Dear writers, don’t try and protect your readers.
I was raised on Shakespeare and Esop’s Fables and folklore from around the world. I read Dracula when I was ten, knew dozens of obscure Slavic tales and could rattle off any Norse myth if you asked me to. Can I still do that? Not really. Or at least, not like I used to. But does that mean stories are any less important in my life?
I’ve learned more from stories than I ever could from teachers, parents and every other guiding adult in my life. Most people were rather perturbed at the thought of a child being raised on Norse and Greek myths - both had their reputation - but it was the Norse ones that really stuck in people’s craw. The varied mythos of the Norsemen is not somewhere you would go for joy or fun. They’re dark, gritty and full of harrowing adventures. While at least the gods of the Greeks were petty, proud and insatiable, there wasn’t much to alleviate the cold truth in Norse myths. For the people of Northern Europe, the land itself was grown from an act of murder; Odin and his brothers killed Ymir and used his body to make the world.
Of all of them, however, Loki was the greatest teacher. He did terrible things and was often forced into redemption by acts of bloody threat. (I’ll never forget the line “If you do not get her back, Loki, I shall crack your ribcage like the wings of a falcon and flay the flesh from your bones.”). When he wanted to be kind, he was a force of loyalty and love; when he wanted to be petty or cruel, he was the biggest threat that the Asgardians would ever have to reckon with. He fathered the monsters that would one day end the world. He lay with giants and Asgardians alike, and at the end settled for the goddess of fertility and bonds as his wife. The people who breathed Loki’s mythology into being didn’t care whether or not he was problematic, or toxic, or how complex he was - and that made him the best of the Asgardians in my eyes.
We all knew from the very beginning that Loki would be punished for his actions, and we knew that none of it really mattered because whatever happened, fate was inevitable. As a child, I saw the Asgardians presented with this bloody, brutal end that they couldn’t escape, and was amazed by their indifference. The whole point was that good or bad, death came everyone. Ragnarok did not discriminate, and not everyone would be held accountable for their actions.
All of that has made the basis for the way that I think and go through life. And you know what? The “child-safe” versions would never have had that same impact. If in school we had been taught that Apollo liked both men and women, that sometimes the good are punished for doing the right thing, that the right thing isn’t easy but usually worth it, that pride in your actions is not a sin but hating others for their pride is? Many children would grow up with a healthier view of the world.
How many of you knew that Arachne was turned into a spider, not because of her pride, but because Athena was too proud herself to accept that Ariachne’s love of her work was justified? Being turned into a spider was an act of mercy after Arachne’s fear of Athena’s wrath caused her to hang herself. “You can create beauty forever now,” read one line of this variation, with Athena torn apart by guilt. That myth taught children that adults are not infallible and that challenging them is okay.
People were given voices or helped to find them by thousands of years of stories, unconcerned by how appropriate they were or what the content was. They trusted one another’s critical skills and held no illusions, and looked to their tales for guidance. Those myths and legends weren’t there to make a point, but to explain the point in the clearest, most unapologetic terms possible.
So tell your story how you want to tell it; not how you feel you should tell it - and I promise you, it will change someone’s life.
titsay
izzy806
baratheonpilled
annaxmalina
kaledo-art
janainaart
