Discussion Main / Demythtification

Renamed to Demythification per TRS:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1592913779068918200&page=1#comment-23

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Shouldn't this be spelled Demythification?

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am... Hide / Show Replies

Not sure about the Doctor Who examples: is "Merlin was a time travelling alien!" or "Ishtar was a time travelling alien cyborg!" really "stripping out the fantastic elements"?

Edited by DaibhidC Hide / Show Replies

Removed:

Fan Works

• The planned fangame I, Mario was planning to do this with, believe it or not, the Mario games, trying to make them less cartoony and more how a somewhat "realistic" (Well, as realistic as one can possibly get when adapting Mario) Mushroom Kingdom would be, replacing a lot of the more fantastic elements with a more sci-fi bent, leaning far towards the "hard" side. It's a shame the project seems to be pretty much inert, though.

Not an example - just a Setting Update.

Edited by MikeRosoft Long live Marxism-Lennonism!

This example was cited without information — please fill it out when replacing it on the main page:

• First Knight

Poping the original here for reference: I dropped the King Jesus subexample because it was not clear what supernatural element was being dropped — and if the white goddess exists and divinity is required to explain events it apparently is not an example.

• Similarly, Robert Graves wrote a novel Hercules My Shipmate that did this with the Argonauts and more controversially with King Jesus, which has a lot of Writer on Board with his "White Goddess" idea. Though Hercules My Shipmate is slightly ambivalent on whether the gods actually exist or not, it is implied that the "White Goddess" at least is real (and certain other aspects are difficult — though not impossible — to explain without recourse to divinity). Probably another borderline case.

Like the incorrectly formatted addition says, these events are indended to be flights of fancy on the part of storyteller rather than real events. And we probably shouldn't start listing inversions — that works quite differently to stipping out the fantastic.

Film

• Inverted in 300, which added evil Persian supermutants and a minotaur/satyr musician into a buffed-up version of a real historical event. Neither of these elements were a part of the original comic, much less the original account by the "father of history" himself, Herodotus!
  • 300 wasn't a visual retelling of Thermopylae. It was a retelling of the battle by a very poetic speaker; the visual side is what his audience is imagining.

Edited by Camacan

Dropping these examples. If the central supernatural events are still there, it is not an example.

Anime and Manga

• While the entire work certainly wasn't based on this concept (there were a number of fantastic elements to the story), Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni had the crucifixion and resurrection story told as "Jesus resurrected in their hearts" and his followers just kept his ideals alive for a while. This story was not included in the anime adaptation.  ^*
  ^{Some Gnostics and other sects had this interpretation of the Gospels, much to the consternation of other sects.}
  The main Jesus-equivalent in Higurashi is Hanyuu, who actually did stay alive as Oyashiro-sama. She later came to regret her role in the whole debacle, though.

Literature

• José Saramago's The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.
  • Kinda. Jesus still performs all his miracles, its mostly the background events of his life and his interactions with the other characters (including God and Satan) that are changed.

Edited by Camacan

This examples was greatly reduced, so I'm placing the original here. The trope is that a story with supernatural elements is retold without them. Almost none of this material addresses this. The trope is not accuracy with respect to the source of an adaptation/retelling.

• David Gemmell's Troy series dispenses with the gods and makes it clear what the Bronze Age Aegean was like. Agamemnon couldn't care less about the fact that Helen ran off with Paris, except that it gives him an excuse to attack Troy, the riches of which he covets so as to finance the defence against the migrating tribes in the Balkans. Helen isn't even beautiful. In the end he takes Troy but the riches it had were spent long ago. He can't even keep the city as the Babylonians, who were happy enough for the Greeks to fight amongst themselves, won't tolerate the occupation of a subject nation. The Greeks are nowhere capable of fighting the Babylonian empire. A blacksmith discovers ironworking near Troy but is killed by Balkan mercenaries who take his technology for themselves, thus signalling a bad future for bronze age Greece (historically the dark age between myth and classical Greece was because of the influx of barbarians from the north) .The closest thing to mythology is that one of the characters turns out to be an outcast Egyptian prince who killed an overseer and is now becoming a leader to the Hebrews.
  • Troy a subject of Babylonia? That's not even trying to present the Bronze Age Aegean as it was or might have been.
    • Replace Babylonian with Hittite and it suddenly starts to make sense. It is even suggested that Hector fought in the very historical battle of Kadesh, just before the beginning of the main events, and everything takes place against a background of historically accurate Egyptian/Hittite conflict. Priam is portrayed from the beginning as subservient to the Hittite king.
  • And Cassandra is still shown to have the gift of prophecy. Because you know, its such a factual series.

Trope rename from Low Low Fantasy per discussion Here.

Old discussion page here.