Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
If you want an example of how mythology and folklore works in action, think about werewolves. All the stuff you just know about them even though literally every piece of media has a slightly different version of how they work.
But you know what a werewolf is. Explaining what a werewolf is would be stupid. Everyone just knows what werewolves are. Where did they come from? Who cares? They’re werewolves.
If in a thousand years people just aren’t talking about werewolves anymore they might be confused by our modern full moon werewolves. What was that? Where did it come from? What’s the lore? Surely there’s one origin story for them that we all knew about.
Nope! Just werewolves. We all know werewolves.
And so it was in ancient times. Everybody knows the feathered serpent. Everybody knows Hercules. Everybody knows coyote. You know. The thing. We’ve all got a vibe for it. What’s the definitive one true version of it? Lol and also lmao don’t be stupid. It’s the thing! You know, werewolves.
As Tia Dalma says in Pirates of the Caribbean, “Same story, different version: and all are true!”
I first came across the White Monkey of Maine’s Saco River (which flows down from the White Mountains of New Hampshire) on Atlas Obscura’s 2013 Lake Monsters of America map (which is also where I found Kipsy), and I was deeply intrigued. I’d never encountered the ‘webbed hominid’ type of cryptid in my personal research before, so when I was preparing for my second post in this series, I thought it would make an interesting topic to read up on and write about.
And, well, I certainly wasn’t wrong, but…
This one’s got everything - colonialism, Joseph Smith, and terrible research practices! …Still looking for the lake monsters, though. (Read More!)
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