More seriously, a problem with using other writers than Campbell is that, since their PR hasn't been as successful as his, fewer of us non-anthropologists have read them, or even read the Cliff's Notes version of them. Thus, we won't know enough to recognize when you who do know them (or think that you do, at least) are full of it.
If you do intend to use them, don't use non-Campbellian terms or arguments without extensive discussion in ordinary English of what you mean, or expect a lot of silence at best or flame wars from the few people who think that they know more than you, at worst.
> While I thinking of such things, what good examples are there in
> Glorantha of classic tragic heroes, like Oedipus, that fate raises up
> then destroys?
Lokamaydon? Arkat? Rashoran, in the Monomythic view? The Mother Of Many, who was just minding her own business when Yelm Deathgod comes and lays waste to Wonderhome? Jaldon Toothmaker, forever banned from his beloved Prax? Alakoring Dragonbreaker, who died by the arrows of an elf who continued his work, and so probably would have been a friend if only they had met differently?
Obviously, there must be others, as well, who didn't participate in world-bending actions, and so haven't received the coverage that the above had.
> There are lots of heroes who get destroyed by their own
> foolishness, or by their enemies, or that make different choices to what
> their original backers desired and are thus held to have fallen. But I
> can't think of that many struck down by fickle fate.
Oedipus was struck down for not silencing whoever it was who first suggested that that he and his wife were related by other than marriage, as a modern version of Oedipus Rex said (starred Fritz Weaver as Kreon and Stacy Keach as Chorus [the piano player], used to be on PBS ever other year during pledge breaks, like The Lion In Winter). More classically, a hero is struck down in tragedy for his flaws, which may be the same as his virtues were. Obviously, then, why a hero is struck down depends on who tells the tale, and Gloranthan tales seem less likely to view Fate as a major cause than Intent. This is rather like those African societies that view any death, no matter how accidental or inevitable we might think it, as the work of evil witches. Also, if everything is Personalized, then nothing is done except by an enemy, even if you didn't know that enemy before. Was Zorak Zoran scarred by a fire, or by an infant Primal Fire? Yes, to both, but the best stories say the Rune or the God, not some boringly mundane fire.
End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #646
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