#the monomyth if you will

[the-lord-of-the-things]

returning to my roots to try and get into an art mood with the OG Lad

[moghedien]

the amount of people I see who think that there is one true, absolute source of all myths (but specially this happens when talking about Greek myths with people tho) is bizarre

like not just people who never really looked into sources or whatever and didn't really think about there being multiple versions of myths, but people who think that all of those sources came from like one definite True Source of All Myths that was just oral or something so its lost to time but there is definitely One True and Absolute way that all of these myths are supposed to be and they just got messed up over time

[yea-baiyi]

i’m sure people smarter than me have said this, but the odyssey is the sequel to the monomyth actually. in the hero’s journey the hero departs from home, from innocence, from safety, to fulfil his destiny. in homer’s the odyssey, the war is over, the destiny fulfilled. next comes the real fight, the unwinnable fight—to return to everything you left home to fight for.

in the first half of the poem, while odysseus fights tooth and nail to return home, his home fights with its last breath to give odysseus a home to return to. and time is running out. his wife penelope is down to her last desperate excuse. suitors have invaded his home, eating through his household and his wealth. his son, telemachus, almost grown, leaves home for the first time to find out if odysseus is still alive, if there is still a reason to keep fighting. having lost everything he had, over and over, odysseus is finally allowed to arrive in his homeland. at first he doesn’t recognise it. and he is cursed to look old and decrepit, so that none of his loved ones would recognise him.

for the second half of the poem, he has returned and miraculously, he has not been displaced or forgotten. but now he has to reclaim what was his. and removing the rot, restoring this place to the home odysseus remembers, is long and painful. instead of walking through the front door, he must sneak in through the back or risk being thrown out. not a single person knows him by sight; odysseus must prove his identity over and over, to every member of his household. he must retell story after story, share secret after secret, reveal every marking or scar upon his body, to finally be recognised by his own family. and then he destroys every last trace of the intruders—kills the men, kills the servants, wipes the slate clean.

by athena’s magic, he is restored to his former youth and glory as he reunites with his wife. the families of the slain suitors try to seek revenge, but zeus, lord of the skies, intervenes. odysseus, filled with his god-given strength, is home, and ready to fight to protect it.

it’s a complete sequel to the heroes journey, but what makes it part of the monomyth is the horrible truth about odysseus’ tale: that it’s impossible. that you will leave, and your home will change in your absence, and someone might fill your place; your family won’t recognise you, your wife met someone else, intruders have destroyed your home, and you will never be as young as you were. you will return and you will fight with every ounce of your strength and it won’t be enough to turn back the clock. it’s the terrible last chapter to every hero’s story that we don’t like to talk about.

and yet, of course, it’s the same story we tell over and over: we’ve won the war, now all we want is to return home, but home is no longer somewhere we can reach.

[gods-favorite-autistic]

Today my English teacher said puss in boots was an anti-hero archetype and like???? No he’s not????? How did you decide this????

[1ore]

of course i continue to rotate that beast in my mind. tamahuaq thoughts because i can't catch a break to draw hardly anything of substance

It would be very funny if Tamahuaq’s ability to parasitize others was limited to gods, endlings, and mages, because they all have exposed/dissociated “souls” to some degree, and Tamahuaq eats god’s blood i.e. “souls” i.e. metaphysical bodyjuice. One (1) human normie walks into Old Sond and the plantfungus loses it. doesn’t know what to do. Heterotrophs are so SCARY!!!!!!!!!!!

Tamahuaq’s emotional world is made of many bodies that are only kinda assimilated into one body. I think it is big enough that it can’t really afford to centralize physically or mentally. So it can pass around impulses and selectively access information from different parts of its network, but if one daughter colony is cut off from the main mass, that physical/emotional/mental space is typically lost to the rest of the body.

Being a part of Tamahuaq is frightening, not because one is a passenger to its hunger against their will or anything like that, but because Tamahuaq is like an echo chamber for one’s own fears and desires. Most of the gods imprisoned in Sond are already resentful of their wardens, if not certifiably off the shitts in pain, so they are already primed to lash out. but they don’t realize how far they’ll go until they’re taken out of it.

IDK how the endlings extract gods and other beings from Tamahuaq, but I think it might be as simple as cutting off that “limb” and peeling off as much plantmycelium as they can. At a certain point, there just isn’t enough Tamahuaq to functionally feed anymore. I think Tamahuaq (or rather its satellite flesh?) self-terminates or jumps hosts when it can no longer justify hitching a ride on that particular host.

The constant risk of losing satellite limbs brushes shoulders with its need to explore and forage, so it has become very efficient at partitioning itself into smaller spaces using simple directives and selective memories to puppet a scout around. A lot of these satellite bodies carry a basic compulsion to get back to the rest of the body at some point, but are also less coordinated and easier to dissociate.

Because of the Boiling Rage shared by its primary food source, Tamahuaq is thought to be hateful and angry and generally motivated by revenge. But it isn’t, inherently. It is apparently able to exploit anger and other emotions-- or at least transmit emotional memories-- but whether human emotions are intelligible to it, or it has just learned thru pattern recognition how to get what it needs is hard to say. It does have its own interior emotional world, but it has been largely diluted by its hosts (and is difficult to understand outside of basic needs like “I don’t want to die” and “I am so hungry all of the time”) For his part, the Tamahuaq depicted in oral tradition is anthropomorphized and has ~human-like motivations.

(in reality Tamahuaq is like a vessel of the pain of his ancient enemy, the very first endling, beloved folk hero twisted by resentment when betrayed and locked up in Sond as Tamahua's keeper. but we will not discuss him further.)

When the endlings do finally succeed in cutting out the “heart” of Tamahuaq—its original body and the closest thing to a central “brain” that it has—the rest of it rapidly dissociates into smaller and smaller functional parts, and decays. Tamahuaq’s psyche also shrinks in a rather violent and disorienting way, as trahearnexpy finds out. This sudden smallness is AHHHH VERY SCARY to the plantfungus, and it loses many of its formative memories that have been scattered across this wider network. Its sensory world shrinks, too, in that its funnie plantmonster body is experiencing the world thru touch, taste, smell, and some rudimentary thermoception, where it used to be able to sense. Probably anything it wanted. I think this is part of why it clamps down on tree boy and does not let go. You WILL interpret the world for me (because im too scared and small ahhhhhh I cant do it myself )))): )

eventually it learns the power of love and being small, but in the mean time it is so scared of heterotrophs. It is so scared of heterotrophs. It is so scared of h

[utilitycaster]

ah yes the hero's journey:

300 pages of elaborate worldbuilding

Call to adventure (father and only friend ritually sacrificed while you were busy flipping and reversing an attempted assassination)

Supernatural emotional support animal

Eldritch cowherding

Eating rats

Depression

Running into your two worst siblings

Suicidal depression

Gnome with sweet prosthetic hammer hands

[vbookfangeek]

CHARACTER CREATOR CHEWSDAY!

She's about to show you the WILDEST 4 hour long video essay.

PICREW LINK

[onewomancitadel]

I say this as someone who lurked in the trenches cross-sites since Volume 1. I know. people. are never. happy.

[k-she-rambles]

Today in "I cannot believe I actually had to say this:"

The Lord of the Rings is not divinely inspired, at least not in THAT way. It's not an elaborate and intentional metaphor for higher truth except in the way all art and creativity is either. Jrrt would fight you

[unhinged-summer-fun]

just realized “I’ve written a prophecy” is hilarious when talking about farmer Joel because the prophet Joel tells a story of redemption and judgment day and purification and restoration and bounty and fruitfulness and hordes of armies that destroy and consume hundreds of times over and the wrath of a god who is vengeful and awesome in that old testament kinda way

in the context of this story, Joel absolutely refuses the call for several years even though literally everything is like. PAY ATTENTION DUDE PLEASE

if I end up calling this fic ‘the book of joel’ literally express ship a fist to my jaw

[tillman]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO the FUCKIGN heros JEOURNEY NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[toskarin]

I think the thing that broke me fully from the grip of the monomyth was a youtube video where someone argued that Bloodborne was an example of the hero's journey, but their explanation made it very clear that not only did they not understand the events of the game, but their misunderstanding also didn't fit the monomyth either, and the top comment was like "maybe it's not a good idea to analyze works through the lens of campbell that weren't explicitly written to follow his formula?"

the funniest part (and by funniest I mean most irritating) is that The Hero with a Thousand Faces keeps adding caveats to the monomyth even as it's presenting its best examples to the reader

"okay so this story doesn't apply exactly, but you can simplify it!" is putting in a heroic effort to smokescreen for how the monomyth is stretched so thin that it actually applies to nearly zero myths written before its publication if you don't significantly simplify the myth and then look the other way when it still doesn't quite fit

it's actually headache-inducing to think about how many young writers are taught about the hero's journey without the disclaimer that it's nonsense. internet horoscopes ask for less suspension of disbelief

[cryptotheism]

You seem (based on your online persona blah blah blah) that you would be super into the Hero's journey if you were an English student

Fuck Campbell and his stupid Jungian monomyth shit.

[comradekatara]

aang's not your typical warrior hero. he's a decolonial hero - a trickster one - in the mold of anansi (hugely reminiscent) and br'er rabbit. and that's why i love him

yeah!!! aang is very much a trickster who uses his opponent's aggression against them, sometimes without even lifting a finger ("ahoy! i'm admiral zhao!!!") and people who expect him to be idk. beowulf. are missing the fucking point. katara, on the other hand, does model the classical western hero more faithfully. unlike aang, who never wanted this responsibility, she is someone who fantasizes about being a hero, saving people, going on quests, etc. and her arc most resembles the so-called "monomyth" (i hate you joseph campbell) or "hero's journey." however, it is somewhat complicated by the fact that her apotheosis does involve her shedding that carefully constructed narrative she has told herself to survive in favor of expanding it somewhat, allowing for shades of grey that acknowledge the humanity of all involved parties, including herself. and then zuko is typically regarded as something of a byronic hero, although i'd contest that notion simply because so much of his character is about striving for a goodness that is just out of reach, rather than relaxing his code of honor out of moral lassitude (most of the time, stolen ostrich horses excluded). so it's not that they're not all classical heroes with very concrete and defined heroic arcs, but katara is the most [culturally] typical formulation of heroism, which is something that people largely refuse to recognize for the simple fact that she is a girl. alas.

[wellofdean]

OK, I was going to reblog this excellent post by @luckshiptoshore so go read it, because yes. Yes!! YES!!! But then when I got started my post got super long and I felt bad tacking it onto her post and decided to make my own in response to these tags:

#i am actually a bit obsessed by the whole hunting as queerness metaphor#it’s so clearly something everyone involved in the show is thinking about#supernatural

Gurl, me too! Like go back to the start! By the time Supernatural began, the backlash against the Joseph Campbell Monomyth-style mode of storytelling had already begun in the hallowed halls of USC film school, and yo: I was there at the time of Kripke's graduation, and my best friends from college are full scale big giant time filmmakers now, whose names I will not share on main because it's uncool, and I don't want that attention, but... yeah. I am referencing FIRST HAND SOURCES on this.

But, for a real source? The Oxford English Dictionary places the first use of the term "Queer Theory" in 1990, with Queer Studies as an option in the academy by 1992. I know the kids think it's a new-fangled thing, but Kripke graduated USC in 1996 (I graduated in 1995) and it was ALL THE RAGE by then. My friends read queer theory in their Critical Studies courses in the Film School, I read it in the College of Humanities getting my degree in Literature. By that time, you could not get through that school with any degree in any non-STEM subject without knowing about ye olde postmodern lenses, queer and feminist theory, and without knowing how to employ those lenses.

Queer refers to sexuality, yes, but the word's earliest use (again, according to the OED) is in the 1500's, meaning: strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric. Also: of questionable character; suspicious, dubious.

So, ok, in 2005, Enter Supernatural, episode 1:

Presented? Two brothers. One actively seeking credit in the straight world that is not available to him in the bosom of his family: Stanford, law school, hot co-ed girlfriend, the other bound to his fractured, wounded family by duty, yes, but also by love, living on the fringe, alone, fighting monsters, and chasing after his father's approval, and who has long since given up any dream of being 'normal'. Episode 1 presents Sam's call to adventure, which he refuses when it's just familial duty, honor and love calling him, but accepts when the show takes a very straightforward and very telling path by classically fridging his woman. Ok, now he's on board. Like John, whose motivation is another dead woman, his motivation is revenge. So far so straight!

Dean though: he's different. He is already on the adventure and he was not 'called' or given the option of accepting or refusing because he had no agency when his feet were set upon this road. He does not fit the straight world at all, because he is cobbled together out of love, duty, deep guilt, striving, desperation and fear. This is who he is now, in some elemental, incontrovertible way. It was not a choice for him, he was born to it. His mother is dead, and we later learn, she made the choices that brought them all to this fate. Dean remembers her idyllically, but he is not motivated by revenge, more than any other thing, he wants to be worthy. He wants his father's approval, his brother's love.

Enter Supernatural's main theme: fucked up relationships between men enmeshed in patriarchy, which will eventually expand to include fucking GOD HIMSELF.

And like, there are SO MANY CLEAR STEPS ALONG THE ROAD in season one, and I am not even talking about sexuality and gender here, but there is SO MUCH TO SAY about it in season 1. But I am not talking about that -- I am talking at a structural, narrative level, the whole thing is just fucking all the way queered, yo.

The big climax?

At the end of the season, Dean says: "I just want my family back together. You, me, Dad... it's all I have." He is Sam's mother, John's partner! His vulnerability and emotion is feminized and contrasted with Sam and John's more overtly driven by their more masculine/straight heroic revenge quest. John: "Sam and I can get pretty obsessed, but you always take care of this family." Only that's not John talking, it's Azazel, and Dean knows it is because his father would never forgive how soft he is, how he will always choose love and family over revenge. Then, in the end, the show makes a huge point of telegraphing that Sam is finally aligning with Dean by refusing to shoot Azazel because he's possessing John, and Sam just can't do that to Dean.

Sam and Dean are thus bound together and cemented into a marginalised path, living on the road, haunting liminal spaces and cheap motels, confronting the monstrous everyday. Sam is presented as the brains of the operation, he does research, logics his way through things (masculine) while Dean is the heart who acts impulsively and on instinct and intuition (feminine).

It later transpires that Sam has a piece of the monster inside himself, and Dean has to learn to love the monstrous, he has no choice, because Sam is his brother and then Cas... and, and, and!

Like... I could go on and on, citing ENDLESS EXAMPLES. This could be a literal book. Maybe one you need to read with a magnifying glass like my condensed edition of the OED. LIke, the queerness of Supernatural is DIZZYING and MYRIAD.

But basically? FROM THE START, hunting is a queered version of family, and within that, Dean is a queered version of a Campbellian hero. Hunting is a metaphor for otherness and liminality, and that's even before you say a WORD about sex. It starts in deviation from the norms of family, masculinity and expands from there on so many levels both in story and on a meta level. The story is flesh on queer fucking bones.

I'm so sorry, but anyone who thinks queerness was not BAKED INTO Supernatural and more specifically into Dean from DAY 1 has clearly never seen Dean's insane lip gloss in season 1, and vastly underestimates the cultural awareness of people who write shit in Hollywood, and also the other people who put pink lip gloss on pretty boys in Hollywood. Nothing that gets on your screen wasn't a fucking choice made and approved by a LONG LIST of people who know what they are about.

[eryelshest]

hbomberguy: "Plagiarism is to be assumed to be everywhere, fact check everyone, hold people who plagiarise accountable", 4h

Todd: "distrust everything that seems kinda fishy. Fact check everything to be sure, hold people who spread lies and made-up bullshit accountable", 2h

Aranock and Jessie Gender: "the monomyth ("The Hero's Journey") that massively got popularised by Star Wars is fascist and misogynistic to the core. It is everywhere nowadays and drowns out any other kind of storytelling. George Lucas is undeservedly held up as a genius and always look for what a story sets out to teach you. Take history into account for past movies. No movie is disconnected from its time and none is apolitical. Be critical of your media consumption. Also neoliberalism and fascism need and feed into each other and maybe we should start using another political ideology to break out of the ever repeating decay.", 6h