Gods different from other superpowered beings

In an attempt to pull away from the touchy topics before things blow over (as they always tend to on these subjects), the Bible literally runs on Alternative Character Interpretation. So Yahweh is a lot of things, in some parts acting like one of the old spiteful physical leaning gods like Zeus, and in other parts more resembling the more familiar interpretations of himself.

That said, the Bible wasn't really written towards angles of what would count as a good plot or not, so try not too read too far into it.

(@Morningstar) It's less inconsistent characterization and more that, despite being the main character that the book revolves around, it's difficult to get a three-dimensional handle on Him. Details are so vague that they might as well have been made up on the fly (we never learn His origins, for example), He only seems to act in black-and-white extremes when dealing with gray characters, is so bad at using His omnipotence that he had to create a son to convince people to believe in him, etc.

To some extent, the Bible resembles a Na No Wri Mo experiment - the details are fully formed and make sense within the story's universe, and there is a single character linking everything, but it's ultimately more concerned with an exploration of an ancient world (so much so that it might as well be an Alternate Universe from a modern standpoint) rather than setting up ongoing stories or themes.

(Again, I mean this all to be tongue-in-cheek. Please don't take this particularly flippant read of the Bible as my judgement of anything related to it.)

It's an odd thing, creation myths. They often have plot structures all their own, and yet from them so much can be interpreted or derived. I am beginning to think that that's what separates Gods and superpowered beings - a good explanation, one that stands up as a story on their own and respects storytelling conventions, so that they are spread rather than known as fact.

Well, Yahweh is described as having always existed, so he would not need an origin.

Next question. What gods from the ancient mythologies do you think were well written?

I know this isn't directed at me, but I wanted to bounce off it anyway

Looking beyond Europe, you have the orishas of Yoruba religion, who are so human in their motivations and actions that it's possible to observe a human and determine who is more likely to be their "head orisha" (though, that might be a purely diasporic concept).

For example, Shango is a fully realized character whose motivations make sense and whose actions logically flow out of those motivations. He also happens to be the personification of fire, thunder, and lightning.

Not only is he a well-"written" character but he is a dynamic one whose actions influence the motivations and actions of other characters, so he doesn't effectively exist in a vacuum, nor is he the center of the universe in the stories.

There aren't any, at least none that I can think of. Most if not all of them are written as characters in "Just So" stories, and either all have the same or similar personality in their pantheon: a whole lotta vengefulness and unchecked rage, selfishness and general indications that they're bipolar - or just plain apathetic. Until you start getting to the "newer" religions, and I don't feel that naming them is particularly necessary or relevant to the topic here. (This applies more to gods whose stories were created under a individualistic society's manner of thought; collectivist societies are better about explaining why and how their gods act the way they do, but not to the point of suspending modern disbelief.)

The reason is pretty simple: when you can only use "a/the god did it" as an explanation for natural phenomena (human behavior and physiology included), the natural phenomena in that religion's sphere of influence starts defining how the god(s) like to act. And as our species came to realize that the world was bigger than Montana (perhaps, say, the size of California or Texas?), we also realized that our gods had... more to their personality than just [insert personality here]. The stories evolved with human understanding.

Basically, you can tell how recent a pantheon is by how well-adjusted by human standards the gods in it are (or not). Anthropomorphizing your gods past what the era of a particular story's creation would actually have allowed for is a common error, and turns them from religious deities into fictional characters - it cheapens them, from a certain perspective of faith.

Superpowered beings don't have any of that, being modern creations that don't (and to avoid claims of blasphemy, can't) have expectations of religious faith being built up around them.

...is what I think, anyway.

Part of the reason why I ask this question is because earlier you were discussing how an abstract god was harder to view as a character compared to a Physical God of something who has weaknesses. So naturally I would think that you had an idea of what gods who fit that description that could be better seen as characters and be "better written". If not, than being abstract or not has no bearing on whether gods are good characters or not, but it would depend on something else entirely.

I think a good way to look at it is to look at just how hard it is to adapt the Bible into any sort of a decent form, mainly because it's hard to deal with the characters of God and Jesus, mainly because they really aren't "characters" at all.

They are really written in response to the world and the characters, and because of that they can't hold down a story on their own without either some serious character changes or focusing on another character entirely, both of which lead to complaints that it isn't an "accurate" adaption.

Yeah, I've noticed that—mythology/folklore can very easily lend itself to interpretation, a Setting Update, and pretty much anything that writers can throw at it. Meanwhile, stories specifically from The Bible are almost always a straight adaptation because too much diversion is going to get ire from Christians. (Of course, they can afford to be pushy about adaptations because they're the majority religion by far.)

Jesus is actually pretty easy to adapt, since he is the messiah, humble,easy going and very human, in fact christians since to like him more than his father: usually YHWV exist more as the creator of hell,heaven and the like, while Jesus is the one who care about you in your dality basis.

This is because Christianity have a lot of time to discuss that matter, focus in what is important to them and letting their religion evolve and move in their sociaty, this did not happen with pagan religion who where cut short for a lot of reasons, so the transition feel....off, in part for values dissonace.

@shiro_okami - well why didn't you say so?

Basically, I think you're asking the wrong question there. Two things:

First, the gods only get "better written" or emerge as relatable characters as time passes, and as a side-effect of the evolution(s) of human culture - I think (and this is what I was saying earlier). From there it's a hop, skip, and jump away to: At this point in our collective history, with enough humanizing, it's possible to make any and all gods (abstract or not) a useful character from a writing perspective. Not necessarily a "good" character, mind, but a useful one.

...Not the best word to be describing a god with, if you think about it. It reduces omnipotence and the power of creation down to... something useful as a plot device. A Wizard Did It, but with a god instead (and I think it's weird that we have that trope but not "A God Did It", when that's actually pretty prevalent in non-Judeo-Christian cultures - a version of Deus ex Machina that only hits the first of the three requirements).

But if you humanize them too much, you end up with a character who happens to have the title "god of something-or-other" but not necessarily the other aspects of being a deity. This happens... pretty much constantly. The temptation to flanderize them away from their historic character is apparently irresistible to modern writers, and so you end up with a character that god's original worshipers wouldn't recognize - or worse, would, and then stone the writer to death for blasphemy.

I mean, if you absolutely need an example, I'm partial to God in Bug Martini. But then the problem is clearer - it's a subjective preference for one style of humanizing over another, yeah? I like his (criminally underrated) sense of humor, and you may or may not care for it over, say, Penny Arcade. Nothin' wrong with that; I'm not saying, I'm just "saying". (*cough*pleb*cough*) Certain religions even rely on it - not the webcomicking part, but the reinterpretation/refinement of interpretation part - as it also modernizes the god and makes them relevant to a modern worshiper/audience.

Second, there's the word "abstract" itself. I think we may have different definitions of it, as it applies to deities, but that isn't too relevant to the issue (as it is subjective, and shouldn't really apply to an objective entity like a god is ...in theory). To me, abstraction itself is a god-level superpower, because it ignores the physical rules of the universe (which we probably do agree on); abstraction makes a god, and not necessarily the other way around. Reducing an abstract god to a humanized character strips away their abstraction(s) and, in the process, their justification for godhood; a god is either abstract to some degree, or it is a character that can be understood and related to by a reader of a story, but not both.

A physical god can be transmuted from one state to another, just by adhering to the rules, and that being the case can be killed and revived as necessary. But an abstract god can only either be known (enough people remember it) or unknown (it is no longer in living memory); the rules of matter don't apply to it, and they exist without any need for us to exist - this is a hard and fast rule, at least to me. So then, by removing this, their abstract nature, you end up with something physical, and thus relatable.

Once you start allowing your reader to know the literally unknowable, you redefine what "unknowable" means (in a particular context) and reduce its overall impact. This is why I think it's much harder to humanize an abstract god, in a way that doesn't remove what makes them a god in the first place.

I think that's where I stand.

It might also be that some Christian sects are so bent on directly quoting the Bible (but usually if it meets their own ends), but while mythology was obviously written down, pagans as a group never had have the insistence on "directly quoting" that some Christians do.

Pagan barely have sacred scripture as whole, there is somewhat informality about it, while the scripture is serious buisness in abrahamic religion(how much it depend of course)

And about abstract gods for me the only way to use it in a story is like a force of nature or at the very least somewhat of a lovecraftnian god, the abrahmian god feel this VERY well.

So how would you humanize a god? What is the difference in the level and type of humanization that different gods would need? For instance, what would be the difference between Yahweh (abstract and beyond immortal), Zeus and Vishnu (Physical God but immortal), and Odin, Thor, and Susanoo (Physical God and mortal).

I don't disagree with you, but it would be easier to understand you if you used specific examples.

Oh it's easy.

Think Dionysus. It's easy to imagine him as a party bringing frat god; forgetting the aspects that bring forth divine awe.

It's forgetting the difference between a man who throws lightning and a force of nature in human form.

I'm not using specific examples because I feel doing so would be blasphemous, or at least a bit disrespectful of extant religions and religious figures, and comp. theology isn't my field anyway. I know enough pagans to not want to trod too lightly, is the quick answer, and I'd rather avoid the minefield by walking around it instead of tiptoeing through it. (Or, in this situation, by turning around and going back the way I came, now that I seem to be halfway through it...)

I suppose it's the difference between Zeus, "sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion, who ruled as king of the gods of Mount Olympus" - an entity who makes himself known to his followers through natural phenomenon (covered by the atmospheric sciences, in this case)...

...and Zeus, who has at least six different "infancy" stories that Wikipedia mentions, and probably a hundred more depending on who did the telling back in the day, even though a god really has no need for one other than to anchor him to a sense of reality that the listener can relate to. (No, really. What would God need with- I mean, why would a god need any further explanation? "Thunder happens because Zeus." "Who's Zeus?" "Zeus makes thunder happen." etc.)

I think, just by telling a story about a god in ways that a listener can relate to, by using human storytelling conventions at all, you humanize a god. (I do not see this as a question of divinity, but of storytelling. Again: areligious.) And in the process, you rob them of some of their heartless and seemingly randomly-applied power - more so depending on the breadth of their domain.

This statement has two possible implications, that either the god has to be relateable to be a good character, or that myths did not use human storytelling conventions. Is it the first, the second, or both?

The point is that religion us storytelling to said WHY some things are like that: god create the rainbow after Now get of his ark, Spider exist because Aranchne and his contest with Atenna and so own.

But in literary stories a god are two things: a background piece use so chararter can have a perticular religion and how that impact the world or a full chararter if is real.

so that is the diference: humanaize a god is just make him more human, that it, the more reasons have to do things it become more like us.

Oh, no no. The first one - I was using "human" for the sake of repetition.

But the stories the gods tell themselves must be odd by our standards.

Aha! Why didn't you say earlier that you think that a character has to be relatable in order to be a good character? This is the key that I have been looking for to understanding your entire argument.

And this is where I have to disagree with you. A good character does not have to be relatable. To say otherwise would be like one person saying that another person has less depth, complexity, or personality, or is less real simply because they can not relate to them, which is silly. There are many different characters that I find interesting but are not relatable.

Or maybe what you mean by relatable is different than what I mean by relatable?

Really? That's an "Aha!" moment...?

(This is getting a little off-topic, but...)

I agree: a relatable character isn't necessarily a good character. There are many ways to make a good character, and that is why I don't think I've said that relatability is required in a good character. It helps, though, and it's an expedient means of getting the audience on the character's side (and in some cases that's enough to get them to think of that character as a "good character", cf. any number of popular franchises in the last few decades with less-than-spectacular characterization or even writing), or at least pay attention to what they're doing, so you see that getting suggested or used a lot.

"Interesting", "relatable", and "good" are three different things that don't necessarily have to intersect in a character, either - and I kinda doubt that a character needs more than two anyway.

This is really off-topic, but I'll quote Scott Adams^note The Joy of Work, if you're curious. It's 80% Dilbert-style humor, and respectively 10% advice and personal story. here: Cuteness, Meanness, Bizarreness, Recognizability, Naughtiness, and Cleverness. Those are the six dimensions to all humor, as he puts it, and all humor uses at least two of the six.

Weird thing? This doesn't apply to just humor. These seem to work in a number of styles and genres, and quite frankly there are deities (or at least patron saints) that embody them. Those six Zeus Infancy stories I mentioned earlier variously hit a couple of them each, even.

I figure, that is how you get people to actually buy into something: by using storytelling conventions (humorous ones, in this case) to get their attention long enough to hear the actual message.

The reason I made that assumption is because the entire discussion I thought you were implying that gods would be better characters if they were relatable, especially when you talk of "humanizing" them.

• "First, the gods only get "better written" or emerge as relatable characters as time passes."
• "I think, just by telling a story about a god in ways that a listener can relate to, by using human storytelling conventions at all, you humanize a god."

If that is not the case, then let me re-ask an earlier question in a more specific way. How would you make a god a better character without changing their "abstraction" and relatability.

You can't, without changing how they are perceived. I figure, once you start to change how a god is perceived, the tendency is to make them more of a character you can get to know - which cuts into their divinity, eventually if not immediately. If you take a god and turn them into a better character (which I define by storytelling standards, not by religious ones), that on its own downgrades them as a deity.

I regret using "relatable" earlier; it's not the only means of making a deity more appealing, but it's the quickest and most common. I wasn't expecting this to turn into such a long discussion, and if I'd known I would have chosen my words better (and I'm not saying this to attack or berate you, Shiro).

Basically, I see godhood as a zero-sum game between divinity and human appeal, and I have no better word or phrase at the moment for those two poles. Moving closer to one end or the other means you're moving away from the opposite end. So the best you can do, I think, is to strike a balance between those two, because you can't have both. Does that make more sense?

It seems that you are trying to say that the very concept of god itself does not appeal to modern human standards of storytelling. Is that correct? If so, then I think I understand your argument.

Storytelling is an explanation, and deities have more perceived power the less they are explained, to the point that they have tremendous power when they defy explanation.

I don't agree with that at all. What you are talking about sounds more like reverence based on the fear of the unknown. But that does not cover actual power. We know much more about the sun or the stars than our ancestors did, but that does not make them any less powerful or wondrous than during our ancestors' time. Sometimes, increased knowledge about a phenomenon can even add to its perceived power.

For example, if someone performed a genuine miracle right in front of a witness, the witness would probably be amazed because what they thought was impossible just happened. But even if the performer of the miracle completely explained how the miracle was possible, and even if the witness understood the explanation, if the miracle was still impossible for the witness to perform despite that knowledge, then it is still a miracle in the sense that the performer of the miracle has a power that the witness does not, regardless of whether the witness knows how the power works or not.

Power is power, regardless of whether you understand how it works or not.

True, but rather oversimplified. Storytelling is as much about explaining as it is choosing not to explain. Whether the former or the latter is more important to the story often depends on the genre. Sometimes it is good storytelling to choose not to explain something.

edited 12th Oct '15 6:40:07 PM by shiro_okami