Why I write mythology
There’s something about how human gods are, how their stories can be so absurd or outlandish, and yet make sense. They’re fantastical and full of things you could never imagine, and I love them.
Mythology is deeply intertwined with human history. They are part of the first stories told, and passed down by word of mouth or recorded in various forms. It’s the same with folk tales, being passed down generation after generation, changing slightly as time continued. And there’s something about them which I find fascinating. I always have done, really.
It wasn’t the many tales of the Greeks which captured me, despite the many years of learning it in school, it was the Egyptians which enamoured me from a very young age. One of my earliest memories is watching a cartoon called the Potato Head Kids and the antagonist picked Anubis as a costume. Something about it stuck with me and as I grew older, I always gravitated towards Egypt. When I was in my early teens I started collecting all the books I could find on Egyptian mythology, learning all I could. I cared less for the more popular aspects such as the Pharaohs and pyramids, and loved reading about mummification, the rituals around it, and especially the Book of the Dead. And then I continued on to mythology. My favourite was always the story of how Seth tricked his brother Osiris into a casket, then threw him in the Nile in fourteen pieces. It was always the more gruesome tales which caught my attention.
And now here I am in my adult life, and not much has changed. I went through a similar process, but this time with Japan. I thought it was a relatively recent thing aided by my love of anime, manga, and now also Japanese games, but it too came from my childhood. Back when I was even younger than watching the Potato Heads, I played on the SNES, and my favourite game? The Legend of the Mystical Ninja.
I could never get far in it, and usually just played the first level over and over (but watched others play the full game), but I didn’t care cause I loved it so much. Looking back, I have realised too, this was my first introduction to yokai. And I remember loving the “bear” at the beginning who warned us.
There were others too, skeleton samurai, onibi, and adorable collectable maneki neko. However, growing up, we don’t learn about Japan. School taught me British and European history, and if we did look at other cultures it was usually places like India. The threads were in place though, and just needed time to come back to me.
I feel like in some way I was fated to write stories inspired by mythology, and definitely fantasy. When I was around nine we were tasked with writing a story, and I thought it was one of the best tasks ever. Even now I remember my protagonists were twins called Kai and Pai and they were archaeologists. I also remember a dragon in a forest somewhere too because he was around at the time of the twins “great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather” (my teacher edited out most of those greats. It was for the best, little me!).
As a teen I wrote many drabbles, unable to choose a direction of what I wanted to write, just that I wanted to write something. I moved on to trying a novel at sixteen, which really didn’t work but I knew deep down I wanted to keep writing. And so I tried again, this time following a group on how to write a novel. Each week we built up on an idea and worked towards making an in depth world for our characters to call home. Here is the start of mythology for me. At the time I was trying to learn to read hieroglyphs and wanted to pursue a career in Egyptology, so I combined the two. I thought it was a great idea to write about Egypt, using all the knowledge I gained. My idea was around the people of Egypt being sent to war because of the gods intervening. I wrote a scene where one of the gods came down and showed themselves to a priest, bringing life to the static photos of temples that I loved. And the idea of the gods being right there on the surface and interacting with humans inspired me so much. I thought it was the best, I even had comments saying it was really good, and I latched onto it.
That project died in the end, I don’t remember why I stopped it now, though I continued doing some writing on and off for many years after. I didn’t revisit the idea, and played around with fanfic, learning how to craft stories without worrying about building a world or characters. Until finally, I started back on my own worlds. I tried and failed at a second novel, after many edits and redrafts and fell into short stories instead. This is where I started gaining traction, and I even wrote a story that started off inspired by one of my favourite Egyptian tales. I looked at what inspired me, and those stories I’d loved as a child still did. I kept going, writing to themes, trying to figure out how to be an author.
And then we reach now. Like a maelstrom brewing inside of me, I was finally ready to write about it again. I’d written a short story for an anthology named Darkness & Moonlight. I’d taken my inspirations of Japan (as for many years I’d been reading manga, watching anime, and playing games originally made in Japan) and made a new world magic and gods. The draft wasn’t ready in time for the deadline, and there were many things that needed addressing, but it had bubbled to the surface. In the end I wrote another story inspired by one of the games I had played alongside the Japanese saying “月が綺麗ですね - tsuki ga kirei desu ne” which translates to “The moon is beautiful, isn't it?”, and to build on that I looked into who the Japanese moon god was… and that’s how the Tales of Yamato started.
Now I’m neck deep in Japanese mythology, just like I was as a kid with Egyptian mythology. And I still love it as much as back then. There’s something about how human gods are, how their stories can be so absurd or outlandish, and yet make sense. They’re fantastical and full of things you could never imagine, and I love them.
Stories haven’t changed since mythology began, because they all came from humans minds. They just get rehashed over and over. They can symbolise the time they are written, and I think part of that is what’s interesting about mythology. Now we see an eclipse and we know exactly what is happening and why, but back then it could have been anything. What if the sun vanished because it got stuck in Nut’s belly so it couldn’t be birthed again, or because Amaterasu hid it out of spite. What if it was the actual reason and we had to learn how to placate a god or find the right something to help.
And that’s why I write it.
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It's so fascinating how we come to write what we do!