Questions Too Like the Lightning raised for me, part 1

[asakiyume]

Since finishing Too Like the Lightning, my mind has been burning up thinking about it. There are elements of the story that made me wonder if I wanted to read further in the series, but after a few days, I can say yes, I do, in part because I want to see what the author’s going to do with those elements.

I thought I could talk here about three things the book brought up for me. Maybe parcel them out over a few entries. Those three things are (1) Flavors of Divinity; Or, What Makes a God? (2) Will a Powerful Enough Computer Result in Unerring Predictions? And (3) Asking the Wrong Questions: Yet Another Asakiyume Rant on the Trolley Problem.

So this entry is for (1). In lots of stories, a god is basically a being who’s much more powerful than your ordinary human. Gods often also rule over and/or protect some collection of ordinary humans—and sometimes menace others. They’re like people, only with higher stats. As the witch says in The Silver Chair, “You have seen lamps, and so you imagined a bigger and better lamp and called it the sun. You’ve seen cats, and now you want a bigger and better cat, and it’s to be called a lion.”—same with gods.

Sometimes a deity’s motivations and thought processes are inscrutable, but usually, when we’re talking about these stat-enhanced creatures, they’re very, very easy to scrute.

But in some fiction, the gods are ineffable, mystical. The story may not specify how powerful they are, because that’s not where the interest is; the gods are there for wisdom and communion. This type of god may be intimate with humans or may be remote, but whatever the nature of the relationship, they’re definitely not simply more-better mortals.

I can enjoy stories with either type of god in it but what I don’t think I like very much is mixing the two; I guess I have an instinct I’m not going to like the two flavors together, so to speak? ETA--maybe because it represents two different kinds of worldbuilding? Or two different types of thinking on divinity?

But I’m also thinking maybe I’ve got too restrictive a taxonomy here. Maybe there are other, different ways of depicting gods in stories that are neither of these two and not just a mixing of them, either.

So… that’s one thing I’m curious about, going forward in the Terra Ignota series.

Comments

[amaebi]

1. I'm even gladder that I bought Too Like the Lightning, and wish I thought I'd get started on it, leet alone finish reading it, any time soon.

2. I've been thinking for weeks now about posting on the natures of god-representation in Diana Wynne Jones, and I had a conversation about god-belief yesterday that would go well with this.

[asakiyume]

re: 2, excellent! I can't wait to read.

[sartorias]

I tend to avoid books with gods because they are usually thinly disguised humans with powers, with adolescent emotions. Especially YA novels in which gods like Death or Evil come in the form of cute young men who then fall desperately in love with our heroine, who thinks she's ugly. (I also avoid books that claim characters are thousands of years old for the same reason, unless they are WuXia or XianXia)

Sometimes the definition of the word seems ill thought out, or slippery.

However, if I get a glance of the numinous, I'm okay with it. Like in Lois McMaster Bujold's Five Gods series. She does that so very well.

In this series, the god part (I keep typing dog because of dyslexia and because I talk more online about dogs than about gods) seems the weakest part of an otherwise fascinating series, because I don't get any sense of ineffable resonance or numinosity, but I'm so willing to go along for the ride because of other aspects of worldbuilding, and the clever writing that only sometimes stumbles.

[asakiyume]

Sometimes the definition of the word seems ill thought out, or slippery. --yeah. I think writers should ask themselves, Why am I calling this character a god? In whose mind is the character a god? Do I, the writer, think of this character as a genuine god, or is that merely a belief on the part of the characters? And if I do, then what am I meaning by that?

Yes; so far in this series I've encountered two godlike beings. The first's abilities set off my worldbuilding warning bells like WOW, because the powers given to the character are literally Too Much. No real limitations have been made on them, and they're story wreckers. If anything is possible--which it is, with those powers--story is reduced to goo. Right now it's not causing problems because the author isn't focusing on that, but--well, I'm anticipating developments with curiosity but trepidation. And this is an instance where I'd prefer not to call the character a god--but I have a feeling the author wanted to to bring up questions about the nature of a god.

The other character is kind of a black box to me right now, but that character, too, seems like some manner of overpowered human being.

I'm willing to go along with the ride too! Clearly.

PS

[asakiyume]

Is the reason that you don't mind a character being thousands of years old if they're WuXia or XianXia because those practices give a tenable reason for longevity, or is it something else?

Re: PS

[sartorias]

No, in those situations I take the years (and sizes of armies) as stylized inflation, sort of, and mentally lop off the back bunch of zeroes to adjust the images for my western perception, sort of.

Re: PS

[asakiyume]

Got it. My mother used to do that with inflated beauty descriptions. "Her eyes were more ravishing than the 160 diamonds on the the rani's diadem." --okay, she had pretty eyes.

Re: PS

[sartorias]

Yup! Same idea.

Re: PS

[sartorias]

Poetic license, that was the term I was groping for.

Re: PS

[asakiyume]

**two thumbs up**

Re: PS

[marycatelli]

"Man, that POV character is IN LOVE!"

Re: PS

[asakiyume]

Yep ;-)

[marycatelli]

Adolescent? On the good days. Most are infantile, and then people try to defend on the grounds the myths were like that.

No. No matter how badly the gods behaved, they weren't infantile.

[sovay]

Maybe there are other, different ways of depicting gods in stories that are neither of these two and not just a mixing of them, either.

I think of the anthropomorphic nature of the Greek or Norse gods as a third option: they superficially resemble humans, and certainly in retelling it's easy (and all too common) to flatten them into humanity, but they're really not just bigger and better humans; they are not what you would get if you amped a human's stats. Just because they sometimes show recognizable emotions or motives doesn't mean they don't show a lot of other things as well.

[asakiyume]

I confess to being pretty tone deaf on this: in my childhood reading of Greek and Norse gods (mainly Greek ones), they *did* feel just like amped-up people to me. But for that matter, so did/does the Biblical God in many stories.

I'm sure there are retellings of Greek myth (and exegesis of Biblical stories) that would make me feel differently.

Can you share an example of something where you were able to see some of those other things?

[sovay]

Can you share an example of something where you were able to see some of those other things?

When Demeter grieves, the world begins to die. She doesn't have to do or not do anything in order to effect this change, as a person might neglect or refuse the practice of their responsibilities: simply because she has lost her daughter under the earth, the earth itself is not fruitful. Barley falls uselessly onto it. Cultivating a field has no effect. People begin to starve and die. When she is reconciled to her daughter's marriage and wintering out, she institutes the mysteries of Eleusis and teaches them to humanity to mark the occasion, but the rites themselves do not restart the fertility of the earth; that is the changing of Demeter's mood. That's the effect of existing as a god, of being grain and civilization as well as something in the shape of a woman who can leave Olympos in bitterness at her brothers and disguise herself as an elderly vagrant and nurse a human child because she misses her own. I have a complicated relationship with the retellings that read the actions of the Greek gods in terms of human psychology, whether negative or positive; I enjoy a number of them and I've even written some myself, but if there's not that aspect of the absolute numinous, they just feel like missing the point. These figures would not be modern even if they were human, and they really are not human to begin with.

[asakiyume]

That's beautiful, and I get what you're saying. I can see/feel it now.

[sovay]

That's beautiful, and I get what you're saying. I can see/feel it now.

I'm glad the example worked!

I agree that if you fail at writing this mode of divinity, you do basically end up with superpowered humans and all the problems of building a religion around one (or several) of those. It's one of the ways fictional religions can go wrong for me. I understand quite well that gods are not always remote and dignified (Loki caught in your own fishing net, I'm looking at you; Loki with your mouth sewn shut, I'm still looking at you; YES LOKI YOUR JÖTUNN-HORSE BABY IS ADORABLE), but if they're just petulant, prideful, and able to blast you to smithereens, then I assume either the author is making an overt or tacit argument about religion or the author really hasn't thought their fictional culture through.

P.S. This remains one of my favorite pieces of fanart to come out of the collision of Norse and Marvel mythologies.

[asakiyume]

In my quiet study, that fanart made me chuckle out loud; it's really cute.

[amaebi]

Thanks! That's very helpful!

[randomdreams]

I've always figured the gods are ineffable but the humans telling the stories try to make them effable, hence the mixture. It depends on how aware the person is of artistic license and accuracy, whether you get the more or less ineffable god.

And, secondarily, some stories about gods are just metaphors for human behavior, while others are trying to explain the difficult or impossible to explain.

[asakiyume]

I agree with you on both points. How a writer handles these matters is going to come down to their own viewpoints and beliefs, their goals with the story, and then their skill and style as a writer.

[amaebi]

I really, really enjoy your characterization of The Divinity as Stat-Enhanced Human. :)

[asakiyume]

It's definitely a style of representation! Not my preferred one, but a common one--and even though it's not my preferred one, I can enjoy stories with that style of god ... I think possibly because what name you attach to a thing doesn't matter so much. If the author calls a character a god, but they're basically just a superhero, I think of them in my own head as a superhero and read on.

[amaebi]

You know, within any given faith tradition, there are so many different forms of farthing, from divinity as gumboil machine insert devotion get goods stuff, to personal devotional relationship, to more abstract and mysterious entity, to....