Myths Retold

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Blog by "The Great Ovid" in which he recounts myths and legends from various cultures in his own irreverent vernacular. Also features some multi-part video retellings.

The mythologies covered on the blog include Classical Mythology, Norse Mythology, The Bible, Arthurian Mythology, Fairy Tales, Celtic Mythology, Arabian Nights, Native American Mythology, Egyptian Mythology, Hindu Mythology, Japanese Mythology, The Cthulhu Mythos, the works of William Shakespeare, and more.

A dead-tree edition is in the works.

Found here.

Tropes used in Myths Retold include:

and then he's like goodnight girls
sleep well
try not to die brutally during the night
HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: These are myths. They are being retold.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The multi-part video myths tend to go this way. For instance, part one of the Genesis series was called "Did somebody say GENESIS?", and subsequent entries continued to speculate on whether or not anybody had indeed said Genesis.
  • Metaphorgotten: Used from time to time, such as in "Medea Kind of Sucks Also".

so medea has effectively killed 2 birds with one stone
or 2 birds with one robe i guess
one poisoned robe
and instead of birds it is nobles
but the metaphor holds

  • No Punctuation Period: The earlier stories had very little punctuation; with time Ovid shed even what little there was, so that most of his myths are completely unpunctuated (emphasis and pacing is provided instead by line/paragraph breaks and frequent use of ALL CAPS).
  • A Rare Sentence: In "Robin Hood is for Pussies":

so the next morning the thief shows up at the count's place
and he's like yo
you should check your closet full of doves
there are religious personages in there
and the count is like boy
how did I get to a point in my life where that sentence makes sense

  • Record Needle Scratch: Inserted into a myth in "It is hard for Set to not be a douchebag".
  • Running Gag: Dwarves sure do love themselves some gold. Like, carnally.
    • Also, consulting the Oracle at Delphi is a terrible, stupid idea.
    • Ovid sniggering at anything that sounds a little dirty.

but the place where daphne finally gets tired
is right on the banks of this river Peneus
haha peneus

one of my favorite things about having this blog
is I get to routinely use words like fucking and seminary
IN THE SAME GODDAMN SENTENCE

  • Space Whale Aesop: A natural result of trying to synthesize a moral out of most mythology.

so the moral of the story
is if you are going to have a goddess for a mom
try to have a less shitty one than aurora
one that can save your life in battle
instead of turning your smoking corpse into some angry birds

and the gods go and bring it to fenrir
and are like i bet you cant get out of this ribbon
and fenrir is like come ON guys
there is no fame to be gained
from breaking a fucking little girl’s pretty bow
and i dont think youd even be asking me to break this
if you had not magicked up some ridiculous bullshit
that means i will like
lose my balls
or my face will come off
when you tie me up
and the gods are like no no no
why would we do that
what do you think we are
desperately afraid of you or something

  • Warped Aesop: The other natural result of trying to synthesize morals out of mythology.

moral of the story
if a charismatic religious figure offers you a pill
eat it
even if it has been clearly demonstrated
numerous times
to be deadly poison
in fact
especially in that case
take two if you can
take a dozen
take all of them
come on don't you want to be immortal

  • Your Mom: Apparently The Iliad did the nasty with her. Your dad too.