Things that annoy you in TM

[Guga]

Yeah, right

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Seiya

I watched the whole anime and don't remember seeing Mecha alien gods XD (that aside, i really liked some references to saint seiya on this LB)

[asterism42]

It's not the 'Gods are alien robots' I have (too) much of a problem with. It's that it's the Greek gods, who are some of the most human deities we have stories of. Seriously, they're basically a bunch of omnipotent teenagers.

Also other Greek deities in the series like the Gorgons and the Dioscuri are entirely human(oid). No robot bits there.

[Twelveseal]

It also leaves one to question exactly how demigods are a thing...

It just seems really strange to me. I mean, Artemis has been around for a while, and like you said, the Gorgon sisters. I mean, I'd have less of a problem if this was tech the gods were using, but it's actually them.

I mean, we've had aliens for a long time in this setting. ORT and Brunestud in particular, or the weirdness of Notes, but still...

[Blastedspider]

The Mecha-Olympians could create human avatars and if some spoilers are correct did indeed use them for demi-god creation purposes even in the Lostbelt timeline. In a proper version of reality their original bodies were destroyed by Velber invasion so they turned into regular Divinities (Divine Spirits incarnated in material forms created from human mentality).

And the Gorgons are native Grecian Gods persecuted and displaced by invading Olympians. This actually was true since F/HA.

[Twelveseal]

Huh. Interesting.

[eddyak]

We knew that the myths weren't 100% true from the start. Before Extella and F/GO most people assumed that ancient deities were just natural phenomena which gained sentience from human worship. So Zeus was a lighting which adopted human form and started the whole "virgins, bulls and showers" shtick. The new version is largely the same: just replace "lightning" with "magic mecha controlling thunder" (and even that original body wasn't identical to the Lostbelt version).

If anything making Olympians into beings which predated mankind and were originally independent from it only made them closer to traditional understanding of "gods" in mythology.

Oh, I don't care about them diverging from the myths. I like these extra details and actual imagination-using, turning Tesla into some sort of lightning-spewing godling because he represents that massive pivot in the tale of mankind, Gil the lynchpin of the gods, Rhongomyniad not just another generic spear with a name but some kind of sewing needle keeping our current reality to the surface of our world and so on. What I care about is them diverging from the myths in the most ridiculous ways, the ways that made the least possible sense.

Of all the motherfucking pantheons to turn into mechs, why the fuck would they pick the greeks? Apart from maybe Odin & company, the Greeks were the most human, the most ridiculous, the most petty and vengeful and arseholish and all that potential is just tossed in the garbage in favour of a fucking SMT/SRW/Seiya/whatthefuckever reference. How much potential have they pissed away in favour of a shitty joke or bad reference?

Remember Beowulf? The oldest recorded english poem we know of? Norse hercules? The dude who could've been held up as a gold standard for "humanity fuck yeah", who while the rest of those wimp vikings were safe and lazing about sailing the ship, swam across the sea to the kingdom that'd wanted his aid, who wrestled and ripped the goddamn arm off a monster that ate vikings like candy? Whose strength was too much for his own magical weapons to take, so they broke in his hands? Who not only beat that monster, but also its bigger, badder mother? And who then, at eighty years old, went and 1v1'd a dragon, and killed it, and then told his subjects to bring out all the treasure he'd plundered so that he could either bask in his own awesomeness or alternatively stare at the mounds of gold and wonder whether the glory weeking was all worth it till he died? Remember that guy? Remember how some jackass fucked that up entirely because he wanted to half-arse a fight club reference and a jojo reference and failed at both, and also went "lol i didn't know what to do with his ascension so i made him blacker each time because lol i dunno he's getting more powerful or something"

Caesar? How about instead, haha fat joke go *tuba noises*

Blackbeard? lol let's make him a weeb cos lol

It's not the 'Gods are alien robots' I have (too) much of a problem with. It's that it's the Greek gods, who are some of the most human deities we have stories of. Seriously, they're basically a bunch of omnipotent teenagers.

Also other Greek deities in the series like the Gorgons and the Dioscuri are entirely human(oid). No robot bits there.

This.

They could've done this with any other pantheon, and it would've been tolerable- good, even. Hell, the Romans took the Greek gods and slapped their own chinese counterfeit stickers on them- why not use those instead? There were a bunch of actual gods, but then aliens! They murdered those gods and buried them in the metaphorical basement and stole their identities & social security numbers, replacing them as the newly born deities of Rome!

[Zork Knight]

Was there ever any pantheon of fully enlightened superior beings free of human faults?

[Twelveseal]

Yes, more or less. Or at least how they were envisioned. Theosophy had its White Brotherhood as transcendent beings. Assuming you count them as gods, anyway. They're not, really, but fill the same basic role in the religion. Likewise Buddhism, though the Boddhisattvas intentionally retain humanity to help others, Buddhas transcend fully.

[eddyak]

Was there ever any pantheon of fully enlightened superior beings free of human faults?

There were very few pantheons as full of themselves and arseholish as the Greek set. That's an eminently human side.

[Guga]

It's not the 'Gods are alien robots' I have (too) much of a problem with. It's that it's the Greek gods, who are some of the most human deities we have stories of. Seriously, they're basically a bunch of omnipotent teenagers.

I see, well, i would be liying if i said that that i disagree with you, but since i hadn't seen a lot of the personalitys and behaviors of the greek gods i was thinking that they stayed pretty much the same (of course with the exception of the alien/mecha parts) but sadly it doesn't seems so likely. But i still think that i will like them whatsoever

[Kamera]

Was there ever any pantheon of fully enlightened superior beings free of human faults?

Monotheism

[Twelveseal]

The problem there is that they usually display flaws fully. Unless we're talking Deism or similar concepts.

[Zork Knight]

There were very few pantheons as full of themselves and arseholish as the Greek set. That's an eminently human side.

Ishtar unleashed the biggest, baddes beast in all of Mesopotamia upon humanity because Gilgamesh wouldn't bang her. And if daddy hadn't let her she'd usher in a zombie apocalypse. That's probably worse than all the Greek Pantheon's misdoings combined.

I feel like the Greek Pantheon's main characteristic isn't being "more human" than others, just hornier and prone to banging humans.

[Twelveseal]

Hades almost killed everything because he wanted to rape a girl. Zeus repeatedly screwed humanity over because Prometheus tricked him. It's a similar level of asshole there.

[eddyak]

Ishtar's one goddess in the pantheon, and it's not as if whether they made bad decisions is the one defining factor. The Greek gods got angry and destroyed anybody who annoyed them, they got super prideful and ruined the life of anybody who annoyed them, they (sometimes) rewarded those who were faithful and proper, they empowered heroes to use in pissing matches against each other, and the list goes on and on.

And the horny thing is almost entirely Zeus & Poseidon, with one or two hints of the other male gods. I think Apollo did the rapey thing once, Hades kidnapped his wife, and a few others were pretty shady.

[Kamera]

The problem there is that they usually display flaws fully. Unless we're talking Deism or similar concepts.

at this point I won't be surprised if TM's capital G monotheist God turns out to be, idk, the demiurg running the simulation or something

[Twelveseal]

Tbh, that would be refreshing. And kind of fit. Iirc, the Creator was supposed to have made everything and then left it according to some of the interviews or materials. It would make sense if that was the case and Big G is a fake. I used to have a personal theory that Big G was actually Brunestud claiming godhood back in the day, and was sort of the Monomythic inspiration for the chief gods of the Middle Eastern pantheons.

[Zork Knight]

Ishtar's one goddess in the pantheon, and it's not as if whether they made bad decisions is the one defining factor. The Greek gods got angry and destroyed anybody who annoyed them, they got super prideful and ruined the life of anybody who annoyed them, they (sometimes) rewarded those who were faithful and proper, they empowered heroes to use in pissing matches against each other, and the list goes on and on.

And the horny thing is almost entirely Zeus & Poseidon, with one or two hints of the other male gods. I think Apollo did the rapey thing once, Hades kidnapped his wife, and a few others were pretty shady.

Odin dicked around with Sigmund for whatever reason
Ra once sent Sekhmet to massacre humanity
According to wikipedia the Mesopotamian pantheon created humanity "to bear the burdens of life so the gods could be at leisure"
For whatever reason the Aztec deities could not go without human sacrifices
Rewarding devotion is like, the standard for Religion, isn't it?

[Twelveseal]

Theoretically, Odin screwed with people as a means to an ultimately benevolent end; the chance at creating a paradise world after the final battle. If wrecking some mortal lives was needed to raise a hero or three who could help achieve that result during Ragnarok, it was at least something done for a good cause.

Most of the rest of the time it's just gods being dicks.

[Zork Knight]

Theoretically, Odin screwed with people as a means to an ultimately benevolent end; the chance at creating a paradise world after the final battle. If wrecking some mortal lives was needed to raise a hero or three who could help achieve that result during Ragnarok, it was at least something done for a good cause.

Most of the rest of the time it's just gods being dicks.

Did any good come out of the Volsung cycle?