Silly god poll for Mikulas morning

[mrissa]

Please note: these questions pertain to works of fiction and use of deities/spirits therein, not to interactions with deities/spirits in your real-world belief system. Also, if you answer that the use of Japanese spirits in fiction gives you a pain, no one will assume that you mean all such uses. Just that uses that give you a pain tend to crop up, that many authors have a habit of annoying you by using these elements badly or frustratingly.

[Poll #883124]

I hope my package from Otto's comes today.

lydy was surprised and amused by the vehemence of my answer to the first question at dinner last night, which is why I thought to have a silly poll of this sort to begin with.

Comments

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

What was your Lydy-shocking answer?

It's not so much that I dislike Zeus as that he tends to bore me, fictionally.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Ditto. The Zeus-Hera dynamic is rarely done in an interesting way. I know that the source material doesn't leave a lot to work with, but meh.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Baldr and I do not get along. That's more conceptual than how he's handled, though. As far as handling, the handling of Loki drives me up a wall. Loki != Lucifer. Loki = Lucifer books make me want to hurl them across the room. I am a grown-up, so I do not. But I want to.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

What are citrus kisses, spritz, cream cheese drops, Russian teacakes and almond bark pretzels? The rest I recognise - or, at least, I've never seen apple bread but I think I can imagine it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Citrus kisses are little drop cookies -- orange cookie with orange frosting, lemon with lemon, etc. New to me this year, may not make them again if I don't like how they go this time.

Spritz are almond cookies made with a cookie press.

Cream cheese drops are drop cookies with a simple frosting, made with cream cheese and pecans.

Russian teacakes are the little dense ball cookies with chopped pecans, rolled in powdered sugar. (I usually hate powdered sugar, but I like teacakes.)

Almond bark is, depending on who you ask, the same stuff as white chocolate.

Apple bread is like banana bread. But with chopped apples instead of mashed bananas.

the virtue of photography

[aet.livejournal.com]

Even if I will fail to gather enough energy, I can always imagine that the old picture below is record of events of current year:

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/50797989@N00/32265647/)

Re: the virtue of photography

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ginger YAY!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I'm not answering the first two because I can't separate fictional portrayals out that way. I reminds me of the time carandol and I were once coming back from the pub with a baby zorinth on a Sunday afternoon, and we passed Jehovah's Witnesses coming along the street. A door was opened to them as we passed, and we heard them ask the hapless neighbour, "How do you feel about the end of the world?" As we went into our house, carandol was gripped with an idea. "They'll come to our house in about ten minutes!" he said. "When they ask that, let's say 'End of the world? Do you mean Ragnarok? We're all ready for it in this house!' and go on like that." First I laughed, and then I said "Don't you think that might be a little, um, disrespectful?" "To Jehovah's Witnesses?" "No, to the Norse gods..." "But you'd only be pretending to believe in them!" "Yes, and that seems a bit disrespectful." "So you're not going to pretend to believe in them because you really believe in them?" "Not believe, exactly, I just don't want to be rude to them." At this point, the Jehovah's Witnesses knocked on the door. "Go away," carandol said, to their astonished faces. "We're not ready for you yet."

[aet.livejournal.com]

You mean to say you live behind this door? Or no, someone who is either less or more respectful ...

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/50797989@N00/296501981/)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And disrespect to the idea of Odin via fiction is just as annoying or upsetting as disrespect to the idea of Thor etc., for you? Or have I not quite got it yet?

[cadithial.livejournal.com]

Lol, Russian teacakes :) My wife just got a package from Russia which may very well have something similar in it :P

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll.68569487

(the t-shirt in question says "druids are the chlamydia of fantasy".)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Waltzing naked through the woo-ids, it's good enough for me!

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

It is a very good thing that we are able to check more than one box on that last question.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well. One will do what one can, hmm?

[meallanmouse.livejournal.com]

To be specific, what I've disliked regarding those particular deities or lot of deities, is that I've seen them treated far too often in stereotypical, uninteresting ways. And so they tend to blur and become all the same far too often each time they crop up in a work of fiction. The rare times they are fun and inventively written are treasured indeed.

(Loki wins hands down on being the most mishandled, poorly treated character.)

[greykev.livejournal.com]

I didn't mark it, but I specifically dislike Set as a character; ooh evil snake god! If they're going to make sh!t up I wish authors would just go whole-hog and make an entire fantasy world to go with their ill-considered, one-dimensional deities.

As an aside, do you think a cakeier gingersnap recipe (one that doesn't set into a firm hard cookie) would work for a jelly roll? perhaps with lemony cream cheese filling? Last year I did scones for the Library's 12 days of Christmas, I wanted to try something new this year.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have similar problems with Loki, as noted above: people who are looking for Lucifer should either use Lucifer or make up a new mythology, not mess with trickster gods.

Lemony cream cheese filling: yes. Just so. My Guinness gingerbread might be closer to the recipe you want than pepparkakor.

Krampusz?

[kaustin.livejournal.com]

You mean this guy?

He doesn't look like he'd hurt a fly!

Re: Krampusz?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Usually he is dressed more decorously when he comes with Mikulas.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I don't find any of the Norse deities particularly onerous, though Thor is frequently stupid and somewhat annoying in fiction, and Odin's always so smug. :)

I frequently get annoyed at the use of Taoist, Buddhist and Hindu mythology in western fiction because it seems like authors don't want to do sufficient research. They get Tibetan mysticism in my Theravada Buddhism, and forget that Krishna and Vishnu are the same person, etc.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

"Krishna and Vishnu are the same person" is itself a bit of an oversimplification in my book, but I take your point.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

As a lot of people say upthread, what annoys me about fictional portrayals of gods is when the authors don't do the research. Oddly enough, my subconscious insists that Homer (yes, that Homer) is an inadequately researched fictional portrayal of the Greek pantheon.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

I would give a great deal for real lebkuchen. Soft, please, in big slabs, and very spicy. I am a total failure at making my own, and even the good commercially-baked stuff does not seem to travel well. (We have Italian local bakeries here, not German or Dutch or Scandinavian ones, so that route is out.)

Oh, yeah, gods. I was the one who checked other, other, and other. One-third of my complaint is that, as has already been said here, it's way too easy and common to write gods lazily. Second third: Even when gods are not written lazily, they're really very big guns to use and can overbalance a story with just a word. If you allow them to use godly powers, then you have just thrown your whole story out of joint unless the whole thing is taking place between gods, entirely on the god-power level. If, on the other hand, you put a god in your story and DON'T allow them to use godly powers, then what makes them a god? Why are they there? Third third: A lot of gods just strike me as, to be blunt about it, assholes. In other words, to my mind, classical gods from known mythologies tend to make lousy characters.

I've read a few good books which had gods as characters (Tom Holt has pulled the trick repeatedly, and I could probably find some non-humorous examples as well), so I know they can exist, but I tend to prejudice against the field. (And don't throw Homer at me, as I'm one of the people who believes the Iliad would have been a better yarn without the gods mucking around in the action all the time.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Third third: A lot of gods just strike me as, to be blunt about it, assholes. In other words, to my mind, classical gods from known mythologies tend to make lousy characters.

Assholes...and therefore lousy characters?

Oh, I am confused.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

You may take it as read from my answer to the last question that I have not had lunch yet.

Also, the thing with a lot of the pantheons I marked is that generally, the person doing the writing doesn't really understand the pantheon/God in question.

And while I appreciate attempts at diversity, I also appreciate people not making Gods into something they're not.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And while I appreciate attempts at diversity, I also appreciate people not making Gods into something they're not.

Yes, diversity should mean actual diversity, not putting labels on things haphazardly and deciding that something is "just like" something else when it's not.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I actually haven't had most the treats on your list, though I take an active dislike to rumballs.

(Demon rum, remember!)

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

I rather dislike comic book versions of Thor. But that's because I find most mainstream comic books to be very, very stupid. (Which is a shame, because the medium itself has much potential.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am not a very visual person, so I can recognize the potential in the medium without considering myself a very good prospective audience for it in general.

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not the I am not anoyed by any Norse Gods, but not the ones I know properly.

Zeus, on the other hand...

Fictional use of deities: Celtic, because there is just too many of them, not often very intersting presentation; other - Baba Yaga. Because people tell the silliest things abouther, get her wrong and I am feeling kind of prprietory.

btw, Russian teacakes (now! with real ground Russian!) ? Baba Yaga totally approves!