African Mythologies

Thread opened after discussion here.

Over the course of the last year, Liongo has been making a massive overhaul of African Mythologies on TV Tropes. We went from having a single "African Mythology" that said "a bit of everything" regarding Sub-Saharan African mythologies, to having over 20 pages concerning each separate mythology. Although it is positive that such mythologies are shared to broader audience, and Liongo is definitely knowledgeable about what they're writing, there have been raised a couple issues about how we should handle such overhaul.

• For one, what should we do with the original African Mythology page. Currently it's divided in three parts: summaries of African Mythologies, an Index, and a Tropes list. Personally, I proposed at least to cut the Tropes List: it makes no sense to have a Tropes list a la "some funfacts about random African Mythologies" when now each Mythology has its own page, thus a satisfactory Tropes' list on its own. Then, the index should be kept as its useful. As for the summaries, I'd be inclined to keep it, but some raised concern that is too long and encyclopedic and could use being shortened.

• The latter issue was raised regarding a few individual pages of African Mythologies as well. Sharing knowledge is always postive, but the fact remains that TV Tropes is not The Other Wiki; as such, pages about African Mythology shouldn't try to look like Wikipedia articles. In particular, Great Lakes Bantu Mythology has been mentioned negatively, due to being a Wall of Text followed a short list of tropes.

• Less important, the pages sometimes show technical mistakes such as Example Indentation in Trope Lists and the like. This is nothing too serious, but deserves attention.

I'm calling Liongo in here, since it's them who made practically the entire work on their own.

Edited by gc10 on Jun 25th 2022 at 5:02:36 PM

In case you didn't PM them, ~Liongo this concerns you.

Oh sorry.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Apr 19th 2022 at 12:06:39 PM

Having the individual pages is good (I certainly support keeping them). Would it help to turn the parent African Mythology into an index?

I agree with making it an index, because frankly just having one big page for African mythology is like having one big page for European mythology. I'm no expert on this by any stretch but there's definite regional and ethnic divisions in beliefs and practices between the various groups, e.g. just in West Africa you've got Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and probably a bunch of other mythologies I've never heard of.

We might need a trope drive for some of the pages, though: they should have to meet the normal tropeyness thresholds.

Edited by StarSword on Apr 19th 2022 at 5:23:27 AM

Thanks for the feedback. I agree that the African Mythology page should become an index and at least have the trope list cut. Almost everything in there is Yoruba or Igbo as it stands. And the maneating tree is blatant western fakelore, as cool as it is. I'm just glad the Africa category is more fleshed out now. You'd think everyone in Africa was an Ashanti-Zulu hybrid based on the scant information available previously.

The Great Lakes Bantu mythology page is hideous and I think I will give it special treatment when I get the time and my books in order. Again, I didn't know WTF I was doing back then. Even the page image is terrible.

Since then I've gone for: relevant image, background on the people, intro to their myths, trope list.

I put in a bit of work for the Yoruba character index the other day and added some tropes to Beti-Pahuin mythology a few weeks ago. The Sahel pages almost cover every culture with a thick enough corpus. Just need to add Lake Chad (the legends about the Sao giants shared by the Buduma, Gamergu, Kanembu, Kotoko, and Musgum) mythology and Tuareg mythology. Fulani mythology still isn't to my liking and I'm going to circle back to clean it up. I left A LOT out, their spirituality is a deep dive. The Songhai myths are covered pretty well but I still need to trope the heroic legends better.

Southern Africa is gonna be pretty straightforward.

Reading about Central African lore is like a never-ending adventure. At first all I knew was Nyanga myth (more specifically Mwindo) and then I'm stumbling on the Lianja, Mvet, Mulombi, Olende, Nzebi, Jeki, Hitong, Mubila, and Mumbwanga epics. The Mongo page needs a lot more work and the Beti-Pahuin page is maybe 65% complete. I'd like to build up an Mbundu mythology page soon. The North Congo and Chari-Nile peoples from the Sara to the Mangbetu will probably be worked on together. One thing at a time though.

The Biafran myths are sorely lacking and I think I will work on Ibibio-Efik before Igbo and Ijaw. I've got an excellent book on Ibibio-Efik myth written by an Efik scholar but I haven't had the time to trope it. Igbo mythology is seriously underrated and I need to finish reading about the Anambra and Cross-River epic songs. The Alusi are interesting on their own but most stories don't really concern them. Or if they do the priests are keeping them close to their chests.

I'll admit I'm not terribly familiar with Upper Guinean myth aside from the Mende and the epic of Woi from the Kpelle. And I'm not very familiar with Malagasy myth either. Must dig into it later.

Feels like exploring mythology DLC. I hope someone builds on the Native American and Inner Asian pages. I've come across some pretty interesting stuff here and there. Freaking Orca demons and reincarnated steppe archers fighting gigantic mosquitoes.

What say you?

^ That's good to hear. It's honestly amazing to have in-depth knowledge about cultures that are greatily underrepresented in media.

Though before creating more pages, I'd say we first revise the pages you made so far, to correct mistakes and put order. So we avoid having work snowballing over time.

That said:

• African Mythology will be a index page without tropes. I'll put a notice over there. It would be better if you help removing tropes from there, so that we can move them to their correct page. I can give a hand, but I'd trust your judgement more of course.
• Please review Example Indentation in Trope Lists before adding tropes, it's particularly important. I've also seen a few cases of wrong alphabetisation (uncommon, but still there), so check here: How to Alphabetize Things.
• Great Lakes Bantu Mythology is practically in your own hands.

Edited by gc10 on Apr 20th 2022 at 12:15:36 PM

I must say, I appreciate the work, that's an insane amount of effort I've seen someone put into one topic and they look very throughly researched.

And yes, Myth.African Mythology should be completely cleared up since there are now specific pages for anything that could be covered. Feel free to copy the page to Sandbox.African Mythology and consider what to do with Overview section and trope list other than just removing them.

To avoid confusion, I'm making a to-do-list in the first post.

GLB mythology should be cleaned up within the next few weeks, stay tuned

I can definetely understand how some pages can become Walls of text, I also struggled writing some Mythology entries in order to keep them concise.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that your work on the African mythologies is simply amazing, Liongo! It was because of your hard work that I was motivated to contribute to the Brazilian Folklore page and enter the wiki in the first place.

Edited by good-morning on Apr 28th 2022 at 2:58:43 PM

Thanks, friend.

Wall of text has been removed and picture has been replaced with a relevant image. Trope list has been split into three in order to examine regional/national variations on the basic Chwezi mythology shared by all the Interlacustrine Bantu. For the sake of consistency, I'm starting off with the Rwanda-Burundi complex.

Speaking of which. Is "Great Lakes Bantu" too wordy in your opinion? I feel like Interlacustrine may make most laymen go "wtf?".

^ As long as it's an enstablished ethnic/linguistic term used by academics, it's legit. The article is much better now, thanks a lot!

Btw, there's still problems with indentation. Please be careful next time. I'm correcting it one for you, but read here: Example Indentation in Trope Lists. It's important and saves us a lot of additional work. You can also take a read at the pages on which I completed an indentation and alphabetization check. You'll see how it's done correctly.

Edited by gc10 on Apr 30th 2022 at 11:54:04 AM

Awesome. I'll circle back and adjust the indentation. Just glad I don't have to avoid the GLB page anymore like an Old Shame. Great Lakes and Interlacustrine are both used in academia. For simplicity's sake I think "Great Lakes" is more straightforward for the average reader browsing.