How long does Odin hold a grudge? Cause he seems like a pretty angry dude.
Are there people in the world that dont hold grudges? That seems impossible. Im from a big Italian family. Every single one of my aunts/uncles has been disowned. After a rather heated political debate(screaming match) two years ago, Ive been disowned as well. So, its hard for me to imagine people that dont hold grudges.
I'm pretty sure he holds grudges, however I dont think Odin holds a grudge much more then any other king-type in-charge god. And he can control himself much better then those with actual vengeance. Odin can easily ignore his grudge if his panties are in a bunch towards someone but hes gotta get his manipulate on. People with vengeance have a much harder time with controlling themselves.
On a mythological note though, we dont really have any evidence of odin holding a grudge, we just have conjecture(lots of evidence of odin being a liar and backstabber though....odin).
From what I understand the Aiser don't really hold grudges, especially against family members, first because no matter how much you hate someones guts today, you'll still be watching each others backs when ragnarock rolls around, and two, the one act of vengeance they actually indulge in (chaining Loki to a rock) comes back to bite them in the ass big time. So Odin constantly screws over and uses his own family, but they never hold it against him because he's their king, father, and best chance of getting out of ragnarock. and he doesn't hold it against anyone who screws him because he will need them later, and he can punk ten times as hard anyway.
ReplyDeleteYou just laid out a great paragraph for why no one should hold grudges. They are pretty much nonsensical. First, Im not sure what ragnarok you're reading, but no one is really watching each others back. Everyone goes and fends for themselves and then they all die alone. There is zero back watching. Re: chaining loki: Its impossible to say if that actually bites them in the ass. All the prophecies are gonna happen anyway and they still do it. They didnt learn anything from it, it didnt really "bite them in the ass", it "bites them in the cock." It did exactly what they knew it would do, and caused the problems they knew it would cause. And they did it anyway!
DeleteRe: Im not sure you can say no one holds a grudge against odin....Im sure his epic manipulation makes that difficult, but his own wife definitely trolls him hard.
Not that trolling someone is the same as holding a grudge....and I think thats where you're getting tripped up here. Just becuase you hold a grudge doesnt mean you wont help someone, or that you attack them on sight or anything like that. A grudge is just when you're angry/disapointed in someone and you hold the memory of that anger/disapointment for far longer then is rational.
Another place you're probably getting tripped up is a classic spot where many players I talk to get tripped up....Gods have emotions, and they dont always(read: rarely) act reasonably. They are larger then life versions of humanity and act in larger then life ways. Almost everyone I've ever known has held grudges in some way. Gods, maybe rare exceptions, are probably the same.
My family (also Italian) don't hold grudges at all. Our personal form of Vengeance comes from the fact that when we're pissed, we make the other's life a LIVING HELL during the rational time that you'd expect someone to be angry at you, and we go all out in completely destroying each other in incredibly unhealthy ways.
ReplyDeleteand then when we feel like the other person has suffered enough, or we just get over it, we move on.
hard to say which is worse, but I personally cannot stand a grudge (I was brought up in a home where the aforementioned was average, so the idea of a quiet, simmering anger that lasts a while is downright horrifying to me)
It seems to me that the Norse don't hold grudges like the meditteranians with their nasty vengeance extremity. With the heavy taboo against cold blooded murder and the importance of the thing in settling affairs, the Norse and their gods seem to either talk shit out or settle things via honorable combat, rather than stabbing each other in the back, points aptly made about their problems with Loki. That's why I've come to love the Norse so much. They don't sit and stew and think of way's to murder someone in their sleep. They either drag your ass to the thing for proper judgment, or they get in your face and force you to settle things like a man, and if you end up dying after an honorable battle, that's the price you pay. After all, don't people end up in Hel for pulling the grudge shit the greeks often pull on each other?
ReplyDeleteYou're right that it's not a cultural imperative the way it is for folks like the Dodekatheon or Elohim. But that doesn't mean people without Vengeance can't hold grudges, and it's also worth noting that different cultures treat how grudges end up panning out differently, so even if two gods are doing similar things, they may get very different results based on the culture they do them in.
DeleteI'd say probably every pantheon has at least a god or two who carries the grudge torch, just as part of their personality, the same way gods from pantheons without Duty can feel strongly about their divine jobs or gods from pantheons without Loyalty can still love their friends. It's the difference between personality and unignorable drive... or maybe between a few people and an entire pantheon doing it.
what is it about the meddeteranians and middle easterners that make them so vengeful?
ReplyDeleteIt's a cultural thing. In a lot of cultures in that area, retribution against someone who wronged you was considered the right of the person who had been hurt; not only that, but seeking vengeance against an evildoer helped ensure that he wouldn't do it again (certainly not to you, possibly not to anyone) and functioned as a very swift and important form of social justice. People who refused to get vengeance would have been seen as cowardly and unfit for responsibility, as well as disloyal to the people they should be protecting by enacting that vengeance (family members who might have gotten hurt, or the rest of the community that might suffer if the wrongdoer went unpunished and kept doing bad tihngs).
DeleteEssentially, vengeance as the right of the injured was one of the first and most important forms of justice and order in the Middle East, so it's very important in a lot of stories that come from that area. Because most modern cultures no longer use that model - and many Western ones actively abhor it - Vengeance tends to get a bad rap as the "evil" Virtue, but from an ancient point of view it was every bit as important and justified as Piety or Loyalty, etc.
(Not that Vengeance doesn't lead horrible places when unleashed, but... well, most of the Virtues do that, it's sort of the curse of the divine.)
Yeah, I definitely like the non-vengeance centric Aiser. If someone wants to get back at me, I would prefer settling it through a fair duel rather than someone rolling up on me when I'm not ready for it. at least with the Aiser extremities all you have to deal with are raging mad beserkers, Sadomasochistis who run until they drop dead, raging assholes who won't shut up no matter how bad their act gets, and slavishly loyal thralls. all of those combined are better than some ass hat hunting me to the ends of the earth because I pissed him off.
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