Cats of Fantasy & Science Fiction

It’s been a thing to make animals into human type characters, or as it’s called, anthropomorphized. An early representation of this is in Kenneth Graham’s Wind In The Willows, with the characters of Ratty, Mole, Badger, and Mr. Toad.  While Wind In The Willows had animals living in holes but also wearing suits and rowing row boats and talking about cars (as Mr. Toad did), Richard Adams’ Watership Down gave a colony of rabbits more socialized human characteristics while keeping them looking like rabbits.

Naturally, Star Trek has their own anthropomorphized creatures with the Gorn, the Caitians, the Ferasan, and even the primate, acquatic, insectoid and reptilian Xindi.  The Xindi as a combined force felt threatened by Earth and attempted to destroy the planet.  This plan to destroy humans was pushed primarily by the insectoid and reptilian Xindi, while the primate, humanoid and acquatic Xindi were hesitant to use the weapon.

The interesting thing about Caitians and Ferasan (which is a Trek name used because they weren’t allowed to use Kzinti) is their origins don’t begin in Star Trek at all.  They began in the Known Space series by Larry Niven.  There, mankind battled against the war like Kzinti, a feline race who were the size and strength of Mountain Gorillas.  Niven rewrote one of his own short stories to use in the Star Trek Animated Series, adding in Catians and the rest is history.  Of course, Trek isn’t the only place you’ll find feline friends who are their own species within a universe.

The Charr, first appearing in Guild Wars Prophecies, are a war like feline species of the realm of Tyria.  Driving the humans out of Ascalon, the Charr claimed that region was their own until the humans drove them out.  In Guild Wars 2, the Charr have become a playable race, and according to the lore, they are finally calling for a truce with the humans.  Mostly because they still have three other fronts to deal with in the Ghosts of Ascalon, the Flame Legion and the Branded (corrupted dragon minions).  They are a technologically advanced race, as they seem to have harnessed the ability drill for oil, refine into petroleum and use for massive tanks and other machines.  In Guild Wars Prophecies and Eye of the North (where the player meets Pyre Fierceshot), the only Charr that are encountered are males.

Naturally, video games and television aren’t the only place where felines show up.  They even appear in the fantasy and science fiction of collectible trading card games.  One of the biggest being Magic The Gathering.

In Magic The Gathering there are many different tribes of cat people.  Mirri the Cat Warrior came from an unknown tribe and was banished for having two different eye colours which was seen as a taboo among her people.  Mirri herself went of alone and eventually became a student among the Multani, and eventually finding that she grew an incredible attachment and attraction to a human named Gerrard.  While she never found a chance to tell Gerrard, she did accompany him on many adventures.  Throughout the lore of Magic the Gathering there are many references to cat like people, many of whom live a warrior’s life.

So where exactly did our fascination with feline, or even canine, humanoids come from.  I’m not talking about were creatures, I’m talking about intelligent species that are felinoid.  Naturally cats are seen as important in many different cultures.  In the Mesoamerican Olmec culture, jaguars were revered.  Shamans and warriors alike would wear the skins of jaguars, and many shamans would claim they could shapeshift into a jaguar.  Even the Mayans and Aztecs found favour with the jaguar, though for the Mayans it was more material as the jaguar pelt was highly sought after.  In Ancient Egypt, cats were sacred.  Egyptians had been domesticating wildcats from the Middle East for thousands of years, and cats were seen as graceful and poised, especially with their ability to control vermin and kill cobras.  Mafdet, Sehkmet and of course, Bastet were all Egyptian deities who were depicted with feline heads.  All of them were lions at one time, though Bastet’s features softened over time to reflect the domesticated cat.  Because of this, many felt cats were sacred to Bastet, so when they died they were mummified and laid to rest so their souls may reside with Bastet for all eternity.

Among many First Nations Peoples, cats were seen as independent, yet enjoying social situations.

Even today, many believe that humans didn’t domesticate cats, but cats domesticated themselves.  They saw humans in a non threatening light, among them they could get food, water, and shelter.  In exchange, they need only destroy vermin and keep the humans company.  Fair enough trade.  And over the years, the existence of cats with humans has meant all kinds of folklore from even culture imaginable.  Many of which are carried down either verbally or through artwork or through written word until they make it to our minds in the 21st Century.  And we change things up for fantasy, fiction, and science fiction.

 

Don’t let the hag ride you

The Boo Hag by MistahWeekes via deviantart.

31 Days of Ghosts presents another story of horror and mystery.  Is it real, myth, or a complete fabrication?  You decide.

Many different areas of the world have their legends and folklore.  Often, those legends are mixed with regions that ancestors grew up in, with what a family currently lives in.  This is especially true regarding immigrant families who arrived in new areas seeking hope and prosperity.

So it’s no surprise that decedents of African slaves in Lowcountry regions of South Carolina and Georgia had their own legends.  One of these legends was that of the Boo Hag, which is a part of Gullah culture.

The Boo Hag is similar to a vampire, though unlike a vampire, the hag gets sustenance from the victims breath or life essence when the hag rides their victim.  This act takes place only when the victim has gone to sleep.  It was believed that someone who had a restless sleep was a victim of the boo hag.  If the victim struggles, the hag will take their skin and leave them to suffer.  The hag never killed their victims, but instead continued to use them as a source of energy night after night.  The hag would have to leave the home of the victim before dawn so they could retrieve their skin and walk among humans during the day once again.

Unlike vampire legends, a hag didn’t need permission to enter a dwelling, they just needed a small crack in the door or window in order to enter.

There is a way to combat the hag; leave a bristle broom by the bed and the hag will be compelled to count the bristles, usually taking them until dawn to do so.

This legend brought about a common saying between people who were retiring for the evening.  Don’t let the hag ride you.  Which isn’t much different than don’t let the bed bugs bite.

 

Interesting talk on witch’s familiars

Fairy – “Take the Fair Face of Woman”, by Sophie Gengembre Anderson. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It came from a quote, really, and how folklore has helped paint fiction for today’s group of authors, illustrators and scriptors.  We all know about elves, fairies, pixies, trolls, dwarves and the like, some in different ways than other people might.  This was a fascinating quote I found to describe it all.

“The aspect of folklore which has the greatest relevance for our understanding of beliefs surrounding the British witch’s familiar, however, is that of fairy belief. The close connections between the witch’s familiar and the fairy have consistently been pointed out by scholars over the past century. In 1921 , in a paper for the journal Folklore, J. A. MacCulloch discussed the close links between the Scottish Devil and the fairy men of folklore, and in 1959 Katharine Briggs touched on these links in her comprehensive study of early modern fairy belief ‘The Anatomy of Puck’. In the early 1970s, Jeffrey Russell noted that ‘The small demons that became the witches’ familiars of the later Middle Ages were originally dwarves, trolls, fairies, elves, kobo Ids, or the fertility spirits called Green men, any of whom could be either frightening or funny’ and Keith Thomas claimed that the cunning man’s fairy helper belongs ‘to the same genre as the witch’s familiar or the conjurer’s demons.” ~Emma Wilby ‘Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits-Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic’

It is one of many things that are written discussing the actual folklore that helped develop many of our current superstitions (and, in quite a few cases, our beliefs). One very good example is that of the fairy ring, which was believed to be a sort of gateway between our world and the world of fae.  A simple circle of mushrooms or flowers in the grass. And yet, something like that can help current authors to dream up something plausible that’s related to that myth, and yet something so incredibly different.

I guess the main point I’m making is that we’ve got all this inspiration around us to write something incredible (even the recent discover of Higgs Boson) that we shouldn’t squander it at all.

Write, imagine, dream, create.

 

I completely forgot

Friday was April 13th.  And here I was, completely forgetting that it was April 13th.

Also, not really caring that it was said date.  To be honest I don’t give in to such things as walking under ladder, or black cats.  If I see a black cat, the only thing I’m thinking is “I wonder if it’ll let me pet it”.  It’s sort of like what Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson said.  Kids are fine, it’s adults that have the problem.  The following video details what I mean by that.

So I don’t give into the hysteria, albeit minor, that surrounds something like Friday the 13th.  Last year when a small group of people were talking about the rapture (which, they got wrong not once, but twice), I wasn’t giving into the announcement of doom and gloom. I wasn’t giving away all of my worldly possessions because of some mistranslation of the Bible.  When the Mayan “prediction” of the end of the world comes around, I’m not gonna freak out.  Because the evidence of what has come to pass clearly states that everything’s gonna be fine.  Here’s another way of looking at it.  If the Mayans could predict the end of the world, how come they didn’t predict that the Spaniards would virtually destroy them and end their civilization.

I’m an inquisitive guy.  When I get thinking about these things like Friday the 13th and such, I look it up.  Because I wanna know how this came about.  First line in the Wikipedia entry for Friday the 13th states: Friday the 13th is a date that is considered to be bad luck in western superstition.  Look at the last word.  Superstition.  Look further into the folklore of the date, it doesn’t appear in western civilization until the 19th Century.  And that is in the writings of Henri Grevedon, who wrote about Gioachino Rossini who died on Friday, November 13.  Rossini’s biography was written in 1869.  But in the writing, Grevedon stated:

He [Rossini] was surrounded to the last by admiring friends; and if it be true that, like so many Italians, he regarded Fridays as an unlucky day and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that one Friday 13th of November he died.

So, it reveals that some people believed not only was the date bad luck, but Friday’s themselves were considered bad luck as was the number 13.  Good thing we don’t have 13 months in the year, because that date would spell the destruction of the world.

There is a phobia that surrounds the date, much like the recently discovered phobia, mobophobia, which is fear of losing your cell phone.  I kid you not on that.  But, the fear of Friday the 13th is called friggatriskaidekaphobia.  This comes from the Norse goddess Frigga, for whom Friday was named after, and triskaidekaphobia, which means fear of the number 13.

As with many things, different cultures have different ways to explain their superstitions.  In Spain, Friday the 13th is cool.  It’s fine.  But Tuesday the 13th, that’s something else.  In Italy, it’s Friday the 17th.  In the United States, stress study centres have reported that there are an estimated 17 to 21 million people who have a fear of Friday the 13th.  It’s said to cause an 800 to 900 million dollar lose in business due to the fact that people are so gripped with fear of the date, that they cannot conduct their usual, daily routine.  Even to the point where they don’t get out of bed.

On the plus side of that, Holland reports that the number of accidents for any Friday the 13th actually declines more than any other Friday.  This is due in part, to the fact that people are considered more cautious on this particular date.

 

Cowboy proverbs

An excellent selection of cowboy proverbs, that I think at some point, I’ll have Shani Wennemein from Black Mask & Pale Rider say in future stories.

Never squat with your spurs on.

Careful as a naked man climbin’ a barbed wire fence.

Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.

If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around.

If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.

The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with watches you shave his face in the mirror every morning.

Don’t interfere with something that ain’t bothering you none.

Always drink upstream from the herd.