Thursday, November 29, 2012

When You're Good to Mama

Question: Which pantheon is the most cohesive (who has the least infighting and comes to each others' aid no strings attached)? I'm going for the Greeks as the most dysfunctional and the Pesedjet as the most cohesive.

It does seem hard to compete with the Greek gods for most dysfunctional, it's true, but John and I both went a little cross-eyed at the idea of the Pesedjet as the most "cohesive" pantheon out there. Sure, they have Order and Harmony, and that helps, but this is a pantheon in which Tefnut ran off to be crazy in the desert and had to be found and dragged home by Thoth, Shu separated Geb and Nut, Geb overthrew Shu and had to be put down by Wadjet, Isis poisoned Ra in order to steal his power, Osiris slept with Nephthys, Set murdered Osiris, Isis ran around fighting with Set for years, Horus, Isis and Set all got into a roiling mess of a continual fight over the succession to the throne, Anubis killed his wife after she hit on his brother, and Ra occasionally tries to take a nap and end the world so he can start a new one tomorrow. Oh, and Sekhmet tried to eat everyone. So we're probably not going to vote for them in the Most Cooperative Pantheon Competition any time soon.

But that's how things go when you're a god; gods are fucking crazy. They have the same problems with their families that humanity has, but they also have the tactical nukes of enormous powers to levy at one anothers' faces, thus making everything blow out of proportion very, very quickly. One of the common themes across all mythologies is the idea of the dramas of the human world played out on the great cosmic scale of the gods; even if we couldn't create a crazy magical trap to capture Ares and Aphrodite in because we are not Hephaestus, we can still recognize the situation and empathize with the character and events, because it is at its core a very human story of wife cheats on husband, husband gets embarrassing revenge. If it weren't, we wouldn't remember and care about it so much.

As far as who has the least infighting, the Yazata are probably the most cooperative Scion pantheon by far; sure, Sraosha might be a little overprotective of his sister, but all in all they don't really have arguments among themselves much, a function of the religion they come from viewing them all as representatives of goodness rather than images of humanity. Everybody else is a fucking mess; the Amatsukami have banished one another so many times nobody knows where they live anymore, the Shen have to build elaborate god-traps to keep their most fractious members under control, the Loa literally encourage one another to murder each other, the Aesir can't go a day without dangerously malicious pranking, the Anunna sometimes have full-scale wars over whether or not to wipe out mankind because it's bothering them that day, the Bogovi are constantly breaking their own laws and then trying to be the first to tattle on each other, the Devas are engaged in continually jockeying for position and comparing penis sizes, the Tuatha are out stabbing one anothers' offspring and/or setting them on fire, the Dodekatheon and Elohim just make it a normal practice to constantly murder each other and the Aztlanti have fought amongst themselves so hard that they have literally destroyed the world four times. Infighting is a way of life among the gods; with that many volatile personalities and great power levels, there's no way to avoid it.

But in answer to the second part of your question, the real answer is nobody. Nobody comes to one anothers' aid, among the gods, with no strings attached. A few might out of genuine love - for example, Isis will probably always help Horus when he needs it, and Frigg is unlikely to leave Baldur twisting in the wind - but for the most part, a pantheon of gods who helps each other for free just because they're in the same pantheon is not a thing that exists. Why would they do that? What on earth would motivate a god who didn't have a strong relationship with another god to rescue him and say, "That's fine, I was just in the neighborhood!" instead of "No problem, dude, you're just going to owe me one"? Favors from other gods are vastly important and powerful. It would be insane to turn the chance for them down, even if they're from someone you like. Sure, maybe Ryujin will help you out with something you want if you just ask nicely, but he's just as likely to say that he can't right now, because, just like you, he's in a war against several Titans and has his own shit to do, and just like you don't want to spend a bunch of time and Legend on other peoples' problems, he doesn't, either, even if he thinks you're a nice guy. Gods almost never help one another for free, because they know there will be a time in the future that they'll need help themselves, and they want to be sure they can get it instead of relying on the ephemeral goodwill of other gods who might just shrug it off and do their own thing instead.

Divine politics are serious business, and no one is immune to them. You can count on some gods to aid others free of charge, but only once in a while, and only for people they absolutely love and couldn't bear not to save (and shit, if the problem isn't lethal, they might let it go anyway). Being one of the Pesedjet simply isn't enough to make Horus blow a bunch of time, energy and valuable resources on helping you if you're not giving him something back to make it worth his while.

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