O’Brien - Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology

Here is a book I wrote, and I hope you enjoy it. A lot of what is in it comes from my website, which is on the Internet, but there is a lot of stuff that is only in this book too, like this introduction. So I figure I better use this opportunity to say some things about myths, and the writing thereof. First off, I think anybody who complains that a retelling of a myth is inaccurate doesnt really understand what it means to retell a myth, or probably even what a myth is. (Yes, there are some non-canon additions in this book. Im sure youll spot a few.) I always stay true to the general arc of the story, but my retellings arent always canon in the obsessive fanboy sense. I have spent the last three years frantically accumulating mythological knowledge and distilling it into what some have affectionately called the death of intellectualism.

I am proud of this, because I think that lately, myths have suffered from a severe intellectualism overdose. Everybodys always studying them in school, or reading watered-down versions of them to little kids, and what that means is that hardly anybody has the time to actually sit down and look at how fucking funny these things are. I mean, for a long, LONG time, the difference between a good story and a bad story was whether a bard could memorize it well enough to not get eviscerated by a mead hall full of drunken barbarians. These things are holy, sure, in a way. But they are definitely designed to cater to the lowest common denominator. Speaking of common denominators, one of the guys who I read a lot of while I was making this book was a dude named Joseph Campbell.

He wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which is both an incredibly sweet title and an incredibly insightful book. One of the things he spends a lot of time talking about is how similar the mythologies of different cultures are, and how that arises out of our innate neurological similarities as human beings (youll see what I mean when you get a ways into this book). What I think is particularly interesting, though, and what I wanted to talk about here, is one of the things he says in his introduction, which is that a lot of the psychological problems that we experience today may stem from our rejection of mythology. Like, if this stuff came out of our common human brain problems, isnt it kind of dangerous to pretend that theyre no longer relevant? I mean, sure, theyre a little outdated, but thats where I come in, my friends. We can rebuild these myths. We have the technology.

We can make them snappier, flashier... it would be hard to make them sexier... But you get where Im going with this. Its been too long since someone snatched these myths out of the past and pitched them screaming into our everyday lives. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell says that the role of the ancient priest, the role of guiding people through their spiritual crises with mythology, has been taken over by the modern psychologist.

GREEK

Ahhh, the Greeks dead longer than America has even existed and still invading our lives with their myths.

GREEK

Ahhh, the Greeks dead longer than America has even existed and still invading our lives with their myths.

If you drive a car you may have bought auto parts from Midas. If you listen to Internet radio you might be acquainted with Pandora. If you got laid today you might have spotted a Trojan on the condom if you use condoms which you should but if you dont then youre probably a lot like Zeus and/or Aphrodite SO YOU CANT ESCAPE THESE MYTHS NO MATTER WHAT. My friends, the extent to which we idolize these Greek myths is ridiculous. Poets cant stop talking about them we carve crazy Greek-looking columns into all our national monuments we name our planets after (the Roman versions of) them and NOW you are about to get the inside scoop on them.

C RONUS L IKES TO E AT B ABIES

So everybody knows Zeus is the king of the gods right? WRONG.

I mean, he is the king of the gods but first of all, not everybody knows that and second of all he wasnt always the king of the gods. Because, see, for a while there was this guy Uranus who was a total asshole (haha, Uranus) anyway he was the king of the gods, born out of the sky or maybe it was the aether? but either way he was definitely married to Gaia who some sources say also gave birth to him so... awkward. BUT LIKE I WAS SAYING Uranus bones Gaia a bunch because it is basically just him and Gaia alone in the universe and what else are they gonna do? And they have a whole bunch of kids but then Uranus suddenly decides he hates all of the kids and instead of like giving them up for adoption or something he just decides to try and STUFF THEM ALL BACK INTO HIS WIFE like THESE ARE NOT THE BABIES I ORDERED I AM RETURNING THEM TO THE BABYSTORE. Which I think demonstrates a really shocking lack of understanding of how babies are made. OW. OW.