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Erin Ròse Latta's avatar

A very interesting post! One thing I find intriguing is that when one thinks of “Celtic”, they automatically think of the British Isles, yet there were Celtic tribes on the European continent as well stretching from France, Hispania, all the way to Central Europe. Why aren’t there any Celtic stories set in continental Europe?

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William F. Edwards's avatar

I've also found that on closer inspection, mythology really is treated poorly (and even disrespected) by a lot of current fiction and fiction authors that use it, so I've become a lot more careful about my own research. And it has made me enjoy some works a lot less, I stopped playing one game after digging into actual mythology made me realize more of its depictions were awful than good.

At least with my secondary world fantasy I loathe the idea of a direct real world counterpart, so even unintentional distinctions from what I use as inspiration can work in my favor, while writing about mythology directly is obviously much more strict on faithfulness. One major misconception people seem to have is that they think the absence of a canon means its impossible to be wrong, when there is a difference between the natural evolution of culture and a comic book writer making something up.

I'm only a hobbyist in terms of research, but google scholar, JSTOR, and looking for proper academic books/PDFs has done a lot to help me move past the basic wikipedia info and get to the real meat of things. Though my own efforts have been mainly focused on the Aztec, the god Tezcatlipoca in particular, whose treatment in/by pop culture I despise and would argue still has traces of colonial attitudes.

Also I had just finished reading The Saga of Hrólf Kraki and His Champions before reading this, so while not Celtic I thought of it when you mentioned the importance of fame for warriors. I think ultimately there needs to be more of an effort from people to understand mythology on its own terms, not conform it to our own.

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