For me any that is not Greco-Roman and Norse have poor representation
Pretty much all of African mythology. Sometimes it gets mentioned tangentially or included in a half-assed way, and even then it’s almost always misrepresented. Anansi was my favorite character in American Gods, in part because I see so little African mythology, but also just because he’s badass.
Zoroastrianism would be cool. Basically the answer is anything not europe or specifically egypt but I always felt that for example a hindu god killer game would be fkn sick. Like either GoW format or Diablo-like.
Indigenous people of north america. Tokenized parts of tales and folklore are often misrepresented and not told by people who grew up learning the stories.
And, they’re treated as a monolithic mythos, as though the myriad peoples all had the same, exact set of beliefs and entities. It’s a mess
The Dogon tribe around Mali in West African caught attention because they might have been able to identify that a star was a binary system before modern tech did (possibly due to good eyesight but also possibly just bad anthropology.)
This led to a lot of interest in their religion, which have elements that ancient astronaut weirdos have adopted into that mythology. It deserves some not stupid attention.
If by poor representation you mean misrepresentation then Islam hands down. If you meant lack of representation then I’d say zoroastrianism and celtic paganism. There are plenty others I’d love to see but I picked what I did because we know enough about them with enough certainty on details that we could accurately represent them if we tried. I’d also love to see Bedouin paganism and Mayan mythology accurately represented in popular media but this is much more difficult to accomplish.
Not quite on topic but I think it’s crazy that Smite features the gods of extant religions like Hinduism but doesn’t have a character that transformers between The Father, Son and Holy Ghost with unique move sets for each
It’s the only game that features a sigificant amount of pantheons for me. All others keep using overused pantheons!
I’d really love to see more representation from various indigenous groups and nations in the US and Canada, like stories and myths from the Anishinaabe people being made into a TV show or animated movie or something (just an example).
I think an anthology series (either one overarching story per season or one shorter story per episode) would be really interesting and probably also allow a lot more indigenous people to break into acting/production. Using music made by indigenous people would also be cool.
All mythologies except maybe christian mythology have very bad representation on mainstream media.
Always cool seeing Yoruba stuff in media. Just watched the new season of the Castlevania spin off and it features a few different pantheons; Aztec, Yoruba, Voodoo, Egyptian. Ogun was badass and loved him telling his story.
Any of the “barbarians” cultures like the Goths or Angles
Greco-Roman and Norse mythology are represented a lot, but in a very shitty manner with barely any research, let alone respect.
Yeah it’s funny that those were called out as exceptions because as far as ancient Greek mythology goes, Disney’s Hercules (one of the most widely known takes) basically made Hades = Satan and Zeus = God. I’ve also seen Hades get treated as Satan lite in DC Comics adaptations, basically unashamedly rewriting another mythology to base it around christianity. Meanwhile, from what I’ve seen, Hades was actually one of the few semi decent gods.
Look at symbols of Christian holidays, then read where they came from. I’d say that represents misrepresented mythologies. It’s all stolen symbolism to blot out the competition.
The Easter bunny giving eggs? Spring is about fucking and both of those are symbols of fertility.
Japanese and Chinese myths and legends have excellent representation in games and movies: the Egyptians have representation and followers everywhere! The Celts and Germanic peoples contributed pretty much everything found in European fairy tales. The Middle East gave us their myths and their gods, and people from European/North American cultures know at least a few Hindu Gods and their tales, again, often thanks to video games. That leaves sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania, and the Slavic and Siberian myths ‘underrepresented’. Can’t say about middle and South American ones: I suspect they are better known in the Americas than in Europe, but I dislike them, so haven’t the background to be sure.
There are lots of adaptations of Greek myth, but none of them are especially faithful to the source material
Every single one. They ethier white wash (not in the making people white way but sometimes they too) or villify everything about it. There is no place for nuance in modern retellings for some reason.
