I hate the look of the Mother of Serpents

[Kristoffer O]

The mother of serpents is a minoan figurine. Whats not to like

[Herode]

Hey, don't touch MoS' sprite ! She's just fine like that. I love her Babylonian fierce and introverted look.

The alternate Final-Fantasy sprite I saw some posts ago is just a Disneyworld's joke

[HoneyBadger]

Well, for a topless woman clutching two live snakes, she just looks a little too...matronly. Like somebody's dear Aunt Edna, if their Aunt Edna worked really hard core strip clubs.

[Aezeal]

looks to matronly... ehm she is called the MOTHER of snakes for a reason I guess she's not called the hot 'n horny lapdancer of snakes

[HoneyBadger]

Well, dear old sweet topless snakeloving mother though she certainly may be, she still doesn't quite say "Mighty Pretender to Godhood" to me. She probably bakes a mean pie though

[Kristoffer O]

Actually, not that many gods are awe inspiring. What about the 'god with backward feet', or the 'two-faced eater of filth'. I imagine most peoples have considered christ rather bland when they first encounter him. Pale, weak and impaled on a crucifix. Not very impressive

I once found this hilarious piece of text:

CHALCHIUHTOTOLIN: God of Pestilence. He is the Precious Night Turkey and a God of Mystery.

It is a mystery we have been unable to unravel. There is a picture of him in the Codex Borbonias that is so utterly weird it must be seen to be disbelieved. In the midst of seemingly undecipherable symbols he is dressed in a turkey suit and seems to be vomiting into a large pot.

We may need to come back to this later, but not without a stiff drink or two first.

[quantum_mechani]

CHALCHIUHTOTOLIN: God of Pestilence. He is the Precious Night Turkey and a God of Mystery.

It is a mystery we have been unable to unravel. There is a picture of him in the Codex Borbonias that is so utterly weird it must be seen to be disbelieved. In the midst of seemingly undecipherable symbols he is dressed in a turkey suit and seems to be vomiting into a large pot.

We may need to come back to this later, but not without a stiff drink or two first.

I can't stop cracking up at this.

[Poopsi]

I give you Chalchiuhtotolin...

[Poopsi]

My biggest beef is that with size 5, the upraised hands, and the huge skirts, she reminds me of the cardboard giants that are displayed at rural festivities. I sort of expected a death and nature goddess to be more... awe-inspiring

[HoneyBadger]

Kristoffer-I agree with you, gods aren't very dramatic in their original forms, taken as a whole. Usually just humans written large, or strange, or just deformed in some way. Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" had some great insights into that trend.

I understand that having something with a history behind it is ofcourse often preferrable to something made up, but I've always been of the opinion that there wasn't anything wrong with making things up, either. Especially if it helps tell a good story. That's what myths are, afterall, good stories that people believed. So I can appreciate and respect that she's a fine Babylonian icon-and I'm not the one who started this thread, keep in mind-but I can also understand the desire for something greater, weirder, more grand and mysterious and monstrous-to the eyes of our generation, as opposed to an ancient Babylonian native.


Also:
The request was for a less human version of Mother of Serpents, and I think I came up with something suitably inhuman-she's hardly a 'Disneyworld's joke', whatever that's supposed to mean...No mickey mouse ears that I could see? She's animated, true, but it was my reasoning that it'd be better to have something that could easily be transformed into a sprite, than not. Aside from that, Disney's responsible for some of the best animation ever made. So it's hardly an insult to compare an image to Disney's. Comparing real myths to Disney versions is ofcourse another story altogether, but artistically they're one of the highest institutions in animation-and share a great deal of the responsibility for creating-and certainly popularizing-the animation art-form, in the first place.