Port of Zelda: 2nd haven

“Yes, Zeus. We are immortal. We don’t ever die. But Rhea’s presence was shattered by Hades. Her fragments now lay with Mother Gaia, where she’ll be taken care of.” —Metis. [MYth: A Promise]

I once read from a great Taiwanese comic artist’s blog… she was experimenting with various types of stories and she spends a lot of time develop and revising her stories to make sure it makes sense. She mentioned types of characters: animal, human, super-human (human with super powers), fantasy creatures, and gods.  Out of all those, Gods are most difficult to create stories with if you try to maintain all the godly features a “god” is supposed to have.  It’s nice to have a godly character in a story as a support for your main heroic human character, but the story will suck if a god IS the main character. Imagine: God isn’t supposed to go through any frustration, despair, adventure, and a god doesn’t have any fear, and the worst is that a god doesn’t DIE, and so nothing in the story could possibly threaten or endanger the godly character.  What kind of story will you have?? 

I thought I was lucky since I have a story about Greek gods, because unlike most gods/deities in Asian culture, Greek Gods are almost human-like…they have emotions. They possess the feeling of happiness, anger, jealousy, sadness, and even lust.  I remember once reading a Greek Mythology book which introduced the gods as “almost the same as us humans, only except they are much more powerful and immortal.”

Mortality is probably the only problem I ran across while planning the stories of MYth.  Death is usually a major element of fear for characters in a story.  When the gods have nothing to fear, it makes the plots very weak.  It also makes any fighting or threats unnecessary and pointless.  I gave this issue a lot of thoughts.  Then a statement from my cool English professor reminded me… he said “Mythology is a religion that people no longer believe in or worship”.  Even in the classic mythology many deities just slowly fade away.  What happens to those gods/goddesses?  Right after the Titanomachy, more than half of the Titans’ whereabouts were lost. (surely they couldn’t have been “killed” by the Olympians…)  So I decided to create a place for the lost deities in the universe of my comic “MYth”. Great Mother Gaia is the mother of all.  Lost deities also make their way back to her. It’s like the recycling of spirits, forces, and power. It will be Gaia’s choice if she wants the lost deities to come back…

Gods are immortal, they can’t be killed by mere humans. However, I think it makes sense when it’s god v.s. god, one should have the power to wipe out the other? 

I guess I cheated a little on this mortality issue.  In essence, I gave them a different form of “dying”.  It’s a “godly style” death unlike the humans. No disease, wounds, health issue could harm them, but a powerful blow from another deity could surely put their godly presence “at risk”.

(I’ve tried really hard not to use any “mortal death” related words in the comic such as “life”, “kill”, “die”, “death”….O___O)