#myth-making

[astranemus]

Heroes are myths.  There are no heroes in Dune, at least not in the indefinite sense.  The Dune series understands that being a hero is not a trait that one possesses, but a fleeting, transitory experience that one embodies for a period of time... Buying into your own myth leaves you unable to evaluate your shortcomings and acknowledge your wrongs.

Quinn’s Ideas, Dune Philosophy: The Most Evil Emperor

[itsevidentvery]

The Good War

How America’s infatuation with World War II has eroded our conscience.

[principleofplenitude]

I have said elsewhere that we have to make myths of our lives, the point being that if we do, then every grief or inexplicable seizure by weather, woe, or work can—if we discipline ourselves and think hard enough—be turned to account, be made to yield further insight into what it is to be alive, to be a human being, what the hazards are of a fairly usual, everyday kind. We go up to Heaven and down to Hell a dozen times a day—at least, I do. And the discipine of work provides an exercise bar, so that the wild, irrational motions of the soul become formal and creative. It literally keeps one from falling on one's face. [...] [on another day] I see my own function as quietly destroying myths, even those of my own making, in order to come closer and closer to reality and to accepting reality.

—May Sarton, from Journal of a Solitude (1973)

[theeditorandnarratorcollaborate]

GABBLER RECOMMENDS: Why Are We So Resistant to the Idea of a Modern Myth?

GABBLER RECOMMENDS: Why Are We So Resistant to the Idea of a Modern Myth?

‘Experts, I fear, aren’t much help here. You can collect academic definitions for as long as your patience lasts. “The word myth,” as Northrop Frye rightly says, “is used in such a bewildering variety of contexts that anyone talking about it has to say first of all what his chosen context is.” Folklorist Liz Locke put it more bluntly in 1998: “such a state of semantic disarray and/or ambiguity is…

View On WordPress

[patbertram]

Doing the Best We Can

Doing the Best We Can

Yesterday was the third anniversary of my older brother’s death. He’d been homeless, possibly bipolar, and driven by rage. As another sibling said, “I will probably always be tormented by thoughts of the torture his demons inflicted upon him.” We are a myth-making species, and the myth another sibling has adopted is that our homeless brother took upon himself the demons that haunted our family…

View On WordPress

[ksandulak]

Man That Bites: An analysis of Vampires in the myth-making process

Man That Bites: An analysis of Vampires in the myth-making process

Vampires have taken different forms throughout history and have developed from demon possessed corpses to shiny iridescent heart throbs. Early vampire folk lore was a means to justify an unknown aspect of health but also sexual transgression. In modern representations of vampires such as the Vampire Diaries or Twilight, vampirism represents a sense of otherness and represents a growing desire…

View On WordPress

[twilight-systems]

So, was no one going to tell me about the Mythopoeia genre, or was I just supposed to stumble across it on Wikipedia?