Today’s myth goes out to Thunderdome veteran
Elayne “The Pain” McClain
it is about the origin of species
or at least one specie in particular
is that the singular of species?
whatever
HERE WE GO
So in hell
(and I’m going to call it hell
because this story was made up fairly recently
and all the gods in it were made up too, I think
so I am going to call them whatever the hell I want too)
the height of animal technology
is the snake
dudes are all about snakes down there
they’ve got it all:
they’re poisonous
hard to spot
sociopathic
what’s not to love?
So they start this massive ad campaign
to get the people who don’t live in hell to start liking snakes
predictably, this does not work
because people who do not live in hell
have way better animals to choose from
THAN FUCKING SNAKES
a couple gods even go so far as to make a bet with each other
that one of them is going to make snakes popular first.
they both lose.
Let me reiterate, friends
the animal in question is not a koala
or a llama or an adorable chipmunk
the animal is FUCKING SNAKES
I CAN THINK OF NO OTHER ANIMAL
THAT CAN TURN PEOPLE TO STONE
JUST BY BEING SOMEBODY’S HAIR.
but finally this snake problem goes up the chain of command
to some really important hell-dude called
uh
let’s call him Scruffles
and Scruffles is like HM
THIS IS A BIG FUCKING DEAL ABOUT THESE SNAKES
OH SHIT I HAVE A PLAN
so what he does
is he goes all around the world and does some demographic research
about why people fucking hate snakes
the problems are these:
1 – scales are gross
2 – no one wants to be friends with something that will poison them in their sleep
3 – no legs
4 – no ears either
5 – too much tail
6 – fucking snakes. I hate snakes.
so having done this market research
Scruffles tracks down a snake and he’s like hey
how about a little elective surgery
and the snake
who has just watched Indiana Jones shoot a dozen of his pals in the face
is like “YES PLEASE.”
So Scruffles takes this snake
and gives him some ears
and puts hair on him
and some legs
and gives it a body, but leaves a good amount of tail
and he can’t take away its gleeful sociopathy
so he does the next best thing
he takes away its venom
and replaces it with RAZOR SHARP CLAWS
and suddenly everyone is all about this thing
which is
YOU GUESSED IT
a cat
so that’s why cats and snakes have pretty much the same eyes
and they’re both shitty and they don’t care if you live or die
and witches make friends with them
and if you grab a cat’s face and hold your hand over its ears
it totally looks like a hairy snake
so good luck getting that image out of your head
now I think we can all agree on the moral of this story
which is that if someone doesn’t like a thing you like
you can easily win them over
by changing that thing into a completely different thing that they like
THE END.
Hey, how’d you know what my brother used to call me when I was 12?! (c:
I’ve noticed a lacking of slavic myths. How about “The Death of Koschei the Deathless” and “Vasalissa the Beautiful and Baba Yaga”
If you’ve done these already and I just missed them, sorry, I haven’t read through the whole site yet.
I just grabbed my cat’s head by the ears and she was like, OMFG what are you doing, my secret’s out!
The cat’s out of the bag, as it were.
I just did this to my cat. Thanks for all the SLEEPLESS NIGHTS I’ll now be having.
Also, judging from the look he gave me, I’m pretty sure he’s planning on disemboweling me the next time I nod off.
I dunno, I kind of like snakes.
And then there’s the Banded Linsang, which is
(1) a primitive cat relative;
(2) hands-down the worst-disguised snake I have ever seen;
(3) breathtakingly beautiful.
Go ahead and add me to the “gleeful sociopathy” list, but I see this story as reason to give denizens of Hell the benefit of the doubt on aesthetic sense, anyway.
Oh my goodness, you’re right about how utterly gorgeous it is! I think you’ve just introduced me to a new favourite animal.
This has always been one of my favorite creation myths, even if it was made up fairly recently.
That’s by Tanith Lee originally, though I don’t remember what book. One of the Flat Earth books, maybe.
I think cats do that deliberately, actually. Like, they’re evolved for it, so that when they hiss at something with their ears down, they look snake-like and whatever they’re hissing at is like “holy shit, snake!” and high-tails it. It’s a defence mechanism, like those butterflies that pretend to be birds, or caterpillars that pretend to be bears, or whatever.
So the next time your cat hisses at you, remember that it’s not just voicing its displeasure, it’s pretending that it’s something that can pump you full of lethal venom, and expecting you to scream in terror and run like hell.