quote: "fer" means "to carry" (well, I dont remember the infinitive form, but anyway).

The principal parts are: fero, ferre, tuli, latus.
I think.
Sigh. All those years of studying Latin. Oh well.

I''m kind of stuck on making my myth cycle, so I''ll lay out what I have so far and you all can share your thoughts.

1) The creation happens - not sure exactly how, maybe something about eggs and/or a life-instilling song. Anyway, twelve kinds of animals are created, and each is like a clan or tribe and sticks to itself. Each has some strengths and some serious weaknesses, and no tribe by itself manages to have much of a civilization; e.g. the Tygers are warriors who always have fresh meat and cool bodypaint but they don''t build houses or clean up the trash, and they''re always fighting with each other. People (dragons) are _not_ created.

2) There is an animal of one kind who falls in love with an animal of another kind, and he goes through several adventures to finally get her to marry him, including dressing up as the other kind of animal and being discovered (wolf in sheep''s clothing myth).

3) Other misfits leave their species tribes to join this motley one. Two of these form the first bond of blood brotherhood, and at least one is an orphan who gets adopted. These different kinds of animals learn to live together, and combining their various strengths they come up with the first real civilization and government (called a Domain) and its ruler, a Dominion (his submate is the first blood brother).

4) They have crossbreed kids who have the traits of multiple species, and eventually they get thoroughly mixed together and people (dragons) are produced as the thirteenth type of animal. But they still each claim whichever of the original twelve kinds of animal they are most similar to as their totem or soulbreed.

5) After this the myths are more historical - there is one based on the story of Helen of Troy, one on the myth of Pygmaleon and Galatea, and some stories explaining the origin of certain cultural customs like musk-laced food and masquerade balls.


So what do you think? Is it interesting? What should I do with the beginning? How should I flesh it out? How can I connect it to the novel chapters that go in between the myths?

Meh, doesn''t anybody have an opinion? (makes begging puppy dog eyes)

I thought of one thing I wanted to add:
1b) A version of the folktale about how the bat is neither bird nor beast - only my version will be about the trickster animal, how it''s an omnivore and neither predator or prey. I thought it would be really appropriate to have this near the beginning where I introduce Merru, because Merru''s totem animal is the trickster one, and having been put into a dragon''s body makes him neither human nor dragon.

Which leads me into the other thing I wanted to talk about - methods for incorporating myth into games and fiction. As I see it there are five possible methods:

1) Just write the myth/folktale in a traditional style and let it stand on it''s own as the complete work of fiction.

2) Do it the Disney way - Take your myth and fill it out with some details, using a lower, less formal register.

3) Write myths in a traditional style and put them in front of or in between pieces of standard fiction. Ursula LeGuin is the master of this approach.
- 3b) Do this but have the same characters acting out both the myth and the main story, and have the myths be metaphorical actions not included in the plot. This is done in anime and western cartoons sometimes. Whinnie The Pooh is a particularly interesting example, especially the episode where they think they broke the sky and climb up into the clouds to fix it.

4) Put the myth inside the fiction by having it told as a story or read by one of the characters.

5) Blend the myth and the fiction in a surreal manner (like many gothic and VR stories. _GloomCookie_ is an excellent example, as are many novels by Samuel R. Delaney.) Fiction written in this manner is usually what is referred to by the term ''mythic fiction''.


Did I miss any approaches to doing this? What do you think are the strengths/weaknesses of each approach? Can you think of any particularly brilliant/interesting examples?