Your Worldbuilding Needs Weird Myths

Legends speak of those who get On Writing and Worldbuilding or my book! linktr.ee/timhickson will you be one of them? ~ Tim

You know, something many writers miss while creating their own mythology is there always make it too clean. They remove anything that can be controversial, problematic, nonsensical, or just weird. But myths are weird for a reason. Not only are pass down from a culture way longer we where born and we often lack the context on why there are told that way, but there are meant to make you think, see things in very different ways and be more open minded about the strangest of ideas, and makes you wonder about impossible things otherwise you never thought before. Is a open book on how people view the world itself.

The more mythology you look into outside of “canon”, the more you realize that our stories are more varied and strange than we originally imagined

Weird things in mythology make more intuitive sense when you're working with the context of the original culture. For example, in Aztec mythology, why was one of the previous worlds destroyed by Jaguars? It's because when you are living near the jungles of Southern Mexico, jaguars are these terrifying creatures which come out of nowhere and kill you. For the Aztecs, they are these terrifying primal monsters who appear out of nowhere and bring about sudden death. They didn't view them as just another animal, but as a herald of the Gods, of the primal force of nature itself. So it makes sense that such a supernatural force could be responsible for destroying a world.

When you try to explain the unexplainable you generally get some insane solutions.

tbf aphrodite just popped up as an adult because she resembles adult love, so it makes sense she was never a kid

Myths/beliefs being used as political tools has so many historical examples, like how many rulers used religion to give legitemacy to their rule (kings being direct descendants from gods or being worshipped as gods in flesh). Also considering how many early civilizations started in valleys of large rivers, it's unsurprising that the flood myths are very common, it is likely a shared common human experience across the world.

Hello Darcy! Myths are like rumors. By the time you learn of them, they've been twisted so many times. In Avatar, the characters get to watch a play about their adventure. The play is probably based on military reports and rumors that have been twisted to glorify the morals of the fire nation.

I love how, even among established lore, there are headcanons (stories we share with each other that haven't been verified by the authors). We make mythology outside of stories. Lore is more than what others say. It's what we believe about what we observe.

Aww... I'm sorry for the loss of the kitty... cute puppy though

During the God’s War before time began, a powerful water deity invaded the Sky, which is why it is water coloured rather than sun coloured. Glorantha has the best invented mythology.

I like the idea of a sci-fi story set in the far future universe that treats our modern understanding of science as a myth. “Early humans believed that, at the beginning of time, all of the stuff in the universe was concentrated into a single ball. And that ball was so hot and so dense that it exploded, and that explosion was so great, it continued for billions of years, and the universe continued expanding and expanding. Eventually, it was big enough that stars and solar systems and even galaxies gathered together within the expanding universe, and civilizations grew within those galaxies. Early humans wondered if the universe would ever stop expanding, or if it would just keep growing forever. Of course, we know better than that now.” Sounds like a pretty good creation myth, right?

Interesting with the Religious Syncretism, when Alexander the Great ‘conquered’ Egypt, a large source of tension was the clash between the Macedonian-Greek Pantheon and the Egyptian Pantheon. To help justify their conquest, and ease tensions, Alexander (it’s told) says that the Pantheons are the same but simply appearing as different aspects - that the sun god appears as Helios to the Greeks, but as Ra to the Egyptians, etc. It helped blend the religions together, and set more of a stability for the Ptolemaic Dynasty of Egypt by imprinting that shared religious identity. Thought this’d be an interesting help for world building bits <3

The romans Famously integrated not only conquered nobility into their society but especially conquered Deities into their own Pantheon, or equal them to some of their own Deities. A big reason why the Romans lasted so long, roughly 2200 years from Kingdom to Eastern Empire, was their adaptability.

Owl House: The islands are the corpse of a Dead Titan, and their magic is just wielding the Titan's residual magic held in it's corpse.

Studying and being an avid fan of mythology is exactly why I'm so frustrated so many stories these days feel like they're just cheap knock offs of each other and how the stereotypical dragons, elves, orcs and castles fantasy setting has became so overused it effectively lost all magic. Mythologies from around the world have so many ideas, settings, creatures, magic systems, societal influences that could be a jumping off point for so many unique worldbuildings with unique plots, yet people just always default back to like a handful of plots and world we've seen a million times. Sure ripping off mythology doesn't make your story "original" either, but at least it's unique and can feel fresh in this oversaturated market of clone trend chasers.

I love, love, love mythology; it's one of my biggest hyperfixations, and it truly fascinates me how stories change and evolve just like people. Terry Pratchett said in Witches Abroad, "People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact it's the other way around." That's why I get really frustrated when people get dismissive of the effect that fiction, and stories in general, have on reality. The stories, tiny stories and huge stories and in-between stories, we tell ourselves and each other every single day, changes our reality, our perception of the world. Reality is molded, shaped, by every single individual's perspective, and with all of these perspectives continually colliding with each other, no wonder the world is in such a mess, and why people are becoming more and more divided, families are fractured, politics are more polarized than ever, and arguments are treated as a matter of life and death. Just taking a few seconds to think, 'why do I think this way?', or 'where did this story come from?' or 'is this my own viewpoint, or is it from someone else?' can be, literally, world-changing. Also, The Ocean at The End of The Lane is one of my favourite books of all time. So nice to see it get mentioned here.

I'm so glad you brought up The Elder Scrolls bc I was definitely already thinking about it. As a person who, like you, is familiar with many world mythologies, it is extremely apparent to me that whomever crafted the various mythologies of The Elder Scrolls was VERY familiar with all manner of Eastern philosophy and Western esotericism, specifically gnosticism and The Bhagavad Gita.

Hello, Darcy! Thank you for comforting HelloFutureMe in this tough time... we all love both of you!

Your writing and world building books are good. The first one helped me a lot with fight scenes.