Creative Truths

[bloodyrosemccoy]

I keep trying to write up a commentary about one of the most interesting fantasy tropes: the Religion Is True trope. Mostly because I've been fleshing out some of the mythological beliefs of OGYAFElanders,* although it's also because I just read Tamora Pierce's Battle Magic and realized that I've been ... slightly disappointed with the direction the Circleverse has been going in for the last couple of books (this one and Melting Stones) on account of this specific trope.

I always liked the Circleverse because the religion, while a central part of the story, was not indisputably, unambiguously true. You had the temple dedicates praying to and swearing by and honoring the gods, but unlike, say, Tortall or Lord of the Rings or David Eddings' books or the Young Wizards or even goddamn Zelda,** in this world they don't do it because the gods regularly drop by the local waffle house for a short stack or leave helpful voicemails for the heroes or bequeath Our Heroes with Mystical Crysticals. Hell, it's entirely possible that the Circle gods don't even exist, and it's just humans ascribing random occurrences to them.

Y'know, like this world.

And don't get me wrong. I fuckin' like all the Religion Is True examples I listed up there. You can tell some great stories with a premise like that. Hell, I'm even working on a Scatterstone installment featuring some True Animism. But even then, making folklore True actually removes an important aspect from the people in your story: their unbridled creativity.

Now, y'all may know I'm an atheist. I grew up an atheist. My big adolescent revelation wasn't so much that I was an atheist as it was the realization that other people weren't. And while that did lead to a good bit of WTFing on my part--wait, you all BELIEVE this?!--and I do think there is a lot of harm to be gotten out of religion, I also think that religious mythology is fascinating. You can learn a lot about people by the myths they come up with. The stories teach important ideals. You can see the way the mind works in magical thinking, anthropomorphism, spiritism, and just-so explanations. And of course, they're really damn inventive. It takes a lot more cognition to make up a story than to report it.***

I don't think I'm the only one who finds this a bit of a gap. Terry Pratchett (of course) explores it a lot. Discworld's got a sort of symbiotic nature of folklore and humanity--like in Hogfather or Small Gods, where the fairies and gods and Anthropomorphic Personifications are real and concrete, but were born of and fueled by collective human imagination. And even Tortall suggests that the Immortals have a similar backstory, though it seems once they're dreamed up they become independent of humans. But those all still have concrete representations of those concepts. The Circle books were the first time it felt like it really was like our world, where it really was all abstract.

And that was the model I used for OGYAFEland, where there are a bunch of different religions/folklores/mythos ... es ... that are not objectively True, but that influence the thoughts and actions of the humans. It looks like how I see the world. And while it's cool for Pierce to change that around, I'd be lying if I didn't say that I was a little disappointed when the Circle Religions started to leak into reality.


*And I just recently had a FABULOUS idea for a short story set in OGYAFEland, god DAMMIT who turned on the Inspiration Fire Hose?

**Or even His Dark Materials--weird, if you've read the book, but while the point is that religion is a construction, it's still not a human construction: angels are a Thing, and they are Messing With Us.

***When I was a kid, it frustrated the hell out of me that everyone was trying to figure out what might have inspired fantastical artworks. "Where could the idea of mermaids come from? Could it have been sailors seeing manatees?" I couldn't figure out why it never crossed their minds that maybe somebody just thought it'd be cool to give a human woman a fish tail. Yes, I know people had frames of reference to work with, but hell, they had fish and women. All it takes is one weirdo with a bit of abstract thinking.

Comments

[shadesofmauve]

Timely post is timely!

I'm working on fleshing out a comedic fantasy world for a story, and this is an issue I keep stumbling up against. One of my three main characters is a cleric of the God of Knowledge. I know various things about the religion -- their itinerant clerics are responsible for the surprisingly high literacy rate in fantasyland, for instance -- but I haven't decided whether their god (and other gods, by extrapolation) is True. I kind of like the idea of having it be a belief, not a truth, if only because it makes it easier to have a police investigation plot, but it's a tangle. The world is a start-from-stereotypes fantasyland, drawing heavily from things that come up in RPGs, esp. tabletop, where religious magic exists and works (and people generally assume the gods to be True, though I think it'd be pretty awesome to play a campaign where that wasn't the case).

Actually, my first D&D experience I went in thinking religion was like real-world religion with fringe magical benefits, only to discover that the gods weren't just True, they'd personally showed up in the story multiple times.
Paladin asks my character: "So, how do you stand with the gods?"
I answer, not having been given ANY background: "Oh, I'm not really sure about gods, really. Religion doesn't bother me, I don't bother with it."
Paladin responds, in shock: "Have you SEEN a god? THEY'RE HUGE!"

It's the best theological argument ever, as far as I'm concerned. :P

[shadesofmauve]

Oh, and I agree about the mermaids. I always thought "Dude, what if, like, there was a person, but with a FISH TAIL?" made more sense as an origin than "Ohhh, man, I'm so drunk that manatee looks hella sexy, and also kinda like a fish."

[baroncognito.livejournal.com]

With spells like "Commune" and "Contact Other Plane" in D&D, it's kind of hard to not have gods. Actually, thinking about it, the type of magic you have available really has an impact. If you have level 20 wizards, there's a pretty good case for saying "Gods exist" because a level 20 wizard can create a plane of existence, summon life into it, etc... And if gods don't exist, then there's a power vacuum that will be filled.

Now, a relatively low magic world has the potential not to have anything that could fill the role of a god.

[shadesofmauve]

Yeah, if you take D&D strictly, that's very true! But it's totally possible to have a game with a lower-magic lower-divinity world where it isn't quite so obvious -- it's just a few spells. I totally agree on the wizard point, though -- eventually the wizard can become one themselves, albeit maybe of a different world.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I suppose you could always leave the gods as possibilities in your fantasy world and decide later! After all, even if they ARE True, they don't need to be particularly present--especially for Joe Cop's investigation. :)

One of my Maybe-Gonna-Write-It short story plots in the same OGYAFE world features a girl who imagines conversations with a few little spirits/gods she made up herself--and, in fact, the ideas she gets from them take her to some interesting places. It's a fun little examination of how folklore can inspire someone.

That is a pretty excellent theological argument, yes.

[shadesofmauve]

Heh, I *would* decide later -- putting it off and letting it develop appeals to me! -- but one of my three main characters is a monk of the God of Knowledge, and as long as he's involved in an investigation... well, now I think of it, him being involved in the investigation is a pretty good argument for NOT having much divine intervention, 'cause otherwise the case is rather open-and-shut, isn't it? Maybe he'll have some simple "is this person telling the truth or not" religious 'gift'... but no one else knows whether it's real or not. :P