Mythological/Legends/Religious Figures combo thread

Me on Tuesday:

"Wow, this thread from yesterday that's specifically targeted to my interests is six pages long already!"

Me after catching up on seven pages of Dracula analysis:

😐

docsilence said:
And now I am thinking about how we've never had a proper good Odysseus figure. Have we? Forget the gods, I want the messy 'heroes.'
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Odysseus is a top-five want for me. The question is, how the hell should he look?
 
TheSameIdiot said:
Me on Tuesday:

"Wow, this thread from yesterday that's specifically targeted to my interests is six pages long already!"

Me after catching up on seven pages of Dracula analysis:

😐
Click to expand...
Yeaaaahhhhhh.....sorry about that. You get @AceofKnaves and I started on Dracula, you're going to get pages and pages of us ranting, raving, and rambling about Stoker and little-known vampire folklore.
 
fac said:
I am tempted by the Azure Lion so nice to see pics of it!
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I think it's the figure of the year for me. It's hard to describe how stunning it is in person.
 
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TheSameIdiot said:
Me after catching up on seven pages of Dracula analysis:

😐
Click to expand...
Apologies. They mention the Son of the Dragon, and I’m gonna show up with the 50 page term paper I wrote on Vlad the Impaler in 8th grade.
😬

To get into the religiousness of it all:
Something that I have tried to cultivate over the years is a solid gathering of devils, demons and evil spirits from various myths. Which is funny for me because Greek myths are my favorite myth structure, and yet the “evil” part of it is more gods being dicks and there being a lot of (generally neutral) monsters running around. Not really a “this guy is the Devil and here are his demonic minions” with the Greeks: Hades is like one of the least shitty gods (unless you watch Disney’s Hercules), and more like an administrator and a jailer than a “Devil”. Which is cool!
I think for me it’s religions like Christianity that are “dominant” in modern history where I’m really into the demonic “evil” side, mostly out of a sense of subversion. When I was a little kid and had to go to the first communions of a lot of my friends, I would always fixate on the parts of the church stuff that involved the “bad guy” stuff: not because I was like “yay Satan!” (I don’t believe in him so 🤷‍♂️) but because it always felt delicious and contrary to be interested in the devilish side of things while everyone else seemed focused on what was, to me, a cloying and faux-optimistic fairy tale . . . and the “bad guys” were just cooler.
Probably a hard sell to just pump out a “Demons and Devils of the world” toy line, but I’d go nuts for that. I used to have that old Chaos Comics Lucifer figure beat up the Bibleman figure, which I bought for beating-up reasons.
I actually used to have a handwritten list of, oh, six BAF waves as well as boxed sets and two-packs of a 2000s-Marvel Legends-style line of “folklore snd mythology monster” figures. Yes, it featured lots of vampires, zombies and werewolves, but also Cyclopes (Polyphemus was a BAF), stuff like Medusa with interchangeable “myth accurate/Clash of the Titans” lower body, Typhon, Tiamat (the mythological Tiamat, not the D&D dragon which is also cool), Lilith, Wendigo, Krampus, Spring-Heeled Jack . . . I think I had a wave with “Biblical monsters” with the BAF being Baphomet.
 
TheSameIdiot said:
Odysseus is a top-five want for me. The question is, how the hell should he look?
Click to expand...
I did an Odysseus custom some years ago using the Boss Fight Greek Mythology figures. But it was definitely a 'with what parts I have available' kind of thing.
I'd love a proper 1:12 line of Greek heroes. We need TWO versions of Achilles, since he wears two different sets of armor in the Iliad. And he needs to be blonde. Fight the urge to go with 'more realistic dark hair.' He was described as blonde. He's blonde.
 
The thing about Odysseus is that I absolutely want a figure of him but I don’t really have a set picture in my head of what I think he should look like, definitively.
 
That's why, I think, there are so few figures to talk about in this thread that aren't directly based on a movie or video game or comic book franchise. These aren't charactes with known, definitive looks where any passersby can see the figure on your shelf and go 'oh, that's X.'
 
Review copies of the Cyan lion have been sent out. I preordered this one and the Azure Lion and based on aesthetics and my previous experience with Nottaa and Fury Toys I was definitely more looking forward to the Nottaa one. The Azure lion kinda has a bad "handfeel" to me and has a lot of fiddly parts, while the Nottaa one seems a lot smoother and more fun to handle based on this video. I think I ordered the non-bloody version and without the throne.

Dumb thought about figures based on the Iliad and the Odyssey: The historical Trojan war took place in the late bronze age so "historical accuracy" would have them looking less like the classical/Hellenistic period Greeks that we're familiar with, instead wearing weird bronze age shit like this, although some more traditional Spartan-style armour did also exist at the time according to Wikipedia.
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Of course as a story known from the classical period you could argue historical accuracy in this context would instead mean adhering to how Homer and subsequent storytellers from the ancient world depicted it.
 
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I think I need that lion.

For Odyssesus, honestly, give me the "I've had a bad few years" version of the Magnus head from Mythic Legions and I could work with it. Although honestly, the actors who have played Odysseus over the years is a murderer's row of talent.
 
TheCaptain said:
Dumb thought about figures based on the Iliad and the Odyssey: The historical Trojan war took place in the late bronze age so "historical accuracy" would have them looking nothing like the classical/Hellenistic period Greeks that we're familiar with, instead wearing weird bronze age shit like this:
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I have a lot of thoughts about this. You guys are going to have to forgive me:


I actually have no problem with representing historical figures in the material culture that would have existed at the time. I actually don't even understand why we're so opposed to it and how we've managed to pre-dispose ourselves to think 'THIS looks cool, but THAT looks awful' in terms of ancient forms of dress that are all equally antiquated at this point. It's like making a line of cowboy action figures but they're all dressed like Sons of Anarchy characters because.. hey, it's the same country just a couple of hundred years later, so why not? Looks cooler this way.

But also, people that are against accuracy will pick out the thing that looks the worst to them and be like 'this is what it will all look like.' First of all, that armor can look cool. Secondly, here's some other badass Bronze Age armor:


55020176938_9dba3313a5_m.jpg
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And another slight variation on the armor everyone on the Internet hates:

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First of all... that all looks badass.

But also, we've somehow managed to convince ourselves that the bronze 'hoop' armor is stupid, but people will trip over themselves to depict Romans in... hoop armor remarkably similar in style and construction... despite that it was the Roman Empire's least-used armor (in terms of the years it saw service). All because we've trained ourselves that 'Roman armor cool.' I'd love to see us break out of this by embracing more historical realism in film, TV, and in TOYS. To see how cool this stuff can actually be when we accept it as it is.


But also, I definitely think depicting semi- or fully mythological characters in a Classical style rather than Ancient makes perfect sense. The same way we often depict biblical events through a medieval lens because that's the most famous interpretations despite them being interpretations of events from a thousand years earlier. Still, if someone said they're going to do an action figure line of historically accurate Iliad characters, I would be FUCKING STOKED, not worried that they're gonna use 'the silly armor.'
 
I know the major toy companies want to tie their releases to media, but it is a little surprising that figures that they would have to pay no licensing fees, go through no licensor approvals, etc., are not more appealing to them. Like Greek, Aztec, and mythological creatures - seems like low hanging fruit. Maybe the Odyssey will be a huge hit and lead to more interest.

Its complex to represent characters when there is less general knowledge/consensus of how they should look, in terms of casual recognition. Even though the gamer versions of Zeus, Hades and Poseidon are over the top, that makes them easier to recognize compared to three basic bearded guys in chitons or himations...
 
Damien said:
I did an Odysseus custom some years ago using the Boss Fight Greek Mythology figures. But it was definitely a 'with what parts I have available' kind of thing.
I'd love a proper 1:12 line of Greek heroes. We need TWO versions of Achilles, since he wears two different sets of armor in the Iliad. And he needs to be blonde. Fight the urge to go with 'more realistic dark hair.' He was described as blonde. He's blonde.
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I've always thought of Achilles and Jason of the Argonauts as having blonde hair.

AceofKnaves said:
The thing about Odysseus is that I absolutely want a figure of him but I don’t really have a set picture in my head of what I think he should look like, definitively.
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I mean...

MV5BODI3NDEwZTQtM2I5ZS00MDAwLWI4MWYtNDkyNzM5OWFhNThlXkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_.jpg
 
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