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

[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!