More Uncorrelated (Though Not Uncaused) Remarks

More tidbits, my grandchildren.

• So there's a book called 45 Master Characters: Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters. I haven't read it, and won't; I know it by references. Basically it appears to be "Try and match your characters to these archetypes from Greek myth (also Osiris and Isis, the only Egyptian gods the author can name)." Unfortunately, I can't fit any characters I like, especially none of my own, into the categories, because they're based on a series of cliches derived exclusively from books catering to a very narrow, modern demographic. These characters can only be written by, or appeal to, people who have mistaken Tamora Pierce for a thinking adult.
  
  Face facts: the only set of archetypes fiction needs is Jung. He's served JMS well enough, hasn't he?


• Know what's funny? I live fairly close to the ancestral homelands of three matrilocal, matrilineal Indian tribes, and know a thing or two about them. Guess what? In these tribes—where women own the property and descent is traced through the mother—the sex roles are...exactly the same. Men hunt and fight, and women cook and clean. Oh, well, Hopi men weave, but that's the only difference. Also, men still pay bride price, despite the fact they're moving into their wives' houses—basically they get together enough money for bride-price, to show they can be trusted to take care of her land.
  
  One difference is, actually, that in Hopi, Navajo, and Apache culture, religion is almost exclusively a male concern. Whereas patrilocal, patriarchal cultures like the Indo-Europeans, and the Eurasian "shaman complex" (Koreans, Mongols, Finns) all had more wise women than you could shake a stick at (if that's your idea of a good time).


• So someone was talking about a tengu character, in some series (books, I think). They said (I paraphrase), "tengu don't suffer from the 'Elf Superiority Complex' because they arise from human souls, but Western spirits would think they were tainted, because in Western culture the spirits always come from outside humanity—Easterners believe anyone can be reborn as anything (including inanimate objects)."
  
  You. Don't. Talk. No. More.
  
  Ever. Pretty please?
  
  See, actually, you'd only get reborn as a tengu—a yôkai and therefore, in Buddhism, a yaksha—if you committed one of the sins that gets you reborn as a preta (of which yakshas and rakshasas are varieties, in Buddhism). Reincarnation is not random—except in Dungeons and Dragons; it's determined by one's actions. Have you even frigging heard of Karma?


• So, question no. 47 of the Fantasy Novelist's Exam:
  

  Do you think you know how feudalism worked but really don't?

  90% of all fantasy writers fail this one, folks.


• I am not certain, but I think Kamen no Maid Guy may well take the prize—for now at least—in the category "Weirdest thing ever to come out of Japan." I know, I'm scared too—that's like "Worst political ideas in German history" or "Least honest Englishman."