Since Trickster seduced Barbeester Gor, Who Was the Child?

[PhilHibbs]

4 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

What do you think it meant if not "by negating rape, you're just making the world of Glorantha sparkling idealistic rainbows and ponies"

Telling stories about morally flawed people isn't negating their flawed morality.

[soltakss]

20 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

On 8/14/2021 at 12:58 PM, soltakss said:

Sure, it is a game and we can control what kind of myths are written, but having just nice and pretty myths with rainbows, unicorns and green pastures misses the whole point of how Glorantha was torn to pieces. 

I do not feel good about this reaction! I'm really angry about this. How dare you? Nobody said anything about this. What, it's not good violence unless there's women raped? This statement is so incredibly belittling, I expect so much better than this misogynist shit from you. I tried to read this in its best light and all I got was: nothing good.

Read into it what you want.

I did not say that rape myths are good. In fact, they usually indicate why rape is wrong.

At least, that is what I draw from such things.

As for good violence, my own personal view is that no violence is good, whatever the reason.

However, Glorantha is a violent world and we play violent characters.

[Joerg]

Where did we get that myth, BTW? While Blood Beer features in "Heortling Mythology" (twice, with AFAICS identical wording), it doesn't say anything about the Valley of Healers. That location is from the Lead Cross quest, of the Humakt cult.

Now Eurmal apparently did manage to seduce Humakt once, which led to Humakt severing his ties with his kin. No idea (and really no interest) how sexual that seduction would have been.

[Qizilbashwoman]

3 hours ago, soltakss said:

Read into it what you want.

I did not say that rape myths are good. In fact, they usually indicate why rape is wrong.

At least, that is what I draw from such things.

As for good violence, my own personal view is that no violence is good, whatever the reason.

However, Glorantha is a violent world and we play violent characters.

"Glorantha is a violent world and we play violent characters." sooo back to rape again I see

[soltakss]

17 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

"Glorantha is a violent world and we play violent characters." sooo back to rape again I see

No, not at all.

[Qizilbashwoman]

11 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Telling stories about morally flawed people isn't negating their flawed morality.

are you saying I said this? this is 100% not the conversation that was being had, why would you say this?

I tell you that I don't understand this secret conversation happening somewhere else. It must be, because it isn't happening in this thread.

Why I get heated: these weird, cryptic statements that are vague and accusatory and have no relationship to this conversation that I can see.

Edited August 15, 2021 by Qizilbashwoman

[Qizilbashwoman]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Where did we get that myth, BTW? While Blood Beer features in "Heortling Mythology" (twice, with AFAICS identical wording), it doesn't say anything about the Valley of Healers. That location is from the Lead Cross quest, of the Humakt cult.

Now Eurmal apparently did manage to seduce Humakt once, which led to Humakt severing his ties with his kin. No idea (and really no interest) how sexual that seduction would have been.

That narrative is in a couple locations, I think, but I don't remember it being a seduction? I remember the narrative as being Eurmal persuading Humakt. I don't even know what gender Humakt was before he severed, which I think is narratively valid in the most ancient of days, because he wasn't a real god until he found his role.

[Joerg]

7 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

That narrative is in a couple locations, I think, but I don't remember it being a seduction? I remember the narrative as being Eurmal persuading Humakt. I don't even know what gender Humakt was before he severed, which I think is narratively valid in the most ancient of days, because he wasn't a real god until he found his role.

The Trickster persuading the stoic and honorable warrior - what methods would Eurmal apply to make Humakt commit to a stupid venture? He must have dangled something before the Storm god to get him on some instinctual level.

[PhilHibbs]

11 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Telling stories about morally flawed people isn't negating their flawed morality.

25 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

are you saying I said this? this is 100% not the conversation that was being had, why would you say this?

You used the phrase "by negating rape", which came out of nowhere as far as I could see. Nobody is negating rape. Unless I misunderstood your use of the word "negating".

25 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Why I get heated: these weird, cryptic statements that are vague and accusatory and have no relationship to this conversation that I can see.

I feel exactly the same about you saying that the story is "negating rape". Literally nobody said that until you did. Same for "What, it's not good violence unless there's women raped?".

Edited August 15, 2021 by PhilHibbs

[Ironwall]

15 hours ago, Eff said:

She appears as a separate entity in the Cults book based on the previews I've seen, but she's also... kind of filling the roles of the three Orlanthi goddesses, in that way. Keeper of Hell, and old (described as a hag), and yet also mature (Dendara's sister and symbolic opposite) and a goddess of the Earth's fury, and also a personal avenger who motivates people to direct action. And of course Gor Gor Ma to Ma Ran Gor is not a huge leap. 

I mean not every god or goddess that share roles are secretly the same. You can have multiple gods fill the same role especially if they are from different pantheons

[Eff]

19 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

You used the phrase "by negating rape", which came out of nowhere as far as I could see. Nobody is negating rape. Unless I misunderstood your use of the word "negating".

I feel exactly the same about you saying that the story is "negating rape". Literally nobody said that until you did. Same for "What, it's not good violence unless there's women raped?".

I am going to use screenshots rather than quoting so that I'm not spamming people's notifications. The initial posts were as follows:

Followed by a quote and reply:

So, we have a post that begins with "It's absurd to suggest that rape is Chaotic, or to come to any conclusion other than that Eurmal raped Babeester Gor." It is followed by a post which suggests that this is the kind of mythmaking which gets the point of Glorantha, and that there's some other kind of mythmaking which misses the point. Now, there's a person participating in this conversation who has said several times that rape is Chaotic in Glorantha and also abnormal and very rare in Orlanthi society. So it's, to my mind at least, pretty easy to conclude that one or both of these posts was aimed at this person, as an implicitly critical remark towards her. And both of these posts suggest, of course, that rape is just an ordinary kind of violence and when we talk about rape we can just talk about it as part and parcel of the depiction of violence in Glorantha. 

Which is what @Qizilbashwoman means by "negating rape", here. The conversation shifts from a discussion about rape to one about violence generally and this certainly has the effect of saying, regardless of the intent of the people saying it, that if we have swords stabbing and arrows flying we must have rape and sexual assault. I hope we can agree that put directly, this is horseshit, right? Like, as a basic thing, we can agree that folding rape and sexual assault into the general violence fold when discussing how to present and write about Glorantha is total bullshit, and move forward from there? Because it obviously is. And so presumably when it's been suggested that this conflation is natural, this has been misspeaking. 

So given that this is the case, where this conversation has largely gone is in a direction where people haven't really clarified what they meant by their initial posts and have just kind of moved to saying "No, that's not it," which certainly comes off to me as an invitation to a kind of ridiculous guessing game. And that's certainly not improving things. 

[PhilHibbs]

Sure. The only thing that I would take issue with there is that "...and everyone is ok with it" is clearly hyperbole for oratorical effect. No, not everyone is ok with it, and I would not interpret the pasted reply as implying "I'm ok with rape". That never even occurred to me, I apologise for reacting based on missing that interpretation.

[Qizilbashwoman]

17 minutes ago, Eff said:

And both of these posts suggest, of course, that rape is just an ordinary kind of violence and when we talk about rape we can just talk about it as part and parcel of the depiction of violence in Glorantha. 

The statements in my mind were actually "if there's no rape it's not real Glorantha". That's what "rainbows and unicorns" said to me pretty unequivocably to me because that's the only thing we were talking about there. There was this sudden flurry of statements about how "Glorantha has ugly violence" but nobody said there was no violence. It was just a discussion about reframing what kind of a monster Babeester was and what "defiling Earth" actually means and how saying it was "rape" is a misconstrual based on outdated and modern Western ideas of society.

Nobody thinks Babeester is anything but a death cult, a word I had used repeatedly. I described her being Sekhmetised to prevent her from killing the entire world.

So what else could be meant?

This seemingly reactive defense of rape is weird and upsetting. It's not a counter-argument. I go with counter-arguments. I was ready to hear them; this isn't the first time I've discussed this idea on fora. There's arguments people make against my conception, there's non-Orlanthi societies, etc. The conversations have been fine.

This ain't it. This is weird and upsetting one-liners that feel like I'm being targeted personally. I know the difference, as a woman and a queer person on the internet, quite intimately. If you didn't realise you were doing it, please for the love of whatever think about this thread and maybe think about using your words to write coherent sentences discussing, in an more academic kind of way, and not these bruising little epitaphs. And being brushed off as "it's fine" is terrible. It's not fine, these are gross and frankly rapey replies.

As a final comment, there are a lot of women here on the forum who lurk and it would behoove us to not present a fucking misogynistic front. I recommend this site to people all the time because it's good but this thread, not good. We should be able to have a conversation about rape cultural issues in Glorantha, which is admittedly A Thing (broo, Thed, Ragnaglar), without this kind of weird reaction from participants. It was Greg who changed much of the game throughout the end of his life to adjust it to modern feminism and the realisation maybe some of the game was kind of outdated in its portrayal of women. We should be willing to talk about these issues freely if Greg was.

[Eff]

5 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

This seemingly reactive defense of rape is weird and upsetting. It's not a counter-argument. I go with counter-arguments. I was ready to hear them; this isn't the first time I've discussed this idea on fora. There's arguments people make against my conception, there's non-Orlanthi societies, etc. The conversations have been fine.

Yes. I might, just as an example, disagree with "rape is always Chaotic" because of Gunda's backstory, with her mother being raped by a "cruel Brithini philosopher". (And I might not, because I don't really think that part of her backstory is important, and because I agree with the basic sentiment underlying the statement- it's something that exists outside the bounds of humanity and is the product of contemptible monsters.) But that would start from a very different place, and it would be a discussion that, perhaps ironically, is more freewheeling and open, in my opinion, by discarding truisms about some things being natural and making sure they're not passing my lips. 

And of course we can discuss the very thorny and difficult topic of broos and Thed and Ragnaglar from a couple different domains as well. 

[AndreJarosch]

5 minutes ago, Eff said:

Yes. I might, just as an example, disagree with "rape is always Chaotic" because of Gunda's backstory, with her mother being raped by a "cruel Brithini philosopher".

As far as i understood rape is BAD, but it can be a part of violent behaviour of members of the human(oid) race(es). 
Gunda was raped by a Brithini philosopher. 
Beat-Pot raped a Lunar Priestess. 

A rape doesn´t make the rapist a chaotic being, BUT rape is a chaotic act. 
Even non-chaotic beings can commit chaotic acts. 
(another) BUT performing a chaotic act gives a chance that it turns you into a chaotic being!

If you rape someone you risk the chance that it turns you into a chaotic being. 
And if you risk the chance that it might turn you into a chaotic being, you almost acknowledge that you ARE already a chaotic being. 

And since every chaos is all chaos rapists will be killed on the spot in my Glorantha. 

 

[AndreJarosch]

But back to the original topic: 

"Trickster seduced Babeester Gor, who was the child?"

IMHO seduction doesn´t have to be a rape. 
If Trickster would have been sober, and went for a drunken Babs, that could be considered rape, but not if BOTH were drunk, and Trickster went for Babs, and she was "Why not?", then this counts for me as seduction, not as rape. 

For the second part: 
Sex doesn´t always end up in pregnancy. Not each one-night-stand produces a child. 


In my Glorantha BOTH were drunk, had sex, the next day Babs regretted it, Trickster boasted about it, and no offspring was produced. 
 

[Sir_Godspeed]

I hope this suggestion isn't in poor taste, but given that the Orlanthi are a bunch with moral values that aren't always palatable to us (ie. slavery, public murder, occasional infanticide), it is possible that they separate what one might call "assault rape" from other forms of what is commonly now considered sexual assult in real life, ie. engaging in sexual activities with someone who is not conscious, or under the influence of something that makes them unable to consent.

The term "seduction" has always had a hazy semantic field, ranging from simply being very charming, to deceiving someone or giving someone false promises and the like. Zeus changing shapes to women's husbands to have sex with them comes to mind. 

Again, in the courts of a lot of countries in the real world, these things would absolutely be considered sexual assault or rape (and I'd certainly would), but it might be that the Orlanthi don't view it like that. Taking the advantage of someone who is drunk might be conceived differently. Presumably still badly, but maybe not Chaotically. I don't know. 

There's also the possibility that this thing is contextually sensitive. Taking advantage of an unconscious or drunk person normally? Horrible to Orlanthi. Doing the same to a cosmic force that almost just murdered the entire cosmos? They'll just let that slide.

---------

I suppose I'd like to imagine that BOTH Eurmal and Babeester got wasted, and then sorta just hooked up because they were suddenly in the mood (with probably different reactions afterwards), but I realize this is probably not quite what the texts intends.

Edited August 15, 2021 by Sir_Godspeed

[Qizilbashwoman]

8 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I suppose I'd like to imagine that BOTH Eurmal and Babeester got wasted, and then sorta just hooked up because they were suddenly in the mood

what text is this?

[Sir_Godspeed]

2 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

what text is this?

I'm not sure I'm aware with the exact text, all I know is the general outline of the myth as told to me by others. I'm just projecting YGWV, I think.

[EricW]

5 hours ago, Eff said:

I am going to use screenshots rather than quoting so that I'm not spamming people's notifications. The initial posts were as follows:

Followed by a quote and reply:

So, we have a post that begins with "It's absurd to suggest that rape is Chaotic, or to come to any conclusion other than that Eurmal raped Babeester Gor." It is followed by a post which suggests that this is the kind of mythmaking which gets the point of Glorantha, and that there's some other kind of mythmaking which misses the point. Now, there's a person participating in this conversation who has said several times that rape is Chaotic in Glorantha and also abnormal and very rare in Orlanthi society. So it's, to my mind at least, pretty easy to conclude that one or both of these posts was aimed at this person, as an implicitly critical remark towards her. And both of these posts suggest, of course, that rape is just an ordinary kind of violence and when we talk about rape we can just talk about it as part and parcel of the depiction of violence in Glorantha. 

Which is what @Qizilbashwoman means by "negating rape", here. The conversation shifts from a discussion about rape to one about violence generally and this certainly has the effect of saying, regardless of the intent of the people saying it, that if we have swords stabbing and arrows flying we must have rape and sexual assault. I hope we can agree that put directly, this is horseshit, right? Like, as a basic thing, we can agree that folding rape and sexual assault into the general violence fold when discussing how to present and write about Glorantha is total bullshit, and move forward from there? Because it obviously is. And so presumably when it's been suggested that this conflation is natural, this has been misspeaking. 

So given that this is the case, where this conversation has largely gone is in a direction where people haven't really clarified what they meant by their initial posts and have just kind of moved to saying "No, that's not it," which certainly comes off to me as an invitation to a kind of ridiculous guessing game. And that's certainly not improving things. 

If getting wasted with someone then waking up in the morning in bed together with a rather indeterminate memory of how you got there always counts as rape, I think a lot of us are in big trouble. Interpreting Barb Gor's encounter with Trickster as rape seems a little harsh. If Barb Gor thought Trickster raped her, surely there would be a cult requirement "kill any trickster you meet". Instead she kind of has a soft spot for the nasty little imp. In a sense Trickster taught her how to take a break from being a 24x7 killing machine - something she was desperate to learn.

Edited August 16, 2021 by EricW

[Eff]

3 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

what text is this?

That's a really good question, by the by. I decided to answer it. 

So, let's look on the Well of Daliath. Not a complete resource, but a useful one. Searching for "Blood Beer" turned up two relevant results. The first one is this: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/glorantha-2/some-gods/

I will return to it later. The second one is this one: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/prosopaedia/deities/b/babeester-gor/

What does it say? 

Quote

She was merciless and cruel. Once she slew so many defenseless residents of Healing Valley that she waded breast-deep in the gore, drinking the blood of victory and slaughter. Eurmal saved some of the healers when he turned the blood to beer, which Babeester Gor drank to blissful oblivion.

Okay. We have the basic Blood Beer story, but it ends with BG passing out. There are sources listed here, though, and the ones that seem relevant are Heroquest Glorantha, Sartar Companion, Sartar, Kingdom of Heroes, Storm Tribe, and Gods of Glorantha. As it so happens, I have all of those sources in varying degrees of handiness. Let's see what they say. 

Starting at the beginning, the text on Well of Daliath is actually straight from the Gods of Glorantha Prosopaedia. There is nothing else in the section on her cult that is at all relevant. 

Storm Tribe offers a different tradition, included in the first Well of Daliath link: 

Quote

She made a victory drink from her foe’s blood. Babeester Gor killed all her foes until at last she faced Ovodaka, the Last Guardian, who held all the other goddesses prisoner. Babeester Gor let Ovodaka kill her, but came back to life by drinking her own blood; and then killed Ovodaka. The other goddesses were released and the world came back to life. Babeester Gor, often now called Ura — the Pleasant One — took the role of Guardian to prevent anyone else from trying to harm her kinswomen.

This says nothing at all about Eurmal. 

So let's move on to Sartar, Kingdom of Heroes. No mention of Blood Beer. Sartar Companion? 

 

Quote

Once she slew so many
defenseless residents of Healing Valley that she
waded breast-deep in the gore, drinking the blood
of victory and slaughter. Eurmal saved some of the
healers when he turned the blood to beer, which
Babeester Gor drank to blissful oblivion.

Babeester Gor killed all of her foes with her
great axe until at last she faced Ovodaka, the Last
Guardian, who held all the goddesses prisoner.
Babeester Gor let Ovodaka kill her. She then came
back to life by drinking her own blood and killed
Ovodaka.

Combines the two textual sources! But then adds a third one, under the section for Axe Trance:
 

Quote

Once, when Babeester Gor needed to murder a
man defended by a host of warriors, she made beer
out of the blood of those she had previous killed.
Drunk with blood, Babeester Gor became one with
her axe. She went into an unreasoning drunken
trance and killed all those who stood before her and
her prey. Once she killed her foe, she kept killing
those too slow to run from her until the Trickster
provided her with enough beer to drink herself into
blissful oblivion.

Heroquest Glorantha only adds this: 

Quote

Babeester Gor: Avenging Goddess and Guardian, she wields a deadly axe and drinks ale made with the blood of her victims.

Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha doesn't mention Blood Beer, and the Glorantha Sourcebook repeats the Prosopaedia text. 

So this doesn't appear to have any canon source that I can find. But I have found a fan source (from Jane Williams's web page: http://www.jane-williams.me.uk/glorantha/vinga/bgor.cfm

Quote

Yet vengeance finally grew empty, for though Babeester Gor was a goddess, she was still a young goddess. She needed love, not hate. She knew her mother's heritage was Life, not Death. So alone (for none had stood before her) in a field of dying fruit and barley, she tried to bring forth Life. Yet as she had become so seeped in Death, she failed. Bemoaning her fate, she wept alone.

It was then that the Trickster found Babeester Gor, of heavenly beauty and hellish violence, and fell in love. (Having spurned Uleria, it was impossible for Trickster to fall in Love, but Trickser is AllGod of Disorder and Impossibilities and did so anyway.) Daring not her bloody axe, he became a flask, and seduced her with his essence.

Filled with Disorder, filled with Trickster, Babeester Gor found the happiness she craved, and she called out in divine drunkenness, and brought a new form of life to her field.

So. I think that this may not be the origin point of this textual variant, but it's probably representative of what those textual variants say. I think that it is perfectly proper to completely ignore this text, mind. It's a very, very strange myth with comparison to everything else about BG. But with that said, I would also like to point something out. 

Gods aren't human. They are people-like things, and they are also symbolic representations/origins of forces within the material world. So Eurmal is, among many things, drunkenness. Which is to say, when a text says, "Eurmal seduced Babeester Gor by turning himself into a flask of alcohol", what it is saying is "Babeester Gor developed alcohol dependency." It shouldn't be interpreted as if there was any kind of erotic encounter going on, because that's not what the myth is saying, what the myth is saying is that Babeester Gor drinks to kill the pain or whatever. And this is in its own way probably an explanatory myth for why Axe Maidens and Axe Sisters frequently have cravings for alcohol. 

But this interpretation is only if we wish to preserve this specific myth and make it our primary myth, and I personally don't. Absent it, what we have are mostly sources which suggest that Babeester Gor is associated with drinking blood and drinking alcohol, and indeed the Hero Wars line of textual tradition suggests that blood beer amps Babeester Gor up, in contrast to the Runequest line where she drinks until she passes out. And that at least is a straightforward version of the soma motif. 

Funnily enough, there's another element of the Hero Wars tradition that is also misremembered in fan discourse:

Quote

Initiates must never love, make love, have sex, become
pregnant, or even fake affection with anything but their goddess.

(From Storm Tribe.) 

People tend to look at this as "can they have sex? can they get pregnant?" and the answer in this textual tradition is that they can fuck Babeester Gor, they can even do it tenderly, they can get pregnant as long as it's Babeester Gor's baby, and very obviously this means that Axe Sisters can have passionate relationships with each other. Maybe they need to go into an Axe Trance before they actually get down to the three-finger discount. But they can definitely get their freak on. 

(Obviously, I will ignore this part of Storm Tribe and the HW textual tradition because it's rather silly, and I mean that in the sense that it's clearly meant to be a tight restriction but actually, given Gloranthan cosmology and metaphysics, means that the entire Babeester Gor cult is ultimately the goddess's polycule. And that's good for a joke but not for actual playability!)

EDIT: To summarize things, there's nothing in any of the canon texts which implies a sexual encounter between Babeester Gor and Eurmal, and in the most readily available text which implies a sexual encounter, it's a fan myth which also implies that the sexual encounter is what produces the drunkenness and not the drunkenness producing the sexual encounter, and indeed seems to be extraordinarily fetishistic if we interpret it as a literal event rather than a symbolic explanation of alcoholism. I don't know where the version where Eurmal gets her drunk and then they have sex comes from. 

Edited August 16, 2021 by Eff
Summarizing

[Sir_Godspeed]

So we just had a semi-lengthy discussion over a fan interpretation of a fan article without even questioning it. 

 

Well, I certainly have egg on my face.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Sir_Godspeed

[soltakss]

5 hours ago, Eff said:

What does it say? 

Quote

She was merciless and cruel. Once she slew so many defenseless residents of Healing Valley that she waded breast-deep in the gore, drinking the blood of victory and slaughter. Eurmal saved some of the healers when he turned the blood to beer, which Babeester Gor drank to blissful oblivion.

Okay. We have the basic Blood Beer story, but it ends with BG passing out. There are sources listed here, though, and the ones that seem relevant are Heroquest Glorantha, Sartar Companion, Sartar, Kingdom of Heroes, Storm Tribe, and Gods of Glorantha. As it so happens, I have all of those sources in varying degrees of handiness. Let's see what they say. 

Thanks, I was going to try and find the myth today.

This does not say that Eurmal seduced Babeester Gor.

However, some people have interpreted the myth as it involving seduction. Personally, I don't subscribe to that interpretation of the myth.

5 hours ago, Eff said:

Quote

Filled with Disorder, filled with Trickster, Babeester Gor found the happiness she craved, and she called out in divine drunkenness, and brought a new form of life to her field.

So. I think that this may not be the origin point of this textual variant, but it's probably representative of what those textual variants say. I think that it is perfectly proper to completely ignore this text, mind. It's a very, very strange myth with comparison to everything else about BG. But with that said, I would also like to point something out. 

This seems to be a way of seducing without sex, which is perfectly fine for Gloranthan Deities. There are lots of cases of reproduction without sex.

 

[simonh]

On 8/15/2021 at 3:56 AM, Qizilbashwoman said:

What do you think it meant if not "by negating rape, you're just making the world of Glorantha sparkling idealistic rainbows and ponies"

I read it as more like “and it’s a good thing we don’t do that”.

[Nick Brooke]

I think complaining that people want "rainbows and unicorns" in Glorantha will lead to unnecessary semiotic complications, and is best avoided.