#the monomyth if you will

[the-lord-of-the-things]

returning to my roots to try and get into an art mood with the OG Lad

#Loki my oldest and most beloved of ocs #yes his name is Loki i cooked him up when I was like 10 and in a huge norse mythology phase #He's like #the Ur-OC #the blueprint #the monomyth if you will #the eldest and most powerful of blorbos #it felt So Good to scribble his stupid mug again holy shit I need to draw him more #you can see his genetics in every oc to follow him in one way or another #and now I have the hindsight to realize Ah. That was the Gender Envy(tm).

[moghedien]

the amount of people I see who think that there is one true, absolute source of all myths (but specially this happens when talking about Greek myths with people tho) is bizarre

like not just people who never really looked into sources or whatever and didn't really think about there being multiple versions of myths, but people who think that all of those sources came from like one definite True Source of All Myths that was just oral or something so its lost to time but there is definitely One True and Absolute way that all of these myths are supposed to be and they just got messed up over time

#this and also people who think that the monomyth is like literal truth that everything adheres to because of aforementioned True Source #instead of just being like an approach to analyzing story #this is such an evangelical christian way of thinking like genuinely if you approach mythology like this you need stop and to think on why

[yea-baiyi]

i’m sure people smarter than me have said this, but the odyssey is the sequel to the monomyth actually. in the hero’s journey the hero departs from home, from innocence, from safety, to fulfil his destiny. in homer’s the odyssey, the war is over, the destiny fulfilled. next comes the real fight, the unwinnable fight—to return to everything you left home to fight for.

in the first half of the poem, while odysseus fights tooth and nail to return home, his home fights with its last breath to give odysseus a home to return to. and time is running out. his wife penelope is down to her last desperate excuse. suitors have invaded his home, eating through his household and his wealth. his son, telemachus, almost grown, leaves home for the first time to find out if odysseus is still alive, if there is still a reason to keep fighting. having lost everything he had, over and over, odysseus is finally allowed to arrive in his homeland. at first he doesn’t recognise it. and he is cursed to look old and decrepit, so that none of his loved ones would recognise him.

for the second half of the poem, he has returned and miraculously, he has not been displaced or forgotten. but now he has to reclaim what was his. and removing the rot, restoring this place to the home odysseus remembers, is long and painful. instead of walking through the front door, he must sneak in through the back or risk being thrown out. not a single person knows him by sight; odysseus must prove his identity over and over, to every member of his household. he must retell story after story, share secret after secret, reveal every marking or scar upon his body, to finally be recognised by his own family. and then he destroys every last trace of the intruders—kills the men, kills the servants, wipes the slate clean.

by athena’s magic, he is restored to his former youth and glory as he reunites with his wife. the families of the slain suitors try to seek revenge, but zeus, lord of the skies, intervenes. odysseus, filled with his god-given strength, is home, and ready to fight to protect it.

it’s a complete sequel to the heroes journey, but what makes it part of the monomyth is the horrible truth about odysseus’ tale: that it’s impossible. that you will leave, and your home will change in your absence, and someone might fill your place; your family won’t recognise you, your wife met someone else, intruders have destroyed your home, and you will never be as young as you were. you will return and you will fight with every ounce of your strength and it won’t be enough to turn back the clock. it’s the terrible last chapter to every hero’s story that we don’t like to talk about.

and yet, of course, it’s the same story we tell over and over: we’ve won the war, now all we want is to return home, but home is no longer somewhere we can reach.

#the odyssey #hero’s journey #the monomyth #greek mythology #odyssey #homeric hyperfixation haze #sorry this has nothing to do with mxtx but i’ve been sitting on this thought about the odyssey for months #like. i’m sure this isn’t a new thought but. #you think of tolkien and the scourging of the shire #all quiet on the western front #narnia #all the chinese poets #i want to go home. but i am home. #think about how the odyssey ends at the very second athena declared the conflict over. #we don’t see odysseus reaction to it. we see him ready to fight. athena declares a peace. #but it is abrupt. as if athena is slamming the window shut. he won he’s happy that’s enough. #does he manage to live after that? we don’t get to know #i was sitting on this thought for ages. and then i read the greek tragedies. was helping my friend with a paper on home by toni morrison #and yeah this all clicked. got irresistible

[gods-favorite-autistic]

Today my English teacher said puss in boots was an anti-hero archetype and like???? No he’s not????? How did you decide this????

#we’re learning about like the monomyth and archetypes and stuff #yesterday she showed us a vid ab it and it was like ‘the one thing you Harry Potter katniss everdeen and frodo have in common #is that you’re all human!’ #my literal reaction was to go ‘no??? frodo is very pointedly not human???? #like I get the point I get what they’re trying to say but also no??? pick literally any other character??? #madurday night live #puss in boots

[1ore]

of course i continue to rotate that beast in my mind. tamahuaq thoughts because i can't catch a break to draw hardly anything of substance

It would be very funny if Tamahuaq’s ability to parasitize others was limited to gods, endlings, and mages, because they all have exposed/dissociated “souls” to some degree, and Tamahuaq eats god’s blood i.e. “souls” i.e. metaphysical bodyjuice. One (1) human normie walks into Old Sond and the plantfungus loses it. doesn’t know what to do. Heterotrophs are so SCARY!!!!!!!!!!!

Tamahuaq’s emotional world is made of many bodies that are only kinda assimilated into one body. I think it is big enough that it can’t really afford to centralize physically or mentally. So it can pass around impulses and selectively access information from different parts of its network, but if one daughter colony is cut off from the main mass, that physical/emotional/mental space is typically lost to the rest of the body.

Being a part of Tamahuaq is frightening, not because one is a passenger to its hunger against their will or anything like that, but because Tamahuaq is like an echo chamber for one’s own fears and desires. Most of the gods imprisoned in Sond are already resentful of their wardens, if not certifiably off the shitts in pain, so they are already primed to lash out. but they don’t realize how far they’ll go until they’re taken out of it.

IDK how the endlings extract gods and other beings from Tamahuaq, but I think it might be as simple as cutting off that “limb” and peeling off as much plantmycelium as they can. At a certain point, there just isn’t enough Tamahuaq to functionally feed anymore. I think Tamahuaq (or rather its satellite flesh?) self-terminates or jumps hosts when it can no longer justify hitching a ride on that particular host.

The constant risk of losing satellite limbs brushes shoulders with its need to explore and forage, so it has become very efficient at partitioning itself into smaller spaces using simple directives and selective memories to puppet a scout around. A lot of these satellite bodies carry a basic compulsion to get back to the rest of the body at some point, but are also less coordinated and easier to dissociate.

Because of the Boiling Rage shared by its primary food source, Tamahuaq is thought to be hateful and angry and generally motivated by revenge. But it isn’t, inherently. It is apparently able to exploit anger and other emotions-- or at least transmit emotional memories-- but whether human emotions are intelligible to it, or it has just learned thru pattern recognition how to get what it needs is hard to say. It does have its own interior emotional world, but it has been largely diluted by its hosts (and is difficult to understand outside of basic needs like “I don’t want to die” and “I am so hungry all of the time”) For his part, the Tamahuaq depicted in oral tradition is anthropomorphized and has ~human-like motivations.

(in reality Tamahuaq is like a vessel of the pain of his ancient enemy, the very first endling, beloved folk hero twisted by resentment when betrayed and locked up in Sond as Tamahua's keeper. but we will not discuss him further.)

When the endlings do finally succeed in cutting out the “heart” of Tamahuaq—its original body and the closest thing to a central “brain” that it has—the rest of it rapidly dissociates into smaller and smaller functional parts, and decays. Tamahuaq’s psyche also shrinks in a rather violent and disorienting way, as trahearnexpy finds out. This sudden smallness is AHHHH VERY SCARY to the plantfungus, and it loses many of its formative memories that have been scattered across this wider network. Its sensory world shrinks, too, in that its funnie plantmonster body is experiencing the world thru touch, taste, smell, and some rudimentary thermoception, where it used to be able to sense. Probably anything it wanted. I think this is part of why it clamps down on tree boy and does not let go. You WILL interpret the world for me (because im too scared and small ahhhhhh I cant do it myself )))): )

eventually it learns the power of love and being small, but in the mean time it is so scared of heterotrophs. It is so scared of heterotrophs. It is so scared of h

#girl you ARE heterotrophs. #monomyth tag #sure. at this point whatever #1ore doesn't want to use her art blog

[utilitycaster]

ah yes the hero's journey:

300 pages of elaborate worldbuilding

Call to adventure (father and only friend ritually sacrificed while you were busy flipping and reversing an attempted assassination)

Supernatural emotional support animal

Eldritch cowherding

Eating rats

Depression

Running into your two worst siblings

Suicidal depression

Gnome with sweet prosthetic hammer hands

#good news drizzt is interesting now #bad news i need to pretend the word blingdenstone isn't funny #m reads lod #also maya do'urden is the tyffial of these books i shall not elaborate #in all seriousness i have complex feelings about the monomyth but these books are probably going to hew closely to it #but also. campbell really skimmed over the part where you wonder if you can call the petrified mushroom king a friend huh

[vbookfangeek]

CHARACTER CREATOR CHEWSDAY!

She's about to show you the WILDEST 4 hour long video essay.

PICREW LINK

#Picrew #Character Creator Chewsday #Definitely unrelated #Have you seen Jessie Gender's video on the monomyth of Star Wars

[onewomancitadel]

I say this as someone who lurked in the trenches cross-sites since Volume 1. I know. people. are never. happy.

#I even remember people being upset during volume 2 #people want to rewrite history that the entitlement of this fandom is some altruistically-motivated hatred on Monty's part of just because #the show got 'bad' during volume 3 #because they committed to decisions set up prior to that volume #sorry I think you are probably fucked in the head if you think the writers of this show are only doing it for clout/to 'corrupt' #a pure vision #the alchemy/monomyth/jung is embedded in red/white/black/yellow; that was always there #the jung has always been there #the fundamental ideas to the story have always been there #you can only tell this sort of story (ultimate sympathy for salem) with this storytelling structure #anyway I think there is a blight in the RWBY fandom #it's like nothing else #I've definitely spectated my fair share of delusional fandoms #but this one gets particularly weird

[k-she-rambles]

Today in "I cannot believe I actually had to say this:"

The Lord of the Rings is not divinely inspired, at least not in THAT way. It's not an elaborate and intentional metaphor for higher truth except in the way all art and creativity is either. Jrrt would fight you

#look i'm a monomyth stan #but you have to draw from what is there not what you *think* is there #and what is there is brilliant and flawed and *human* #stories to quote Hopkins #deal out that being indoors each one dwells #but that doesn't mean they have inerrancy #i had to say it irl don't worry i try not to vagueblog

[unhinged-summer-fun]

just realized “I’ve written a prophecy” is hilarious when talking about farmer Joel because the prophet Joel tells a story of redemption and judgment day and purification and restoration and bounty and fruitfulness and hordes of armies that destroy and consume hundreds of times over and the wrath of a god who is vengeful and awesome in that old testament kinda way

in the context of this story, Joel absolutely refuses the call for several years even though literally everything is like. PAY ATTENTION DUDE PLEASE

if I end up calling this fic ‘the book of joel’ literally express ship a fist to my jaw

#I didn’t reject the church for this #actually I kinda did #but THATS BESIDE THE POINT #scardinata #there’s just something so 🤌 about the Refusal of the Call #and I haven’t purposefully used the monomyth/hero’s journey for story writing since high school #even though STC is essentially THJ #but I truly appreciate how impactful it is on so many other pieces of media #I’d say TLOU included #it’s cyclical and it’s poetic the way we see Joel go from whole to empty to broken to healed again #it’s not redemption it’s a circle #both can be valuable #but a circle doesn’t resolve cleanly which is why I think ppl have been resistant to TLOU’s canon #sometimes you just have to let a circle be a circle and you can’t fault it for having equal ups and downs #but also I’m very excited to rant about hügelkultur with y’all

[berah-ronah]

joseph campbell my FUCKING nemesis. every day i wake up and choose violence against that man

#idk maybe the heros journey works for literary analysis #but as analysis of religion/myth/folklore? bullshit #as it turns out when you sand away all cultural context and material differences #its easy to define a Monomyth #anyway stan jonathan z smith

[tillman]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO the FUCKIGN heros JEOURNEY NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#I HATE YOU THE MONOMYTH I HATE YOU. #txt

[transcrocgirl]

gonna take away certain peoples writing privilages if I hear about another blue stapler or avatar the last air bender being brough up in my writers workshop class

#croc thoughts #croqueue #text post #croc writes #SHUT THE FUCK UP #MONOMYTH THIS #HARD MAGIC SYSTEM THAT #JUST WRITE AND STOP USING THESE TERMS AS THE BE ALL AND END ALL OF WRITING #IM GOING TO THROW YOU IN A TRASH COMPACTOR #THESE ARE MORE SO ANYLITICAL TERMS AND NOT FUCKING WRITING ADVICE YOU TWEED CUCKS #STOP BELIEVING THAT YOUTUBE HAS THE SECRET TO WRITING #AND YOU JUST HAVE TO USE THESE TERMS TO MATHMATICALLY WRITE THE PERFECT STORY #ok #im done

[toskarin]

I think the thing that broke me fully from the grip of the monomyth was a youtube video where someone argued that Bloodborne was an example of the hero's journey, but their explanation made it very clear that not only did they not understand the events of the game, but their misunderstanding also didn't fit the monomyth either, and the top comment was like "maybe it's not a good idea to analyze works through the lens of campbell that weren't explicitly written to follow his formula?"

the funniest part (and by funniest I mean most irritating) is that The Hero with a Thousand Faces keeps adding caveats to the monomyth even as it's presenting its best examples to the reader

"okay so this story doesn't apply exactly, but you can simplify it!" is putting in a heroic effort to smokescreen for how the monomyth is stretched so thin that it actually applies to nearly zero myths written before its publication if you don't significantly simplify the myth and then look the other way when it still doesn't quite fit

it's actually headache-inducing to think about how many young writers are taught about the hero's journey without the disclaimer that it's nonsense. internet horoscopes ask for less suspension of disbelief

[cryptotheism]

You seem (based on your online persona blah blah blah) that you would be super into the Hero's journey if you were an English student

Fuck Campbell and his stupid Jungian monomyth shit.

[comradekatara]

aang's not your typical warrior hero. he's a decolonial hero - a trickster one - in the mold of anansi (hugely reminiscent) and br'er rabbit. and that's why i love him

yeah!!! aang is very much a trickster who uses his opponent's aggression against them, sometimes without even lifting a finger ("ahoy! i'm admiral zhao!!!") and people who expect him to be idk. beowulf. are missing the fucking point. katara, on the other hand, does model the classical western hero more faithfully. unlike aang, who never wanted this responsibility, she is someone who fantasizes about being a hero, saving people, going on quests, etc. and her arc most resembles the so-called "monomyth" (i hate you joseph campbell) or "hero's journey." however, it is somewhat complicated by the fact that her apotheosis does involve her shedding that carefully constructed narrative she has told herself to survive in favor of expanding it somewhat, allowing for shades of grey that acknowledge the humanity of all involved parties, including herself. and then zuko is typically regarded as something of a byronic hero, although i'd contest that notion simply because so much of his character is about striving for a goodness that is just out of reach, rather than relaxing his code of honor out of moral lassitude (most of the time, stolen ostrich horses excluded). so it's not that they're not all classical heroes with very concrete and defined heroic arcs, but katara is the most [culturally] typical formulation of heroism, which is something that people largely refuse to recognize for the simple fact that she is a girl. alas.

#10000dandelions #asks #aang #katara #zuko #analysis #like. a mini analysis #i could obviously get way more into it #but like...... i wont #i think we all get it