Daily Archives: April 21, 2024

Top Tens – Miscellany: Top 10 Youtube (Special Mention) (5) Tier Zoo

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Youtube channel banner as at 21 April 2024

 

(5) TIER ZOO (USA 2017)

 

 

All animals are equal but some are more equal than others – some are just higher tier or OP.

 

That’s essentially the schtick right there (and in the channel title) – looking at animals as if they were video game characters, ranked by tier or power. Obviously that’s in terms of how well they are adapted or “fittest” for their survival – or used their “evolution points” for their character build as the channel puts it.

 

It’s an entertaining schtick with an entertaining delivery – and not coincidentally the only science channel in my top tens or special mentions, although I am open to other entertaining science channels.

 

I’ll let the channel description tell the rest –

“Hi everyone, welcome to TierZoo, the web show which seeks to analyze the meta to determine the best current builds. I talk about the special abilities and build stats of various prominent animal classes and show people things they may have overlooked when specing their character”

 

“Okay but actually my goal is to get gamers interested in zoology, since there’s a ton of amazing aspects of life on Earth that go underappreciated. Evolution has produced some bizarre traits, strategies, and life cycles that I feel need to be given the spotlight once in a while. I don’t shy away from keeping the brutal with the beautiful, so if you’re new to my content, be warned. Expect two videos per month. The good thing about my topic is that there’s potentially limitless content and I’m more than willing to provide it. Hit me up with all of your suggestions! I’ve gotten some amazing ones so far.”

 

The usual videos are tier list rankings of various classes of animal or whether certain animals or animal attributes are overpowered.

 

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mancy (Special Mention) (5) Nomancy

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Tetragrammaton in Palaeo-Hebrew, ancient Aramaic and modern Hebrew scripts created by Zappaz and Bryan Derksen for Wikipedia and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 

(5) NOMANCY / ONOMANCY

 

“The name is the thing, and the true name is the true thing.”

Yes – we’re talking the divination or magic of names. Although typically it involves not just any names, particularly the names we so casually toss about for ourselves in our daily lives, but true names or names of power, even if they have to be discovered through nomancy or onomancy itself, sometimes to those who have forgotten or don’t know their own true name or nature.

“A person’s true name might be self-determined, or bestowed on them by someone else — possibly in a religious or magical ritual, or it could be stolen, or given away”. It also tends to be something a person or being jealously guards or keeps secret – although that often applies to names in general, as with Odysseus with his name to Polyphemus.

A true name perfectly describes something’s essential nature – one might well say its soul or spirit – and knowing a true name gives one power over the owner of the name.

It is a concept with a long pedigree in mythology and folklore which I suspect originates in prehistory with human language itself and our ability to vocalise or for verbal thought, which often seem magical of themselves.

Some of the most striking illustrations of it are in the Bible, particularly in the creation myths of Genesis – from God essentially naming or speaking creation into existence to Adam naming the animals. True names might be said to reflect the divine language of heaven or the primal language of creation.

Interestingly, that goes for the name of God as well and there’s a whole running theme in or from the Bible about the power of God’s true name or names – from the Tetragrammaton (or four letters YHWH representing God) to the multiple or secret names of God giving power over creation, hence the various taboos revolving around the name (or names) of God (including one of the Ten Commandments).

I would argue that it also underlies the concept of Plato’s Forms – indeed, it might be argued that one’s true name essentially corresponds to one’s Form. It also perhaps underlies magic words or incantations in general.

There is even a myth, whether it has any historical truth or otherwise, that the city of Rome had a true name, safeguarded and kept secret lest her enemies learn of it to curse her or gain power over her.

All that is very well but it doesn’t seem to make for much by way of a method of divination – except of course to divine a true name as part of magic. Well, perhaps for things like those childhood or adolescent games in which one “calculates” the compatibility of a crush or love interest, although they tend to involve alphanumeric keys based on letters.

As a system or school of magic, it comes close even to oneiromancy as arguably the original source of all divination, as well as magic and religion in general – the ability to shape reality to our conceptual and verbal thought, perhaps even to define things into existence.

Not coincidentally, it is a concept that often underlies or is at least invoked by game mechanics for magic in Dungeons and Dragons – although not as a core mechanic given its potential power. Hence the class of truenamer, which on paper was a decent concept, but its actual mechanics in game play were so bad that it was widely acknowledged to be so hopelessly broken as the worst class of the game.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mythologies (Special Mention) (5) Discordianism

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The Sacred Chao of Discordianism

 

(5) DISCORDIANISM

 

Life is the laughter of the gods!

Or the goddess in this case.

Discordianism is the combination of two strands within contemporary mythology (or religion) that appeal to me.

Firstly, the strand of neo-paganism – not so much a mythology of itself, but an eclectic combination, reconstruction or syncretism of earlier mythologies, particularly those of historical pagan or pre-Christian Europe. The most distinctive – and perhaps the most numerous – neo-pagan religion is Wicca, which reconstructs historical witchcraft as a pagan survival or resurgence, typically combining historical mythic female figures within one overarching or universal Goddess, often identified as the Triple Goddess or Great Goddess, either as a monotheistic figure on her own, or with a similar male figure, often identified as the Horned God, as her consort in a duotheistic couple. Or not, since neo-paganism in general and Wicca in particular are extremely eclectic and difficult to pin down.

Of course, Discordianism isn’t the most serious example of neo-paganism – to the extent that it is even accepted as such, something which is often disputed. Which brings me to the second strand – the strand of parody religion, or more broadly, religious comedy, humor and satire. Parody religion or religious comedy is perhaps distinctively modern with many different strands, some notably sourced from popular culture, but also arguably has long roots extending back at least to classical philosophy or literature, even within traditional religions. Some even ascend to distinctly postmodern religions – which appear to have a number of relatively serious followers who embrace the perceived absurdity of these religions as spiritually significant and it is hard to tell whether even these “serious” followers are not just taking part in an even bigger joke.

Sometimes I feel that the world would be a better place if all religions originated in comedy or was told in the form of jokes.

And so Discordianism appeals to me because of its complete playfulness and lack of seriousness in matters of belief, all with a neo-pagan tint. After all, if you’re going to have a universal goddess, metaphorical or otherwise, then who better than the playful goddess of chaos, invoking Eris from Greek mythology or her counterpart Discordia from Roman mythology? Essentially, Discordianism originated as a parody religion, and as far as I’m aware, one of the first parody religions – although is it a joke disguised as a religion, or a religion disguised as a joke? Only Eris knows!

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT GODDESS-TIER?)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Books (Special Mention) (5) Euripides – The Bacchae

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Pentheus being torn apart – Attic red-figure vase painting

 

(5) EURIPIDES – BACCHAE

 

Literal Dionysian deus ex machina in the original folk horror story and clash of church against state – or cult against throne.

The greatest Greek tragedy – indeed one that has been argued to be one of the greatest ever written – in the usual style of Greek tragedies, which is the gods will screw you over and there’s nothing much you can do about it, even with that weird chorus telling you what’s happening, and even if they liked to call it nemesis for your hubris.

Yes, I know Dionysus personally appears, albeit in mortal disguise, to give Pentheus a repenting chance, but he doesn’t exactly go all out in the attempt because it’s much more demonstrative – and fun – setting up Pentheus for the Wicker Man to his Lord Summerisle. Except that the Bacchae makes the Wicker Man look like a picnic.

Anyway, the play by Euripides is based on the myth of Pentheus, king of Thebes, who is opposed to the new god Dionysus and his cult, despite being, you know, actually related to him. No, seriously, Pentheus is the cousin of Dionysus, because that’s how it was in those days, particularly with Zeus. Worse, Pentheus – and much of Thebes denies the divinity of Dionysus. And you can’t be disrespecting Dionysus.

So Dionysus does what any Greek god would do:
Step 1 – disguise yourself as a mortal priest of yourself and be captured only to respond cryptically to questions
Step 2 – drive your female worshippers or Maenads mad and trick Pentheus into spying on them in disguise as one of them
Step 3 – !!!
Step 4 – profit!

And by step 3, I mean sit back as your Maenads, including Pentheus’ own mother Agave, literally tear Pentheus apart with their bare hands in a crazed frenzy, believing Pentheus to be a wild beast.

That leads to a moment of classic horror as Agave proudly bears the head, still under divine delusion that it is the head of a mountain lion, to her own father Cadmus, only to see it for what it really is when Cadmus recoils and calls upon her to look more closely.

From a modern perspective, it’s hard not to identify or sympathize with King Pentheus cracking down on a strange new cult spreading through his city – particularly one with literal crazed worshippers like the Maenads, up there with the followers of Jim Jones or Charles Manson.

The Bacchae resonates on so many levels. I’ve already compared it to The Wicker Man, which replays many of its story beats for horror – and it’s easy to adapt the Bacchae for horror, from folk horror to cosmic horror – Dionysus as Yog Sothoth, perhaps?

More substantially, others have argued the parallels between it and the Gospels, with Jerusalem for Thebes and Jesus for Dionysus (and the Jewish leaders and Pontius Pilate for Pentheus), except of course Jesus is far more morally palatable in his divine coup de grace than Dionysus.

And there’s the Nietzschean interpretations, most famously with his dichotomy of the Apollonian and Dionysian in The Birth of Tragedy – and it is tempting to see Pentheus as a good Apollonian, attempting to hold the line of order against Dionysian chaos. Or the Freudian interpretations with Pentheus as ego trying to hold back the wild ecstasy of the id…

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)