This wasn't really an update so much as a quick edit, so we didn't include it in our normal project list, but thanks to the long weekend without John I'm a dynamo of productivity. Therefore, I finally managed to get around to something we've been meaning to do for quite a while: renaming some of the pantheons.
Some of the pantheon names in vanilla Scion are fine, but there are others that we've long been annoyed by, and now they're finally cleaned up so we don't have to cringe whenever we look at our pantheon page. The pantheons who have changed are as follows:
- The Amatsukami are now the Kami. "Amatsukami" actually means "heavenly gods", but we've always found it strangely limiting thanks to the fact that there are also "earthly gods" called the Kunitsukami, including Sarutahiko, as well as various other kami that aren't strictly defined as belonging to either group that are excluded by it. This way we have a blanket term that covers everyone, and we're also fond of the reinforcement of the connection between the great kami of Amaterasu's court and the lesser kami that invest natural objects and places.
- The Aztlanti are now the Teotl. This was the biggest one we've wanted to change, basically forever, because it was just such a puzzling misfire in the original book and really had no purpose that we could come up with. "Aztlanti" is a word made up by the writers of the original Scion; it means "those from Aztlan", referring to the ancestral homeland the Mexica believed they had traveled from with Huitzilopochtli. However, that's a human origin myth, and the gods (with the notable exception of Coatlicue) were believed to live in entirely different celestial and chthonic worlds, and at any rate it was deeply silly to use it as the name of the pantheon when there was already a perfectly good word for Aztec divinities that was used by the Aztecs themselves. That word is teotl, which means not only god but also refers to the entire concept of divinity and superhuman power. We are so glad to finally bid farewell to one of the last randomly-thrown-together Nahuatl portmanteau words from the original game.
- The Devas are now the Deva. This was just grammatical housekeeping, really. "Deva" is already plural; the "s" is only added by English-speakers.
- The Dodekatheon are now the Theoi. "Dodekatheon" means "the twelve gods", and refers specifically to the major inhabitants of Olympus: Zeus, Hera, Demeter, Artemis, Apollo, Athena, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus, Hermes and either Hestia or Dionysus, depending on the time period. It would be a totally appropriate name if those were the only gods in play, but of course they're not; people like Hades, Persephone, Hecate and Poseidon aren't members of the Dodekatheon, and it seems a bit silly to use the name and ignore them. "Theoi", on the other hand, is the ancient Greek word for "gods", and includes all the mad tapestry of deities the ancient Greeks could come up with.
- The Pesedjet are now the Netjer. This is the same problem we had with the Dodekatheon; "Pesedjet" is the Egyptian term for the set of nine deities also called the Ennead by the Greeks, which is made up of Ra, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys. But using that term excludes all the Egyptian gods that aren't members of the Pesedjet, including Anubis, Sobek, Hathor, Bastet and so on, so we swapped it out for "netjer", which is again the general Egyptian term for gods.
- The Celestial Bureaucracy are now the Shen. The original book used these terms interchangeably, which we're actually totally fine with since both are appropriate, but we aren't fans of the Chinese pantheon randomly being the only set of gods with their name in English for some reason. The Chinese phrase would be something akin to Tianguo Guanliao, but that might be a bit of a mouthful for most players, and since "shen" literally means "gods" - not to mention including some of China's more ancient gods that aren't strictly members of the bureaucracy - we decided to go ahead and jettison the long title.
This is one of those changes that we're making for our own games and peace of mind, but it doesn't actually change the way anything in the game works, so of course everybody should feel free to keep calling the gods whatever they want to. We've all gotten used to Dodekatheon and Pesedjet over years of playing, so we won't bite you if you go on using them.
Everything should be properly updated, but if you see one of the old terms still floating around on the site, it would be awesome if you dropped a comment here to warn us.
And now... exhausted slumber.
Edit for accuracy: Poseidon totally is a member of the Dodekatheon, guys... I must have been more tired than I thought when I wrote that. The others I listed are not.
It still says Celestial Bureaucracy on the Shen page, and it still says Dodekatheon on the "click for a bigger family tree" link, and in the second to last line of the main Theoi page.
ReplyDeleteTheoi issues fixed - thank you!
DeleteThe CB title file is for some reason eluding me - must be on the other hard drive. I'll get it updated when I find it!
I honestly cannot decide how I feel about these changes.
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, Amatsukami, Dodekatheon, Pesedjet, and Celestial Bureaucracy definitely do not represent the entire body of gods for a pantheon.
On the other hand, the terms do represent major ruling bodies of gods within those pantheons. It feels more culturally relevant than to use the generic term for "God" in different languages.
I guess a similar example might be calling a certain region in North America "Humans" vs "The United States", and a certain region in Europe "Menschlichen" vs "Deutschland", and a certain region in Asia "Человек" vs "Россия".
Aztlanti definitely deserved to be changed though. That was just a bunch of nonsense.
DeleteFor real, the Aztecs needed help all the way.
DeleteI don't know, man. Horus is the king of the Egyptian gods, and he's not even in the Pesedjet, which hardly seems very appropriate; Hades and Poseidon are rulers of two thirds of the universe together, but aren't part of the Dodekatheon. Those particular labels don't even really accurately cover "most important gods of this culture" - just "gods of this culture that are part of a particular group".
...NKF just totally point out that Poseidon is part of the Dodekatheon and I am apparently drunk tonight or something. But I still believe firmly in my point, sans-Neptune. :)
DeleteNo matter how ancient the Egyptians might be, I can never shake the feeling that Horus Jr is a come-lately and as soon as Ra secures regains his power (one way or another) then Horus Jr is going to be in a very unfortunate place.
DeleteHades is certainly allowed in Olympus and probably would be a sitting member of the Dodekatheon if he wanted.
But neither of those are my issue. I definitely and happily admit that those terms are not very good at representing all the gods of a culture. At the same time, I feel like saying "God" in a bunch of different languages is even less personal and less relevant to the gods of a culture. Unfortunately, I cannot think of a better solution to both problems. :(
I can definitely see that; it is more impersonal to just use the word for "gods" than to have a fancy name. But at the same time, I almost wonder if that's really a bad thing at all; after all, their people called them gods as well, and they're only special races that need weird nicknames within the context of Scion. The cultures that worshiped and wrote about these gods would have called them "netjer" or "kami" or whatever else when talking about them as a whole group instead of specific subsets of them. Is it worth trying to preserve a sense of "clannishness" that doesn't really exist outside of the game anyway? Is it just a knee-jerk reaction to wanting to be able to think of them in the same kind of specific terms as Vampire clans or D&D races? (I'm not actually sure I even know the answer.)
DeleteJohn actually leans all the way the other direction - he'd rather just call them "the gods of X" without giving them a collective noun, since in a global context they don't really need one. I think it's too useful to the game to keep them with separate names to help talk about pantheons more quickly and easily, but I see his point, too.
I wonder, what do they call each other?
DeleteA good question. Probably a word in their own language, but when they're all on the same playing field, they may not feel the need to be all that formal all the time. (Unless they have Piety, that really encourages everyone to sing each others' praises all the time.)
DeleteBetween pantheons, I think that's one of the places that having banner names for different cultures' gods is really useful. While it's probably more accurate for a Japanese god to talk about kami and mean all the gods everywhere in the entire universe, it's a lot less confusing for PCs if they can mention groups of what they consider kami, like the Theoi, so you're not trying to guess what they mean in broad terms.
Love the changes. Much more appropriate and we'll definitely be using these terms. Although Poseidon is in the Dodekatheon btw.
ReplyDeleteThat... is totally true, what is wrong with me today? I obviously need sleep. I must have counted twelve with both Hestia and Dionysus and then somehow transplanted him out. Sheesh.
DeleteHaha, that's alright. Every time I list the 12 Olympians without looking at something I always forget one. Usually Hephaestus for some reason.
DeleteTHANK YOU! "Aztlanti" makes my left eye twitch like you wouldn't believe.
ReplyDeleteRight there with you, man.
DeleteI think the hardest one to get used to for me is the Netjer. I've seen "Theoi" used a thousand times before I ever saw Dodekatheon, and we've been unofficially using "Teotl" for almost a year because Aztlanti is both a mouthful and wrong, and "Deva" is practically the same. But the Netjer...before they were given the name "Pesedjet" they were always just "The Egyptian Gods" to me, and over time "Pesedjet" became my term for that ancient and venerable pantheon, and to have to get used to their new, true name...
ReplyDeleteI guess there's something to be said for Ren, after all!
Heh, I think Netjer's the one that's the biggest adjustment for us, too, for the same reason - we didn't know a different name for them prior to Scion's use of the rarely-used "Pesedjet", so it feels "original" to us.
DeleteThanks for this! The Pesedjet Nether thing will take some getting used to, but the rest are changes I was hoping would happen someday (esp. the Deva!)
ReplyDeleteHeh, I knew you were calling for that one!
DeleteAs everyone seems to dislike the change to the Pesedjet's name I'd like to ask if you knew that the term didn't originally refer to what the Greeks called the Ennead. It was a name for any recognised collection/ruling body of deities a so I would think a fitting name for the Legend 12 badasses of the Egyptians (I will find the reference! Somewhere ... sometime ...). This is especially clear in the "Contendings of Horus and Set" where the (or one) Pesedjet is said to act as judges, which would be highly strange if we took that to be Ennead, as one of there members is dead and definitely not present (as they need to write a letter to reach him), one is a cotender and another one is acting practically as Horus' attorney and is temporally banished from the court. Nonetheless I think, if all the other Pantheons' names are changed to the generic word for "deities", then the Netjer should be no exception.
ReplyDeletePS: Isn't Teotl singular? Wouldn't it rather be Teteoh or something like that?
Interesting, but I never said I disliked the name change, only that it is a change and one I'll have to get used to! I like change, especially if it's for the better. :)
DeleteWhat Jacob said. That aside though, you're explanation of the many meanings of Pesedjet is very interesting. Thanks :)
DeleteI didn't intend to distort what you said and actually changed the expression like 3 times because I couldn't find a single, simple word for "have said that they will need some time to get accustomed to". Jeez, as if that would have made a difference considering the length of my comment. Sorry.
DeleteExcellent dive into the word "pesedjet" - thank you!
DeleteIt's a thorny issue because while it's true that it didn't always concretely mean the Ennead alone, it also didn't really mean all the gods, either; it was a term for a grouping of gods, meaning there could be many pesedjet within the pantheon, which makes it hard to use as a general term. It would be a bit like calling them "the divine council" but not explaining which one or who was on it. (Although technically "pesedjet" is also plural, so it could be "the divine councils", but then it would exclude gods who weren't in a pesedjet.) It also has become over time so strongly associated with the Ennead that it's almost indivorcible from the Greek term, so that was the other reason we wanted to move away from it.
I think it's definitely a great word to keep using for Scion purposes, though, because there would still definitely be coalitions, cliques, power blocs or whatever within the Netjer that would count as pesedjet, and it's a great culture-specific word for all the political shenanigans going on over there.
I don't think it's plural, as far as I remember most Ancient Egyptian plurals are formed by adding an w (or u depending on your system of tranliteration) at the end of the word. But I could be wrong, for mysterious reasons I kind of suck at 5000 year old dead languages.
DeleteTalking about plurals, you seem to have overlooked my question: Is there a reason why you use the singular Teotl instead of whatever may be the plural?
Unfortunately, words like Dodekatheon and Pesedjet will eventually fade away and not get used in the games of anyone but the serious mythology buffs. We're just lazy like that, and those kinds of names prompted us to get curious and wonder what they meant. No longer.
DeleteHmm... no, I think you might be right about the pesedjet plural. I'll need to do more research on that one. If I'm going to use obscure names for deity councils, I hope I'm doing it with the right noun form.
DeleteOh, I did miss that, I'm sorry! I'm actually torn on the use of teotl versus teteoh. While in specific terms of "a god", teteo/teteoh would be the correct plural, "teotl" as a singular noun refers to not just a single god but also to divinity as a whole and to all the gods and their powers collectively. The only comparable example I can think of being vaguely similar is brahman over in India... but it's not really the same as that, just has similar connotations of collective divinity. In Nahuatl, you could say two gods were teteoh, two gods, but you could also say two gods were teotl, divinities, and either would be a correct sentence.
It's a complicated term and nobody is really in agreement about all the things it's supposed to mean even in the scholarly world. What do you think, other Mesoamerican enthusiasts? Got and teotl/teteoh opinions on you?
*Arrives dressed in jaguar warrior getup* I came as soon as I saw the Griff signal in the sky!
DeleteI do agree that teotl is kind of a hard term for Westerners to wrap their heads around. In Nahuatl, practically every term in Scion could be grouped as Teotl. Legend is Teotl. Boons and Knacks are teotl. Ichor is teotl. It's nuts.
My gut says Teteoh, but in the Aztec spirit of collectivism, I'm gonna suggest sticking with Teotl.
I feel like Teotl is appropriate as a label for the pantheon as a whole, but that in actual conversation we would talk about teteoh when referring to a few of its gods doing something. Which is a totally not useful distinction for, like, everyone, I know.
DeleteOn the Kami page they are still named Amatsukami.
ReplyDeleteSame for the Shen.
DeleteKami fixed! Someone else pointed out the Shen above, but I'm having a brief file problem for them. Hopefully fixed soon.
DeleteDescription for Expression on the Theoi page still calls them the Dodekatheon.
ReplyDeleteI was sitting here thinking, "How the heck could those have gotten past me when my search-and-destroy got all the other examples of the word on the same page?", but then I realized it was misspelled so it didn't come up in my replacing marathon. Darn it. Fixed!
DeleteSo will you be changing the Aesir to Asa since Aesir refers specifically to Odin's family and Njord's are the Vanir?
ReplyDeleteEesh that sounded inordinately dickish to me when I reread it. My apologies if it offends.
DeleteNah, you're fine. :) While that would be the most inclusive, in their case we're actually fine not being inclusive. The Vanir members of the pantheon are there as POWs, not really actual "members" of the pantheon, so in this case the not-PC-ness of the term actually reflects the political situation pretty well. It's not the Asa, a group of conglomerate Norse gods; it's the Aesir and some people they force to live with them.
DeleteI could definitely see people using a different term for the sake of matching the other pantheons, though.
Good catch.
DeleteThe Anunna would need to be changed as well, since the term refers only to the most powerful of the Mesopotamian gods, and not all of them as a whole.
Anne, I'm not sure that's fair about the Aesir. If you're divorcing everyone else from the names of their political groups then Aesir should be on that list as well.
DeleteI'm sure there are plenty of Vanir who are still grumpy about the imprisonment, and we could end up breaking Godwin's Law discussing imprisoned groups that deserve to keep their own identity.
We're not necessarily, though. We're trying to find the most appropriate labels for the pantheons at hand, not blanket divorcing them from their political affiliations if those are relevant. It's just the for a lot of them they weren't.
DeleteOh, the Vanir are definitely epically grumpy, and the Vanir - as a group called that! - still exist in Scion, too, or should. It's just that they aren't in play as a playable pantheon, so their name isn't really relevant here. I'm sure Freyr, Njord and Freya (and Ullr or some of the ladies, if you roll that way) do identify as Vanir, but that doesn't mean the pantheon as an organization gives a damn.
It is a portrait of oppression, that's totally true, but on the part of the Aesir.
Allllso, I'm glad you brought up the Anunna, whichever Anon you are, because they are a weird special case!
DeleteAnunna literally means "gods of heaven", much like the old Amatsukami label, whereas the also-often-used Anunnaki means literally "gods of heaven and earth". The problem here is that there are actually literally several entire pantheons among the Mesopotamian gods, and we're not even sure at this point, with the backing of a bunch of scholarly evidence and study for the past few centuries, which are who.
The Anunna are certainly the major gods of heaven - Marduk and his ilk. Then there are the Igigi, which are a "younger" pantheon who at one point rebelled and fought the Anunna because they resented being the "servant class" gods and wanted to also hang out in the overworld being special (humanity was created as a result of this war so someone else would do the work the Igigi used to do, which is the reason that human lives suck. Thanks, Mesopotamian gods). The term Anunnaki is used sometimes to refer to the gods generally, but it's also used as the specific name of a third pantheon of gods - the gods of the Underworld, who are seldom enumerated but are described as an exact duplicate and mirror of the gods of the Anunna, simply in underworld capacities.
So we have just a freaking ton of gods, the vast majority of whom are never named or described, that are divided into three distinct pantheons. Calling everyone Anunnaki would cover the whole shebang (maybe? do the Igigi fit in there?), but it would really be there to include gods that not only aren't in Scion's setting but actually literally can't be, since we don't know who they are or what they do, only that they exist.
This was the reason that, when we wrote the original Anunna supplement, we used that name; the gods that actually appear as personalities with explots are all Anunna, and when the culture itself makes such an explicit demarcation between them and other classes of gods, it doesn't make sense to lump them together without a good motivator (like some gods that are getting left out, which we don't have). The only god on the roster you could maybe try to argue is Anunnaki is Ereshkigal as queen of the Underworld, but then again she was also originally Anunna and was coerced/requested/abducted/whatever to become an underworld goddess, so she's as much one of them as any of the others, although she probably has crossover membership now.
It is a very twisty maze of nomenclature, especially since it's all been reconstructed from tabletry and royal lists and stuff. In the end, we decided to go with Anunna, since that's the actual pantheon of Scion, and to reserve the Igigi and Annunaki labels for those groups in case Scions happen to go visit them. But it's a place where we could definitely see different games making different calls, and we wouldn't cry at all if folks were using the Anunnaki label instead.
It feels like there is some kind of weird double standard going on, where you are giving political names if nobody big or important is outside of the organization, but you are given your generic name if someone big or important is outside of the organization.
DeleteI see what you're getting at. Though I think that the same general sentiment could be applied to the Kami, given that the Amastukami are the important ones.
DeleteSo many Anons!
DeleteI wouldn't call that a double standard... I'd call it a standard. It's just not the standard you're thinking of - we're looking at who's involved where and what an appropriate label would be to include them, not making calls based necessarily on political affiliation. That can be a part of it we take into account, but not necessarily always the defining factor.
DeleteIn the end, what you want to call these guys is all going to come down to a judgment call by the ST and players, right? This just happens to be our judgment call, and we have reasons for all of them, which you're free to disagree with. As we said above, it's basically a cosmetic change, so you guys are totally free to ignore it if you want to. It's just something we've been wanting to do for our games for a while.
Well, there I have extra info you don't, Texas Red - we haven't done the Japanese rewrite yet so I know of some non-Amatsukami we're considering for inclusion. :)
DeleteI can't tell who's talking, but I love that so many anons are interested in the conversation!
This might be somewhat flattering, but my storyteller does everything you tell him to do. He runs his game according to your rules down to the letter. So if I want anything to change in my game, I have to get you guys to change it. :P
DeleteBeing Anon is somewhat liberating. I saw a while back how John was going after certain posters he didn't like. So I'm always afraid of posting under a name and accidentally saying something that will get me on the vengeance virtue list.
Hey, we keep anon around both because we want people to be able to post without jumping through the hoops of internet registration and because we want them to be free to speak their minds. As long as you guys aren't being abusive with it, it's fine with us (although sometimes it does get confusing if there are three or four anons in the same thread!).
DeleteAll we can do is tell your ST - and all STs everywhere! - that while we choose things we like and believe are solid, you're always welcome to choose other things. If you want to direct him over to the comments on this post, he'll have plenty of opinions and discussion to choose from. :)
I think I'm leaning towards what John suggested. Terms like Theoi, Netjer, and Kami are rather bland and only informative from an external perspective. We can say 'Theoi' and know we are referring to a Greek god, but a Theoi would almost never say 'Theoi' and to him the word just means 'God'. Only someone who is not Theoi would care.
ReplyDeleteIt's almost like a Caucasian walking up to another Caucasian and saying "Hello there, Caucasian".
Or something another poster mentioned. What name did they call themselves?
DeleteYep, all very true. It's useful for the game so that you can have a conversation within, say, the Egyptian pantheon and refer to "the Shen" or "the Deva" instead of using a bunch more words or worrying about translation, but from an outside perspective it doesn't matter very much.
DeleteI would rather assume they use those words to refer to other pantheons when necessary, but they would never refer to themselves as whatever name everyone else uses. Like your example, it's just not something they'd probably do.
To be honest, one could likely expect they called themselves by their names and/or titles. Like walking up to John and Anne saying "Hi John, hi Anne." Or as to the generalities, how often do you say "Hi guys, " or "hello ladies? " same thought process I would imagine.
DeleteYou bring up a funny point, Anne.
DeleteThe Greek are going to call everyone Theoi. The Mexica gods, the Slavic gods, the Finnish gods, the Hittite gods, etc. All Theoi (unless it is something like the Deva and Zoroastrians who are actively calling each other something else).
Yeah, I know! Most of the time everything that they're saying is going to be in translation - that is, the Greeks are saying it in Ancient Greek, we just have to say it in English (or language of choice) at the table because most of us don't speak Ancient Greek - so we forget that they'd be using different terminology. That's why I think the labels are really useful for Scion's purposes, because otherwise everyone is just saying, "you know, gods" and it can be confusing for players. But, as John points out, they could also just say "the Egyptian gods" and while that involves a few more words, it's just as precise. I think it probably comes down to individual game preference.
DeleteYeah, I think John is onto the winning idea here. Since mortal politics are rarely a concern past Hero, you can start off calling them "Egyptians" or "Irish" and then just clarify "Egyptian people" when you are talking about the mortals.
DeletePlus, then you can as a player be as specific or general as you want. Instead of saying you're Aztlanti, you can say you're from the Mexica pantheon if you're an Aztec-only god's child or from the Toltec pantheon if you're a son of Quetzalcoatl looking for hsi roots, and both would be just as usable; if you were a Scion of the shen, you could say you were from the Taoist pantheon or the Buddhist pantheon or the Shenist pantheon, whichever was most appropriate.
DeleteThe bonus is that it allows for as much precision as you want to have, and doesn't involve learning a bunch of new terms if they aren't necessary. The drawback is that it can be used much more generally and in some situations might cause confusion if someone isn't as explicit.
Heh, our players already do that - they will call them the Pesedjet or Netjer sometimes, but they also just as often refer to "the Egyptians" and we all know they're talking about the gods hanging out around the Nile.
I don't at all mind that a lot of pantheons are simply called "The Gods" in their respective language. It even corresponds nicely with the real world, where something like half of all ethnic groups' names for themselves mean "The People", "The Real People" or something along those lines.
ReplyDeleteWe were actually just talking about that - discussing how to work with nomenclature for the probably-going-to-win Native American tribes on the poll, since the names they're commonly known by often aren't names they used for themselves (Navajo versus Dine, "the people", for example). :)
DeleteMy players frequently referred to each other as Teotl, Dia, Shen, Boge, etc. Instead of writing a sentence like "The young God picked up his axe" they would say "the young Boge picked up his axe" because the Russian Scion thought of himself as a Boge, not as a God.
ReplyDeleteI think there is very much room to use culture-specific terms in a lot of ways instead of just calling everyone "the Gods of X." They wouldn't necessarily think of themselves as that. They'd think of themselves as the word in their language that means that.
I've been using Teotl for so long that I can't think of them as Aztlanti anymore. Possibly because Teotl is easier to spell and say? However I can't make the swap from Pesedjet to Netjer. I've been using Netjer as the word for a specific Egyptian God (Hathor is the Netjeret of all things Bodacious).
It's a lot of fun to have the option to mess around with culture-specific words, in my opinion! Not every player cares about it, of course, but they're free to keep using general terms and let the linguistics nerds geek out, and everybody's happy. :)
DeleteI thought Shen and Kami are much closer to "Anything vaguely legendary including Titans, Gods, shapeshifting Foxes, impressive rocks.."
ReplyDeleteIt depends upon the context in which the word is used. "Kami" does apply to a vast number of spirits, but it is also directly the term used for the gods. Shintoism is sort of a continuum of spirits on a giant scale - some are much bigger and more important than others, but they're all still kami at their core. Sort of like you can call insects and whales both "animals" and be correct. (And then you can use more specific terms - yokai, kunitsukami, or whatever - to further distinguih between different types of them.)
DeleteShen, as far as I know, is more directly meaning "god" most of the time. There are a ton of little gods in Chinese folk religion, though, often just the guardian of a particular village and unknown outside it, so different STs may want to rule differently on whether those are really "gods" or some other kind of thing in Scion's setting.
I mean for the Theoi they have a clear dividing line with the Titans, and Protogenoi. The Aesir have a clear dividing line between Aesir and Elf, and Vanir and all Manner of Giant.
DeleteKami definately doesn't seem to have a dividing line between God side and Titanside(and I don't think shen does either) that's my point. They seem to be pretty all inclusive.
Actually, the line between Vanir and Alfar kinda IS blurry. It depends on who you listen to. I've heard some theories that the Vanir are just really, really powerful Alfar, based on certain references in the Eddas.
DeleteAnd of course the line between Aesir and Jotunar is blurry too. After all, Odin's father was a giant, and so was Thor's mother. Kinda. Sorta. There's other examples of Aesir who are giants or half-giants. Loki, don't forget him.
Lines that seem clear are often fuzzy when viewed at sufficient detail. I mean, even the division between Titans and Gods depends on who you listen to. Is Hecate a Titan or a Goddess? Who knows! And that's like Greece's THING: clear categories.