But the story is fundamentally attached to the real history, interwoven with it, and it's just generally understood as part of the "lore" of a real life community
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And see you're gonna say Spider-Man is like that and you can, like, point to the Empire State Building and say he swung off of it and I'm saying no you couldn't I'm going to die on the hill that it actually is fundamentally different
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You can make jokes about crazy nerds who can't tell fiction from reality but the fact is we all know that Spider-Man was a totally made up thing within living memory that was purchased as an entertainment product and judged by its customers on how entertaining it was
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People actively choose to care about Spider-Man or not to care about Spider-Man, they choose whether they're into DC or Marvel or neither or both They write their own superhero story that gets a niche fandom in online communities They decide what's canon based on their tastes
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A mythology isn't like that It's something you just inherit, as part of your connection to a real life community As such by its nature it's the kind of thing that's old fashioned and uncool and dying out, and being replaced with fiction, which is not the same
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And this distinction and transition matters We do not relate to fiction the way we do mythology and someone whose life is heavily affected by the consumption of fiction is different than someone whose life is heavily affected by mythology I'm not saying it's bad, it just is
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Replying to @arthur_affect
I remember reading Scalzi saying he thought of mythology as the residue of dead belief systems* and reacting very strongly to this because of the ~billion Hindus in the world.
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Replying to @GirishDuvvuri
I mean yeah I may speak too quickly about the triumph of secular capitalism here Plenty of Christians also still very much do engage with "Christian mythology" (whether or not they accept that word) and would be miffed at being told it's the same kind of thing as comic books
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Replying to @arthur_affect @GirishDuvvuri
And I'm not talking about fundamentalism, that you have to believe the myth is fundamentally literally true
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Replying to @arthur_affect @GirishDuvvuri
I'm saying that a Catholic's relationship to "This is a St. Christopher's medal, we wear it for protection because of the tale of St. Christopher protecting the Christ child" is, for the most part, something quite different from "I'm wearing a Marvel T-shirt as a Marvel fan"
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People joke about the latter *mimicking* the former, sure, but it's a joke because it's a shallow mimicry, it isn't the same Being a Catholic because your family is Catholic is not at all like being in a "fandom" and we all obviously know this
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Replying to @arthur_affect @GirishDuvvuri
How does this account for people whose families really do raise them as fans of a story? It seems like they aren't exactly the same, but the resemblance is much closer than shallow mimicry.
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I don't know if you can compare the relationship to living religions with fandom, but I think a solid case could be made people relate to Comics and stuff like Star Wars the same way they relate to older myths from cultures they don't necessarily belong to.
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End of conversation
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