Mythology World Tour

The fantasy genre is a domain of great imagination and potential, drawing not only from personal creations but ancient religions and mythology, but at times it starts to feel a little well-trodden. Maybe it was the bombardment of at least 12 hours of Tolkien film (great as those hours were). Maybe it was the cheap knockoffs of those movies that got churned out in their wake.

I dare you to try to remember the name to this movie.

Or maybe it’s because almost all of the stories draw from the same basic lore.

As I started with in the last entry, I’m going to continue touring other regions of the world that aren’t part of the lands involved in the Crusades and give a small taste of what makes those places interesting source material too. With our last entry I pointed out a few interesting but often overlooked ideas from the far east with lore from China and Japan. But today, I move a little south of there and look into the regions more influenced by Hinduism. It’s time to take a look at…

Continue reading Mythology World Tour: South Asia →

One of the things that sometimes makes the fantasy genre a bit stagnant is the lack of new source material. There’s a lot of work required to just write a novel, movie or television series, let alone build your own mythology from scratch. So when you look at anything within the genre you’ll typically find they have all of the same earmarks and it can seem impossible to come out with something different.

The problem with that thinking is that we definitely haven’t tapped into all of the world’s mythologies. There’s still a lot of room for the genre to grow. In an effort to broaden my horizons, I often look to the world at large and see what exactly we’ve missed. Seeing all the great lore out there, I decided to share a small glimpse of the other interesting folklore, legends, and mythologies in the world. But first, let’s take a look at the problem…

Continue reading Mythology World Tour: Introduction and East Asia →