Mixed (and modern) mythologies - help avoid clichés

[BearCavalry]

This is my first post, but I hope to have many on here.

I'm working on an illustrated "web-novel" with an artist friend of mine, I'm writing. It is decidedly fantasy, set in a modern world, but with a fantastic pantheon - think Neil Gaiman or Gunnerkrigg Court. Souls travel to the Underworld upon death, which is ruled by four deities called the Horsemen, inspired by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Instead these Horsemen are both benevolent and malevolent, in regards to humans. They govern the deaths of all humans, eventually, but we can all agree this is eventually for our own good.

The characters in the novel are widespread, having come from several pantheons of "First Children". The First Children were humans who were given immortality of a sort and ridiculous power by the Piper, who was one of the originally five Horsemen, who rebelled against the rest. Anyway. The most prominently featured First Children are the Aesir and other Norse figures. In this story, Ragnarok occurred long ago, and it follows the tale of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelung cycle. The characters of Woden, Loki, and Alberich feature prominently as two antagonists and a deuteragonist of sorts.

Anyway, my dilemma is how to mix multiple mythologies without hitting the cliché of "the greek gods hang out here in Greece, the Norse gods have a secret meadhall in Copenhagen" sort of thing. I'm hitting an obstacle when two "clashing" mythologies arrive. Igbo mythology (from Nigeria) and other African myth is featured alongside the Norse and Germanic gods, and I have a difficult time portraying them as anything but opposing, in order to keep the "styles" of the characters coherent on each side.

How much and which characters should I modernise? Adopting a contemporary visual style seems to be the only way to keep these characters from falling into clichés. Should Woden wear Westwood, rather than robes? Does Anansi dress like a traceur?

In the end, my question is how do you like your mythological figures portrayed in a modern setting?

 

[RJM Corbet]

I think the symbolism and dress of the gods express to a large extent what they timelessly are. Man may try to argue with God, but God doesn't have to argue with man. What God is, God is; man doesn't have to like it, but does have to accept it?

Sorry, is that in any way helpful?

 

[r_j_dando]

For me, I think it's all about how I think that character might have survived the ages (if we're talking about people who've been around for centuries, if not millenia). Whether they would have the sort of mentality to merge into modern society, or if they would have gone and hermited themselves away to hide from it all. That, and where you see them fitting into society, would answer the question for me. I can imagine Anansi, Loki, etc all fitting well into modern society (see Gaiman...), but maybe others who might be more set in their ways could have found certain styles that fitted them better from previous eras. You could pick and mix from all different styles if you so chose to do...

 

[hopewrites]

to truly answer your question you have to look back at the mythologies and see what they were trying to show. Each culture has its own because each culture has its own way of organizing their society, the overlaps from each come from the overlapping needs of cultures. ie people who need to hunt to survive will always have somegod who over sees hunting, people who give birth will need somegod who oversees life, people who die will need somegod who over sees death...
how you modernize them will relate directly to how they fit within their pantheon in modern society. and how their rolls will have shifted and changed over the ages to modern mentality and modern needs. Hunting is now more for sport than for sustaining life, so the hunting gods will ether become more sportsmanish or oversee the "breadwinning" occupations that would be most suited to their tastes while still representing themselves as God-of-providers.
see where i'm going? if not i can come up with more examples.

 

[Arkose]

Try reading The Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne. Basically, he has all the gods from all the mythologies in modern era. He goes with some popular ideas of what the gods are and less popular ideas.