I don't mean to say that Comic Books and Anime are the basis of mythology with this thread. Though they might be in a few hundred years as context is lost and all that remains are books of mythological or legendary heroes accomplishing endless series of heroic tasks, having their ultimate reward denied to them, and starting their path anew like Sisyphus and his Boulder. Like Goku getting even stronger only for a new and more powerful enemy to appear. For Spider-Man to grow up and the timeline get reset so a dude in his late teens in the 1960s is still in his late teens in the 2010s.
What I mean is that throughout history legends and myths arise from tall tales and acts of fiction that grow in importance within the cultural mindset of a given people and permutate even further once context has been lost and exaggeration has set in. I think it's safe to say we all agree that Theseus never walked through a Labyrinth built to house a minotaur in the real world, nor did Hercules spend one of his Seven Labors mucking out stalls. Nor did Thor try to outrun thought or Loki get plowed by a 6 legged horse to make the horse too tired to build a wall.
These things are myths and legends made by people telling stories to entertain and inspire, or to offer parable and wisdom. And in plenty of cases, it's very likely that the former was far more important than anything else when the story was written and shared.
So write some absolutely WILD stories about your mythological figures. Make a resurrected martyr grow 100ft tall and fight crime in the lands where he was killed. Have a trickster change every detail about themself to seduce a dragon item by item and make deception checks to convince the dragon they always had scales. Write a story in which the god of rage and violence was so ANGRY about getting killed that he kicked the Death God's ass in the underworld so he could go back to the land of the living and kill the guy who DARED to kill him, first! Have your mythical figures beat death -physically-. Make them cure their sicknesses by drowning the illness inside through the drinking of an entire river or lake. Have them punch the God of Light -SO HARD- that he gets stuck in the sky and becomes the Sun itself.
And when someone questions a mythical story or legend about one of these characters, double down and embellish it -harder- because that's how our legends got to be so huge. A massive flood in a river valley in Mesopotamia became a "Worldwide Catastrophe that killed EVERYONE except us!" according to Gilgamesh, after all.
What I mean is that throughout history legends and myths arise from tall tales and acts of fiction that grow in importance within the cultural mindset of a given people and permutate even further once context has been lost and exaggeration has set in. I think it's safe to say we all agree that Theseus never walked through a Labyrinth built to house a minotaur in the real world, nor did Hercules spend one of his Seven Labors mucking out stalls. Nor did Thor try to outrun thought or Loki get plowed by a 6 legged horse to make the horse too tired to build a wall.
These things are myths and legends made by people telling stories to entertain and inspire, or to offer parable and wisdom. And in plenty of cases, it's very likely that the former was far more important than anything else when the story was written and shared.
So write some absolutely WILD stories about your mythological figures. Make a resurrected martyr grow 100ft tall and fight crime in the lands where he was killed. Have a trickster change every detail about themself to seduce a dragon item by item and make deception checks to convince the dragon they always had scales. Write a story in which the god of rage and violence was so ANGRY about getting killed that he kicked the Death God's ass in the underworld so he could go back to the land of the living and kill the guy who DARED to kill him, first! Have your mythical figures beat death -physically-. Make them cure their sicknesses by drowning the illness inside through the drinking of an entire river or lake. Have them punch the God of Light -SO HARD- that he gets stuck in the sky and becomes the Sun itself.
And when someone questions a mythical story or legend about one of these characters, double down and embellish it -harder- because that's how our legends got to be so huge. A massive flood in a river valley in Mesopotamia became a "Worldwide Catastrophe that killed EVERYONE except us!" according to Gilgamesh, after all.
