So 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 (and it IS misappropriation because for a century or so they were banned from practicing their own religion, so this is part of the many racist issues that first nations peoples still have to deal with today, but that's neither here nor there) it ends up not resembling the original myth at all?
Algernon Blackwood wrote a story titled "Wendigo," but whatever monster appeared in said story didn't act like a wendigo at all and seemed likely to be a particularly sadistic ijiraq (a creature from Inuit myth, not Algonquin).
President Theodore Roosevelt wrote another story titled "Wendigo," but the monster there didn't act like a wendigo either and seemed likely to be a territorial bigfoot or something.
Stephen King's "Pet Sematary" featured a so-called wendigo, but the creature acted like a Kandarian demon from the Evil Dead franchise.
Marvel Comics featured another so-called wendigo, but it was basically a werewolf or were-Sasquatch. Metis myth has the loosely similar "rugaru" (influenced by colonial French myth, name derived from French loup-garou or werewolf) but I doubt that's what they were going for.
The Hannibal television show featured another so-called wendigo, which obviously wasn't one and in this case it seemed to be a peryton. The peryton was actually a practical joke invented by the Book of Imaginary Beings and explicitly mentioned they originated from Atlantis.
In D&D the wendigo is flying furry cannibal dude, while Pathfinder adds horns and burns the feet into stumps.
Google searches are flooded with an absurd zombie weredeer meme that has nothing to do with the Algonquin religion. No joke, I see people conflating the wendigo with Celtic hunter gods and other stupidity.
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.
[video=youtube_share;wAtMlV5Rgwc]https://youtu.be/wAtMlV5Rgwc[/youtube]
Are you this offended by devils and demons in games? By the appropriation of creatures of Chistianity?
Honestly, this question sounds like a better fit for Tangency on npc.net.
It probably has to do with the comparative difficulty of research in the times the originals were written, and then later versions iterating on those rather than going back to the original source. The pinnacle of this may be Demogorgon, who, according to C. S. Lewis (cf. The Discarded Image), started off as a scribal error for 'Demiurge' before undergoing a transformation into divinity, Demon Prince, and TV monster.
I believe the version in Michael Surbrook's Ghouls, Ghosts and Golems for the HERO System (there transcribed as 'witiko') is rooted in the original mythology, though.
I was OK with the Wendigo featured in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer book. It was a possessed person that ate people. It also grew claws & fangs and regenerated like mad. Was it accurate to the myth? I frankly don't give a fuck.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066272Marvel Comics featured another so-called wendigo, but it was basically a werewolf or were-Sasquatch. Metis myth has the loosely similar "rugaru" (influenced by colonial French myth, name derived from French loup-garou or werewolf) but I doubt that's what they were going for.
Where did you get that?
In Marvel the Wendigo is a curse laid on someone who eats human flesh. They change into the monster effectively permanently until slain. If I recall correctly there can only be one Wendigo at any given time in the Marvel mythology. That is how the wendigo was at least into the early 2000s.
Also... When was a Wendigo added to D&D. I do not recall one in pre 3e D&D.
And you missed the Wendigo in Call of Cthulhu.
As far as DnD and Pathfinder, eh, it's kind of hard to kill a "moral lesson" with a sword, so they made it a tangible enemy to fight. Maybe the Wendigo is just a more brutal version of The Ant and The Grasshopper. Better help stock up for winter or we are going to be chewing on you til March.
Quote from: Joey2k;1066275Are you this offended by devils and demons in games? By the appropriation of creatures of Chistianity?
Honestly, this question sounds like a better fit for Tangency on npc.net.
I'm not offended. I'm annoyed that the wendigo ISN'T treated like a Satan-figure, as it is treated in Algonquin religion. "Wendigo psychosis" is a real thing.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1066279It probably has to do with the comparative difficulty of research in the times the originals were written, and then later versions iterating on those rather than going back to the original source. The pinnacle of this may be Demogorgon, who, according to C. S. Lewis (cf. The Discarded Image), started off as a scribal error for 'Demiurge' before undergoing a transformation into divinity, Demon Prince, and TV monster.
I believe the version in Michael Surbrook's Ghouls, Ghosts and Golems for the HERO System (there transcribed as 'witiko') is rooted in the original mythology, though.
The misappropriation of the wendigo took off in the age of the internet when research material was a google search away, so as far as excuses go this only makes modern writers look really stupid.
Quote from: HappyDaze;1066281I was OK with the Wendigo featured in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer book. It was a possessed person that ate people. It also grew claws & fangs and regenerated like mad. Was it accurate to the myth? I frankly don't give a fuck.
The myths are fairly nebulous to begin with (http://www.native-languages.org/ice-cannibal.htm), being orally passed down and all. But the zombie weredeer is definitely wrong.
Quote from: Omega;1066282Where did you get that?
Do a google image search of "wendigo" and you'll notice the majority of the images are of zombie weredeer.
Quote from: Omega;1066282In Marvel the Wendigo is a curse laid on someone who eats human flesh. They change into the monster effectively permanently until slain. If I recall correctly there can only be one Wendigo at any given time in the Marvel mythology. That is how the wendigo was at least into the early 2000s.
There's no creature in Algonquin myth matching that criteria, but it has the most similarity to the Rugaru of Metis myth (http://www.native-languages.org/ice-cannibal.htm). Which, as I said, was influenced by the French werewolf.
Quote from: Omega;1066282Also... When was a Wendigo added to D&D. I do not recall one in pre 3e D&D.
Fiend Folio 3e, page 186.
Quote from: Omega;1066282And you missed the Wendigo in Call of Cthulhu.
The Cthulhu mythos does this weird meta-fictional thing in which the alien god Ithaqua inspired the myths of the wendigo. And by "inspired", I mean its mere presence caused mass death and madness.
Quote from: Mind Crime;1066283As far as DnD and Pathfinder, eh, it's kind of hard to kill a "moral lesson" with a sword, so they made it a tangible enemy to fight. Maybe the Wendigo is just a more brutal version of The Ant and The Grasshopper. Better help stock up for winter or we are going to be chewing on you til March.
If it's not the same thing, don't use the name. Pathfinder prides itself on being accurate to mythology, which is totally a lie by the way. They mutilate the myths almost worse than D&D does.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066285If it's not the same thing, don't use the name.
If you applied that evenly across the board, wouldn't that eliminate a large chunk of RPG material?
Quote from: Mind Crime;1066287If you applied that evenly across the board, wouldn't that eliminate a large chunk of RPG material?
Feature, not bug?
Quote from: Mind Crime;1066287If you applied that evenly across the board, wouldn't that eliminate a large chunk of RPG material?
And fiction in general. Plenty of complaints about Norse mythology in the Marvelverse.
Quote from: Mind Crime;1066287If you applied that evenly across the board, wouldn't that eliminate a large chunk of RPG material?
I suppose I do have a similar issue with the Gorgon.
The complaint is reasonable, but hardly unique. I mean, excluding A Wind in the Door (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wind_in_the_Door), has any work of fiction done Cherubin justice? D&D and Medusa/Gorgons? Half of our vampire tropes coming from either movies (how many vampires were destroyed by sunlight before Nosferatu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosferatu)?) or a drunken summer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula#Background)spent with the Shelley's, even though the vampire myth covers hundreds to thousands of years and multiple cultures.
I don't want to sound too dismissive, but this is hardly out of the ordinary.
OTOH, I understand the feeling of being irked when something I like gets 'messed up' in some interpretation.
People'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.
Quote from: Mind Crime;1066287If you applied that evenly across the board, wouldn't that eliminate a large chunk of RPG material?
I 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.
Quote from: Joey2k;1066291I suppose I do have a similar issue with the Gorgon.
That'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.
Quote from: Willie the Duck;1066294The complaint is reasonable, but hardly unique. I mean, excluding A Wind in the Door (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wind_in_the_Door), has any work of fiction done Cherubin justice? D&D and Medusa/Gorgons? Half of our vampire tropes coming from either movies (how many vampires were destroyed by sunlight before Nosferatu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosferatu)?) or a drunken summer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula#Background)spent with the Shelley's, even though the vampire myth covers hundreds to thousands of years and multiple cultures.
I don't want to sound too dismissive, but this is hardly out of the ordinary.
OTOH, I understand the feeling of being irked when something I like gets 'messed up' in some interpretation.
I'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.
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.
That'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.
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 (http://www.native-languages.org/ice-cannibal.htm). Which, as I said, was influenced by the French werewolf.
1: Do a google search of Marvel Wendigo and the majority are of this.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Uxm140.png/250px-Uxm140.png)
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.
(https://i.stack.imgur.com/icywv.jpg)
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.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066418Continuing 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.
And all of that is
completely useless unless I'm running a game
set in mythological Greece.
Whereas a generic bull-headed monster is useful in almost any fantasy campaign.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066418The 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.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest at least half, if not a significant majority of players know little to nothing of Crete culture. I'm going to further suggest it's not unlikely that a lot of them don't even specifically know the mythological story behind the Minotaur, save that it was "Roman, or Greek, or something like that, I think? Lived in a maze, I guess?".
I don't mean to be as dismissive as this might sound, but the Monster Manual is what it says on the cover - a book of
monsters. It's not a mythology text book. It's not even a setting bestiary. It's just stuff to throw at your players. Highly specific, story-driven one-off encounters that wouldn't be useful in the vast majority of games are not what it does.
Don't like the lack of "weird behavior with absolutely zero explanation or justification"? Change that. You're familiar with Greek myths...
you tell them. The book doesn't need to, and in fact doing so would get in the way of what the book is trying to do. Meanwhile, another person can make up their own answers, if they need to, for their own game.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066418The 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.
Here, the purpose is to introduce an earth mythology monsters into a fictional setting, with very loose ties to the real world. There is no default setting in D&D, and the few pregen settings are not earth. Therefore minotaurs have no business being in Oerth or Krynn or Toril, because there is no King Minos or Crete.
But D&D is a mishmash of myth and folklore, and so minotaurs got in there, and got adapted to fit their settings. Dragonlance did a whole other take on the minotaurs as a race, and Greyhawk (AFAIK) just went with bull headed man monsters.
If you want to pick on D&D for not being accurate to mythology, you will have plenty of material, and I'm quite sure the writers knew this, being a bunch of fantasy nerds.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1066408To be fair, as a Catholic I have a similar problem with how many RPGs tend to treat Judeo-Christian angels.
I'm sure followers of Baal would empathize. :D
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066418The 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.
This strikes me as a very puritanical approach to creativity and games, where the quality of something is measured purely by how much it connects to the original source material. Adding in the requirement that 'it has to add something', just feels like an arbitrary way for you to dismiss anything people come up with. If adding the twist on the maze isn't sufficient for you, I really don't know what will be.
I am not saying the original mythology isn't interesting. But the D&D minotaur worked great, in part because its was easy to run without knowing the myth (though I am sure it helped plant seeds of interest in learning more about the mythology). And I don't ever remember finding any of the abilities to be a problem. They are great for tracking people in dungeons, which makes them scary. But they also aren't tied to something highly specific. There was only one minotaur in the myth if I remember, for example; and you can only really use the details you describe, if those details exist in the campaign world. The monster entry is just a fast, effective monster you can deploy. We can debate the value of abilities over different editions. I mainly used Minotaurs in 2E and 3E, but always found them to be a great challenge for a party and a threat I could add to in interesting ways. You didn't like it. That is fine. It isn't for everyone. But I think you'll find a lot of people found it an interesting monster. And I think you'll find a lot of people like it when legends and myths are taken as a kernel for a completely new idea. After all, especially in horror movies, half the fun is not knowing what the creature is exactly. It is pretty much a staple of the genre to take a few key features of a legend and build them into something new. Overtime, that almost creates a new legend (like people pointed out with zombies---which have moved very far from the source material and been codified into a new creature).
That said, I think it is great when people put out material that gets more at the real world myth. There is definitely an audience for that. I don't think though, that authenticity to the original legends, automatically makes something better for gaming purposes. And I think there is room in the hobby, and in genre fiction since that came up as well, for people to take both approaches.
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.
So what would YOU call a race of bull-headed humanoids in a fantasy setting?
Frankly, the most common reason to call a monster (or PC race) by a given name is because its FAMILIAR. You don't have to say "[Race X] are tall muscular humanoids with a cow's head"... you can just say "Minotaur" and 99.9% of your audience knows what it looks like.
Likewise, if you want to get absolutely "accurate" there should only ever be one Minotaur ever and it should be trapped in a maze on Crete (or dead by Theseus' hand). The same would go for Medusa, Hydra, Chimera, Pegasus, etc.
Definitions CHANGE over time. Pegasus came to mean any winged horse, not the unique offspring of Medusa's blood. So too did Minotaur come to mean any bovine-headed humanoid.
Again. If you want to create a "Mythic Greece Authentic" RPG setting... more power to you. I have my own fantasy setting with zero connections to Ancient Greece so my critters get named based on what a casual person would recognize. My Minotaurs are herbivores who live in tribes in plains regions of my world. They're called Minotaurs because everyone knows what that word means whereas something like "Cowfolk" brings up a whole different set of expectations (like that they ride horses and shout "Yippie-ki-yay!").
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Maybe not a minatuar. But I like this guy.
Shats your source for the Wendigo? You seem to know a bit about it. I like mythology, always looking to to expand my references a bit.
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.
Nobody cares.
The level of assine pedantry the rpg community gets up to seriously makes me question my hobby. I see threads like this and I picture neckbeards in a game store circle jerk.
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.
Um... News flash... But you really just want to PC this instead of actually think dont you?
The minotaur was trapped in the maze but could navigate it pretty damn well. He just could not escape it due to the mechanical nature of its containment. So a minotaur being really good at mazes makes perfect sense when viewed that way.
This and other things you rant about without actually stopping to understand. You just want to SJW bitch and lay down more impositions and restrictions.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1066424This strikes me as a very puritanical approach to creativity and games, where the quality of something is measured purely by how much it connects to the original source material. Adding in the requirement that 'it has to add something', just feels like an arbitrary way for you to dismiss anything people come up with. If adding the twist on the maze isn't sufficient for you, I really don't know what will be.
I am not saying the original mythology isn't interesting. But the D&D minotaur worked great, in part because its was easy to run without knowing the myth (though I am sure it helped plant seeds of interest in learning more about the mythology). And I don't ever remember finding any of the abilities to be a problem. They are great for tracking people in dungeons, which makes them scary. But they also aren't tied to something highly specific. There was only one minotaur in the myth if I remember, for example; and you can only really use the details you describe, if those details exist in the campaign world. The monster entry is just a fast, effective monster you can deploy. We can debate the value of abilities over different editions. I mainly used Minotaurs in 2E and 3E, but always found them to be a great challenge for a party and a threat I could add to in interesting ways. You didn't like it. That is fine. It isn't for everyone. But I think you'll find a lot of people found it an interesting monster. And I think you'll find a lot of people like it when legends and myths are taken as a kernel for a completely new idea. After all, especially in horror movies, half the fun is not knowing what the creature is exactly. It is pretty much a staple of the genre to take a few key features of a legend and build them into something new. Overtime, that almost creates a new legend (like people pointed out with zombies---which have moved very far from the source material and been codified into a new creature).
That said, I think it is great when people put out material that gets more at the real world myth. There is definitely an audience for that. I don't think though, that authenticity to the original legends, automatically makes something better for gaming purposes. And I think there is room in the hobby, and in genre fiction since that came up as well, for people to take both approaches.
The zombie isn't actually a new creature at all. It's a folkloric vampire with the name of a Haitian creature. In fact, even in modern fiction vampires are commonly depicted as being able to create (often carnivorous) zombies that may or may not be able to graduate into more powerful forms. This outright combines the two, with the zombie being a slave to the vampire that raises it as well as a vampire itself.
The problem I have with the monster manual isn't that it disposes of specific mythology, but that it writes all its monsters as existing in a vacuum devoid of context. This generally makes them nonsensical because there is now no explanation for why a bunch of random features have been thrown together into a monster. They become boring. Contrast this with the Scarred Lands Creature Collections, which provided myths for every single monster that generally explained what they were and why they existed.
Quote from: Chris24601;1066425So what would YOU call a race of bull-headed humanoids in a fantasy setting?
Frankly, the most common reason to call a monster (or PC race) by a given name is because its FAMILIAR. You don't have to say "[Race X] are tall muscular humanoids with a cow's head"... you can just say "Minotaur" and 99.9% of your audience knows what it looks like.
Likewise, if you want to get absolutely "accurate" there should only ever be one Minotaur ever and it should be trapped in a maze on Crete (or dead by Theseus' hand). The same would go for Medusa, Hydra, Chimera, Pegasus, etc.
Definitions CHANGE over time. Pegasus came to mean any winged horse, not the unique offspring of Medusa's blood. So too did Minotaur come to mean any bovine-headed humanoid.
Again. If you want to create a "Mythic Greece Authentic" RPG setting... more power to you. I have my own fantasy setting with zero connections to Ancient Greece so my critters get named based on what a casual person would recognize. My Minotaurs are herbivores who live in tribes in plains regions of my world. They're called Minotaurs because everyone knows what that word means whereas something like "Cowfolk" brings up a whole different set of expectations (like that they ride horses and shout "Yippie-ki-yay!").
Greek mythology did multiply some of its unique figures into races long before Gygax and friends did. In some cases this was because they were the descendants of the original, much like how humans might be called "adamites."
I take issue with D&D turning EVERYTHING into a "race" as part of its often absurd ecology series in Dragon magazine. As opposed to, I don't know, minotaurs being recipients of the Minotaur's Curse (and a separate thing from bovine furries entirely, and for extra fun bovine furries can also contract the curse), all hydras being grown from the severed members of the original hydra and becoming smaller with every severing until they can't split further, lamias being the transformed ghosts of women who died of heartbreak, or dragons being born from the movements of ley lines and weather phenomena and auspicious circumstances.
Really, D&D claims to be fantasy but as far as I can see it isn't remotely fantastical.
Quote from: Omega;1066433The minotaur was trapped in the maze but could navigate it pretty damn well. He just could not escape it due to the mechanical nature of its containment. So a minotaur being really good at mazes makes perfect sense when viewed that way.
I mentioned that when I described my reinvention of the game monster to better fit the original myth.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066435The zombie isn't actually a new creature at all. It's a folkloric vampire with the name of a Haitian creature. In fact, even in modern fiction vampires are commonly depicted as being able to create (often carnivorous) zombies that may or may not be able to graduate into more powerful forms. This outright combines the two, with the zombie being a slave to the vampire that raises it as well as a vampire itself.
The problem I have with the monster manual isn't that it disposes of specific mythology, but that it writes all its monsters as existing in a vacuum devoid of context. This generally makes them nonsensical because there is now no explanation for why a bunch of random features have been thrown together into a monster. They become boring. Contrast this with the Scarred Lands Creature Collections, which provided myths for every single monster that generally explained what they were and why they existed.
Greek mythology did multiply some of its unique figures into races long before Gygax and friends did. In some cases this was because they were the descendants of the original, much like how humans might be called "adamites."
I take issue with D&D turning EVERYTHING into a "race" as part of its often absurd ecology series in Dragon magazine. As opposed to, I don't know, minotaurs being recipients of the Minotaur's Curse (and a separate thing from bovine furries entirely, and for extra fun bovine furries can also contract the curse), all hydras being grown from the severed members of the original hydra and becoming smaller with every severing until they can't split further, lamias being the transformed ghosts of women who died of heartbreak, or dragons being born from the movements of ley lines and weather phenomena and auspicious circumstances.
Really, D&D claims to be fantasy but as far as I can see it isn't remotely fantastical.
Well, I'm sorry it disappointed you. Perhaps you should try the myriad of other games out there that might fit you better? Or maybe write your own?
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066435The problem I have with the monster manual isn't that it disposes of specific mythology, but that it writes all its monsters as existing in a vacuum devoid of context. This generally makes them nonsensical because there is now no explanation for why a bunch of random features have been thrown together into a monster. They become boring. Contrast this with the Scarred Lands Creature Collections, which provided myths for every single monster that generally explained what they were and why they existed.
I had the scarred lands book. And it certainly had some good flavor, but wasn't always useful if your campaign didn't fit the flavor without reskinning. And to be totally honest, a lot of the flavor still felt very much in the realm of D&D monster manuals to me. I think though the thing to keep in mind here is this is about evaluating something by its purpose and intent. The monster manual is intentionally giving you creatures in a vacuum. you find creatures tied to specific settings in many of the monster books for campaign worlds. But in the core book, you need stuff you can throw into just about any campaign.
If you don't like the monster manual, you don't like it. That is entirely fine. I think the issue people are having is it is pretty clear your reasons for disliking it are very much about wanting to run something different than what the monster manual is meant to provide. No one really objects to your ideas of a more mythologically based game. Those are out there, and there is always room for more. I don't know that such an approach would be the best fit for D&D though. And again, I think when we start creating all these rules about what constitutes a good/cool monster, it gets a bit stuffy when the bar is 'must be mythologically authentic'. That is a bar that only applies to 10% of what people want. Most people aren't looking for that when they buy monster books for a D&D campaign.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066435Really, D&D claims to be fantasy but as far as I can see it isn't remotely fantastical.
I would say play Runequest, or Godbound, Agnon, or even Hercules and Xena if you want something more in the myth and legend. Everyone and their brother has been where you are at some point. D&D is a broad game, that is trying to give a taste of fantasy while sticking to some tried and true approaches to play. Sometimes that is at odds with what you are after. There are plenty of games out there that do exactly what you want. I'm not especially interested in standard D&D myself these days. But I understand why people like D&D. And I understand why the formula works.
Quote from: Ratman_tf;1066439Well, I'm sorry it disappointed you. Perhaps you should try the myriad of other games out there that might fit you better? Or maybe write your own?
It hasn't disappointed me and I'm terribly sorry for giving that impression. I've had more fun devising ideas for D&D than I have any other game.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1066442I had the scarred lands book. And it certainly had some good flavor, but wasn't always useful if your campaign didn't fit the flavor without reskinning. And to be totally honest, a lot of the flavor still felt very much in the realm of D&D monster manuals to me. I think though the thing to keep in mind here is this is about evaluating something by its purpose and intent. The monster manual is intentionally giving you creatures in a vacuum. you find creatures tied to specific settings in many of the monster books for campaign worlds. But in the core book, you need stuff you can throw into just about any campaign.
If you don't like the monster manual, you don't like it. That is entirely fine. I think the issue people are having is it is pretty clear your reasons for disliking it are very much about wanting to run something different than what the monster manual is meant to provide. No one really objects to your ideas of a more mythologically based game. Those are out there, and there is always room for more. I don't know that such an approach would be the best fit for D&D though. And again, I think when we start creating all these rules about what constitutes a good/cool monster, it gets a bit stuffy when the bar is 'must be mythologically authentic'. That is a bar that only applies to 10% of what people want. Most people aren't looking for that when they buy monster books for a D&D campaign.
You're right and I'm sorry for giving a negative impression. I'll keep your words in mind and try to avoid alienating others. It wasn't my intent to be nonconstructive when I deconstruct fantasy gaming.
Quote from: Angry_Douchebag;1066431The level of asinine pedantry the rpg community gets up to seriously makes me question my hobby.
Hey, now, asinine pedantry is the point of
any hobby. Listen to firearms aficionados debating guns or oenophiles debating wine sometime. :)
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1066448Hey, now, asinine pedantry is the point of any hobby. Listen to firearms aficionados debating guns or oenophiles debating wine sometime. :)
Well, I learned a new word today. :)
Quote from: Ratman_tf;1066454Well, I learned a new word today. :)
Become one and you can forget it by tomorrow. :p
I had a wendigo in one of my campaigns. Savage Worlds Necessary Evil, owing to their own decisions the PCs wind up in a safehouse for supernatural creatures in Hawaii, there's demons, werewolves, vampires, Ra occasionally raids the fridge for orange juice "It really is like liquid sunlight!" and a big quiet white sasquatch that mostly sits in the corner. One night it slowly let itself into a female PC's room, sat on the edge of the bed and said in a quiet, reasonable voice, "you can do it you know. You can kill them all. I can help you. I can tell you how. We both know you want to." It then got up and left the room as quietly as it came.
Mythology is just garbled or mutilated real life stuff. Like Rocs were seeing ostriches and think they are chicks of a much larger bird. Giants from seeing dinosaur bones, or possibly strange tribes of people, like how the Lestriconi (a Celtic tribe) were turned into the Laestrygonians (cannibal giants). Or look at Ireland - the Fomorians, Firbolg, Tuatha de Danu were all just people, but turned into giants, monsters, and elves.
What D&D (and really Tolkien before) does is take those mythological creatures and turns them back into flesh & blood creatures, albeit fantastic or magical ones.
I notice you do not mention the Lovecraftian version of the Wendigo, connected to Ithaqua The Wind Walker... How do you feel about that "manifestation"?
Yeah, the first time I heard Wendigo used in an RPG was CoC and I played that in the early to mid nineties.
I reckon the "misappropriation" was caused by laziness, not malice.
It probably went something like this (feel free to use Beavis and Butthead voices)
"Wendigo" sounds like a cool name.
Let's use it for a monster!
But, like, what is it?
It's from the frozen North, some sort of terrible creature
Like Bigfoot?
I guess, but with bigger teeth.
Cool, let's stat it up and put it in our next game ...
And so the Wendigo passed out of Myth and into cyberspace
Quote from: spon;1066550Yeah, the first time I heard Wendigo used in an RPG was CoC and I played that in the early to mid nineties.
I reckon the "misappropriation" was caused by laziness, not malice.
It probably went something like this (feel free to use Beavis and Butthead voices)
"Wendigo" sounds like a cool name.
Let's use it for a monster!
But, like, what is it?
It's from the frozen North, some sort of terrible creature
Like Bigfoot?
I guess, but with bigger teeth.
Cool, let's stat it up and put it in our next game ...
And so the Wendigo passed out of Myth and into cyberspace
I don't recall the CoC Wendigo so I cant comment on that. But a few of things: there is no requirement to replicate the original myth. Taking a name, and a key trait or two is entirely viable, and often desirable in the horror genre. Two, ideas often grow in odd and new directions from the original. They also get combined with other things to make something new (you see this all the time with musical styles for example). Three, CoC was pre-internet. Anyone who had to write papers or tried to look up myths and legends prior to the internet understands it was a much more involved process than looking up 'wendigo' on a search engine. Expecting people writing at that time to have the same degree of automatic worldliness that people do now, isn't realistic. But again, that point only matters if the writers are aiming for authentic connection to the original myth (and most are not).
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1066553Anyone who had to write papers or tried to look up myths and legends prior to the internet understands it was a much more involved process than looking up 'wendigo' on a search engine.
In the 80s, Time-Life gave me The Enchanted World. If it was wrong, I had little else to go on back then.
Quote from: JeremyR;1066535Mythology is just garbled or mutilated real life stuff. Like Rocs were seeing ostriches and think they are chicks of a much larger bird. Giants from seeing dinosaur bones, or possibly strange tribes of people, like how the Lestriconi (a Celtic tribe) were turned into the Laestrygonians (cannibal giants). Or look at Ireland - the Fomorians, Firbolg, Tuatha de Danu were all just people, but turned into giants, monsters, and elves.
What D&D (and really Tolkien before) does is take those mythological creatures and turns them back into flesh & blood creatures, albeit fantastic or magical ones.
True. A critique I have specifically of D&D is that it engages in one true wayism in its depiction of monsters. Myth and folklore were highly diverse and often inconsistent, which I consider a feature. D&D strips away most of the interesting lore, if it doesn't just apply a familiar name to something wholly fabricated.
Take any D&D monster with a name from myth or folklore, compare it to the original, and this becomes obvious. Greek monsters like the Lamia and Minotaur are stripped of most of their original interesting features that could have been expanded on, like the lamiae being the ghosts of women who died of heartbreak and the Minotaur being a divine curse for the crimes of greed and impiety. The D&D troll has nothing in common with Scandinavian trolls, since it was based entirely on a single monster who appeared in all of one scene in a Poul Anderson story.
I get that Gygax and friends didn't have the best research materials, but continuing to mindlessly copy their work without awareness isn't a good thing in my opinion. There is so much more that can be done with the monsters. You can make mythology for them that isn't specific to any setting.
Quote from: shuddemell;1066539I notice you do not mention the Lovecraftian version of the Wendigo, connected to Ithaqua The Wind Walker... How do you feel about that "manifestation"?
To try vainly to halt the stream of accusations in my direction, I'm not Algonquin and I'm not really qualified to decide what is and isn't cultural appropriation. The absolute best I can do is criticize writers for getting the myth wrong and parroting the talking points of Algonquin writers who criticized the misappropriation.
Ithaqua is a weird meta-fictional case.
Within the fiction itself Ithaqua (as well as the creatures related to it) is never actually called a wendigo or similar, despite having numerous traits attributed to multiple different First Nations cannibal ice giant myths (http://www.native-languages.org/ice-cannibal.htm). It also seems influenced by Old Man Winter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_Winter) and similar personifications, with a Lovecraftian twist.
To further confuse the issue, within the fiction Ithaqua is stated to have inspired the wendigo myths (and presumably failing your SAN roll may cause you to develop wendigo psychosis, but I don't have the book with me to check). That is, wendigo don't actually exist in the mythos... last I checked, anyway.
Of course, the mythos in general often claims that most human religions misunderstand the truth at best. I've seen an article arguing that Jesus was the son of Cthulhu (http://bactra.org/jesus-cthulhu.html).
Quote from: spon;1066550Yeah, the first time I heard Wendigo used in an RPG was CoC and I played that in the early to mid nineties.
I reckon the "misappropriation" was caused by laziness, not malice.
It probably went something like this (feel free to use Beavis and Butthead voices)
"Wendigo" sounds like a cool name.
Let's use it for a monster!
But, like, what is it?
It's from the frozen North, some sort of terrible creature
Like Bigfoot?
I guess, but with bigger teeth.
Cool, let's stat it up and put it in our next game ...
And so the Wendigo passed out of Myth and into cyberspace
Correct. Most misappropriation is the result of laziness, not malice. I'm actually having difficulty imagining what a deliberately malicious portrayal would look like. Virtually every portrayal of the wendigo in popular culture has treated it as the vicious monster it is, even if everything else about the original myth has been stripped away.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1066553I don't recall the CoC Wendigo so I cant comment on that. But a few of things: there is no requirement to replicate the original myth. Taking a name, and a key trait or two is entirely viable, and often desirable in the horror genre. Two, ideas often grow in odd and new directions from the original. They also get combined with other things to make something new (you see this all the time with musical styles for example). Three, CoC was pre-internet. Anyone who had to write papers or tried to look up myths and legends prior to the internet understands it was a much more involved process than looking up 'wendigo' on a search engine. Expecting people writing at that time to have the same degree of automatic worldliness that people do now, isn't realistic. But again, that point only matters if the writers are aiming for authentic connection to the original myth (and most are not).
Even so, wendigo still have some mitigating issues like 1) the surviving Algonquin people genuinely believe wendigo exist, 2) wendigo psychosis is a real condition specific to Algonquin culture that has resulted in a number of recorded deaths, and 3) wendigo psychosis has historically been used as a excuse for the genocide of the Algonquin people.
To use a recent example, Netflix is currently streaming a series called
Ghoul which deals with Islamophobia in India. The protagonist is a woman of Muslim background who works as a government agent who investigates terrorist activities. Her colleagues distrust her because of her background despite her obvious and constant displays of loyalty. Etc. Then paranormal stuff happens involving a malicious genie from Arabic folklore called the ghoul. I highly recommend watching it.
That is the sort of treatment that the wendigo should get in media. First Nations peoples are still being treated horribly by the United States and Canada after centuries of genocide. I'd have to do more research to be sure, but I've come across mentions that in modern Algonquin culture the wendigo has come to be associated with the colonial powers due to their destructive greed. You could very well spin a horror series from that in a similar vein to
Ghoul.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066558True. A critique I have specifically of D&D is that it engages in one true wayism in its depiction of monsters. Myth and folklore were highly diverse and often inconsistent, which I consider a feature. D&D strips away most of the interesting lore, if it doesn't just apply a familiar name to something wholly fabricated.
That is not One True Wayism. It's the exact opposite of that. It's saying "Here's some random shit, use it as you will." Jesus,
you're the one advocating for One True Wayism here.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1066553I don't recall the CoC Wendigo so I cant comment on that. But a few of things: there is no requirement to replicate the original myth. Taking a name, and a key trait or two is entirely viable, and often desirable in the horror genre. Two, ideas often grow in odd and new directions from the original. They also get combined with other things to make something new (you see this all the time with musical styles for example). Three, CoC was pre-internet. Anyone who had to write papers or tried to look up myths and legends prior to the internet understands it was a much more involved process than looking up 'wendigo' on a search engine. Expecting people writing at that time to have the same degree of automatic worldliness that people do now, isn't realistic. But again, that point only matters if the writers are aiming for authentic connection to the original myth (and most are not).
Also CoC setting itself makes any argument of "waaaaah muh authenticy!" totally pathetic as the whole premise is that the things people have called "insert god or monster here" are just named given to things that sometimes are barely related, or things that have different names in different cultures.
Ithaqua and the Gnoph'Keh both have been attributed to Wendigo and other horrors. You dont like it? Tough! These are implacable space gods who really could care less what a microbe thinks as long as it opens the gate to let them play in its fragile little petri dish.
I guess to appease Box we will need to rename all Wendigo to "the cannibalism challenged".
Quote from: Bruwulf;1066566That is not One True Wayism. It's the exact opposite of that. It's saying "Here's some random shit, use it as you will." Jesus, you're the one advocating for One True Wayism here.
Point taken. I'm trying to avoid doing that. I can't articulate myself as well as I would like.
The Greek myths are still being told and retold and expanded on today. Fantasy gaming sticks out to me because it doesn't do that: it takes isolated memes, strips away any context or meaning, and... doesn't do much with them.
For example: Minotaurs in D&D are bland and boring furries. There is so much more you could do with them (http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2013/06/on-ecology-of-minotaur.html).
Quote from: Omega;1066568I guess to appease Box we will need to rename all Wendigo to "the cannibalism challenged".
The article I linked on First Nations comparative mythology (http://www.native-languages.org/ice-cannibal.htm) already calls this meme "ice cannibal."
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066558Even so, wendigo still have some mitigating issues like 1) the surviving Algonquin people genuinely believe wendigo exist, 2) wendigo psychosis is a real condition specific to Algonquin culture that has resulted in a number of recorded deaths, and 3) wendigo psychosis has historically been used as a excuse for the genocide of the Algonquin people.
To use a recent example, Netflix is currently streaming a series called Ghoul which deals with Islamophobia in India. The protagonist is a woman of Muslim background who works as a government agent who investigates terrorist activities. Her colleagues distrust her because of her background despite her obvious and constant displays of loyalty. Etc. Then paranormal stuff happens involving a malicious genie from Arabic folklore called the ghoul. I highly recommend watching it.
That is the sort of treatment that the wendigo should get in media. First Nations peoples are still being treated horribly by the United States and Canada after centuries of genocide. I'd have to do more research to be sure, but I've come across mentions that in modern Algonquin culture the wendigo has come to be associated with the colonial powers due to their destructive greed. You could very well spin a horror series from that in a similar vein to Ghoul.
I see these as two very separate issues. The treatment of native cultures is one thing, whether cultures should be able to control their mythology like it is copyrighted, quite another. I think this notion comes from a good place but is deeply misguided. Cultures connect by sharing, not by drawing lines in the sand. If you want people to understand the Algonquin, telling people the Wendigo is off limits unless they abide by certain rules, isn't going to promote deeper understanding. However people finding the Wendigo cool and interesting, will probably lead folks to learn more about them. I get this argument. I understand it. But I think it does more harm than good. And I think it is counter to the spirit of creativity and openness that humans should be striving for.
I just happened to be reading a graphic novel that reprints the two Wendigo issues of the Uncanny X-Men (139 and 140). They're very well done, even if the Wendigo of the story is a powerhouse. And so what? The Wendigo originally appeared in the Hulk, and they had a three-way brawl with Wolverine. So they made Wendy a bruiser who could go one-on-one with the Hulk, while being as cunning as Wolverine. That's not laziness or misappropriation, that's creating an appropriate opponent. And it does hint at the original myth, calling it a curse, which takes hold when someone eats human flesh in the great north. That gave the writers a hook.
Or what about Harpy? She's another Hulk-tier bruiser, which is even further from the original myths, but it happened because they wanted someone for the Hulk to beat on with wings. There's nothing wrong with that.
Now all the people who just copied Marvel's Wendigo, they are being lazy, and/or ignorant. There's a strong tendency in geek media, including RPGs as well as comics, to become too self-referential. Too many weapon lists are on earlier weapons lists in other RPGs, instead of getting a book by Oakeshott, and too many monsters based on other monsters in monster manuals, instead of digging into the legendary sources. But that's just poor writing and research, not misappropriation.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066285The misappropriation of the wendigo took off in the age of the internet when research material was a google search away, so as far as excuses go this only makes modern writers look really stupid.
All cultures start out as hybrids and adaptions. The Algonquin wendigo stands on a set of collective experiences stemming back across the Bering landbridge, then Asia, and then Africa.
Having said that there nothing from stopping YOU from presenting the Algonquin myth in the form you thinks works best.
Write it up and release it.
Quote from: Pat;1066577Now all the people who just copied Marvel's Wendigo, they are being lazy, and/or ignorant. There's a strong tendency in geek media, including RPGs as well as comics, to become too self-referential. Too many weapon lists are on earlier weapons lists in other RPGs, instead of getting a book by Oakeshott, and too many monsters based on other monsters in monster manuals, instead of digging into the legendary sources. But that's just poor writing and research, not misappropriation.
I don't even think that is necessarily poor writing though. Genres become very self referential over time, and develop a lore of their own. I see no issue with this. Especially you are writing for people who want the Marvel Wendigo. Again, for me, I see both as important options to have on the table. I don't think I'd be happy if everyone was always just doing the self referential thing, but I also would get bored if it was all deep delves into the authentic legend. For me, whether the writing is good, is more about how effective it is on me as a reader. You could be true to the legend and create a terrible story. You could take something from pop culture and make an amazing story. I feel like late, especially on the internet, we've been conflating style with quality.
Quote from: estar;1066578All cultures start out as hybrids and adaptions. The Algonquin wendigo stands on a set of collective experiences stemming back across the Bering landbridge, then Asia, and then Africa.
Just so. Myths have been appropriated from other myths, re-told and re-told over the millenia. The Wendigo situation is nothing new or noteworthy in that regard.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1066579I don't even think that is necessarily poor writing though. Genres become very self referential over time, and develop a lore of their own. I see no issue with this. Especially you are writing for people who want the Marvel Wendigo. Again, for me, I see both as important options to have on the table. I don't think I'd be happy if everyone was always just doing the self referential thing, but I also would get bored if it was all deep delves into the authentic legend. For me, whether the writing is good, is more about how effective it is on me as a reader. You could be true to the legend and create a terrible story. You could take something from pop culture and make an amazing story. I feel like late, especially on the internet, we've been conflating style with quality.
It's fine if you're writing a new story about Marvel's Wendigo. But it's crap if you're writing a new fantasy novel, and basing it on Marvel's Wendigo instead of actually doing the trivial amount of research on your own.
While it's true modern things can take on the status of legends, that's rare. Vanishingly rare. Sturgeon's rule with a lot of extra 9s. The real legends have already passed through that filter, there's something in there that resonates, and has continued to do so for centuries. When you base a story on those legends, you're using good ingredients. When you base a story on the modern copies, it's equivalent to using catsup that's been sitting the gas station shelf for 3 years after its expiration date. Now it's true, it might not be spoiled, and a master chef could potentially turn that into a great dish. But what's the most likely occurrence? That's why all this intra-genre referential stuff tends to be crap, and why we should always go back to the source material when possible.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1066576whether cultures should be able to control their mythology like it is copyrighted, quite another. I think this notion comes from a good place but is deeply misguided.
Like I said previously we all stand on the set of experiences that began in Africa.
Why bitch about the Wendigo when the English (and some Scottish) killed a million Irish through their indifference or incompetence in the Great Famine. By the logic being offered by cultural control everybody who isn't Irish should stop using Leprechauns, Sidhe and the other elements of Irish mythology.
What is winds up being in the end is a small clique imposing their views on everybody else.
The better solution is what the Irish did with Saint Patrick Day. Everybody Irish for a day as part of a celebration of Irishness. If there isn't a version of the Wendigo that true to the original myths then somebody should write it up and get it out there.
Quote from: Pat;1066581It's fine if you're writing a new story about Marvel's Wendigo. But it's crap if you're writing a new fantasy novel, and basing it on Marvel's Wendigo instead of actually doing the trivial amount of research on your own.
Again, I would disagree. I am not talking specifically about the marvel wendigo, as I don't really read comics, but if something like that takes off and becomes its own thing in the culture, why is it worse to use that, rather than go to the original legend material. Again I am not saying people shouldn't go to the original material, just I don't see why it is automatically bad writing to begin with the current point in the evolution of the concept in the culture. You can always have people going back to the root. But what makes either good writing, is the writing, not whether they researched the original concept or elaborated on a more prevalent pop culture one.
QuoteWhile it's true modern things can take on the status of legends, that's rare. Vanishingly rare. Sturgeon's rule with a lot of extra 9s. The real legends have already passed through that filter, there's something in there that resonates, and has continued to do so for centuries. When you base a story on those legends, you're using good ingredients. When you base a story on the modern copies, it's equivalent to using catsup that's been sitting the gas station shelf for 3 years after its expiration date. Now it's true, it might not be spoiled, and a master chef could potentially turn that into a great dish. But what's the most likely occurrence? That's why all this intra-genre referential stuff tends to be crap, and why we should always go back to the source material when possible.
Again, I want both. I don't want to just be reading stuff based purely on old legends. I want writers to experiment with new concepts, play to audience expectation and help evolve legends. I just don't see how it is any less lazy to do one or the other. If you strictly rely on one approach, that is lazy because all the decision making has been done ahead of time. I'd rather see writers struggle a bit with that part of it. And again, I like legendary material. I probably read more legends and myths than I do modern material. But I can kick back and enjoy both. And can see value in both approaches.
Quote from: Pat;1066581It's fine if you're writing a new story about Marvel's Wendigo. But it's crap if you're writing a new fantasy novel, and basing it on Marvel's Wendigo instead of actually doing the trivial amount of research on your own.
While it's true modern things can take on the status of legends, that's rare. Vanishingly rare. Sturgeon's rule with a lot of extra 9s. The real legends have already passed through that filter, there's something in there that resonates, and has continued to do so for centuries. When you base a story on those legends, you're using good ingredients. When you base a story on the modern copies, it's equivalent to using catsup that's been sitting the gas station shelf for 3 years after its expiration date. Now it's true, it might not be spoiled, and a master chef could potentially turn that into a great dish. But what's the most likely occurrence? That's why all this intra-genre referential stuff tends to be crap, and why we should always go back to the source material when possible.
Understand that in the end in your opinion not an absolute. You are write about certain legends standing the test of time but also keep in mind at some moment, the Wendigo was just one person's tale told to a group of people in North America. It just happened to caught on and endure.
The process of creativity is ongoing and always a mishmash of originality and what been done before. The sentiment expressed in the first paragraph is detrimental to this process which vital to keeping culture alive. Judge a work for itself if it is a crap it is crap if it is good it is good. The use of a traditional Wendigo can be crap or it can be good. The same with an adapted Wendigo or a Wendigo in name only.
Quote from: estar;1066587Understand that in the end in your opinion not an absolute.
You're an idiot. I used terms like "might not", "most likely", and all kinds of qualifiers. How did you get anything absolutist out of that?
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066558True. A critique I have specifically of D&D is that it engages in one true wayism in its depiction of monsters. Myth and folklore were highly diverse and often inconsistent, which I consider a feature. D&D strips away most of the interesting lore, if it doesn't just apply a familiar name to something wholly fabricated.
Quote from: Bruwulf;1066566That is not One True Wayism. It's the exact opposite of that. It's saying "Here's some random shit, use it as you will." Jesus, you're the one advocating for One True Wayism here.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066574Point taken. I'm trying to avoid doing that. I can't articulate myself as well as I would like.
I appreciate that you are owning up to that, but I think you are trying to apologize and move on, whereas I think you should hang around and analyze/internalize this (you would only be doing yourself a favor by doing so). This here is I think why you are getting this pushback, and why you aren't finding much purchase here. You
aren't articulating yourself well, and the argument the rest of us are experiencing is ranging from contradictory to simply not becoming a cohesive point.
First and foremost, yeah, you just accused D&D of being one-true-wayist upon something where it never has been, and you in fact were being so this whole time. That makes it look like you are just upset with D&D and instead of spelling out a specific accusation, just king of threw negative sounding words at the wall, hoping one would stick. Remember back to other threads where people who were just plain made at OSR/TSR D&D/modern D&D/storygames/non-storygames/oWOD/nWOD/what-have-you and just kind of barfed 'they're a bunch of railroading/mother-may-I/snowflake/edgelord/condescending/angsty/childish/rose-tinted glasses/out-of-touch/blarglglglglargh! I hate them!
' onto the forum. That ever work well for them?
QuoteThe Greek myths are still being told and retold and expanded on today. Fantasy gaming sticks out to me because it doesn't do that: it takes isolated memes, strips away any context or meaning, and...
And here's the second point. This is where you don't seem to be able to solidify your point. Myths (folklore/legends/faerie tales/etc.) are living cultural narratives still being modified today, and Fantasy gaming has done just that, and it's... wrong? Somehow? It takes isolated memes and strips away context (how were they isolated then?)... in some way that is more pronounced than any other media that solidifies the whole breadth of the myths and comes down with one single interpretation?
Quotedoesn't do much with them. For example: Minotaurs in D&D are bland and boring furries. There is so much more you could do with them (http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2013/06/on-ecology-of-minotaur.html).
Okay, so D&D Minotaurs are
boring. Okay! That I can get behind. Yes, compared to an entire myth, certainly they are. As others have said, by making them a race of monsters that exist in an (generic) fantasy milieu, one has to strip away specific names and places. Also, much of what is kept in the short descriptions will be what landscape they can be found in, what special abilities they have, a any specific behaviors which can be exploited by enterprising adventurers hoping to kill them and loot their treasure. Much less so who trapped them in a labyrinth (since the DM is going to provide an explanation (if any) of why they are in a dungeon, etc. Some of that is inherent. Some of it simply a page-space issue. Some of it I agree could be done better. It certainly wouldn't be bad if D&D Wendigos (/genies/rakshasa/etc.) could at least overlap with their mythic origins.
I don't know. If you can formulate this finer than boring, things games do that other things you give a pass to are also doing, or inaccurate accusations, perhaps we can help.
I have this critique of Monopoly in that it denigrates single-shoe-wearers that go to Free Parking zones demanding their Free Parking money they're entitled to - only to be arrested and sent directly to jail without due process.
Note! The police that show up in these Free Parking areas are all white. They're clearly blowing whistles in my face and threatening me accusingly with their problematic finger. It's statistically improbable and I believe that my race might be an issue. What is the deal, Monopoly?
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Quote from: Pat;1066591You're an idiot. I used terms like "might not", "most likely", and all kinds of qualifiers. How did you get anything absolutist out of that?
I am disagreeing with the assertion in the initial paragraph that it is crap. Which was not a qualified statement. I understand with your stated reason why you think it is crap i.e. the author is too lazy to the research. I don't agree that is a conclusion that can concluded from a use of an alternative myth or a myth in name only situation.
Quote from: Pat;1066581It's fine if you're writing a new story about Marvel's Wendigo. But it's crap if you're writing a new fantasy novel, and basing it on Marvel's Wendigo instead of actually doing the trivial amount of research on your own..
Quote from: Ratman_tf;1066580Just so. Myths have been appropriated from other myths, re-told and re-told over the millenia. The Wendigo situation is nothing new or noteworthy in that regard.
Somewhat true, there is originality as well but it all intermixed into a stew at any given moment. It highly likely that the genesis of the Wendigo was the inspired work of a single individual who wove together a bunch of shared experiences to produced a myth that later individuals added to and modified to produce the version that was recorded.
Another example closer at hand. The development of D&D was dependent on the general development of wargames in the late 60s and early 70s but it required the inspiration of Dave Arneson to be added before it could move on to Arneson working with Gary Gygax, the creation of D&D and the birth of tabletop roleplaying. Similarly it required the inspiration of David Wesely and the Braustein scenario before it could move on to Dave and his Blackmoor campaign. But none of this would have occurred without what was going with with wargames at the time.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1066576I see these as two very separate issues. The treatment of native cultures is one thing, whether cultures should be able to control their mythology like it is copyrighted, quite another. I think this notion comes from a good place but is deeply misguided. Cultures connect by sharing, not by drawing lines in the sand. If you want people to understand the Algonquin, telling people the Wendigo is off limits unless they abide by certain rules, isn't going to promote deeper understanding. However people finding the Wendigo cool and interesting, will probably lead folks to learn more about them. I get this argument. I understand it. But I think it does more harm than good. And I think it is counter to the spirit of creativity and openness that humans should be striving for.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1066579I don't even think that is necessarily poor writing though. Genres become very self referential over time, and develop a lore of their own. I see no issue with this. Especially you are writing for people who want the Marvel Wendigo. Again, for me, I see both as important options to have on the table. I don't think I'd be happy if everyone was always just doing the self referential thing, but I also would get bored if it was all deep delves into the authentic legend. For me, whether the writing is good, is more about how effective it is on me as a reader. You could be true to the legend and create a terrible story. You could take something from pop culture and make an amazing story. I feel like late, especially on the internet, we've been conflating style with quality.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1066585Again, I would disagree. I am not talking specifically about the marvel wendigo, as I don't really read comics, but if something like that takes off and becomes its own thing in the culture, why is it worse to use that, rather than go to the original legend material. Again I am not saying people shouldn't go to the original material, just I don't see why it is automatically bad writing to begin with the current point in the evolution of the concept in the culture. You can always have people going back to the root. But what makes either good writing, is the writing, not whether they researched the original concept or elaborated on a more prevalent pop culture one.
Again, I want both. I don't want to just be reading stuff based purely on old legends. I want writers to experiment with new concepts, play to audience expectation and help evolve legends. I just don't see how it is any less lazy to do one or the other. If you strictly rely on one approach, that is lazy because all the decision making has been done ahead of time. I'd rather see writers struggle a bit with that part of it. And again, I like legendary material. I probably read more legends and myths than I do modern material. But I can kick back and enjoy both. And can see value in both approaches.
If the intent is to promote understanding of Algonquin culture, then applying the name wendigo to an unrecognizable hodgepodge of memes accumulated over the last century by non-Algonquin writers sounds like a terrible way of doing that.
The wendigo of pop-culture is a generic monster. It doesn't promote any understanding of Algonquin culture. Telling non-Algonquin writers to stop using the name and make up their own original monster isn't some misguided attempt at political correctness that will cause more harm than good, but an appeal to simple honesty.
Think about it in terms of, I don't know,
Neon Genesis Evangelion,
Xenosaga or any other Japanese fiction that uses Christian symbolism. Although they use familiar terminology like angels, dead sea scrolls, gnosis, Lilith, Adam, and Mary Magdalene, the context is unrecognizable. The premise of
Xenosaga is that you are playing Mary Magdalene reincarnated as a sexy android dressed in skimpy lingerie who generates weapons of mass destruction from hammerspace, and the premise of
Evangelion is that giant surreal angels are trying to destroy the world and the protagonists have to kill them by piloting giant robots grown from the flesh of Adam and Lilith.
While these might be engaging stories on their own, they have pretty much nothing to do with Christianity and do nothing to promote understanding between Christians and non-Christians.
Turning the wendigo into a zombie weredeer that only shows up in one episode, or what have you... that is about as effective at promoting an understanding of Algonquin peoples as turning Mary Magdalene into a gun-toting robot stripper is effective at promoting an understanding of Christians.
Going back to the source material is the only way to understand the myth if popular culture has already stripped it of meaning. Making a photocopy of a photocopy ad nauseum only results in the complete loss of the original image.
Look at the cyclops, for example. D&D treats it as yet another generic monster to kill, whereas in the myths they were crazy awesome blacksmiths who forged Zeus' thunderbolt. Which of those concepts is more interesting on its own merits? The overwhelming majority of the time the original myth is superior to any later stripped-down iteration from fantasy gaming. The only time an iteration is better is when it adds to the original rather than subtracting from it. Which has its own downsides but we humans ain't perfect.
Read the
Monsters of Greek Mythology series by Bernard Evslin sometime. He took the original myths and either remixed or expanded on them. In some cases he made up most of the story wholesale since the myths are often quite short, but those new works actually feel like mythology.
Or read the comic book adaptations of Greek myth by Zelda C. Wong. The arc about the Titanomachy is loaded with references to little known myths that will go over most readers' heads. Kratos is a character, and NOT the one from the God of War game. Probably the best part of her work is how she characterizes Hades and Zeus, which are essentially the exact opposite of how they are typically depicted in modern pop-culture.
Those are good examples of myth-making.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066613Look at the cyclops, for example. D&D treats it as yet another generic monster to kill, whereas in the myths they were crazy awesome blacksmiths who forged Zeus' thunderbolt. Which of those concepts is more interesting on its own merits? The overwhelming majority of the time the original myth is superior to any later stripped-down iteration from fantasy gaming. The only time an iteration is better is when it adds to the original rather than subtracting from it. Which has its own downsides but we humans ain't perfect.
The D&D cyclops is based on Polyphemus. A cave-dwelling, man-eating monster that features prominently in one of the most famous adventure stories of all time, the world over, so I would argue that concept is plenty interesting. What we were given in the rulebook were
rules to try to recreate a similar story if we wanted it. Nothing more, nothing less. His genealogy and backstory aren't needed, or generally
wanted, because GMs are making those parts up for themselves.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066613If the intent is to promote understanding of Algonquin culture, then applying the name wendigo to an unrecognizable hodgepodge of memes accumulated over the last century by non-Algonquin writers sounds like a terrible way of doing that.
The wendigo of pop-culture is a generic monster. It doesn't promote any understanding of Algonquin culture. Telling non-Algonquin writers to stop using the name and make up their own original monster isn't some misguided attempt at political correctness that will cause more harm than good, but an appeal to simple honesty.
Think about it in terms of, I don't know, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Xenosaga or any other Japanese fiction that uses Christian symbolism. Although they use familiar terminology like angels, dead sea scrolls, gnosis, Lilith, Adam, and Mary Magdalene, the context is unrecognizable. The premise of Xenosaga is that you are playing Mary Magdalene reincarnated as a sexy android dressed in skimpy lingerie who generates weapons of mass destruction from hammerspace, and the premise of Evangelion is that giant surreal angels are trying to destroy the world and the protagonists have to kill them by piloting giant robots grown from the flesh of Adam and Lilith.
While these might be engaging stories on their own, they have pretty much nothing to do with Christianity and do nothing to promote understanding between Christians and non-Christians.
Turning the wendigo into a zombie weredeer that only shows up in one episode, or what have you... that is about as effective at promoting an understanding of Algonquin peoples as turning Mary Magdalene into a gun-toting robot stripper is effective at promoting an understanding of Christians.
Going back to the source material is the only way to understand the myth if popular culture has already stripped it of meaning. Making a photocopy of a photocopy ad nauseum only results in the complete loss of the original image.
Look at the cyclops, for example. D&D treats it as yet another generic monster to kill, whereas in the myths they were crazy awesome blacksmiths who forged Zeus' thunderbolt. Which of those concepts is more interesting on its own merits? The overwhelming majority of the time the original myth is superior to any later stripped-down iteration from fantasy gaming. The only time an iteration is better is when it adds to the original rather than subtracting from it. Which has its own downsides but we humans ain't perfect.
Read the Monsters of Greek Mythology series by Bernard Evslin sometime. He took the original myths and either remixed or expanded on them. In some cases he made up most of the story wholesale since the myths are often quite short, but those new works actually feel like mythology.
Or read the comic book adaptations of Greek myth by Zelda C. Wong. The arc about the Titanomachy is loaded with references to little known myths that will go over most readers' heads. Kratos is a character, and NOT the one from the God of War game. Probably the best part of her work is how she characterizes Hades and Zeus, which are essentially the exact opposite of how they are typically depicted in modern pop-culture.
Those are good examples of myth-making.
I am just not buying this argument. You are taking what I am saying to the most extreme end of it. There is a spectrum of taking influence from something to create new things. D&D is just a game. But pretty much anytime I've encountered something in D&D that turned out to be from real world mythology, it was a starting point of interest for me (not matter how far the D&D stuff veered from the original source material). Someone taking something in myth, and having fun with it, is something I find infectious. Someone issuing commandments on how myth is to be handled, isn't. Again with the Wendigo, when you set up this giant list of rules about how we should be taking inspiration from Algonquin culture, it doesn't make me want to learn about Algonquin myth. It makes me not want to bother. You are not giving people room to have fun, make mistakes, and experiment.
Quote from: Bruwulf;1066618The D&D cyclops is based on Polyphemus. A cave-dwelling, man-eating monster that features prominently in one of the most famous adventure stories of all time, the world over, so I would argue that concept is plenty interesting. What we were given in the rulebook were rules to try to recreate a similar story if we wanted it. Nothing more, nothing less. His genealogy and backstory aren't needed, or generally wanted, because GMs are making those parts up for themselves.
Using the behavior of single individuals as a blanket characterization of entire species is a tried and true cliche in speculative fiction. That doesn't make it any less bland and boring.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1066621I am just not buying this argument. You are taking what I am saying to the most extreme end of it. There is a spectrum of taking influence from something to create new things. D&D is just a game. But pretty much anytime I've encountered something in D&D that turned out to be from real world mythology, it was a starting point of interest for me (not matter how far the D&D stuff veered from the original source material). Someone taking something in myth, and having fun with it, is something I find infectious. Someone issuing commandments on how myth is to be handled, isn't. Again with the Wendigo, when you set up this giant list of rules about how we should be taking inspiration from Algonquin culture, it doesn't make me want to learn about Algonquin myth. It makes me not want to bother. You are not giving people room to have fun, make mistakes, and experiment.
I was introduced to a lot of cultural monsters through D&D, and my research into how much better the myths are is what caused me to develop my dislike how of generally lazy and unimaginative the writers are. I'm not opposed to reinventing myths, and I have linked to Hackslashmaster blog which collects huge lists of ideas for reinventing common monsters.
The wendigo is a worst-case example. Foreign writers keep pilfering it and we've likely reached the point were more people have heard of the wendigo than know the Algonquin people exist. There are a few articles which discuss the appropriate and why it is a negative, but the basic gist is that it isn't really being reinvented. The Algonquin people aren't extinct and they are still reinventing the myth to reflect the evils of capitalism and colonialism, which is completely ignored by non-native authors. We aren't taking inspiration from Algonquin culture. We're taking a name and an extremely simplified stripped down idea, then applying it to a bunch of familiar Euro-American imagery and symbolism like vampires, werewolves and Herne the Hunter.
I gave my Christianity example, but here's another. Imagine if our culture referred to all werewolves as vampires or zombies. That's the best equivalent I can think of to explain how the Euro-American wendigo has nothing in common with the Algonquin wendigo.
Greetings!
You know, some of the comments about "appropriation of native mythology and culture" and such things got me thinking. I love learning about different cultures and mythologies. In many creative, artistic pursuits, whether writing, game design, campaign design, and more, being inspired by a variety of sources--cultural, mythological, whatever--is an essential foundation.
All the "whaa, they're culturally appropriating us!" or whatever is just bullshit. It reminds me of when I think it was some white girl in Minnesota, she was in high school, and for her school prom, she wore a traditional Chinese Spring dress or whatever, as she loves Chinese culture and art, and design--you all know how richly coloured the Chinese are in lots of things, right?--I saw a picture of the white girl in the traditional Chinese dress, it was bursting with colour, layers, all that good shit. It was awesome, beautiful, and I thought damn, that's fucking cool and sweet to celebrate Chinese culture like that.
Truckloads of whining SJW cunts had meltdowns and wrote into the papers and the school involved to complain about how this white girl was "racist and culturally appropriating traditional Chinese ways" and how deeply offensive she was for doing this.
Low and Behold, the school boards also got truckloads of emails from China, and Chinese people from all over--applauding the young girl for *honouring* Chinese people and culture by wearing a traditional Chinese dress to her formal prom. Chinese people LOVED some white girl in America getting happy about Chinese clothing, culture and food. Imagine that. It just shows me yet again, people in China have far more common sense than whiny fucking stuffed-animal clutching SJW's. I love how China laughs at how stupid we are in America. Truth is truth. If you look at all kinds of things here in America from an *outside* cultural perspective, a whole lot of the stuff we screech about and think is important and meaningful--in other cultures all of that is absolutely meaningless, irrelevant, and stupid. It gets very tiresome when so many liberal SJW morons all somehow think that THEY are the appointed cultural guardians of every non-white culture.
By the way--do ya think the Chinese "culturally appropriate" from us here, in America? YEAH, THEY DO! :) All the damn time, with everything from Coca Cola and Nike, to dressing up like Michael Jackson, to Cowboy western styles in India, Americana gets embraced and jacked and loved everywhere.
So, yeah. Get that traditional Chinese dress. Borrow and mix from whatever mythology. Why is being inspired and loving other cultural stuff seem to be so bad to these people? You know, for people that are always calling other people *racists* all the fucking time--it strikes me that SJW's are the true racists. They want everyone living in some strictly controlled ghetto all isolated and separate from each other. Separated physically, separate food, separated mythology, separated clothing, separated music--it all has to remain separate and isolated from each other. That kind of insidious control and imposition from above, is so offensive to me. Fuck the SJW tyrants. Mix up the mythology! Eat different cuisines of food, for god's sake. Dress with colours and fabrics and styles from everywhere. Be inspired by different cultural music.
You know, it strikes me also for people that *claim* to be so non-white, non-imperialist, blah blah blah, SJW liberals seem mind-numbingly shallow, petty, and absolutely boring and dull. These people don't have the rich, multi-cultural empathy that's real, that's authentic. I forgot the old Philosophy definition thing, but the proof is right there in the proposition to begin with. People that love people--of different colours, races, cultures--all tend to have some things in common. One is curiosity and inquisitiveness about difference. Second is a real tolerance and appreciation for how different people, different cultures, do things differently from you. Thirdly, such folks are typically passionate about somehow embracing other cultural stuff--whether its the food, the music, clothing, what have you, truly appreciating different cultures generally means that you're going to embrace it in some way, and that "embracing" is naturally going to show up and be reflected in your life somehow.
They are generally happy, open-minded, graceful people that are simply a pleasure to have around you. SJW's are no where near these kinds of descriptions or associations. SJW's by their own words, actions, and attitudes entirely contradict and refute their claims of being "tolerant and diverse."
If you are designing your campaign, and working with different regions and creatures, and being inspired by different mythologies, what is wrong with mixing and matching? What's wrong with you making up some cool gibberish name for whatever? It might even sound cool, too! :) Authors, artists, of all kinds do this stuff all the damned time. Why is D&D stuff somehow supposed to be different? I don't understand why it needs to be. D&D doesn't need to be mythologically "Pure" and "Correct". On purpose, it *never has been*. And I'm sure many of you are aware, some of the "authentic" mythologies, or stories, or creatures seem stupid, and need to be changed. Yeah, they need to be changed to fit into a story, milieu and campaign better. To include them strictly from the roots so to speak would either be dumb; boring; cause all your players to laugh at you mercilessly; or all three. So yeah, some of that shit needs to be changed. The names are stupid or unpronounceable. Fucking change them, too. Whatever. I think a lot of people--especially SJW's--tend to lose sight of the big picture, concerning D&D. IT'S A GAME. We have seen this similar issue come up over and over with SJW's always taking some innocuous thing, that has always been cool and fun for everyone--but now the SJW's have a bitch fest and meltdown about whatever. It always involves something that's horribly misinterpreted, or taken to some crazy extreme, or is somehow considered to be "offensive"--over and over again, SJW's view the D&D game in some very strange ways, often totally divorced from the main idea that D&D is a game, to play and enjoy having fun.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066625Using the behavior of single individuals as a blanket characterization of entire species is a tried and true cliche in speculative fiction. That doesn't make it any less bland and boring.
I was introduced to a lot of cultural monsters through D&D, and my research into how much better the myths are is what caused me to develop my dislike how of generally lazy and unimaginative the writers are. I'm not opposed to reinventing myths, and I have linked to Hackslashmaster blog which collects huge lists of ideas for reinventing common monsters.
The wendigo is a worst-case example. Foreign writers keep pilfering it and we've likely reached the point were more people have heard of the wendigo than know the Algonquin people exist. There are a few articles which discuss the appropriate and why it is a negative, but the basic gist is that it isn't really being reinvented. The Algonquin people aren't extinct and they are still reinventing the myth to reflect the evils of capitalism and colonialism, which is completely ignored by non-native authors. We aren't taking inspiration from Algonquin culture. We're taking a name and an extremely simplified stripped down idea, then applying it to a bunch of familiar Euro-American imagery and symbolism like vampires, werewolves and Herne the Hunter.
I gave my Christianity example, but here's another. Imagine if our culture referred to all werewolves as vampires or zombies. That's the best equivalent I can think of to explain how the Euro-American wendigo has nothing in common with the Algonquin wendigo.
I think the Algonquin people likely have more important things to worry about than whether a fantasy role playing game got their make believe monster accurate enough for your personal tastes.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066613If the intent is to promote understanding of Algonquin culture
It's not.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066613Think about it in terms of, I don't know, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Xenosaga or any other Japanese fiction that uses Christian symbolism. Although they use familiar terminology like angels, dead sea scrolls, gnosis, Lilith, Adam, and Mary Magdalene, the context is unrecognizable. The premise of Xenosaga is that you are playing Mary Magdalene reincarnated as a sexy android dressed in skimpy lingerie who generates weapons of mass destruction from hammerspace, and the premise of Evangelion is that giant surreal angels are trying to destroy the world and the protagonists have to kill them by piloting giant robots grown from the flesh of Adam and Lilith.
While these might be engaging stories on their own, they have pretty much nothing to do with Christianity and do nothing to promote understanding between Christians and non-Christians.
Sounds awesome though. Like the Chinese & Japanese, I love it when people appropriate my culture. I also think this kind of thing, this borrowing, does tend to promote mutual empathy. But that is a side effect, not the intent.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066625I gave my Christianity example, but here's another. Imagine if our culture referred to all werewolves as vampires or zombies. That's the best equivalent I can think of to explain how the Euro-American wendigo has nothing in common with the Algonquin wendigo.
But would this be so bad? I watch a lot of Chinese movies and they bring in western influences all the time where concepts are conflated, and it often produces cool results. A werewolf/vampire might have some traction. Again, I am not saying don't go the source. There is room for that. But there is also room here for people to misunderstand and have 'happy accidents' when they are handling things from other cultures. Sometimes people take just an evocative word, or a sliver of an aesthetic and use it to make something new. There is nothing wrong with that. I just think this whole thing is a poorly chosen battle. The Algonquin are not going to be helped by D&D accurately representing their mythology. People borrow from other cultures. They don't always get it right. Sometimes getting it right isn't the point. But i do think you are going to have more real cultural exchange if you allow people to do that, than if you put up walls and tell people it can only be done a certain way or by certain people.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1066621I am just not buying this argument. You are taking what I am saying to the most extreme end of it. There is a spectrum of taking influence from something to create new things. D&D is just a game. But pretty much anytime I've encountered something in D&D that turned out to be from real world mythology, it was a starting point of interest for me (not matter how far the D&D stuff veered from the original source material). Someone taking something in myth, and having fun with it, is something I find infectious. Someone issuing commandments on how myth is to be handled, isn't. Again with the Wendigo, when you set up this giant list of rules about how we should be taking inspiration from Algonquin culture, it doesn't make me want to learn about Algonquin myth. It makes me not want to bother. You are not giving people room to have fun, make mistakes, and experiment.
Welcome to the other side... this is what its like to deal with an SJW (or at least SJW-adjacent) and why the SJWs always ruin everything because this weeks its self-righteousness on behalf of the Algonquins, the next week it'll be some other cause that pushes things ever further towards boring banality where all you do is hold competitions about who has the more severe mental illness.
Honestly, I haven't seen anything to suggest BoxCrayon is an Algonquin or even American Indian... so this isn't actually personal offense they're taking. They're offended on behalf of people who probably don't even care on the off chance they might care and he wants to demonstrate he's sensitive to their struggles.
You know what... I'm actually insulted at his arrogance that the Algonquin people can't possibly be capable of defending their own beliefs... that without the efforts of a Leftist whose extent of knowledge of actual Algonquin culture is what he read on Wikipedia to actually defend them... they might possibly have their feelings hurt.
Then he's going to pat himself on the back for having spread his rightthink to the masses because all this really is is ego-masturbation.
Let alone the affront of United States and Canadian savagery at beating the dogshit out of Algonquin myths *repeatedly* for decades. It truly is outrageous. When will these outrages finally end?
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Quote from: tenbones;1066641Let alone the affront of United States and Canadian savagery at beating the dogshit out of Algonquin myths *repeatedly* for decades. It truly is outrageous. When will these outrages finally end?
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I think that the alumni of the University of Michigan should be appalled at the appropriation of their mascot. That's not dark blue and maize in that picture...
Cultural appropriation is the BEST.
Go forth and steal without mercy, butcher without care and create without limits.
If that offends anyone of any color or creed along the way, FUCK THEM.
FUCK THEM ALL.
However, it is very cool to revisit and research the origin of a myth or monster. Not to masturbate about "woe iz them", but because often the original sources have powerful bits to inspire you on your way to greater creativity than just revising other people's revisions.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1066647Cultural appropriation is the BEST.
Go forth and steal without mercy, butcher without care and create without limits.
If that offends anyone of any color or creed along the way, FUCK THEM.
FUCK THEM ALL.
However, it is very cool to revisit and research the origin of a myth or monster. Not to masturbate about "woe iz them", but because often the original sources have powerful bits to inspire you on your way to greater creativity than just revising other people's revisions.
Greetings!
Preach on, brother!
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Greetings!
The whole "Cultural Appropriation" ideology is just so much pathetic, whining bullshit.
Newsflash...The Native Americans were conquered. Yes, the evil white colonialists imposed defeat, racism, all manner of degradation, humiliation, and total subjugation on the native tribes, including GENOCIDE. Read some history, and get acquainted with it.
Let go of the weeping, and gnashing of teeth about how the native tribes were crushed and plundered. Native traditions also embrace a strong concept of *dignity*. All of this whining and hand-wringing is undignified. Get the fuck over it.
How many Americans--native or white--are somehow intermixed? I'd guess a huge trainload. Oh, yeah, even back in the day, interbreeding between such races was also very popular. Somewhat ironically, some of the greatest and most noble Native American chiefs were...half white. Even back in the day, there was this weird dynamic of both hating and loving each race, from both sides, really.
Into our modern era, the dominant white society has largely embraced so much of its Native American roots. Fuck, half of our mountains, forests, towns, cities and states are all named after some kind of Native American word. How many schools, sports teams, and even our military is swimming with Native American names, values, and iconography?
In my mind, I tend to think that both cultures have, at the end of the day, intermixed and inspired each other in remarkable ways. Americans. White, Native, Black, Yellow, Brown--whatever. We are all Americans. One of our distinguishing customs--as opposed to Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and so on--is that Americans, traditionally, care far more about who YOU are, and what YOU have done. No one gives a fuck what your father did, or who your ancestors are related to. This tradition of eschewing class and blood does have some downsides--Americans are notably informal, and far more casual about virtually everything, compared to other cultures. Even we, as Americans, can recognize this, and often lament it. However, our honored tradition has also such immense and powerful appeal--in truth, it is a driving component that has always been present under the hood so to speak about why millions of people--foreigners--have sought to come to America, and become Americans. It is a special quality, and we should always cherish it.
An aspect of this, is, to my thinking, we own it all. It is all part of us. Native American this or Native American that. White this, or White that. Where is the line drawn? We have blended and embraced each other in such interminable ways--specifically Native Americans and Whites, though certainly other races as well--that it all belongs to each of us, thank you very much. Yeah, I, and other Americans, of whatever race, are privileged, and entitled. Our entire culture, while predominantly WHITE--has also embraced the "Other" like a fucking buffet table, and has, for centuries.
So, that pretty much stakes all of this bullshit of "Cultural Appropriation". Like Spinachcat said, be inspired. Steal and plunder and embrace all of this great and wonderful cultural and mythological traditions. I think it all belongs to ALL OF US. Fuck the whiners.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: Chris24601;1066637Welcome to the other side...
The world isn't that simple, or that dualistic.
Actually, if you consider the extended Mythos fiction, the Wendigo is directly used to refer to Ithaqua. Robert M. Price wrote the story "The Wendigo", and I even believe Algernon Blackwood wrote a story directly from his interpretation of the Algonquin myth... if my memory serves. I think the interesting point would be does the myth represent some immutable reality or is it rather simply a title for a large group of conceptual horrors? I understand the desire for purism, but purism is inherently static and that is contrary both to the purpose and the entertainment value of myths. In other words, is there really a pressing need (other than scholarship) to keep such things pure, or like language, allow them to evolve and permeate the current culture, to keep them alive and vital, and therefore in an organic way, also preserve some of the Algonquin culture into the future?
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1066636But would this be so bad? I watch a lot of Chinese movies and they bring in western influences all the time where concepts are conflated, and it often produces cool results. A werewolf/vampire might have some traction. Again, I am not saying don't go the source. There is room for that. But there is also room here for people to misunderstand and have 'happy accidents' when they are handling things from other cultures. Sometimes people take just an evocative word, or a sliver of an aesthetic and use it to make something new. There is nothing wrong with that. I just think this whole thing is a poorly chosen battle. The Algonquin are not going to be helped by D&D accurately representing their mythology. People borrow from other cultures. They don't always get it right. Sometimes getting it right isn't the point. But i do think you are going to have more real cultural exchange if you allow people to do that, than if you put up walls and tell people it can only be done a certain way or by certain people.
Those are good points. I can't tell people to stop pilfering other cultures for stories, or at least not without getting laughed at and making no difference anyway. I can't argue that it's morally wrong because it's not like this can make the already horrible situation facing First Nations peoples worse than it already is.
The Euro-American wendigo and the Algonquin wendigo only share a name and are otherwise unrelated to one another. There's an article that interviews an Algonquin professor on the topic which is more eloquent than I am: https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/10/why-the-wendigo-is-not-my-monster/
To put it over-simply, in Algonquin culture the wendigo is greed. The concept, personification, demon, etc. Without growing up in Algonquin culture and understanding their specific struggles, it is difficult for outsiders to really understand what this means. Despite being one of the seven sins of Christian tradition, we have very different ideas on what greed is and how to personify it in our stories compared to the Algonquin.
Euro-American pop-culture just uses the name for a generic monster which has been stitched together from familiar European imagery like re-animated corpses and deer skulls. The only time that Euro-American pop-culture came remotely close to capturing the cultural significance of the Algonquin wendigo was in an episode of
My Little Pony (https://www.backstoryradio.org/blog/the-mythology-and-misrepresentation-of-the-windigo/#comments).
It's actually kind of ironic in my opinion that Euro-American pop-culture has stolen and butchered the wendigo into a generic monster at the exact same time that the Algonquin have turned the wendigo into the personification of our own greedy thieving industrial culture. To burrow an old meme, and cross it with
Hetalia:
Quote"No! I must kill the wendigo" he shouted / The radio said "No, America. You are the wendigo"
I think it's a tragedy that the cultural significance cannot translate and only results in the dissolution of the original moral.
Quote from: Chris24601;1066637Welcome to the other side... this is what its like to deal with an SJW (or at least SJW-adjacent) and why the SJWs always ruin everything because this weeks its self-righteousness on behalf of the Algonquins, the next week it'll be some other cause that pushes things ever further towards boring banality where all you do is hold competitions about who has the more severe mental illness.
Honestly, I haven't seen anything to suggest BoxCrayon is an Algonquin or even American Indian... so this isn't actually personal offense they're taking. They're offended on behalf of people who probably don't even care on the off chance they might care and he wants to demonstrate he's sensitive to their struggles.
You know what... I'm actually insulted at his arrogance that the Algonquin people can't possibly be capable of defending their own beliefs... that without the efforts of a Leftist whose extent of knowledge of actual Algonquin culture is what he read on Wikipedia to actually defend them... they might possibly have their feelings hurt.
Then he's going to pat himself on the back for having spread his rightthink to the masses because all this really is is ego-masturbation.
I said that I wasn't an expert a few pages ago, which should be a signal that I'm not an SJW... whatever that even means anymore since everyone here seems to be using it as a generic slur for anyone who is centrist or left-leaning.
I'm not offended, either. I don't feel that strongly about this, or much of anything any more. More annoyed than anything else with Euro-American pop-culture's obsession with pilfering other cultures for stories and then butchering said stories, which defeats the point of going to other cultures for stories in the first place.
I wrote a blog post which categorized the different varieties of "wendigo" that have appeared in Euro-American pop-culture. While I think calling them all wendigo waters down the cultural significance to nothing, I didn't write an article saying that white people ruined everything and should stop stealing. That wouldn't accomplish anything. It's more constructive to just do research and then regurgitate what I find with only minor commentary from the peanut gallery.
Remember Texas, the state which has more lions and tigers in captivity than live in the wild worldwide? The blood of Texas runs through my veins. And the blood of people who fought on the side of the Confederacy. Ancestry.com didn't provide any conclusive evidence that I know of, but I wouldn't be surprised if my ancestry in the last two centuries includes african and amerindian slaves.
Quote from: shuddemell;1066736Actually, if you consider the extended Mythos fiction, the Wendigo is directly used to refer to Ithaqua. Robert M. Price wrote the story "The Wendigo", and I even believe Algernon Blackwood wrote a story directly from his interpretation of the Algonquin myth... if my memory serves. I think the interesting point would be does the myth represent some immutable reality or is it rather simply a title for a large group of conceptual horrors? I understand the desire for purism, but purism is inherently static and that is contrary both to the purpose and the entertainment value of myths. In other words, is there really a pressing need (other than scholarship) to keep such things pure, or like language, allow them to evolve and permeate the current culture, to keep them alive and vital, and therefore in an organic way, also preserve some of the Algonquin culture into the future?
I agree with your overall point, but your argument relies on some flawed assumptions.
Algonquin culture isn't static and neither are their myths of the wendigo. In fact, Euro-American pop-culture's depiction of the wendigo is static since aside from accumulating a bunch of weird baggage involving zombie weredeer that Euro-Americans now consider the one true way to depict it (i.e. modern purism), it remains nothing more than a generic cannibal monster. By contrast, in Algonquin culture it is greed, as in the concept of greed in a communist tribal culture. Right now Algonquin people are telling each other stories about the evils of capitalism under the bogeyman "wendigo." They are telling numerous stories about it for different contexts, such as the coming of spring, which they naturally refuse to commit to writing or share with outsiders.
The wendigo of Euro-American pop-culture and paleo-anthropology papers is completely disconnected from modern Algonquin culture. Regurgitating centuries-old stories that missionaries committed to paper doesn't preserve Algonquin culture any more than reprinting the Ancient Egyptian book of the dead preserves modern Egyptian culture. To oversimplify, the wendigo is the bogeyman for a communist culture and outsiders have consistently missed the forest for the
leaves as well as the fact that cultural myths aren't static.
I've seen this with other monsters in the stories of indigenous cultures. Algernon's story seemed to have conflated the wendigo with the ijiraq of Inuit folklore (which is a completely different tribe btw). The ijiraq ("something about the eyes") was known to flay people's shins, making them faster runners if they survived. There are other stories of it being a shape-shifting trickster who lures children away. Kind of weird that it does such wildly different things, right? That's folklore for you. In recent centuries the ijiraq have become increasingly conflated with the tariaksuq ("invisible shadow people"), although the anthropology research indicates that they were originally distinct entities prior to that.
Ignoring that the stories change over time within their culture of origin, the oldest myths that he have committed to paper are so vague and inconsistent that it is implausible to use them as a basis for purism. Even within the same tribe nobody can agree whether the wendigo is (for example) a singular entity, a primordial race, a demonic presence or all three. The only things that remain consistent are the associations with winter cannibalism, hence the anthropological appellation "ice cannibal."
So the only agents of change that are legit are from the cultures that spawn those ideas? Let alone where those ideas come in contact with other cultures? Puh-LEESE.
Have you ever tried reading D&D in Old English? Or does that not matter - because English is European and they don't count for the purposes of illustrating such concerns?
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066757The only time that Euro-American pop-culture came remotely close to capturing the cultural significance of the Algonquin wendigo was in an episode of My Little Pony (https://www.backstoryradio.org/blog/the-mythology-and-misrepresentation-of-the-windigo/#comments).
You might have missed my mention of it earlier, but have you seen the 1999 horror/western film
Ravenous, starring Guy Pearce and Robert Carlyle? It really does seem to capture that theme of the wendigo as the embodiment of selfish greed that you were looking for, or at least it always seemed so to me.
It's still "appropriative" in a sense in that the horror all happens to Euro-American people (there are only two native characters, one of whom dies and the other is only there for exposition purposes), but it's always been difficult to get production budgets without recognizeable audience-draw stars.
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 (and it IS misappropriation because for a century or so they were banned from practicing their own religion, so this is part of the many racist issues that first nations peoples still have to deal with today, but that's neither here nor there) it ends up not resembling the original myth at all?
There are two things here: The poor rendition of the Wendigo and the Cultural Misappropriation of the Wendigo.
The poor rendition of the Wendigo is because most of us are not Algonquin and have only read about a Wendigo or seen on on TV or in films. This means that we use what we remember, what we have seen or written, and base out interpretation on that.
In the same way that I have not seen a Flying horse, I might base it on Pegasus or, more likely for me, Turkic/Bashkort Winged Horses. I write what I have read or seen.
If you want a better rendition of a Wendigo, then educate us and provide myths of the Wendigo, local descriptions of the Wendigo, pictures of a Wendigo and so on. Then, we can use those to build our own versions, that would be more true to your myth. However, someone else might produce different descriptions, different myths and so on, which would mean a different type of Wendigo.
Now, for the Cultural Misappropriation, I am afraid this will happen.
Winged horses come from Greek or Turkic Mythology. Giant Black Dogs come from Celtic Mythology. Lamias come from Middle Eastern Mythology. Leprechauns come from Irish Mythology. All have been embraced and have become generic monsters.
As soon as a culture's myths and religion is exposed, the creatures from that myth and religion become fair game.
As a GM, if I wanted to run a game set in Algonquin territory then I might want to use a Wendigo. Do I use it properly? Probably not. But, what I would do is to check Wikipedia and various other sources, to find out about mythical creatures and work them into the setting.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066272Google searches are flooded with an absurd zombie weredeer meme that has nothing to do with the Algonquin religion. No joke, I see people conflating the wendigo with Celtic hunter gods and other stupidity.
There is an element of Anthropology that seeks to compare and contrast different religions, heroes, mythical creatures and so on, to establish a baseline of myth. I can see people drawing parallels with how a Wendigo works with how similar things work in different cultures and mythology. This is almost certainly not meant to offend, but is a kind of analysis where you break things down into their mythical components and compare. If the Wendigo and certain Celtic Hunter Gods each have 10 base components and they share 7 of them, for example, then there is a good case for arguing that they both reflect an underlying mythical reality.
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.
People write what they want to write.
Robin Hood has been butchered for years, but it still makes a good story.
If you want to bring back the meaning, then write something about the Wendigo. I, for one, would love to read it.
Quote from: tenbones;1066774So the only agents of change that are legit are from the cultures that spawn those ideas? Let alone where those ideas come in contact with other cultures? Puh-LEESE.
I do not believe that to be the case and was not trying to convey that impression.
The American "wendigo" and the Algonquin wendigo are completely different, unrelated entities that happen to share a name in common. The Algonquin wendigo is Greed, the American "wendigo" is the Wild Hunt repackaged.
Quote from: tenbones;1066774Have you ever tried reading D&D in Old English? Or does that not matter - because English is European and they don't count for the purposes of illustrating such concerns?
Is there a translation into Old English? I would like to read it, but I do not know Old English.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1066778You might have missed my mention of it earlier, but have you seen the 1999 horror/western film Ravenous, starring Guy Pearce and Robert Carlyle? It really does seem to capture that theme of the wendigo as the embodiment of selfish greed that you were looking for, or at least it always seemed so to me.
It's still "appropriative" in a sense in that the horror all happens to Euro-American people (there are only two native characters, one of whom dies and the other is only there for exposition purposes), but it's always been difficult to get production budgets without recognizeable audience-draw stars.
I have not seen that, at least not fully. I give it credit for being creative by invoking the colonialism metaphor.
Quote from: soltakss;1066782*stuff*
I think that's been the general reaction, well put.
Quote from: soltakss;1066782There are two things here: The poor rendition of the Wendigo and the Cultural Misappropriation of the Wendigo.
The poor rendition of the Wendigo is because most of us are not Algonquin and have only read about a Wendigo or seen on on TV or in films. This means that we use what we remember, what we have seen or written, and base out interpretation on that.
Yep. This really the root of all the problems I have.
It doesn't help that outsiders never learn much of anything about the wendigo in the first place. Whenever a "wendigo" appears in Western media, it typically is just familiar Western tropes repackaged and given a cosmetic coat of Indian-sounding woo woo.
Algernon's wendigo is actually a hodgepodge of familiar evil fairy tropes. It taunts its victims with a voice on the wind, it flies, and eats moss. Then the story adds elements of punishment because, according to the text, it gouges out its victims eye to punish them for the lust of beauty and burns away their feet through friction for wanderlust. Then it wears their face to further mock them. Pretty freaky, but not a wendigo.
Roosevelt's wendigo is a simple bigfoot who kills intruders in its territory. If you squint you might see a repudiation of colonialism, but I think that might be reaching.
King's wendigo is the Kandarian demon again plus a bunch of other familiar tropes. The burial ground is cursed because an evil spirit is trapped there (where have we seen that before?), so do not bury your dead there because it will possess them! Also, the white man is an idiot for staying there because the oh so superior natives left when the monster arrived.
The word "wendigo" has lost all meaning in these contexts beyond a generic monster.
It's just so boring and overused. I'd be much more interested in seeing someone use the peryton unironically. If you read the tales associated with it, it becomes really tragic. They lived on Atlantis until it sank, and now they are cursed with immortality unless they eat a fresh human heart. Also, they are transmuted from the souls of people who got lost or died while traveling. How terrible an existence is that?
Plus, the peryton was made up by a dude in the 1950s as a joke.
What about the fearsome critters of lumberjack lore? Does anybody remember those? They're uniquely American but are absent from modern popular culture.
There are so many more monsters deserving of our attention than a name co-opted from another culture to be applied to our own ancient myth memes.
Quote from: soltakss;1066782There is an element of Anthropology that seeks to compare and contrast different religions, heroes, mythical creatures and so on, to establish a baseline of myth. I can see people drawing parallels with how a Wendigo works with how similar things work in different cultures and mythology. This is almost certainly not meant to offend, but is a kind of analysis where you break things down into their mythical components and compare. If the Wendigo and certain Celtic Hunter Gods each have 10 base components and they share 7 of them, for example, then there is a good case for arguing that they both reflect an underlying mythical reality.
That is just it. The wendigo myth has nothing in common with the horned hunter god meme. That is entirely the result of an image published in a 1950s magazine in which the artist depicted Blackwood's monster as a variation of the old Wild Hunt meme.
Which illustrates that we outsiders never really understood the wendigo. We got a name and a very basic description from the Algonquin, but all the rest we made up on our own.
Quote from: soltakss;1066782If you want to bring back the meaning, then write something about the Wendigo. I, for one, would love to read it.
Without being a communist I cannot really understand the cultural significance of the wendigo's greed. The closest that I can come is Satan and his legions, but that's almost the exact opposite because the Christian God is pretty malevolent already.
That is my personal tragedy as a creative content creator. Even if I wanted to capture the significance of the wendigo, all I can ever do is just remix elements of my own cultural myths. I can more or less easily understand Greek and Ancient Egyptian cultural memes because my own culture descends from them. The Greek gods are omnipotent psychopaths, so is the Abrahamic God. The Ancient Egyptians gave offerings to their dead to help them in the afterlife, I visit graves to present flowers. Even the symbolism that the heart is the seat of emotion comes from Ancient Egyptian beliefs.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066791Without being a communist I cannot really understand the cultural significance of the wendigo's greed. The closest that I can come is Satan and his legions, but that's almost the exact opposite because the Christian God is pretty malevolent already.
That is my personal tragedy as a creative content creator. Even if I wanted to capture the significance of the wendigo, all I can ever do is just remix elements of my own cultural myths. I can more or less easily understand Greek and Ancient Egyptian cultural memes because my own culture descends from them. The Greek gods are omnipotent psychopaths, so is the Abrahamic God. The Ancient Egyptians gave offerings to their dead to help them in the afterlife, I visit graves to present flowers. Even the symbolism that the heart is the seat of emotion comes from Ancient Egyptian beliefs.
If so, then what was this all about? There's no way a bunch of RPG writers in Seattle sipping lattes and looking up Wendigo on Wikipedia are going to to a better job than you can.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066791There are so many more monsters deserving of our attention than a name co-opted from another culture to be applied to our own ancient myth memes.
Then fix it. Either write the book yourself or find somebody interested in writing such a book and support them with the skills you do have. It seems at the very least you have decent research skills considering what you wrote about various specifics. Write a monograph to be used as a research aide for those interested in adhering to the original myths and legends.
Complaining that others have to fix it is not going to work where there creative freedom.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066791That is my personal tragedy as a creative content creator. Even if I wanted to capture the significance of the wendigo, all I can ever do is just remix elements of my own cultural myths.
You are overthinking it by ignoring the fact that despite the different circumstances they are still human beings with the same needs and wants as any other arbitrary group of human beings. How those needs, and wants, are expressed and dealt with is what different. Those differences can be understood through discussion, study, observation, and research. And that understanding can be communicated to others.
It may be hard work for a specific individual to understand another culture or time but if one is willing to put the work in and make an honest effort than it can be done.
Quote from: Ratman_tf;1066797If so, then what was this all about? There's no way a bunch of RPG writers in Seattle sipping lattes and looking up Wendigo on Wikipedia are going to to a better job than you can.
I never expected otherwise.
Paizo just grinds my gears because they claim to be accurate to myths when all they are really doing is plundering world mythology for ideas. If they just said they were very loosely inspired, I would not have a problem. But no, they have to be pretentious about how accurate they are.
I do a lot of research on Google books going back as far as it will go, but I can never claim that anything I write would be accurate to some arbitrary platonic ideal. I fully accept that myths are moving targets to begin with and that all I can ever do is make up myths.
Although that still does not stop me from criticizing Disney for turning Hades into a Satan analogue when in the original myths all he did was sit on his throne while Zeus was out raping people and destroying cities.
He abducted his niece and tricked her into marrying him, in a story that is literally titled "Rape of Persephone," (http://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/HaidesPersephone1.html) but for whatever reason romance novelists and artists decided to spin doctor that into some kind of star-crossed lovers narrative. I cannot really criticize that since the myths were contradictory to begin with due to the oral history thing.
Quote from: estar;1066799Then fix it. Either write the book yourself or find somebody interested in writing such a book and support them with the skills you do have. It seems at the very least you have decent research skills considering what you wrote about various specifics. Write a monograph to be used as a research aide for those interested in adhering to the original myths and legends.
Complaining that others have to fix it is not going to work where there creative freedom.
There are a bazillion myths across dozens of cultures. Even within cultures different stories depict the monsters in wildly different fashions (https://the-orbit.net/entequilaesverdad/2016/05/05/supernatural-s1-e2-wendigo-spirit/). The spirits that possess people become most powerful when they possess
grandmothers, and one old variation of the stories tells that wendigo have their own hidden culture similar to fairies or genies and sometimes visit human communities to find spouses. The article I just linked says this (in a list of ideas for being more "accurate"): "What if the missing brother had been persuaded to wed Grandmother Wendigo's granddaughter, either due to her tricking him into cannibalism in a dream, or in a bid to protect his community?"
Fantasy games where you kill an endless conveyor belt of targets do not seem like the best spot to explore that diversity. The monster books give a couple pages at most for the wendigo monster, but the wendigo stories are a huge umbrella that a fantasy game could only approximate with a dozen different monsters for all of the different roles that have been imagined for them. Of course, considering that the monster books already include dozens of man-eating whatever...
Hags, frost giants, vampires, everything we need seems to be there.
Quote from: estar;1066805You are overthinking it by ignoring the fact that despite the different circumstances they are still human beings with the same needs and wants as any other arbitrary group of human beings. How those needs, and wants, are expressed and dealt with is what different. Those differences can be understood through discussion, study, observation, and research. And that understanding can be communicated to others.
It may be hard work for a specific individual to understand another culture or time but if one is willing to put the work in and make an honest effort than it can be done.
There's a book that articulates how modern indigenous cultures tell stories about the Wendigo (http://amzn.to/1SQyCgR). Here's a quote:
QuoteIn contemporary Indigenous traditions, the windigo has become associated with the danger of greed, capitalism, and Western excess, while in European and Canadian imagery, it is the symbol of evil, wilderness, and madness....
In Euro-Canadian novels and films, the windigo is largely separate from Aboriginal culture, in that there is little meaningful discussion of Native beliefs. Instead, Aboriginal peoples are often associated with a simplified version of the past, in which discussions of colonialism are avoided. In contrast, Native works focus on the traumas associated with colonialism, such as residential schools, sexual abuse, and cultural loss, which are equated with the windigo spirit. Indigenous books, plays, and films draw on a vision of the windigo articulated by Ojibwa scholar Basil Johnston, who described it as being the spirit of selfishness, as epitomized by the Euro-Canadian culture of extraction and environmental destruction: 'These new weendigoes are no different from their forebears. In fact, they are even more omnivorous than their old ancestors. The only difference is that the modern Weendigoes wear elegant clothes and comport themselves with an air of cultured and dignified respectability.'
What does that last part remind you of?
The closest analogue I can think of in my culture would be the "vampire counts" that sometimes appear, being an exaggeration of the metaphorically blood-sucking nobility and rich folks in the past and present. This is not a direct correspondence. The indigenous tribes were communist and thus the conflict was greed versus the community, whereas in my capitalist culture the conflict is between the haves and have-nots.
It seems to me like we never needed wendigos since all the baggage we use them to represent are already present in copious amounts already. At this point we are just co-opting the name and basic description to give a false veneer of foreignness, originality and generally magical Indian woo-woo.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066812What does that last part remind you of?
That chapter one is about more recent times and the stuff that you need to focus on is in chapter two and chapter three that describes what was recorded about the original myths.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066812The closest analogue I can think of in my culture would be the "vampire counts" that sometimes appear, being an exaggeration of the metaphorically blood-sucking nobility and rich folks in the past and present. This is not a direct correspondence. The indigenous tribes were communist and thus the conflict was greed versus the community, whereas in my capitalist culture the conflict is between the haves and have-nots.
You are bring in your cultural baggage by describing indigenous tribes as communist. They were their own thing where some featured communal ownership as part of their culture. But it is not communism in the sense normally used as that was a philosophy first put into modern form by Karl Mark in 1848. Nor you are correct that greed doesn't exist in societies that practice communal ownership.
The desire for more doesn't go away in a society where there is communal ownership, it get transferred to other status symbols. And those status symbols are not always tied to material possessions either.
For example how was decided how food is allocated? Not matter how it is labeled it comes down to a decision made by human beings who have feeling, likes, and dislikes especially when it comes to other people. A successful greedy person in a society who desired more food that has a system of communal food storage would be an expert at persuasion and social manipulation. While in another society a successful greedy person because they control the most armed warrior. And in a later time a greedy person is successful because of their intellectual prowess at manipulating a system of numbers.
In all of these societies greed remains. Although how it manifests and the means by which it is checked to restore what the culture considers acceptable differs. Because greed is about taking more than one's fair share.
To relate to other culture's myths and legends one need to understand common elements of our shared humanity. And there are many common elements that cuts across time and geography. They exist because of the same physical and emotional needs of all humans. In the latter half of the 20th century there are numerous works that looked at this issue if you want to develop an understanding of it.
However until you do, you will have a tough related the specific to your own experiences. Because the form of the myth includes cultural specifics that represent layers of interpretations across generations. Something that it illustrated in Chapter 1 of the book you referenced. That show how the myth has changed post-contact and adapted to the needs and wants of succeeding generations of that indigenous culture.
The issue here is adapting a decent version, by your criteria, the original myth. Do that you will to do the work in reading the primary material as the authors of the book did in chapter two and three.
Quote from: estar;1066799Then fix it. Either write the book yourself or find somebody interested in writing such a book and support them with the skills you do have. It seems at the very least you have decent research skills considering what you wrote about various specifics. Write a monograph to be used as a research aide for those interested in adhering to the original myths and legends.
Complaining that others have to fix it is not going to work where there creative freedom.
Bingo is your name-o.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066812I never expected otherwise.
Paizo just grinds my gears because they claim to be accurate to myths when all they are really doing is plundering world mythology for ideas.
I'm not familiar with everything Paizo has written. When did they claim to be accurate to myths?
Quote from: estar;1066823That chapter one is about more recent times and the stuff that you need to focus on is in chapter two and chapter three that describes what was recorded about the original myths.
You are bring in your cultural baggage by describing indigenous tribes as communist. They were their own thing where some featured communal ownership as part of their culture. But it is not communism in the sense normally used as that was a philosophy first put into modern form by Karl Mark in 1848. Nor you are correct that greed doesn't exist in societies that practice communal ownership.
The desire for more doesn't go away in a society where there is communal ownership, it get transferred to other status symbols. And those status symbols are not always tied to material possessions either.
For example how was decided how food is allocated? Not matter how it is labeled it comes down to a decision made by human beings who have feeling, likes, and dislikes especially when it comes to other people. A successful greedy person in a society who desired more food that has a system of communal food storage would be an expert at persuasion and social manipulation. While in another society a successful greedy person because they control the most armed warrior. And in a later time a greedy person is successful because of their intellectual prowess at manipulating a system of numbers.
In all of these societies greed remains. Although how it manifests and the means by which it is checked to restore what the culture considers acceptable differs. Because greed is about taking more than one's fair share.
To relate to other culture's myths and legends one need to understand common elements of our shared humanity. And there are many common elements that cuts across time and geography. They exist because of the same physical and emotional needs of all humans. In the latter half of the 20th century there are numerous works that looked at this issue if you want to develop an understanding of it.
However until you do, you will have a tough related the specific to your own experiences. Because the form of the myth includes cultural specifics that represent layers of interpretations across generations. Something that it illustrated in Chapter 1 of the book you referenced. That show how the myth has changed post-contact and adapted to the needs and wants of succeeding generations of that indigenous culture.
The issue here is adapting a decent version, by your criteria, the original myth. Do that you will to do the work in reading the primary material as the authors of the book did in chapter two and three.
That is precisely the reason why I do not think myself or anyone else outside the Algonquin culture can do the wendigo justice. The wendigo is a cultural bogeyman without similar relevance to those outside said culture. I cannot stop myself from bringing my own cultural baggage with me. You demonstrated this perfectly when you pointed out that my appellation of "communism" is wrong. As I said, if I was trying to communicate a moral message about the evils of greed, I would probably have the most success using vampire counts due to my culture's history of evil rich people.
I could certainly take inspiration from particular stories about wendigo, like writing a story about a ogress' granddaughter looking for a human husband and trying to make him an ogre through dreams, but I would not use the name "wendigo" because I do not understand its significance. I know that literally it derives from a word for owls and refers to an ice cannibal that features in many stories, but I do not understand it beyond those superficial features.
To a degree, this issue afflicts a lot of fairy tales simply due to their age. If you read through fairy tales, particularly those from non-European cultures, you will notice characters engaging in acts that apparently have a lot of importance but you do not understand the why. The cultural relevance is absent for you, so the reference goes over your head.
Quote from: tenbones;1066828Bingo is your name-o.
Myths are wildly diverse. Fantasy monsters are one-note. If people want to adhere to the original myths, they first need to learn that. Until it is possible for fantasy monsters to be more than just duplication of the same short block of text, showing people how to adhere more closely to myths is pointless because they have been trained to falsely believe that everything fits into neat tiny boxes. Myths do not fit into neat tiny boxes like monster manual entries do.
Quote from: Ratman_tf;1066831I'm not familiar with everything Paizo has written. When did they claim to be accurate to myths?
It has been so long since I have visited their forums, but I remember that they used this as a talking point in their advertising and hypocritically criticized D&D for inaccuracies. I cannot remember any specific examples that I could link here. I do remember that they released "Monsters Revisited" books which included sections recounting the original myths if any and how to be more "accurate" or whatever.
I am honestly quite sick of the entire concept behind monster manuals and bestiaries. I would prefer to organize monsters by archetypes in order to cut down on the huge problem with filler and redundancy afflicting the books.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066832That is precisely the reason why I do not think myself or anyone else outside the Algonquin culture can do the wendigo justice. The wendigo is a cultural bogeyman without similar relevance to those outside said culture. I cannot stop myself from bringing my own cultural baggage with me. You demonstrated this perfectly when you pointed out that my appellation of "communism" is wrong. As I said, if I was trying to communicate a moral message about the evils of greed, I would probably have the most success using vampire counts due to my culture's history of evil rich people.
Out of curiosity, which culture are you referring to?
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066832Myths are wildly diverse. Fantasy monsters are one-note. If people want to adhere to the original myths, they first need to learn that. Until it is possible for fantasy monsters to be more than just duplication of the same short block of text, showing people how to adhere more closely to myths is pointless because they have been trained to falsely believe that everything fits into neat tiny boxes. Myths do not fit into neat tiny boxes like monster manual entries do.
We're not playing a game of storytelling myths around a fire. We're playing roleplaying games. Either this matters for the purposes of playing in an RPG or it doesn't. This is your thread talking about the Wendigo and your concerns about their presentation. I have yet to see an example that makes me WANT to use a different conception of the Wendigo that is more useful/interesting than what I currently use (which is nothing - I've never used a Wendigo for anything except the Marvel comics one). I've never seen a game where the players expected the RPG to teach them something about a real culture as a means to actually enjoy the game.
I've considered using the Wendigo in Deadlands. But frankly he's too powerful.
So therefore - you're asking the question for something only you think is an issue. What ARE your alternatives? Post them.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066832I am honestly quite sick of the entire concept behind monster manuals and bestiaries. I would prefer to organize monsters by archetypes in order to cut down on the huge problem with filler and redundancy afflicting the books.
Then take a page out of Fantasy Craft and create a bunch of scalable tables for attributes and abilities - and you can call that pile of numbers *anything* you want. And make them as culturally relevant as you want. Problem solved.
Quote from: Ratman_tf;1066833Out of curiosity, which culture are you referring to?
American. I know it is a hodgepodge but it is mine.
Quote from: tenbones;1066835We're not playing a game of storytelling myths around a fire. We're playing roleplaying games. Either this matters for the purposes of playing in an RPG or it doesn't. This is your thread talking about the Wendigo and your concerns about their presentation. I have yet to see an example that makes me WANT to use a different conception of the Wendigo that is more useful/interesting than what I currently use (which is nothing - I've never used a Wendigo for anything except the Marvel comics one). I've never seen a game where the players expected the RPG to teach them something about a real culture as a means to actually enjoy the game.
I've considered using the Wendigo in Deadlands. But frankly he's too powerful.
So therefore - you're asking the question for something only you think is an issue. What ARE your alternatives? Post them.
It depends on what I want to present to the adventurers.
I've categorized the various American depictions of the windy go as separate monsters.
Blackwood's monster I call the "punisher of lust." It lives in the wilderness and likes to torment people by gouging their eyes and sanding their legs off.
Roosevelt's monster is just the sasquatch.
Marvel's monster is essentially a lycanthrope.
King's monster is an evil necromancer trapped in one spot.
Hannibal's is a peryton.
Typing on phone
QuoteThen take a page out of Fantasy Craft and create a bunch of scalable tables for attributes and abilities - and you can call that pile of numbers *anything* you want. And make them as culturally relevant as you want. Problem solved.
Okie dokie. Best d20 game ever made. Sad that more people don't like that.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066846American. I know it is a hodgepodge but it is mine.
Quite a bit ethnocentric too. There are plenty of rich, evil people in all cultures to draw inspiration from.
Algernon Blackwood's original story is fascinating on its own. There is a detailed review at tor.com for those who want to save time.
The monster therein bears no resemblance to the wendigo and doesn't need to. It stands on its own as a gothic fairytale. It represents the Call of Nature... horrible, seductive, vicious...
I thought of conflating it with the monster from The Ritual to add more depth for game adventures. The creature design therein is way cooler than the zombie weredeer meme. The vicious nature god that gouges eyes is a shared motif too!
I've created a new monster? It might need more work, I don't know?
I fell in love with D&D as a young man due to, after spending my formative years devouring every book of mythology and folk-lore I could get my hands on, the contents of the Monstrous Compendium on my brother's bookshelf. Familiar creatures from all the legends I loved with different ideas and details swapped at seemingly random, mixed in with creatures I'd never heard of that had sprung from the imaginations of Gygax and a hundred other writers. This kind of synthesis - almost a syncretism - was exactly what my own imagination had been looking for, to grow out of any hidebound notions of all the legendarium my mind had collected having to be just-so, and start spinning my own ideas out of the cloth of the old.
I was lucky - I started my journey before the American tendency to take what we found interesting, useful, profitable or cool and make them our own became branded as cultural-appropriation and denounced as a grievous sin instead of a cultural touchstone (only just, though - I can remember a school assembly where they tried to tell us the idea of the melting-pot nation was outdated and harmful and we should instead strive for a cultural "salad bowl", but I was old enough already to call it stupid). Without D&D, I probably would have never been able to get myself to start writing - and even if I had, I doubt it would be in its current form, filled with both literal and metaphorical cultural tomb-raiding.
The myth of the Wendigo's roots, or those of anything else used in fiction or gaming, only matter as much as a given author decides they matter. Every story has evolved almost unrecognizably from their roots, and should continue to do so as each of us tells our own stories. To lock everything into some kind of stasis based on how the story is currently told by one set of tellers (or how they told it 100 years ago, or 50 or 2000) is both ultimately impossible, and creative suicide.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066791That is just it. The wendigo myth has nothing in common with the horned hunter god meme. That is entirely the result of an image published in a 1950s magazine in which the artist depicted Blackwood's monster as a variation of the old Wild Hunt meme.
Which illustrates that we outsiders never really understood the wendigo. We got a name and a very basic description from the Algonquin, but all the rest we made up on our own.
Without being a communist I cannot really understand the cultural significance of the wendigo's greed. The closest that I can come is Satan and his legions, but that's almost the exact opposite because the Christian God is pretty malevolent already.
Ah, I thought you were coming at this from the point of view of an Algonquin or someone who has studied them, lives in the area or has Algonquin relatives. I didn't realise that this is just something you have taken offence over.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066791That is my personal tragedy as a creative content creator. Even if I wanted to capture the significance of the wendigo, all I can ever do is just remix elements of my own cultural myths. I can more or less easily understand Greek and Ancient Egyptian cultural memes because my own culture descends from them. The Greek gods are omnipotent psychopaths, so is the Abrahamic God. The Ancient Egyptians gave offerings to their dead to help them in the afterlife, I visit graves to present flowers. Even the symbolism that the heart is the seat of emotion comes from Ancient Egyptian beliefs.
So, if you want to make a more realistic monster, then study it. Check online to see if there are any Native American sites that describe creatures. Buy books about them, written by people who know about them, do research.
Wikipedia is a great tool for surface level research and I use it all the time, but if you want to get a deeper understanding of something then you have to do a lot more research. Whether that is something that is worthwhile really depends on how important it is to you. Do you want to spend a couple of years properly researching a Wendigo, to write a one page Monster writeup that some people will use now and again as an opponent?
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066812There's a book that articulates how modern indigenous cultures tell stories about the Wendigo (http://amzn.to/1SQyCgR). Here's a quote:
QuoteIn contemporary Indigenous traditions, the windigo has become associated with the danger of greed, capitalism, and Western excess, while in European and Canadian imagery, it is the symbol of evil, wilderness, and madness....
In Euro-Canadian novels and films, the windigo is largely separate from Aboriginal culture, in that there is little meaningful discussion of Native beliefs. Instead, Aboriginal peoples are often associated with a simplified version of the past, in which discussions of colonialism are avoided. In contrast, Native works focus on the traumas associated with colonialism, such as residential schools, sexual abuse, and cultural loss, which are equated with the windigo spirit. Indigenous books, plays, and films draw on a vision of the windigo articulated by Ojibwa scholar Basil Johnston, who described it as being the spirit of selfishness, as epitomized by the Euro-Canadian culture of extraction and environmental destruction: 'These new weendigoes are no different from their forebears. In fact, they are even more omnivorous than their old ancestors. The only difference is that the modern Weendigoes wear elegant clothes and comport themselves with an air of cultured and dignified respectability.'
That's a good quote. What it says to me is that each generation interprets its own stories in a way that makes sense to that generation. This has always happened, forever.
Homer interpreted Greek Myth to satisfy the people of his generation, as did the writer of the Aeneid, as have many people over the years. There is nothing wrong with that and it just freshens the stories and makes them more relevant. TV Shows interpret monsters and myths in their own way, to fit the way the TV shows work, as do films, as do novels, as do web articles.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066812What does that last part remind you of?
The closest analogue I can think of in my culture would be the "vampire counts" that sometimes appear, being an exaggeration of the metaphorically blood-sucking nobility and rich folks in the past and present. This is not a direct correspondence.
In a way, yes, but both are about blending into normal society, so both are really aspects of a deeper, underlying thing. This is similar to your objection to Wendigos being likened to Celtic Hunter Gods. The same objection coukld be made to likening Wendigos to Vampires. Both objections are valid and not valid, because on the one hand they identify mythic traits that are in common and, on the other hand they identify those too closely.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066812The indigenous tribes were communist and thus the conflict was greed versus the community, whereas in my capitalist culture the conflict is between the haves and have-nots.
As other have pointed out, shared ownership and shared resource management is not being communist. They both share traits in common, but are not the same ideology. Also, not all indigenous tribes had the same political makeup.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066812It seems to me like we never needed wendigos since all the baggage we use them to represent are already present in copious amounts already. At this point we are just co-opting the name and basic description to give a false veneer of foreignness, originality and generally magical Indian woo-woo.
Sure we need them. If I have a game set in fur-trapping America, then a lone trapper in Algonquin territory may well meet a Wendigo. If I have an urban fantasy or urban horror game, then I might need a Wendigo as a monster opponent. If I have a SciFi game set on a galaxy faraway then I might not need a Wendigo.
I am not offended by the continued distortion of the windy-go in the urban myths of Euro-American peoples. Many people believe these modern myths are true and there are reports of sighting windy-goes to the present day. What exactly it looks like varies, but most recently people think of it as a goat-headed monster similar to the Jersey devil and similar figures taken from European myth. Not only that, but misinformation keeps spreading and people start imagining First Nations myths as a homogeneous morass and treat skin-walker, windy-go and goat-man as being synonymous. The words steadily lose their meaning.
Ultimately this comes down to me being an etymology nazi. The Euro-American windy-go and so forth is a repackaging of ancient European myth memes, like the Satanic goat and the Wild Hunt, with a false veneer of Indian woo-woo. People who don't know better and aren't interested in educating themselves then mistakenly think this Euro-American monster is accurate to First Nations beliefs.
It is the Wild Hunt, a distinctly European folklore motif. An ogre. A murderous satyr. The Minotaur of Crete. Any number of other European myth memes. I cannot stress that enough. The level of misinformation has gotten to the point where I have seen people online refer to the monster from the UK horror movie The Ritual, which takes place in rural Sweden, as a "wendigo" simply because it has generic horned god symbolism.
I'm a simple grammar nazi who feels calling a murderous satyr of American urban legend as a "wendigo" clearly promotes a false impression of foreign belief systems. That's assuming that people who hear about it ever learn that the word is of Algonquin origin, which isn't necessarily the case. I'm sure most people who know the word think it is a misspelling of "windy-go" or something. Folk etymologies are always fun like that.
Sure, there are indeed First Nations activists who state that foreigners should stop referencing their myths entirely and generally promote a form of cultural isolationism. I do think that sounds insane, really insane, but I'm totally fine with respecting those wishes. European cultures have a rich history of myths that need more love than they currently get, and any monsters loaned from First Nations myths were butchered anyway. I have no problem sanitizing Pathfinder's "wendigo" of all Algonquin cultural references by something as simple as changing the name. Let's be honest here: this deer-headed stump-footed freak isn't remotely related to Algonquin culture aside from shoehorned references to "wendigo psychosis" that were absent from the original Blackwood story.
On the other hand, I'm more than happy to pilfer foreign cultures for myth memes in this vein. Both Europe and East Asia have stories of trickster (and cannibal) foxes, such as Reynard, huli jing, gumiho and kitsune. I'm more than happy to put these in a blender and refer to the blood-drenched result as a culturally non-specific "fox fairy" that does things as diverse as trick people, eat human organs, possess people, control the elements, and so forth. The benefit of this is that I can avoid accusations of getting the original myth wrong, as I love to level at others who get the myths wrong, because I am only inspired by the myth rather than adapting it.
One Hollywood example of this is in the Tales from the Crypt movie. The third story was an adaptation of a Japanese story about a "snow woman bride," but the Japanese cultural elements were completely sanitized. I didn't know that until after I watched, and I still thought the movie was good. I'm pretty sure the plot outline is listed as a fairy tale motif in the academic listing of them, but I don't know which exactly.
For anyone who read the "Short & Shivery" books in the 90s (now available on itunes), those tales are adaptations of cultural myths from around the world and they are neat. However, in many cases the names may be changed to English ones that are better understood by children while still making it clear that the story takes place in wherever it did. IIRC, one story about an African girl referred to the monster as an ogre although when I looked up the story elsewhere I got an African word I don't remember (which translated as ogre). That was one weird ogre though.
To anybody who thinks I am SJW: I am deeply sorry for offending you and I hope you have fun using windy-goes in your adventures. I hope you have a happy holiday. Thank you and have a nice day.
Passive Aggression is sooooooo unattractive.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066846American. I know it is a hodgepodge but it is mine.
It depends on what I want to present to the adventurers.
I've categorized the various American depictions of the windy go as separate monsters.
Blackwood's monster I call the "punisher of lust." It lives in the wilderness and likes to torment people by gouging their eyes and sanding their legs off.
Roosevelt's monster is just the sasquatch.
Marvel's monster is essentially a lycanthrope.
King's monster is an evil necromancer trapped in one spot.
Hannibal's is a peryton.
Typing on phone
Okie dokie. Best d20 game ever made. Sad that more people don't like that.
Since we're being reductionist - what precisely is the value of your opinion without actually offering something?
Marvel's Wendigo is an awesome character (or he used to be in the Byrne/Shooter era). He was/is tied directly to the Inuit pantheon of gods that are extant in the Marvel Universe. They didn't shy away from it - in fact it's a HUGE part of the Alpha Flight storyline considering TWO of their members are actual members of the Inuit pantheon (Sasquatch and Snowbird) and Shaman is an actual indigenous medicine man of considerable power not to mention influence on the team (as is his daughter).
I'll assume your reductionist claims are equal in scale for your other citations. Wtf are you actually arguing about?
Quote from: tenbones;1067282Passive Aggression is sooooooo unattractive.
My apologies. I didn't get a lot of good sleep last night. Recent studies have confirmed that a lack of even one or two hours of sleep causes aggression during the day.
Quote from: tenbones;1067284Since we're being reductionist - what precisely is the value of your opinion without actually offering something?
Marvel's Wendigo is an awesome character (or he used to be in the Byrne/Shooter era). He was/is tied directly to the Inuit pantheon of gods that are extant in the Marvel Universe. They didn't shy away from it - in fact it's a HUGE part of the Alpha Flight storyline considering TWO of their members are actual members of the Inuit pantheon (Sasquatch and Snowbird) and Shaman is an actual indigenous medicine man of considerable power not to mention influence on the team (as is his daughter).
I'll assume your reductionist claims are equal in scale for your other citations. Wtf are you actually arguing about?
I honestly don't know anymore. I haven't been sleeping well the past few weeks. Seasonal affectation disorder or something like that. As a result my arguments are jumbled and nonsensical.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1067302My apologies. I didn't get a lot of good sleep last night. Recent studies have confirmed that a lack of even one or two hours of sleep causes aggression during the day.
Causes or correlates with? I'd like to see your sources (honestly).
Quote from: HappyDaze;1067303Causes or correlates with? I'd like to see your sources (honestly).
https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/lifestyle/health-and-sex/2018-11-29-could-your-anger-be-linked-to-lack-of-sleep/
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1067304https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/lifestyle/health-and-sex/2018-11-29-could-your-anger-be-linked-to-lack-of-sleep/
I read the full article; not just the boiled-down version on the webpage. The actual article it references from Krizan & Hisler (2018) specifies that sleep deprivation can be causal to anger, but it doesn't necessarily equate to increased aggression (although they suggest it
might). An earlier study by Cote et al. (2013) actually looked at aggression linked to sleep deprivation and noted that while anger might increase, emotional blunting from exhaustion and hormonal effects actually seems to decrease aggression.
Cote, K. A., McCormick, C. M., Geniole, S. N., Renn, R. P., & MacAulay, S. D. (2013). Sleep deprivation lowers reactive aggression and testosterone in men. Biological Psychology, 92(2), 249–256.
Krizan, Z., & Hisler, G. (2018). Sleepy anger: Restricted sleep amplifies angry feelings. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1067302My apologies. I didn't get a lot of good sleep last night. Recent studies have confirmed that a lack of even one or two hours of sleep causes aggression during the day.
I honestly don't know anymore. I haven't been sleeping well the past few weeks. Seasonal affectation disorder or something like that. As a result my arguments are jumbled and nonsensical.
Get a HappyLight (i.e. full spectrum lamp) and put it in your peripheral vision for 20-30 minutes a day. You'll feel loads better.
First of all, thanks for apologizing, BoxCrayonTales - and I hope you get to sleep better. I haven't looked at that study, but there's a ton of other reasons why getting enough sleep is important.
That said, I still disagree about the wendigo and myth. I think it's normal and reasonable for mythic elements to be adapted and changed in other fiction.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066832That is precisely the reason why I do not think myself or anyone else outside the Algonquin culture can do the wendigo justice. The wendigo is a cultural bogeyman without similar relevance to those outside said culture. I cannot stop myself from bringing my own cultural baggage with me. You demonstrated this perfectly when you pointed out that my appellation of "communism" is wrong. As I said, if I was trying to communicate a moral message about the evils of greed, I would probably have the most success using vampire counts due to my culture's history of evil rich people.
I could certainly take inspiration from particular stories about wendigo, like writing a story about a ogress' granddaughter looking for a human husband and trying to make him an ogre through dreams, but I would not use the name "wendigo" because I do not understand its significance. I know that literally it derives from a word for owls and refers to an ice cannibal that features in many stories, but I do not understand it beyond those superficial features.
To a degree, this issue afflicts a lot of fairy tales simply due to their age.
I would say that the way myths happen is precisely because people bring their own cultural baggage when re-using and adapting prior material. The Greeks took material that were used by other cultures, and added their own cultural baggage to it - and the result of that was Greek myth. The Romans took material from the Greeks and other cultures, and added their own cultural baggage - and the result was Roman myth. The Europeans took Greek myths and added their own cultural baggage to it, and created their own myths, and so forth.
I'm morally certain that the same thing will have happened to myths in the Americas - we just don't have as good a record of it. I'm sure that Mississippian myths were adapted by other cultures, and those were changed and modified by Mukogean-speaking cultures, and those in turn were adapted by Algonquian-speaking cultures, and so forth.
I think trying to maintain only the original cultural context is impossible and further is contrary to how myths happen in the first place. That said, there are absolutely dumb, ignorant, and/or hollow adaptations that people have made. But you're setting the bar that means that essentially no adaptation is possible - even the ones that created the myths in the first place.
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Actually, now that I think about it, I had a wendigo in an old magic-themed superhero game back in the 1990s. Overall, the campaign was drawing on what would be called urban fantasy like Charles de Lint and Neil Gaiman. I had an evil cannibalistic monster possessing a young woman - though I'm not sure if I used the word "wendigo", that was what it was intended to be. It wasn't a very nuanced treatment, but then, not every RPG session needs to be a culturally nuanced work of art.
I have featured Algonquian-speaking people in one campaign and some related one-shot games, but I never used the wendigo in those games. I had a long campaign called "Vikings & Skraelings" set in alternate-history America where Icelandic colonies flourished instead of disappearing, with some later one-shots in the same setting.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1066832I am honestly quite sick of the entire concept behind monster manuals and bestiaries. I would prefer to organize monsters by archetypes in order to cut down on the huge problem with filler and redundancy afflicting the books.
I think this is a point to itself which could be interesting to discuss independent of the wendigo.
Quote from: Chris24601;1067338Get a HappyLight (i.e. full spectrum lamp) and put it in your peripheral vision for 20-30 minutes a day. You'll feel loads better.
It definitely helps! I live in a semi-basement and get SAD pretty bad, definitely sleep better when I use the light.
As I think about it, Runequest is one of the few games that is really well equipped for doing the Wendigo. As a spirit it has Int and Pow and can attack a target's pow until it is reduced to zero at which point the wendigo can start to use the body to kill its family and friends.