Yeah, I did think it kinda looked that way. And I was shocked. Nice to see that you were shocked in turn that anyone would take you literally.
me:
>> Real World comparison: Loki, to Coyote, to Hermes.
Greg:
>I would be extremely curious to know what you calculate those
>three individuals' percentages of evil, meaningless, stupid and
>good things to be.
Haha. Let see...
Hermes. My weakest case. Not a fullfledged trickster, but rather many
functions, perhaps originally many deities, amalgated into one divine
being with strong trickster aspects. God of merchants, thieves and
gamblers. Also god of clever lies and wild stories. Started out by
stealing Appollos cattle and inventing the lyre, while still a baby.
Adopted (or actually recognized as an official Zeus bastard) tamed,
incorporated into the pantheon, gainfully employed as divine messenger,
and psychopomp. Some of the stuff that tricksters ordinarily do turn up
with other greek beings, like Athene (inventing technology, lie really
well) Anyway, I'd say ... 60/20/10/10? Just guessing on the
meaningless/stupid things, really.
Coyote. Closest to your 25/25/25/25 pattern. Not surprisingly, if you
based the gloranthan tricksters on the north american ones? I'm not
expert on native american myth, so a neil gaiman quote comes to mind:
"...but you think about it: who's going to worship Coyote? He made love
to Porcupine Woman and got his dick shot through with more needles than
a pincushion. He'd argue with rocks and the rocks would win." (Out of
American Gods, a good read, by the way.)
Loki. Pretty much 100 % bad things. It's just that they are divided in
Bad to Our Enemies (because he's on our side – sortof), Bad to Us
(because he's evil) and Bad to Himself (because he's a pervert, or
selfdestructive, or something backfired). Even when he creates new
technology, it's a about hurting someone, namely himself. (He's on the
run, hiding out, knows he's gonna get found and plans to escape as a
fish. Thinking about what could be used to trap him in fishshape, he
invents the net, actually makes the damn thing and then fails to
destroy it when his pursuers show up.) Um. There is also this one time
I can think of when he does Bad to Random Bystander (for no cause,
because he's just Loki) So: 0/100/0/0. Or, if you divide his evilness
into useful/harmful/pointless/selfdestructive, perhaps... 20/40/10/30.
>> I would also have guessed that pelorian tricksters, generally,
>>would be more rotten, as a consequence of the solar guys' anal
>>retentive obsession with order, no?
>There are wide ranges of acceptability. As Trotsky said, to the uptight
>DHs everything that is not "good" for their upper class standards is
>bad. But if Carrot Man put a whoopee cushion on the Emperor's throne
one
>time, do you think that the Lodrilites (90% of the population) would
>consider it to be bad? Yet the upper class would likely consider it
>evil, a capital offense, and chop Mr. Carrot up. (again).
Ha ha. Yes, a lot depends on where you are when you hear a story.
Someone mentioned Bugs Bunny earlier in the thread. We all love to
watch him, but take a minute to think about what would happen if you
actually ran into him on, while on a heroquest. Personally, I can't
think of a scarier, tougher, and more
no-matter-what-you-do-you're-gonna-end-up-toast trickster.
" krunch krunch krunch Hey, whatsup doc!"
Dan G
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