Current Events > It's a shame America doesn't have its own mythology to pull from.

(+) Yeah! (+)

The unicorn and the dragon went extinct before America was founded. We have the Headless Horseman, the Devil's black book of names, the Bigfoot, and the Jackalope. That's about it. A headless Hessian mercenary and a rabbit with antlers. There is Native American mythology, but it's mostly guarded and any non-Native would be called a bigot and an exploiter for trying to use it for content in a story.

America cannot have its own story like Lord of the Rings, Journey to the West, or Princess Mononoke because there's nothing to pull from. You can't very well write a story in which a pilgrim battles a dragon which incidentally resembles a dinosaur discovered on American soil.

Uhh we have Cryptids and Tall Legends

sure it does

scientology

Mormonism is probably as close as it gets

Joke answer: High school history class
Real answer: Paul Bunyan

Don't forget about Paul Bunyan and Babe, the "Founding Fathers", and Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter

Baha05 posted...

Uhh we have Cryptids and Tall Legends

Tall legends? You mean like Paul Bunyan?

I suppose we do get folk stories like that. There's also stuff like Ghost Riders in the Sky where damnation is depicted as an endless cattle drive with demonic horses keeping the pace with demonic cattle without ever catching them.

Dude. We got Chuck Norris.

Johnny Appleseed

John Henry

Native Americans are like dude...

Also Fortune Cookies are America. That is why they are mostly hollow and leave bad taste in your mouth, and full of lies.

John Henry
Paul Bunyan
Johnny Appleseed
Br'er Rabbit

And to a lesser extent:
The apocryphal tales of George Washington, Ben Franklin, and other founding fathers.
Lady liberty
Uncle Sam

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Unfortunately the NHL team destroys the Jersey Devil in SEO.

Classic American mythology would be freedom and its modern mythology would be the corporatocracy.

Dark_Arbron posted...

Classic American mythology would be freedom and its modern mythology would be the corporatocracy.

Those are not myths , those are lies.

cjsdowg posted...

Those are not myths , those are lies.

Perhaps the same could be said of all religion

cjsdowg posted...

Also Fortune Cookies are America. That is why they are mostly hollow and leave bad taste in your mouth, and full of lies.

The only thing full of lies is this post.

We are an ancient Chinese tradition and we have a sweet taste with no aftertaste. >:V

Hamilton

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/9/3/AAFOjXAAEuyB.jpg

It does, just look at Red Dead Redemption 2

All of you forgot about Mothman which came from West Virginia.

Wussies...

American cryptids are what Australians have to deal with whenever they have to take out the trash.

All kinds of folklore in America. It usually has a basis in Native, Miner, or Old West history.

California Dark Watchers.
Jersey Devil
The Mothman
The Goat Man
Beast of Bray road
Wendigo

Most of what we teach in history class is pretty much myth anyway

Like Columbus and Edison

There's an absolute ton of American lore if you go look for it. It's just about all Native lore and typically specific to local areas of importance to the tribes, such as certain lakes and such.

Aren't Gremlins also American?

Silly topic tbh. America has tons of mythology.

Baha05 posted...

Perhaps the same could be said of all religion

We could shift this discussion into when something goes from a lie to a myth. Time frame and number of believers maybe?

FortuneCookie posted...

but it's mostly guarded and any non-Native would be called a bigot and an exploiter for trying to use it for content in a story.

Paul, you is a warwilf!

Hence, the quest to write the Great American novel.

UFOs, alien abductions and Men in Black all feel distinctly American, though maybe that's just because I am American and grew up hearing those things from our perspective. Though even the few cases I've heard of UFO encounters overseas were at military bases.

And there are other urban legends like the Bunny Man.

We got skunk apes

UFOs have been described many times before the white man stepped on American soil.
If you want a more modern take, then we got the Scandinavian Ghost Rockets in the 40s.
Alien abductions are just a modern take on an old story. Back then it was the dark unknown forest instead of space, and trolls or other mythological creatures instead of E.T.s.

Y'all got guns. The legend of Glock. The All-God AK-47.

It would be kinda cool if someone like Tolkien did for America what he did for the UK. His goal with Middle Earth was to make a mythology for Britain

We need someone to do that for the US

We've got myths upon myths. Everything from gunfighter tales (including stuff like Jesse James' buried treasure) to the Winchester House, to the Poe Toaster, to the Philadelphia Experiment, to Roswell, that's all part of America's mythology.

The American Dream mirite men?

But seriously, Paul Bunyan, John Henry, Bigfoot, Boogieman, etc. Slaves had a bunch of other stories that Im sure you could dig up. Actually, a ton of original stuff comes directly from slaves, like Blues.

You could say Americas rntire music industry, and even the entire modern music industry, was inspired by Blues, jazz, and rock, all of which originated in the US. But that isnt mythology, went on a rant.

mercurydude posted...

We've got myths upon myths. Everything from gunfighter tales (including stuff like Jesse James' buried treasure) to the Winchester House, to the Poe Toaster, to the Philadelphia Experiment, to Roswell, that's all part of America's mythology.

Yea but that's all seperate stuff. We need a unified mythological set up like Lord of the Rings.

Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. (A.K.A. a game no one ever played) was basically based on American mythology, folklore, and widely known public domain stories.

flussence posted...

sure it does

scientology

TMOG posted...

Mormonism is probably as close as it gets

Through in the Nation of Islam and you have the trifecta of rather interesting American born religion.

Two words: Pecos Bill. Dude used a rattlesnake as a lasso.

Baha05 posted...

Uhh we have Cryptids and Tall Legends

Like Shaquille O'Neal?

The United States biggest mythology issue is it was formed after Christianity had become dominate. Most mythologies morphed and developed as different cultures conquered/were conquered, were assimilated, moved, etc. The people's would intermix and prior mythologies would get taken, modified, and reshaped. It's why Greek and Roman mythologies are so similar, or why there is a lot of overlap in East Asian mythologies.

Even Christianity itself did its fair share of mythology assimilation, with things like Yule and Easter getting worked into it.

But once Christianity took root, that became kinda thing became heretical. Meeting new cultures didn't result in myths being reshaped, morphed and passed on. Instead people were converted and myths snuffed out.

In a different world European settlers would have taken a bunch of native myths and reworked them, blended them with their own and passed them on.

Beyond that the country is very young and has a healthy chunk of its existence in an age of science. So a lot of our myths haven't had a lot of time to form, and as a populace we are far less likely to use myths to explain the unknown.

There's also Champ, the monster in Lake Champlain, and Tahoe Tessie, the monster in Lake Tahoe.

The one about the US being founded on freedom and liberty for the people as its bedrock ideals is pretty persistent.