Just tell the story you want to tell. Someone will be offended no matter what, so don't waste your effort trying to appeal to people who choose to be angry. It's fiction and you have creative license. The worst that can happen is that some tightwad refuses to read your story. So what.
Supernatural butchers Christianity but plenty of people still watch it and some of them identify as Christians.
Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.
One thing that works in your favor is that a lot of real-world myths overlap heavily. There's certain archetypes and events that pop up in myth and legend all over the world. A ton of mythologies have a Prometheus-like figure, for example, or a great flood that only a handful of chosen people survive. Putting in these archetypical elements would be quite justified and shouldn't really cause too much offense.
^ Not to mention a lot of mythologies have cribbed from others.
And then a lot of mythologies don't crib from others so much as "end up with very similar views of the human condition because we're all people."
I read boatloads of mythology, and half the fun is running into similarities between all the different stories and mythos that everyone has.
Plus, don't worry if Christians get offended at you using elements of their religion. I don't care when people use my religion (Irish paganism) for story ideas, as long as it's a good story.
edited 8th Jan '14 12:47:10 PM by Sharysa
This is a title.
If you're going to let the possibility of offending people deter you from writing then you might as well give up now. It's impossible to avoid pissing off everyone.
How's that old saying go? You can please some of the people all of the time or all of the people some of the time but not all of the people all off the time.
Like nekommon said, write what you want to write and if Christians get offended fie on them.
On the other point, lots of people have been very successful writing original mythologies, but that doesn't mean your work is somehow not as good if it uses existing figures in real world mythologies.
As a random example, Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips, which uses the Greek gods. Maybe it's not a blockbuster genre defining work like Lord of the Rings, but it's well written and popular and does its own thing without worrying about who might get upset..
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!
Tolkien himself stole from Norse mythology and Christianity, so I don't see what's the big deal.
Intellectual Rock Star
Thrusting a unique religion on an Audience will drive a lot of them away. Give them something to compare and contrast with and you'll keep them. Someone's always going to be offended by something.
RIP Leonard Nimoy 26/03/1931 - 27/02/2015
If you are worried about offending people just use the religious stories you want and change the names of major figures and gods so they aren't exactly copied. It doesn't matter if they are identical in content, 99% of monotheistic religions in fiction are just variations of Christianity under another name anyway.
In one of the WIP books i'm writing, i've included elements from Greek, Egyptian and Norse Mythology, as well as a touch Christianity for reasons i've forgotten.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, especially since i've seen such a concept work in other media (television). But after taking into consideration what authors like L. Frank Baum, J.R.R. Tolkien, Kenneth Oppel and Kathryn Lasky did with their books; actually give their worlds their own deities with unique names, what i'm doing; taking other mythologies and trying to build on them, seems kind of weak. And another factor that suddenly occurs to me is that some Christians might take offense to me referencing their religion in a story that frequently references Myth and legend.
Any suggestions on this?