Mythic Fidelity

One of my favorite complaints people make about the Twilight series is: "that's not how real vampires are!" I giggle every time someone brings it up. Twilight's vampires are still far outside of my personal tastes for the undead, but I recognize the vampire legend is pretty mutable, even if Ms. (Mrs?) Meyers does seem intent on neutering them.

That said, I get an involuntary eye twitch at the word "wereleopard". Data supports that if you just called them something different, rather than using a specifically northern European term for it ("wer" for man, also related to terms like "wergeld" for what you had to pay for having killed someone) I have far less problem. All sorts of societies have shapeshifters who take on animal form, and they generally have native, non-germanic names for them. (As another etymological nitpick, I'm bothered by the shortened term "lycan" as it splits the root word "-anthropos" (again, man) rather than dividing on the sensible break between the two).

My point was that I believe if you put everybody who cares at all about legends and myths in a straight line, could make a continuum of where one author or another has diverged too far from the source material for the work to be pleasurable for them. I know one writer who cringes every time someone talks about plural minotaurs as if a mommy and daddy minotaur get together and make baby bull headed monstrosities, rather than it being a very specific curse from the gods. His Dark Materials and Anne Rice's Memnoch the Devil played way too fast and loose with their Christian source material for me. I've been witness to mind numbingly passionate discussions about how fairies ought to be depicted (nevermind spelled! "faerie" indeed.).

Though by the same token, some of my favorite works ever include a re-imagining of seven world myths in terms of physics, a book where Pan has a conversation with Tarzan, a series in which Ishtar the goddess of lust works at a strip club and Orpheus' dismembered head is a character, a story in which very real angelic miracles are a common and well known occurrence that lends no more understanding or meaning to the lives of people, and one where the Greek muses are alzheimer's patients in southern California. And Tolkien, which has several convenient lifts from a number of European mythological sources.

I think how you deal with well-documented outside source material is especially important in a short story, where your reader's enjoyment of the piece may rest heavily on their familiarity not only with the original myths and legends, but the subsequent debates and controversies surrounding them. (In one of my favorite books, in utter frustration, a wizard says "or maybe I could turn you into a rhinocerous, which is how this whole stupid unicorn myth got started anyway." The character he says it to is, in fact, a unicorn). Being able to drop a single name, or a precise phrase, and have it conjure in your readers minds a wealth of myth, culture, and drama is a beautiful thing (Try the word "Ragnarok" and see how much pops into your head).

But if you want just the classics, the place to go is the actual classics. The difficult trick is to put a new spin on something that summons that wealth of story, keeping it familiar enough to feel like you haven't cheaply stolen a name or face for your own nefarious agenda, but also keeping it fresh and new enough that a reader who knows the legend can still be surprised and delighted.

It's a thin tightrope at the best of times, and the terrible truth of it is, each reader's rope will be in a different place that you won't be able to judge until you've already put your weight on the forward foot, and there's either a rope there, or there isn't.

Anyway, those are my scattered thoughts for the moment.