Quote from: Bob Something;1066296People's understanding of mythology is very limited and heavily affected by the imitations of imitations of the imitated misunderstanding that is pop culture. This get more and more true the more the creature is obscure and lack concrete written sources.

I continue what I said before... it took me all of five minutes to learn about the extremely obscure "moon woman" aka "Selenetidae." She's a woman who lays eggs that hatch into giants. Her name is derived from the Greek/Latin selene "moon" + -ites "belonging to" + -ides "son of", meaning something along the lines of "child of moonstone."

There are now entire wikis dedicated to cataloging obscure mythical creatures. The reliability is questionable at best, but Google Books can provide reliable sources based on the names alone.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1066290And fiction in general. Plenty of complaints about Norse mythology in the Marvelverse.

  Have they started accusing Dante yet?

Who's to say the writer don't know the original myth? It's possible they do and just wanted to get creative (for good or bad) with the source material. Keep on blogging and writing material you think is fun and accurate and gamable. We need more of that.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066285Do a google image search of "wendigo" and you'll notice the majority of the images are of zombie weredeer.

There's no creature in Algonquin myth matching that criteria, but it has the most similarity to the Rugaru of Metis myth. Which, as I said, was influenced by the French werewolf.

1: Do a google search of Marvel Wendigo and the majority are of this.



2: and that description matches your description of what the wendigo really is right at the start of your pose. Are you invalidating your own statement?

3: I did mention pre-3e D&D. No Wendigo in the original FF. Nor in the 2e FF.

The 3e Wendigo fits loosely some NA descriptions attributed to monster. A possessing spirit and its undead appearance in some descriptions. Not sure where they get the deer head though.

Quote from: Bob Something;1066296People's understanding of mythology is very limited and heavily affected by the imitations of imitations of the imitated misunderstanding that is pop culture. This get more and more true the more the creature is obscure and lack concrete written sources.

This is true wven without pop culture. Myths and myth creatures mutate over time or migrate to other cultures with similar elements.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066272Seriously, what gives? The original wendigo was awesome specifically because of its status as a Satan-figure within the context of the Algonquin culture and life, but modern writers have turned it into a generic monster devoid of meaning.

Most modern horror writing pays little attention to the original mythology of a monster. Zombies, werewolves, and vampires in modern fiction bear little resemblance to their original depictions - I don't see why wendigos would be any different.

That said, I would agree that adaptations haven't been very compelling, which is the real problem. Cannibalism is a powerful taboo that people are easily fascinated by. I think the popularity of the Hannibal Lector franchise speaks to that. But yeah, the wendigo hasn't been a cool monster when I think it could be. I think the core of the horror is in the situation - being starving on the edge of wilderness, and turning to eating people and becoming a monster as a result.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066297Writers need to actually know the original myths, since there's no excuse in the age of Wikipedia and Google Books. They should at least do something to disambiguate their creations so that readers aren't confused by the massive disparity between the game monster and the myths that everyone is familiar with.

Or I can say "Nah, a brine demon with eels for hair that turns those who gaze upon it into statues made of salt is a way more interesting Gorgon/Medusa concept for my setting."

Myths make great starting points, but my world isn't Mythic Greece and 'fallen divine being who turns you into a statue (of salt)' is close enough for the term Medusa or Gorgon to be applied to it as a monster entry even its not just one of only three sisters and, by rights, should have long ago been killed and its head used by Perseus if it was the ACTUAL Medusa.

The gorgon mythos is interesting, because there is of course the original Greek version, but a later mythic version also shares the name but sometimes goes by catoblepas, its found in Ethiopian mythology. Which in D&D is yet a third creature. The same is true for cockatrice and basilisk--which are considered the same creature in folklore, but D&D made them two things. Plus, lets look at stirge/strigia, striges which are sometimes considered the same creature, and other times completely different, its a very regional specific thing, and likely all descend from an older mythological source that changed as the common ancestors with the well "original" myth split and became separated by time and region.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066272So the wendigo is a nebulous winter demon of Algonquin religion that drives people to cannibalism, and much like Satan in Christianity it exists to illustrate all-important moral lessons. The tribe is all and greed leads to demonic possession, murder and cannibalism.

So why is it when the wendigo is misappropriated by non-Algonquin writers...

Seriously, what gives? The original wendigo was awesome specifically because of its status as a Satan-figure within the context of the Algonquin culture and life, but modern writers have turned it into a generic monster devoid of meaning.

Except in Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning. Probably one of the best Werewolf movies I have ever watched. There was a Wendigo in it as well.

https://tubitv.com/movies/447873/ginger_snaps_back_the_beginning

Based on your examples the Wendigo has obviously been misrepresented. However, I'm intrigued.

You should write up a Wendigo, in your system of choice, and share. I would be interested to see what the mythologically-accurate Wendigo looks like. Also, some of the other creatures in that list would be interesting to see "done right", especially with the contrast of the correct Wendigo write-up.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066297I guess so?

Writers need to actually know the original myths, since there's no excuse in the age of Wikipedia and Google Books. They should at least do something to disambiguate their creations so that readers aren't confused by the massive disparity between the game monster and the myths that everyone is familiar with.

Why should they do that?

Mythological creatures are names. They convey some archetypal ideas. A minotaur is a bull-headed creature. A giant is a big creature. But at the end of the day, they're names. They invoke a sense of other and a sense of familiarity all at once - they're things we're vaguely aware of in our cultural consciousness, but they're not real. So they sound more... plausible, I suppose, to us, than inventing new terminology whole-cloth.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066297That's a perfect example. Most people know that Medusa is a gorgon and that gorgons are snake-haired monstresses. Most people do not imagine the gorgon as a scaly bull that exhales toxic gas.

The D&D version of a gorgon is an interesting example, in that it actually comes from a quite old text from the 1600s.

Quote from: The History of Four-Footed BeastsOf the GORGON or strange Lybian Beast

Among the manifold and divers sorts of Beasts which are bred in Africk, it is thought that the Gorgon is brought forth in that Countrey. It is a fearful and terrible beast to behold, it it hath high and thick eye-lids, eyes not very great, but much like an Oxes or Bugils, but all flery-bloudy, which neither look directly forward; nor yet upwards, but continually down to the earth, and there∣fore are called in Greek, Catobleponta. From the crown of their head down to their nose they have a long hanging mane, which make them to look fearfully. It eateth deadly and poysonful herbs, and if at any time he see a Bull or other creature whereof he is afraid, he presently causeth his mane to stand upright, and being so lifted up, opening his lips, and gaping wide, sendeth forth of his throat a certain sharp and horrible breath, which infecteth and poysoneth the air above his head, so that all living creatures which draw in the breath of that air are grievously afflicted thereby, losing both voyce and sight, they fall into lethal and deadly Convulsions. It is bred in Hesperia and Lybia.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066297I've posted numerous articles to my blog complaining about how fantasy gaming gets the myths wrong and how much cooler the monsters would be if they were actually based on the original myth.

Giants, for example. In D&D they're just big humans, sometimes with elemental powers. In myth they have snakes for legs, the bodies of giant wolves, and other crazy awesome stuff that you never see in D&D.

Likewise for trolls. In D&D they're green regenerating brutes. In myth they ranged in size from dwarves to mountains, have tails, turn to stone in sunlight, variable numbers of heads and limbs, and tons of other crazy awesome stuff you never see in D&D.

"Cooler" is relative. The mythical meaning of "troll", for example, is almost as useless as the mythical meaning of "elf" or "faerie"... It basically just means "supernatural whotsit". And mythical giants were sometimes also just big humans - the giant of Jack and the Beanstalk, for example, or you could go all the way back to biblical accounts of "giants", which were, again, essentially just big people.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066297That's not a remotely decent excuse in the age of Wikipedia and Google Books. Now it takes a few seconds, maybe a minute or two, to find reliable sources on these things.

If a person is trying to specifically get things right, and trying to make a believable world based on specific myths, great, that's wonderful. But if all they need is a name for their fantasy beast in a high fantasy setting that has nothing to do with the culture that beast is drawn from, why would I even expect accuracy? I mean, if I'm adventuring in the ruins of a Deep-Dwarf city on the world of , why would I expect to run into a mythologically-accurate monster unique to, say, Greek mythology?

Quote from: Mind Crime;1066300Who's to say the writer don't know the original myth? It's possible they do and just wanted to get creative (for good or bad) with the source material. Keep on blogging and writing material you think is fun and accurate and gamable. We need more of that.

I thinking adding to the myth is fine, but contradicting its intent is a waste of the myth. (EDIT: If you are inverting the myth for the purposes of satire, such as depicting the minotaur as the protagonist, that's fine though.)

For example, the Greek minotaur was trapped in a maze. In D&D, they can solve any mazes. The change is bad because it contradicts the intent of the myth.

So I changed that by making the maze into something that is part of the minotaur curse. Every minotaur has their own maze that they can never escape.

Quote from: trechriron;1066322Based on your examples the Wendigo has obviously been misrepresented. However, I'm intrigued.

You should write up a Wendigo, in your system of choice, and share. I would be interested to see what the mythologically-accurate Wendigo looks like. Also, some of the other creatures in that list would be interesting to see "done right", especially with the contrast of the correct Wendigo write-up.

As a product of oral folklore, there isn't one wendigo. There are multiple myths of "Ice Cannibals." http://www.native-languages.org/ice-cannibal.htm

The details vary wildly, even within a single culture. Sometimes the ice cannibals are giants or werewolves, have hearts of ice, melt above freezing temperatures, are the result of demonic possession, a primordial race, a single demonic entity, etc. They could a fill a bestiary by themselves.

I even found obscure references to a cult of windigokan or "cannibal dancers" who, despite what the name might imply, are healers and exorcists. They hunt wendigos and other demons.

Without exaggeration, you could write an entire sourcebook about this stuff.

Quote from: Mind Crime;1066287If you applied that evenly across the board, wouldn't that eliminate a large chunk of RPG material?

To be fair, as a Catholic I have a similar problem with how many RPGs tend to treat Judeo-Christian angels.

It's the prerogative of a game designer who doesn't share my beliefs to tailor their concepts in his own RPG for his own sense of drama, of course, but it's likewise my prerogative to not play those RPGs and to complain loudly about what's been distorted when someone asks me why. Or even, as demonstrated, when nobody asks for my opinion at all.

For a more helpful depiction of the specific monster complained about, the 1999 film Ravenous, starring Guy Pearce and Robert Carlyle, is a little-known but genuinely creepy examination of the Windigo concept that seems to be a lot closer to what he's looking to see.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066397For example, the Greek minotaur was trapped in a maze. In D&D, they can solve any mazes. The change is bad because it contradicts the intent of the myth.

 sour.

This doesn't seem like a good reason for saying the change is bad. All that matters is if the change is interesting, fun on its own or has something about it that makes it work in game.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1066410This doesn't seem like a good reason for saying the change is bad. All that matters is if the change is interesting, fun on its own or has something about it that makes it work in game.

The overwhelming majority of the time the changes are not interesting, not fun on their own and never make the monster "work." The changes are made for the sake of change rather than because they serve any actual purpose.

Continuing the minotaur example, the myth explained why the minotaur existed and why it was in a maze. It goes all the way back to Crete's bullfighting culture and the family tree of King Minos. King Minos was the son of Zeus in the form of a bull, he was nursed by a magic cow as a baby, his kingdom was decorated with bull imagery, he refused to sacrifice a white bull gifted to him by Poseidon, Poseidon cursed his wife to screw the bull, the wife gave birth to a hideous half-bull half-man abomination, it was named Minotaur meaning "Bull of Minos," Minos commissioned Daedalus to build an inescapable maze to contain the minotaur, Minos demanded a tithe of seven or so virgins of both genders from the cities he defeated in battle to be sacrificed to the minotaur, a hero shows up and slays the monster, etc. It's all very anthropological.

The monster manual stripped all that away and turned the minotaur into a generic murderous monster which has weird behavior with absolutely zero explanation or justification. It is half-man half-bull, eats human flesh, and lives in mazes for no apparent reason. They also worship the made-up pagan deity Baphomet (very loosely based on the Islamic prophet Mohamed) because it has a bull's head despite sharing zero symbolism in common with the Crete culture.