Not here, look elsewhere
Interesting. I get a Mayan feel from all this.
It's a good twist to it, and I look forward to seeing more of your ideas.
And yeah, lazy writers.
An useless name, a forsaken connection.
I'm having a little trouble with the Chaotic Evil aspect, yeah it's a tropical setting but even there trees won't grow without sunlight. "Predators are evil" is even more cliche in my book, they kill cute things and it's awful but they're there for a reason, namely to keep the ecosystem under control. Imagine if a moon-deer spawned every other week, there'd be thousands of moons.
So Yeah. I think making it into a "the world needs balance" thing would be more plausible.
edited 12th Apr '10 1:17:50 AM by melloncollie
Was?
People probably tend to put the Sun as one of the good aspects of the universe because of one big factor. Light. Humans are visual creatures who depend on their eyes. At night our primary sense is shot to hell and it is easy to become nervous from things we can't see. Dark is scary not because of any inherent evil, but because we can't tell what is going on as easily.
So Yeah though, interesting world building. Not so sure about the heat thing because if it was always that hot the people would eventually get used to it. Not find it pleasant but find ways to live in it.
Oh come on, good god bad god? That is so 'Christian', why not a duality, neither is entirely good or entirely bad (ie Fire and Ice, Order and Chaos, Freedom and Authority etc.)?
Not here, look elsewhere
I still like the idea, but I now agree that it needs tweaking.
How about the Sun god not evil, just angry and pissed because his brother's not around?
An useless name, a forsaken connection.
Was?
You do realize all of those things, even good and evil are just dualities? The only thing special about them is that they are slightly less common than good and evil dualities.
The problem with good and evil is that they don't follow the same pattern as say fire and ice, too much good is rarely a bad thing, too much evil is rarely a good thing.
General note—my original idea was super different.
Originally the White Jaguar and the Moon-King were the sun and moon themselves. The Jaguar is the eldest and the sun, the Moon-King is younger and rather frail, which is why the moon is so much dimmer.
The Moon-King is the White Sheep of the divine family and a constantly-ill Bishōnen, and the Jaguar was forced to become a Knight Templar Big Brother because their parents ridicule the Moon-King for being a frail pretty-boy instead of an awesome jaguar like his brother. They also try to kill him a lot—the moon's waxing/waning periods and the high/low tides are from his constant need to run from them. Hence, the White Jaguar steps in to fight them off and the sun's rising and setting is explained as the Jaguar dragging his parents farther away from the sea where his brother lives.
I got worried that people would think it was too complicated or that I was ripping off Mayan mythology (which was indeed the inspiration), but I should have remembered that this is TV Tropes. :D
edited 12th Apr '10 12:13:32 PM by Sharysa
Not here, look elsewhere
Well, I like this better.
Less obviously-evil, more caring family. Sort of.
edited 12th Apr '10 2:24:31 PM by krrackknut
An useless name, a forsaken connection.
The problem with good and evil is that they don't follow the same pattern as say fire and ice, too much good is rarely a bad thing, too much evil is rarely a good thing. Is too much fire ever ice? Does too much ice make fire?
Yeah, I decided to have the Jaguar become the more reckless good to his brother's Lawful Good because he thought his parents were joking about "killing off the runt."
My gods have Type Three Immortality, by the way. They have a healing factor, but it wears out after a certain point. The Moon-King's limit is drastically low for a god, what with his already-bad health—the other gods can regenerate pretty much everything after a year of keeping out of trouble, but the Moon-King needs important limbs back before six months or else his body wears out from the strain. (They don't decay, otherwise that would be Squick-y. And, well, time-consuming.)
edited 12th Apr '10 3:45:40 PM by Sharysa
Is too much fire ever ice? Does too much ice make fire? No, but too much fire causes burns, while too much ice causes frost bite. They're polar opposites, but too much of either is a bad thing, which is unlike good/evil.
Her with the hat
You know, I read a book along this lines recently - there were basically three Gods: The one of Day, the one of Night and the one of Twilight who were effectively order, chaos and balance in that order.
The Sun God was basically a Light Is Not Good Knight Templar type, who killed the twilight goddess, and imprisoned the night god. (Admittedly, there is a more complicated explanation that comes out in the story).
The owner of this account is temporarily unavailable. Please leave your number and call again later.
No, but too much fire causes burns, while too much ice causes frost bite. They're polar opposites, but too much of either is a bad thing, which is unlike good/evil. What if they're the evil and good impulses like in Judaism? In that case we need a balance.
Also, you could argue that you always have to tolerate a degree of evil because people are imperfect, and an attempt to exterminate all evil would backfire horribly.
edited 12th Apr '10 5:53:48 PM by Durazno
Maybe I should have called this Averting "the sun is Incorruptible Pure Pureness" instead of just "sun is good," because the title seems misleading now that I've gone back to my original idea.
Game Master
I like the current story, but what would the parents of the Suna nd moon , be the Sky and Earth,would be my first pick. Because A) scientifically it somewhat makes sense, and B) that'd be mirroring Uranos and Gaia. Which is not bad per se.
TVTropes Nuzlocke Thread. - Arceus Help Us All.
Upkeep: 1 Troll
One thing that some people have been touching on is that people tend to go for the sun god because we like, and need, light. Is there some reason why humans love night-time so much in this setting? If you're in a tropical setting, why do people not live places where the ridiculously tall rainforest trees shelter them from the sun? Are they nocturnal? Are all the animals they hunt nocturnal? Are days on that world the same length as weeks on ours, making 4 days of daylight hellish? Does it only rain at night?
I think the only other story I remember seeing people who hated the sun in was Guy Gavriel Kay's "Lions of Al-Rassan". The Christian, Muslim, and Jew stand-in cultures worshipped the sun, stars and moons respectively. It worked well because, well, if I lived in the desert I think I'd hate the sun too. The tropics have rain and enormous trees that mitigate the harshness somewhat, though.
I like your ideas. It's hard to give any advice on the gods themselves without background though. (Really I just want to know more about your world. I love worlds.)
I like the current story, but what would the parents of the Sun and moon , be the Sky and Earth, would be my first pick. Because A) scientifically it somewhat makes sense, and B) that'd be mirroring Uranos and Gaia. Which is not bad per se.
Fixed your post XD. I haven't really thought about where exactly their parents came from, but I was planning for them both to have come from the earth. For this mythos, the sky is just... well, the sky.
So, here's the gist of my divinely screwed up family:
Dhiyasseh: Former queen of the gods, and technically the most beautiful. By her demands, her paintings are all lavishly detailed and she is a familiar sight: A tall woman with black hair reaching the floor, luminous green eyes (often made of emeralds), and deep-brown skin. Created every intangible misfortune (gossip, lying, slander, hate) for kicks. Is also an attention whore, which is why she hates the Moon-King—both for being weak and for "stealing" her worshipers by being nice instead of terrorizing them into submission. She also hates how pretty he is, but since she hates anyone with the misfortune of good genes, that's not mentioned as often.
Poisoned-Voice: Former king of the gods. Not an attention whore like Dhiyasseh, but he likes making people miserable by physical disaster, illness and injury, or just invisibly following them around and telling them how worthless and insignificant they are. His preference for the former, so much that his appearance isn't even known, got him the name "Poisoned-Voice." Like his wife, he dislikes his younger son's poor health, but he specifically hates that the Moon-King didn't become angry and vengeful despite his best attempts. If he is depicted in art, it is usually as a nebulous cloud surrounding a weeping person (or group of people).
The White Jaguar: A huge, pure-white jaguar. He is depicted in art as a mother-of-pearl jaguar whose shoulders reach a man's eyes. Dhiyasseh and Poisoned-Voice's oldest son, who is the literal sun, and was their favorite before he turned on them. He's at least equal to both his parents in physical strength and fighting ability, but is a decent if forceful god with strong shades of The Caretaker. The people are grateful to him for bringing sunlight into the world, but also because he left them mostly alone instead of forcing them to worship him or making them miserable. Was once asked to kill his brother, and thought it was a joke—but when he found out that his parents were serious about fratricide, he attacked and fought them for two weeks straight, dragging them into the blood-covered sky each morning. He avoids killing them as a reminder that he chooses to exhaust them each night for the rest of their lives instead of just crushing their skulls and getting it over with. His morality fluctuates between various shades of gray, but he always follows his brother in the end.
The Moon-King: The current king of the gods, who lives in the sea. Noted for being poor in health—for a god, at least—but remarkably handsome. Every two weeks he needs to run because his parents try to kill him (luckily his brother is perfectly capable of fending them both off), and every two weeks he comes back, which is why the moon waxes and wanes. Moonless nights are when his brother's hunters—normal jaguars—are looking for Dhiyasseh and Poisoned-Voice to make sure they aren't hiding in the forest to ambush him. He got his name because Dhiyasseh thought it was hilarious to call such a weak and feeble person "king." He is the first good AND nice deity in the pantheon, and is understandably the most widely-beloved. Depicted as a slender young man with black hair, gray eyes (often inlaid with mother-of-pearl), and pale skin to denote his frail health. Often seen in the depictions of sea-burials, kneeling on the waves and extending a hand to the deceased's spirit.
Oh right, and the story: The Moon-King's parents can't stand for him to be happy, so they kidnapped his daughter (the goddess of love) and hid her in the South Continent. Just to be safe (or... NOT safe?), Dhiyasseh had the gods' messenger mistake the islanders' princess for her while the princess is sailing back home from her wedding to a foreign prince. The newlyweds are then shipwrecked in an entirely not-home country while the messenger gets her divine nearsightedness corrected after the shipwreck.
Nobody is happy to realize her mistake, especially not the couple whose honeymoon was completely and utterly ruined. However, they manage to earn their happy ending while the White Jaguar opens a can of whoopass on his parents.
...I'm spending more time on this novel than the preceding one, and I started the first novel in February.
Why am I the only one here who hasn't mentioned the Star Trek The Next Generation episode "Masks"?
The Enterprise gets corrupted by an alien archive which starts transforming the ship into a representation of a long-dead civilization and uploads personalities representing their culture and mythology into Commander Data. From these personalities, the Enterprise crew learns of the sun goddess Masaka, who they treat with both reverence and absolute terror. Masaka is cruel and vindictive; she is said to burn her victims alive slowly, and their creation myth even says she murdered her own father and built the world from his bones. However, the Enterprise crew also begins to piece together the existence of Masaka's opposite number, Korgano. Korgano is largely a mystery; all we ever learn for sure is that he represented the moon, but in the end Captain Picard is able to successfully play the role and convince Masaka to "rest".
o hai
Oh come on, good god bad god? That is so 'Christian' On another note, saying Lucifer = Satan to be is basically saying Hitler = the flying evil ice cream van of doom to me, as its never actually stated in The Bible that they ARE the same person with namechanges.
If people learned from their mistakes, there wouldn't be this thing called bad habits.
Banned
I like it and you can always use the fact that over expose to the sun has been Known to cause Cancer .
[[User Banned]]_ My Pm box ix still open though, I think?
The Odd Lad
Reminds me of a story I once wrote for class where the reason we had a day-night cycle was because the sun and moon were once lovers, but the moon slept with something I didn't think it out that well, and gave birth to the stars, and when the sun found out he murdered the other thing and advanced upon the moon. However the moon run and whenever the sun stopped to take a breather she stopped, creating night, but when he gave chase once more she run once, more creating day. The craters on the moon were the result of blows from the sun. And woulden't a desert culture hate the personifactions of the day and night? Desert days are hot but desert nights can give you hypothermia.
edited 29th May '10 9:21:12 AM by Zolnier
Life's Gonna Suck When You Grow Up... But Is It That Great Now?... Also I'm Skylark2 now.
Heh. In the setting I'm working on, both the sun god and the night goddess are good. (Although the night goddess is also one of the death gods.)
But I digress. I wrote this
idea up a few days ago. (Some credit must be given, however, to Kippurbird and others.)
Technically, my sun god is good, since he's The Caretaker who's relatively decent. :D
Edit: The main discussion is ended. I've gone back to my original idea, which is a few posts down.
I was thinking up deities for my fantasy novel because I'm planning a sequel with a god-heavy plot after I finish the first one, so naturally I needed a good deity and a bad deity. However, I didn't want to do the standard "sun-god is good, night/dark god is feared" fantasy cliche. My fictional culture is a tropical island nation, so I figured they wouldn't be as big on the sun as your standard medieval fantasy culture. I mean, the sun is important because it helps plants grow and we need plants to live, but there's also a lot of problems that the sun creates.
Their main god is the Moon-King: He controls the sea and created the night from raven feathers, with the spaces between them becoming the stars. When they told him that it was still hard to see, he put a white deer into the sky that became the moon. They thereafter considered him king of the gods. While he doubles as a guide for the deceased into the underworld, he's also considered merciful and people don't panic if they see him while they're still alive.
Their personification of the sun is the White Jaguar, a Chaotic Evil pure-white jaguar who created fevers, heatstroke, and insanity. He started out all right, but after the Moon-King created night-time, he got jealous of the people praising him so much and made the days as hot as possible out of spite. He also routinely hunts down the moon; moonless nights are called the Jaguar's Hunt, when the moon-deer has been completely eaten, and nobody goes out because they say the White Jaguar is stalking the islands for another meal. (Luckily, the Moon-King resurrects the deer the next night.) Of course, since jaguars are native to tropical climates and cats in general have good night vision, it's pretty obvious how the myth would get started.
This is a general reversal of most creation myths, and I was wondering why people don't think outside of the box more often—obviously most people don't use tropical settings as the main focus, so the sun-god SHOULD be benevolent or neutral, but it's a little weird to notice everyone automatically associating sun-gods with goodness in stories even though Dark Is Not Evil is getting more popular nowadays. Even in fictional DESERT countries, the writers STILL regard whatever sun-god there is as completely and utterly good.
edited 29th May '10 11:27:18 AM by Sharysa