During the panel “From Myth to Magic” on Sunday at 1PM in Hyatt Embassy EF, Kaitlin Bevis, Elizabeth Donald, Bill Fawcett, Nancy Northcott, Jody Lynn Nye, and DL Wainright discussed how to creatively use myths, legends, and folklore while being respectful of original sources and cultures. Fawcett began the panel by asking each author to describe the advantages of incorporating a known mythos into their stories. Pulling from “mythoi,” Nye said, has the advantage of using a reader’s past knowledge as a foundation, but it’s important to add a twist of some kind or to “incorporate it in a different way.”
Each of the authors talked about their own fascination with past mythoi. Northcott has loved the Arthurian legend since childhood and decided to incorporate it into her work partly because she believes Morgan “got a bad rap.” She thinks that while Merlin tended to stay out of things, Morgan decided, “[they’re] going to mess it up, we need to fix it.” Bevis wanted to finish the story of Persephone and tell her side of it. Wainright sees folklore as “windows into different cultures,” and loves to explore their influence on the culture. Donald is fascinated by the strange creatures in lesser-known folklore, like the redcap, a gnome-like creature that throws iron spikes and “dips its hat in its victim’s blood.”
Fawcett noted that using known legends can speed up the pacing of a story because the tropes are a type of common language. He asked the panelists to discuss the difficulties this can present. Donald warned writers to “tread carefully” and acknowledge the folklore’s roots. If you tweak it, Wainright added, do it in a respectful way. Nye pointed out that readers have expectations if you use a known mythos, and authors can get strong “push back” if it’s changed too much. It’s wise, she added, to contact people grounded in the culture or religion you plan to use and ask them about it. She warned authors to “be flexible enough to exclude it” if the interpretation could be seen as offensive. The other thing you can do, Nye suggested, is to change it so much that it’s unrecognizable.
What mythos haven’t these authors used? Northcott, who is part Filipino, would like to draw from that culture someday, but she knows she will have to research carefully. Nye has drawn from mythologies worldwide in her work but would like to use African and South Asian, like Anansi, the trickster spider. Bevis is thinking about a retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and Donald would like to delve into Egyptology.
What legends might people thousands of years in the future create about the 20th century? Nye thinks they’ll tell stories of the plastic people, covered in a plastic shell, who thought plastic was a gift—but “it was everywhere and destroyed everything.” Northcott thinks we’re so fascinated with tech that it might become a deity someday. Donald suggested they might think some magic spell caused people to “drift away from books,” but Bevis said it’ll be cats. Why? Because of all those images and memes. People of the future will wonder, “Could [the cats] talk?”
A lively discussion of cats ensued. If they became intelligent, Fawcett asked, what legends would they tell in the distant future? “Once there was a type of demon,” Wainwright quipped, “that would steal your [unmentionables].” They were “stupid and squeamish,” Northcott added, “and didn’t appreciate the corpses we brought them.” Bevis thinks they’ll tell stories of “the food-bringers” who failed “to keep our bowls always full.” Donald agreed and said they would call us the “cruel servants.” Expanding on the idea, Nye described “the large hairless beings who adored us and were willing servants” and their “futile attempt to communicate with us.” She added that future cats would also speak of “Chewy,” the benevolent box, and how the humans “appreciated our buttholes” because they “always made exclamations about them.” Someone in the chuckling audience shouted out, “The legend of the red dots!” And so new legends were born amid laughter at Dragon Con 2024.
