Post by KoptenOwl in Build 0.4 General Discussion

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Hmm...although I think this theory is pretty interesting, I forsee two problems with Storm being related to Io.
1. Although certainly skin color can change through the generations and through intermarriage, Io was a white heifer and storm is pretty dark. It's not out of the question, but with a number of other bulls throughout myth and MinoTeam being pretty detailed, the color change is not insignificant

2. If I recall correctly, Io ended up in egypt at the end of the story. Although it's not out of the question to have a egypt->moors->portuguese->brazil migration of Io's descendants, it's another narrative obstacle.

But hey, love y'all's theories. Y'all are bringing up a lot of good points. I was telling my friend that we should start a wiki to help keep track of info.

tawerwut3 years ago (3 edits)

He's too dark?

At the end of some free-wheeling speculation over a fictional fantasy furry visual novel with a magical hotel set in a metaphysical labyrinth and a main character that can change appearance at will, the constraint that we want to fixate on is that Storm is too dark to maybe be distantly related to a mythical character?

Kopten, if I may call you that, I don't relish singling you out, but you just touched on a few things that can't be left unexamined.

One - and most importantly - any attempt to ligature race, ethnicity, and skin color to limited physical attributes of animals/anthropomorphic animals/androids/physical projections of A.I./~~an animated fucking toaster~~ is inherently damaging and toxic and dangerous to members of the community, e.g. trying to treat fur color as a analogue to skin color. This is racial essentialism. This hurts all of us and limits us, but worst of all it singles out and excludes people of color in the furry community by attempting to remove agency from how they represent and explore themselves.

Two - maybe due to a misunderstanding or maybe a misapprehension of inherited traits I think it is worth pointing out that it is entirely possible for a white cow to be closely or directly related to a black cow. And, just so we're clear, it is also entirely possible for a dark skinned person to be directly related to a light skinned person. But, see point above, let this point go. Set it free. (Okay, also before I set it free, frequently the telling of these myths point out that the white cow is a meant to be a fated occurrence - a sign, omen, message, gift. Not herds of cattle of a certain color - okay those exist too sometimes in legend and myth like in some worship of Apis but not the point to take away from this.)

Three - I admit to leaving the door open on this one by playing fast, loose, and unscrupulous while discussing myth, so I'm going to state some things that I hope are obvious and maybe a couple less-obvious things too:

a) Myth ain't real! It may be honest, it may be revealing, and re-interpreting it can be liberating, but it's just a social construct meant to reify power through narrative. So don't think we owe mythic tradition anything, because people have been meddling with it for millennia. Most of the versions of myth we have been discussing are relatively late, often the most popular, traded and translated and retranslated again and again, and there are usually twenty other tellings, some of which omit whole characters or invent places and new plots. It matters whose telling it is. Whose translation. Whose edition of that same translation. There is no "true" version. No one true unifying myth or retelling (looking at you, Robert Graves). Actually, there've been many references to Ovid's Metamorphoses. Care to guess some of what Ovid is exploring? Myth! Power! Agency! Narrative mutability! In fact, if any of you have time, go read Ovid right now. You can read it in Latin or English with the translations side by side like the Loeb editions! Take and read!

b) While we were playing around trying to create as many concordances in the popular tradition of myth around Crete, Asterion, Io, Europa, Minos, and Pasiphaë, the endeavoring to draw that line from Io down to Storm through the migration of real ethnic groups is a great example of how myth is really used by nations and states to create arbitrary boundaries and in-groups. This can be another dangerous and misleading game meant to lend legitimacy to nationalism, ethnocentrism, and all kinds of trouble (read: fucked up shit.) Autochthony doesn't have to be alienating, and don't let me catch anybody trying to remove any kind of sovereignty from Indigenous peoples, but it as soon as it is used to enforce some kind of impossible ethnic homogeneity . . . And look, myth in all forms (oral tradition, religious tradition through text, etc.) are particularly important to diaspora communities, but when the interpreter of this story uses the myth to exclude those who don't resemble those in power currently shaping the mythic history, we land back at trouble (F.U.S.) So many nations do this or some derivative of it (I don't HAVE TIME today for discussing manifest destiny in these United States of America). SPEAKING OF MANIFEST DESTINY - another reading rec - revisit the Aeneid. In addition to many other things it is Roman propaganda reinforcing that the line of Roman monarchy wends back to Troy (its also kinda Augustan fanficiton). AND ALSO even in the microcosm of the Aegean basin diaspora in the is a constant! From the (many) Bronze Age depopulations, to the massive 1923 forced population exchange to the very current influx of migrants (who, by the way, are definitely being excluded in part using the exact apparatus we are discussing).

c) It's a fantasy! The authors have the license to take whatever liberties they desire! And so far they have not made any sort of indication that if Storm is meant to be coded Afro-Brazilian that they will use that against him. They could reveal anything they choose too about any character - Luke could be a literal physical manifestation of American patriotism (ala American Gods - also definitely not the point I am trying to make), Storm could be from folklore, the Olympians, an entirely novel manifestation of supernatural incident, or some Hittite deity, or just an ordinary man! I am not interested nor going to abide projection of casual, invented, racial limitations - intentional or unintentional.

Sorry y'all. I done rambled. And Kopten, you are not uniquely guilty of these things - but you just happened to land smack-dab in the middle of field in which I ruminate daily.

So, for your trouble, here's a shorter, neater response.

TL;DR

Don't try to enforce colorism, please, not in the world, not in furry fantasy, and let us take a long and uncomfortable look at ourselves when we are trying to so.

KoptenOwl3 years ago(+2)

Tawerut,

Thank you for the response and the critique. Looking back, I realize that my habits of being brief with my words / assuming other people are sharing my headspace/writing late at night in this instance has produced an impression/conclusion that is not what I believe AND indeed my previous conceptions about greek myth limited my frame of view. I am going to respond, not to excuse what I said, but to offer a context as to what I was thinking at the time, which I realize is a bit too little, too late at this point.

"any attempt to ligature race, ethnicity, and skin color to limited physical attributes of animals/anthropomorphic animals/androids/physical projections of A.I./~~an animated fucking toaster~~ is inherently damaging and toxic and dangerous to members of the community, e.g. trying to treat fur color as a analogue to skin color. This is racial essentialism This hurts all of us and limits us, but worst of all it singles out and excludes people of color in the furry community by attempting to remove agency from how they represent and explore themselves. "

>I assure you that this was not my intention to exclude people of color in the furry community or try to remove their agency. I do not wish to invalidate your interpretation.

The latter half of Point Two was the main reason why I wrote what I did. The white Bull form that Zeus took, The white Bull / perhaps Poseidon's form, and Asterion fall into the mythological pattern you mentioned. Patterns are important, both in mythology but also in how Mino tells its story. I too made the mental connection with Argos and Io, and pondered if she would have some part to play in the story. It would be cool if that were the case.

I am aware that in genetics, traits can not be phenotypically be represented but can be genotypically represented. My point was that at this point it is an unsettled question how if he was a descendant of Io, how if Io had cow genes, how those would interact with those of his human parent(s). When I said "problem", I meant more of a narrative obstacle that would have to be explained. I am very fine with saying that coat phenotypes could have changed over time and could be influenced by those of his parents. My point is that it's one motif/narrative step removed from fitting as neatly into the established pattern, and I am very happy to expand that pattern.

I articulated this point poorly in my original post, I admit.

I have enjoyed reading Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Aeneid for my latin class in high school, but thank you for the recommendation. MY favorite Ovid translations has the muses vs a group of nymphs doing a rap battle in meter, and it's one of the best things ever.

3a- I agree and have enjoyed how the MinoTeam has adapted myths so far. If team mino wants to turn a pattern on its head (i.e. what I thought Disney was going to do with Rei before she was retconned to be a Palpatine), I welcome it.
3b-I'm not quite sure I understand the point in 3b. I.e. I understand and agree with what you're saying, but I'm unsure on how it relates to the topic at hand, apologies, I am dense boi.
3c- I agree. My motivation behind that is that at least for Luke, a connection was made between him and his greek griffin ancestry, and something I would like to see is if storm is related to Io, I would at least like to get an idea of how her bovine descendants ended up in South America and if these cow traits popped up before . In addition, we have a lot of greek myth represented right now, it seems Koda and maybe the kobalds are the only non-greek myth. I personally would like to see some other myth sources being drawn from. Again, it's fine if he is a descendant of io, but it'd be cool as well if he was from another realm of myth.

tl;dr. I apologize if my short response inadvertently enforced colorist / traditional ideas surrounding mythology. I will try to be more cognizant about talking about things of this subject in the future / better articulating my points.

tawerwut3 years ago (1 edit) (+2)

I appreciate your earnestness! I appreciate your thoughtfulness!

No, you are not dense, the point I attempted to make at 3b simply unspooled further and faster than I intended.

What I should have said is that there are many popular interpretations of antiquity and myth that maintain a very narrow and nearly exclusively white vision of who have made meaningful contributions. These interpretations are as popular with ordinary people as they are with academia and white supremacist organizations (like Identity Evropa). With the consistent recapitulation of these narrow interpretations, marginalized people find themselves excluded from the discourse and cannot see themselves in antiquity and myth and are made distinctly uncomfortable in the spaces in which they are enjoyed. When people of color and queer people and disabled people and people of transgender experience are excluded from the discourse about the Past, they are also excluded from the story of the Past. Then the cycle perpetuates itself.

Maybe that makes more sense, maybe it really doesn't, but I am grateful that you were listening at all. I am also grateful to the Mino team for creating a story with room enough that we even got here.

Thank you.

. . . and I too mourn a meaningful arc for Rey. And for Finn.

Jay3 years ago (1 edit)

Rereading this a couple of days later (the ichor hypothesis is just, wow) and caught this:

KoptenOwl said:
"MY favorite Ovid translations has the muses vs a group of nymphs doing a rap battle in meter"

…that's amazing, if you remember the translation I'd love to check it out! 😁

The highlight of mine was Latreus trash-talking Caeneus—"Caeneus, you bitch!"—making a pun on his original sex and name, Caenis. (I never studied Latin, just had a very long commute, so unsure how big a liberty the translator took.)

KoptenOwl3 years ago(+2)

Metamorphoses, a new tranlation by charles martin, pg 173. Picture on the cover of my edition is a femboi faun

itch.io

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