Jemini
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Introduction
There are several significant advantages to pulling from old lore and mythologies from the ancient world (Greek, Christian, Chinese, Japanese, and Babylonian) or the classical world (Norse, Icelandic, Slavic) to implement in your writing.
The advantages are that these are common stories that, even if the reader does not know this specific story, they have usually heard something like it and are able to recognize the themes. This allows a writer to use short-cuts to get the same feeling of deep history and gravitas into their story that would usually require very in-depth world building to create, and even people who do go into deep world-building can use some of these themes to either inform their own world building or even borrow some pieces for their own use.
In my own stories, I have borrowed heavily from Chinese and Slavic lore, and VERY heavily from Jewish and Babylonian while playing up the strange link Jewish and Babylonian lore have to each other by linking the two.
Specific disadvantages
The disadvantages are interspersed, but necessary to be aware of. One of the biggest disadvantages is that if you use the lore of a religion still in practice today, such as Christianity, Judaism, Shinto, Bhudism, or Hinduism, you will be placed under a special level of scrutiny in which you have to tread carefully and represent the religious figures in a way that is not too disrespectful or deviating too greatly from their portrayal in the source material. In some ways, this disadvantage can even be turned to an advantage if you do a good enough job, and a very faithful representation that respects the source will gain you a lot of attention from the groups in question, but a single misstep will bring down a populous wrath the likes of which you want no part of.
There is also a great deal of baggage with some of these religions. Christianity, in particular, is regarded as synonymous with western culture and critics of western culture therefore are also highly critical of anything that brings up Christianity without bashing and lampooning it.
There is also another kind of baggage specifically with Norse and Greek mythology, as these are two mythologies that are very popular to adapt in fiction. Neither of these are living religions today, but they have baggage regardless due to all the poor adaptation others have done with it as they've used the names of Norse or Greek gods as set dressing for their story, just blatantly using the name, to a point that several people these days will roll their eyes if they see a Norse or Greek hero or god name come up in your story.
It is understandable as Norse and Greek mythologies are in that sweet spot where neither are living religions and thus avoid all the pit-falls of using a living religion, but at the same time they also each have a large amount of the lore preserved (unlike Babylonian lore) which allows for a lot of material for the writer to pull from. But, much like the Isekai genre, this understandable popularity has made for a large amount of trash-tier material in the category that sours readers' tastes to it. Those who adapt it well are still appreciated. To continue using the Isekai example, there is a firm differentiation between trash Isekai and the real stand-outs of the genre such as Overlord, Re:Zero, and Mushoku Tensei. In this same manner, a really faithful leveraging of Greek and Norse mythology can still be well appreciated by readers, but a bad adaptation will get a lot of readers loosing interest fast.
Specific advantages to living religions
This does bring up two more advantages of the living religions to counter-balance the HUGE pit-falls if writing with them. 1st. The lore is more complete in living religions. Not only is there more material to work from, but in the case of religions that have survived into the modern day that information is often a lot more personable and easier to relate to, more meaningful to the common man and more useful for the small-level world building in a story.
The 2nd major advantage of living religions is that these religions have greatly informed the culture of an entire people, and thus the themes are literally baked into the society itself. This means that adaptations of these religions will greatly increase the appeal of your story to the particular group that practices this religion. Even someone who is an atheist or a practitioner of a religion that is a minority in that region of the world will have been heavily influenced by the majority religion of that region and thus will feel the same form of resonance with the themes.
This has long been an advantage Japanese writing has had over Western writing. Japanese writing often heavily applies aspects of Shinto and Bhudism in most of their writings. Even the standard Shonen anime have their origins in Journey to the West, a text written by Bhudist monks using these characters to explore aspects of a person's inner psyche and the battle with the self to gain enlightenment. Japanese writers also make heavy use of Christianity, as Christianity is the 3rd largest religion practiced in Japan, making it a very significant minority religion there.
Meanwhile, the afore mentioned anti-western sentiment in the western world has bashed on Christianity so hard as to make writing with Christian themes unpopular, thus stripping writers of a valuable tool for gaining mass appeal among western audiences.
Conclusion
In conclusion, despite all the pit-falls involved, there are also so many advantages to using the lore from current and past religions in your writings. So long as you remain conscious of the pit-falls and put in the work and research necessary to use and leverage this old lore well, it can be a short-cut to greatly improving the quality of your work.
However, some require more work than others in the case of currently practiced living religions. Using these living religions can be a high-risk high-reward gamble, and require so much work you might as well build your own lore from the ground up, but for those who are passionate enough to put in the effort I would actually encourage you to go for it. (Although writers using Christian themes in the western world really have their work cut out for them.)
Introduction
There are several significant advantages to pulling from old lore and mythologies from the ancient world (Greek, Christian, Chinese, Japanese, and Babylonian) or the classical world (Norse, Icelandic, Slavic) to implement in your writing.
The advantages are that these are common stories that, even if the reader does not know this specific story, they have usually heard something like it and are able to recognize the themes. This allows a writer to use short-cuts to get the same feeling of deep history and gravitas into their story that would usually require very in-depth world building to create, and even people who do go into deep world-building can use some of these themes to either inform their own world building or even borrow some pieces for their own use.
In my own stories, I have borrowed heavily from Chinese and Slavic lore, and VERY heavily from Jewish and Babylonian while playing up the strange link Jewish and Babylonian lore have to each other by linking the two.
Specific disadvantages
The disadvantages are interspersed, but necessary to be aware of. One of the biggest disadvantages is that if you use the lore of a religion still in practice today, such as Christianity, Judaism, Shinto, Bhudism, or Hinduism, you will be placed under a special level of scrutiny in which you have to tread carefully and represent the religious figures in a way that is not too disrespectful or deviating too greatly from their portrayal in the source material. In some ways, this disadvantage can even be turned to an advantage if you do a good enough job, and a very faithful representation that respects the source will gain you a lot of attention from the groups in question, but a single misstep will bring down a populous wrath the likes of which you want no part of.
There is also a great deal of baggage with some of these religions. Christianity, in particular, is regarded as synonymous with western culture and critics of western culture therefore are also highly critical of anything that brings up Christianity without bashing and lampooning it.
There is also another kind of baggage specifically with Norse and Greek mythology, as these are two mythologies that are very popular to adapt in fiction. Neither of these are living religions today, but they have baggage regardless due to all the poor adaptation others have done with it as they've used the names of Norse or Greek gods as set dressing for their story, just blatantly using the name, to a point that several people these days will roll their eyes if they see a Norse or Greek hero or god name come up in your story.
It is understandable as Norse and Greek mythologies are in that sweet spot where neither are living religions and thus avoid all the pit-falls of using a living religion, but at the same time they also each have a large amount of the lore preserved (unlike Babylonian lore) which allows for a lot of material for the writer to pull from. But, much like the Isekai genre, this understandable popularity has made for a large amount of trash-tier material in the category that sours readers' tastes to it. Those who adapt it well are still appreciated. To continue using the Isekai example, there is a firm differentiation between trash Isekai and the real stand-outs of the genre such as Overlord, Re:Zero, and Mushoku Tensei. In this same manner, a really faithful leveraging of Greek and Norse mythology can still be well appreciated by readers, but a bad adaptation will get a lot of readers loosing interest fast.
Specific advantages to living religions
This does bring up two more advantages of the living religions to counter-balance the HUGE pit-falls if writing with them. 1st. The lore is more complete in living religions. Not only is there more material to work from, but in the case of religions that have survived into the modern day that information is often a lot more personable and easier to relate to, more meaningful to the common man and more useful for the small-level world building in a story.
The 2nd major advantage of living religions is that these religions have greatly informed the culture of an entire people, and thus the themes are literally baked into the society itself. This means that adaptations of these religions will greatly increase the appeal of your story to the particular group that practices this religion. Even someone who is an atheist or a practitioner of a religion that is a minority in that region of the world will have been heavily influenced by the majority religion of that region and thus will feel the same form of resonance with the themes.
This has long been an advantage Japanese writing has had over Western writing. Japanese writing often heavily applies aspects of Shinto and Bhudism in most of their writings. Even the standard Shonen anime have their origins in Journey to the West, a text written by Bhudist monks using these characters to explore aspects of a person's inner psyche and the battle with the self to gain enlightenment. Japanese writers also make heavy use of Christianity, as Christianity is the 3rd largest religion practiced in Japan, making it a very significant minority religion there.
Meanwhile, the afore mentioned anti-western sentiment in the western world has bashed on Christianity so hard as to make writing with Christian themes unpopular, thus stripping writers of a valuable tool for gaining mass appeal among western audiences.
Conclusion
In conclusion, despite all the pit-falls involved, there are also so many advantages to using the lore from current and past religions in your writings. So long as you remain conscious of the pit-falls and put in the work and research necessary to use and leverage this old lore well, it can be a short-cut to greatly improving the quality of your work.
However, some require more work than others in the case of currently practiced living religions. Using these living religions can be a high-risk high-reward gamble, and require so much work you might as well build your own lore from the ground up, but for those who are passionate enough to put in the effort I would actually encourage you to go for it. (Although writers using Christian themes in the western world really have their work cut out for them.)
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