#not joy

The thing is, I think it’s hard to define what mythology is - the boundary with folklore and fairy tales is pretty thin, and since mythology can be retold in any form, from novel to play to poetry, it’s sort of hard to pin down what is it I’m looking for when I say I’m a nerd for this sort of thing. Maybe what I like is the questioning and the sense of awe and marvel for our world that mythology awakens in us. There is something in those stories, in the idea of gods and monsters, which, when done well, captures the essential mystery of our existences and the landscape stretching out around us, but I feel that how we get there, that’s mostly personal? For me, it was about reading a lot, and reading everything, even books I now recognize are not very good, or accurate, but it was also about studying Greek and Latin, and sitting through dozens of bad movies, and, mostly, walking around in the mountains. The wilderness - for me, that’s how I became a ‘mythology and theology’ nerd - because there is where you feel all those gods and monsters you read about. They come alive in undisturbed nature, in lonely dawns, in the fear that grips you in the dead of night (not the bad fear - the fear you’ll be attacked and mugged and left for dead in a ditch, but that other fear - the realization that you don’t know what goes on in the dark, that you’re just a tiny person in a boundless, expanding universe, that you don’t know, will never know, if that sudden cold you feel are ghosts or your brain playing tricks on you - worse, you don’t know which option scares you the most). So, if you can, when you can - I don’t want to go all Shakira on you, but try everything - do everything - travel, push yourself to your limits. In every culture, mythology is about giving an answer to those things you feel inside yourself, and I think the one way to really get what these stories are about is to allow yourself to feel these things in the first place, without fear or self-doubt - to just be. 

/pew pew finger hearts i love u all

/floops on everyone ahhh i’m going to be starting my internship soon so both joy n miryo are gonna be on hiatus until 30th jan!! i know i owe a bunch of replies n starters (esp miryo omg) so i’ll maybe be online occasionally to do those/reply messages etc if i’ve got time but yes yes i will ~see you all soon~