Category Archives: Observations

Mythology World Tour, Observations, Writing

Mythology World Tour: The Amazigh – They’re Everywhere

A few months ago I started my mythological world tour with the premise that fantasy, specifically epic fantasy, was usually fairly Euro-centric. The basic premise was to start pointing at different regions of the world, selecting a handful of interesting stories, and wetting your appetite for the concept of possibly using these regions in your own writing. It’s gone well – I’ve covered Asia, Australia, and Egypt. But then I ran into a really strange speed-bump.

Kush
And believe me, if they build a speed bump in that region it’s sturdy and painful

The region around Egypt has several other cultures that have existed there, some of them absorbed into what we’ll refer to as the “Crusade belt” and thus folded into the greater fantasy genre already. But others are a little more confusing and a little more subtle. For instance, the kingdom of Kush to the south of Egypt was for a very long time considered to actually just be a subset of Egypt. Only in recent times has Kush been considered by some scholars to be a distinct group of people who had a culture sufficiently different enough to be worth study. This means that even if I wanted to talk about Kush’s culture, there’s no real information for me to use except: “it’s, kind of like Egypt, but not.” On the other hand, another culture existed to the west of Egypt in what is now modern day Libya known by many as the Berbers but referring to themselves as the Amazigh. And the story of the Amazigh is… complicated.

berbers1
Like I said, Africa has a lot of skin tones.

Honestly, how the fuck do I explain the Amazigh?

I considered skipping the Amazigh and declaring that Egypt was enough to cover what could be called “North Africa”. But looking into them made me realize just how stupid the Euro-centric model in epic fantasy actually is. Over the course of thousands of years, the Amazigh were kind of a melting pot and test-bed of cultures from all around their corner of the Mediterranean. Not sharing the background of how these cultures intermixed would be allowing the process to be ignored and let people miss the fact that all of these cultures are interconnected on some level.

berber-pyramid
They even had pyramids… round ones.

So today I’m going to do something a little different and discuss more about how things can be the same, rather than different… Continue reading Mythology World Tour: The Amazigh – They’re Everywhere →

Observations, Writing, WTF

Legend of Korra: Victim of Casual Stupid

Years ago, the basic cable channel Nickelodeon took a risk on an animated series brought to them by a pair of guys with a 10 minute pilot film produced by a Korean animation studio. The product they got was Avatar: The Last Airbender – one of the most original American animation projects in decades. Frankly, Nickelodeon executives weren’t sure what they had at the time. So it made sense that they only paid only for the first 7 episodes with further episodes to be determined as they went. It soon extended the order to 14 and, before long, ended up with 60 episodes for a series that had been an unknown quantity not long before.

It was a smash hit.

Nickelodeon suddenly had a series that was regularly garnering 4 million viewers an episode, with the final episodes reaching a spectacular 5 million viewers – unheard of for basic cable, especially animation. With charm, style and a more inclusive world view featuring the cultures of many races and religions, Avatar was easily one of the biggest surprise hits of its time. And it came to an end on an incredible high note, leaving everyone, especially the fans, wondering what was to come from the creative minds that brought it to the screen.

Then there was an unfortunate detour: a man who shall remain nameless was put at the helm of a live action movie. And, in ironic fashion, despite being of Indian descent, the man at the helm decided to make decidedly darker characters surprisingly white. Combined with a bad screenplay, stilted dialogue, horrible acting, broken direction, and a hefty dose of exposition – the movie bombed. The very feel of the franchise was gone, washed away in the director’s ego and mismanagement of the film. And, worse, the producers mismanaged it as well by handing it to him in the first place. Fans were, needless to say, not happy.

But then good news was on the horizon and the original creators were back with a brand new story in the same world. They introduced us to Korra, the next Avatar and the reincarnation of Aang, the protagonist of the first series. Korra was tough, energetic, enthusiastic and brimming with personality. She was a strong female character done RIGHT and with a touch of understanding as to who the audience was and where the franchise could go to keep feeling fresh.

Unfortunately, Nickelodeon didn’t see it this way and decided that the series that brought them 5 million viewers the last time they aired it suddenly wasn’t trustworthy. They started to throttle the production of the series and downgraded it into a mini-series before eventually realizing this new chapter was just as popular as the last and green-lighting production of a full series.

Why did they strangle their franchise with indecisiveness? Well, according to at least two people behind the scenes: because Korra was a girl.

And the comedy of errors began… Continue reading Legend of Korra: Victim of Casual Stupid →

Mythology World Tour, Observations, WTF

Coming soon to Fo-…oops, cancelled

1 Comment

So as I’ve been making my way through mythologies of the world I’ve been aiming to try to point out that there are more sources to be used than the typical Eurocentric folklore that has dominated much of the fantasy genre. In the course of that, as of just this week I’ve covered Egypt and pointed out that it would be just a wonderful idea to use it because it could be used in literally any fashion you need to.

Imagine my surprise when it turned out that Fox had green-lit the production of a show called Hieroglyph, an ancient Egyptian fantasy series created by Travis Beacham of Pacific Rim fame. It was like TV was listening to me already, and apparently Fox was so in love with the concept and Travis’ work up to that point that they skipped right on past making the pilot and instead ordered a full 13 episodes to begin production immediately. There’s advertising for it already with promotional shots of the cast in full costume and looking all Egyptian and the first episode has already filmed and they’ve begun production on the next 12 episodes and-…

Oh, it’s cancelled already.

WTF Fox? Continue reading Coming soon to Fo-…oops, cancelled →

Mythology World Tour, Observations, Writing

Mythology World Tour: Lesser Known Egypt

1 Comment

As I prepared to dive into the topics of Africa’s mythology for the sake of tour of the world’s mythologies, I wondered whether or not I should actually cover Egypt. Egypt, being so closely associated to several empires that formed around the Mediterranean and Middle East, is one of the few places in Africa that we are familiar with in some fashion. But as I was considering it I realized that, despite our familiarity with who they are, we really have very little clue when it comes to their ancient religion.

In the west, we all know a few things about Egypt. First, we know they built pyramids and a sphinx that are iconic and have existed for so long that we wonder why we can’t get a cell-phone battery that doesn’t flake out on us in the modern day. Second, they believed cats were sacred, setting up the ground work for the internet as we know it. Third, they lived on the River Nile. Fourth, Cleopatra was, for a time, queen of the Nile, or queen of denial, depending on who you ask. And fifth, they worshipped the sun because you don’t want to anger that thing while living in the desert.

So, in the spirit of “the wisest man is the one who admits he knows nothing” I will now show you a handful of elements from Egyptian mythology that we in the west typically don’t hear anything about. So let’s begin today’s Alternate Mythology… Continue reading Mythology World Tour: Lesser Known Egypt →

Observations, Writing, WTF

WTF Wednesdays – HBO Couldn’t Adapt American Gods?

Neil Gaiman is a member of the nerd god pantheon. Though few of the mainstream know him by name, he’s definitely the Nerd Pantheon’s Hermes to Joss Whedon’s Poseidon (who can make a ship sink or sail with very little warning) and George R.R. Martin’s Hades (for he presides over grim shit and dead people). Gaiman is the nerdy trickster, whimsical, on the move, still providing wisdom from on high but mostly just creating things with a flair for batshit and little care for what could be considered normal. Gaiman is to books what Tim Burton is to movies (except he hasn’t overstayed his welcome and doesn’t have a fetish for Depp in white makeup).

Burton’s been doing this to Depp for decades.

So it makes sense that one of Gaiman’s most popular works is a novel talking about the modern interpretation and existence of gods. American Gods is a whimsical little take on modern society and the evolution of culture, with old gods adjusting to the modern society while new gods are born out of concepts such as the internet and television. It was a great premise and obviously ripe for the picking for a television adaptation. And, considering how well they’ve been doing with book adaptations on TV, everyone was kind of hyped when HBO picked it up.

Then HBO lost the option and said they couldn’t make the concept work… WTF? Continue reading WTF Wednesdays – HBO Couldn’t Adapt American Gods? →

Mythology World Tour, Observations

Introduction To Things That Want To Kill You (Australia)

1 Comment

Continuing our tour of world mythologies, let’s change it up a bit and move to a different continent, one that’s both more naturally dangerous and yet never produced a Genghis Khan figure… potentially because something ate him.

In the late 18th century, the American colonies did something that wasn’t exactly expected by the British Empire: they threw tea into the ocean. Now, to you and me this may sound like a minor offense, but the empire, being British, was gravely offended. By some accounts there was a skirmish afterwards and to this day we Americans only enjoy tea in ironic fashion like a nation of Hipsters.

But the end result left the British with a new found problem. You see, they hadn’t been using any of their own land for prisons. After all, who wants to live next to thieves, murderers and drunkards? So what they’d done for a long time was send them somewhere far from anything remotely looking like civilization: Georgia. This makes a great deal of sense – after all, to this day the only signs of human settlement in that region is the city looking thing you see out the windows as you come to and from their really big airport.

But with Georgia gone there was a need to send them somewhere else. That place had to be isolated, far from anything that remotely looked like civilization to prevent the prisoners from feeling human or like they mattered to the crown. It had to be unimportant to the empire so that they wouldn’t be taking up precious space from something like a tea crop or the shops where they made those powdered wigs. But, most importantly, to make sure that this place was punishment it had to be completely hostile to human life.

The answer came to them in a continent that had, to that point, only been known for being a peculiarity on sea maps that the Dutch had poked at a few times. Aside from that, very little was known about the place. After all, it’s hard to learn much when all you have are the terrified journal entries of the poor souls who’d wandered into the place like Jurassic Park. Still, before the bloodstains on the page it sounded like just the right place. So before long the prisoners were moved to their new home. Continue reading Introduction To Things That Want To Kill You (Australia) →