earth-centered system. They had cycles, then epicycles to account for the mis-matches, and the layer upon layer to adjust where needed, etc. Likewise, the Titans/Gods seem to be human intellect grasping at a mysterious world around them, and applying a suitable explanation to fit what they knew.

There are two issues with the Roman/Greek gods that I find very revealing, and think more people need to be aware of:

1. Mars/Athena -- Both were gods of war, but the important difference was the method. Mars was chaos, mayhem, and slaughter. Athena was guile, subversion, and influence. That says a lot about the male/female ways of doing things, and of conflict in general.
  • Sun Tzu's Order of Battle:
    - Attack the Plan
    - Attack the Alliances
    - Attack the Resources
    - Attack the Army in the Field
    - Attach the Cities
Athena was the first two. Mars was the last three. One path is very messy, another is less so, but which is more effective in the long run? So we choose...

2. Venus -- Goddess of Love AND Apathy. People miss the second part. Venus used love as a weapon to befuddle those she would afflict, not reward. Alternatively, her servant Cupid had not just golden (love) arrows, but leaden ones to dull a heartfelt desire. She could really screw people up when she wanted to!
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Re: Titans and Gods.

Post by TazManiac »

I had a another reply in 'draft' mode but I'll likely scrap it (re: Goodwin).

One part of it though is germane to this post; let us recall that 'Gods' where cumulative for the most part. Lots of separated peoples had a Primary Deity they dealt with and they were often incorporated into a Pantheon later on. I think Poseidon is a good example. Aphrodite another

Also the previous (conquered, dispersed, subsumed, incorporated) society influenced the later ones' Deities; the overlap in Greek and Roman Gods as a classic example.

Christmas being on Dec 25th, 'the Little People', etc etc. Lots of examples. (Paging Joseph Campbell, whit courtesy telephone please...).

What was always interesting to me is that Paul is dealing more with Titans than Olympian
Gods (and of course there are other, non-Mediterranean Gods in the Wapsiverse).
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Re: Titans and Gods.

Post by Catawampus »

Boxilar wrote:Well, you gotta remember for several thousand years, what we call Olympian Myth was somebodies religion. As such, it actively grew and changed as more stories were added and new personalities were added to the mix that had to be explained as fitting into the already existing stories, so you ended up with a contradictory mishmash of conflicting origins and story events by the time everything got written down and codified. People at the time accepted it.

That's just the way it was. It was only after the fact, long after the Olympians stopped being venerated as Gods at the head of a religion and became objects of curiosity in mythology, that people started worrying about all the contradictions.

Kind of like the DC universe before the Crisis on Infinite Earths, or Star Wars after the prequels came out.
The ancient Greeks (and other people from that general time and place) had a somewhat different way of looking at things than people do now. Their mythology was their version of science and history, but it was not really thought of as being a fixed and permanent thing. It didn't matter if the contents of the story contained conflicts with other stories, because the specific points of the stories didn't really matter. It was the point of the story, the moral or the idea that the story was created to impart to the listener, that mattered. People were quite happy to re-write their "history", or even toss it out and make it over from scratch, to fit the current needs of the community. Most of them believed in some version of the gods, but their religion was somewhat separated from their mythological stories about those gods.

There was one town in Asia Minor (I forget the name right now) that had a long-established and detailed history as to the founding of the town and the way in which it received its name. Then the townfolk heard that the army of Alexander the Great was heading their way. The population got together, discussed what their options were, and decided on a solution. They made up a new town history, complete with all of the required acts of the various gods and whomever. When Alexander rode up to the city, the townfolk all went out and greeted him and welcomed him "home": their new town history told how their town had been founded by an ancestor of Alexander. Alexander was delighted to hear that, and not only did the town not get molested at all, it was actually given tax-free status in his new empire. For the next couple thousand years, the people of that town quite happily celebrated their town's link with Alexander's past and forgot about the previous "history".

And that sort of creative re-writing of the myths was commonplace. As towns and regions made alliances or broke alliances with other towns, they'd often have their priests just coincidentally happen to "discover" some new bit of information that tied the two towns' respective mythologies together or split them apart.

Add to that the fact that every town had its own versions of the gods, and you end up with no real over-all canon or mythology. It's all just whatever seemed to fit the needs of the time.

You can see the same sort of thing in the Christian Bible, which was written by similar people in similar times with similar influences. There are a ton of inconsistencies and contradictions in the Bible, which even most Christians will acknowledge. That's because the people writing it weren't really trying to make an absolutely perfect factual chronological history, they were trying to tell a story to get across the basic lessons that needed to be taught. If they got a few specific details muddled up, it didn't really matter.

While you can find occasional exceptions through the years, most "history" right on up through the Middle Ages and Renaissance was less concerned with accurate retelling of events and more with making sure you got the moral. Totally unbelievable and ridiculous exaggerations were common, and people accepted them without problem not because people were stupid then, but because they felt that it was perfectly proper to drastically reshape the facts to let the more important "truth" be shown.

Which is something that many people are still quite happy to go along with, even if today it's generally considered more important to have your histories given some solid foundation of verifiable facts. Put together the histories written up by the Axis powers and the Allied powered before and during the Second World war, and you'll see just as much confusion and contradiction as you do in ancient mythology.
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Re: Titans and Gods.

Post by Boxilar »

Catawampus wrote:
Boxilar wrote:Well, you gotta remember for several thousand years, what we call Olympian Myth was somebodies religion. As such, it actively grew and changed as more stories were added and new personalities were added to the mix that had to be explained as fitting into the already existing stories, so you ended up with a contradictory mishmash of conflicting origins and story events by the time everything got written down and codified. People at the time accepted it.

That's just the way it was. It was only after the fact, long after the Olympians stopped being venerated as Gods at the head of a religion and became objects of curiosity in mythology, that people started worrying about all the contradictions.

Kind of like the DC universe before the Crisis on Infinite Earths, or Star Wars after the prequels came out.
The ancient Greeks (and other people from that general time and place) had a somewhat different way of looking at things than people do now. Their mythology was their version of science and history, but it was not really thought of as being a fixed and permanent thing. It didn't matter if the contents of the story contained conflicts with other stories, because the specific points of the stories didn't really matter. It was the point of the story, the moral or the idea that the story was created to impart to the listener, that mattered. People were quite happy to re-write their "history", or even toss it out and make it over from scratch, to fit the current needs of the community. Most of them believed in some version of the gods, but their religion was somewhat separated from their mythological stories about those gods.

There was one town in Asia Minor (I forget the name right now) that had a long-established and detailed history as to the founding of the town and the way in which it received its name. Then the townfolk heard that the army of Alexander the Great was heading their way. The population got together, discussed what their options were, and decided on a solution. They made up a new town history, complete with all of the required acts of the various gods and whomever. When Alexander rode up to the city, the townfolk all went out and greeted him and welcomed him "home": their new town history told how their town had been founded by an ancestor of Alexander. Alexander was delighted to hear that, and not only did the town not get molested at all, it was actually given tax-free status in his new empire. For the next couple thousand years, the people of that town quite happily celebrated their town's link with Alexander's past and forgot about the previous "history".

And that sort of creative re-writing of the myths was commonplace. As towns and regions made alliances or broke alliances with other towns, they'd often have their priests just coincidentally happen to "discover" some new bit of information that tied the two towns' respective mythologies together or split them apart.

Add to that the fact that every town had its own versions of the gods, and you end up with no real over-all canon or mythology. It's all just whatever seemed to fit the needs of the time.

You can see the same sort of thing in the Christian Bible, which was written by similar people in similar times with similar influences. There are a ton of inconsistencies and contradictions in the Bible, which even most Christians will acknowledge. That's because the people writing it weren't really trying to make an absolutely perfect factual chronological history, they were trying to tell a story to get across the basic lessons that needed to be taught. If they got a few specific details muddled up, it didn't really matter.

While you can find occasional exceptions through the years, most "history" right on up through the Middle Ages and Renaissance was less concerned with accurate retelling of events and more with making sure you got the moral. Totally unbelievable and ridiculous exaggerations were common, and people accepted them without problem not because people were stupid then, but because they felt that it was perfectly proper to drastically reshape the facts to let the more important "truth" be shown.

Which is something that many people are still quite happy to go along with, even if today it's generally considered more important to have your histories given some solid foundation of verifiable facts. Put together the histories written up by the Axis powers and the Allied powered before and during the Second World war, and you'll see just as much confusion and contradiction as you do in ancient mythology.
Now I'm imagining an alternate reality where the ancient Greek Myth remained the primary religion of the western world, and an "Olympian Fundamentalist" movement rose in response to the rise of science and technology.
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Re: Titans and Gods.

Post by Dave »

Boxilar wrote:Now I'm imagining an alternate reality where the ancient Greek Myth remained the primary religion of the western world, and an "Olympian Fundamentalist" movement rose in response to the rise of science and technology.
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