Neo-Pagan Commercial Blog!

It is said in the Bible that "once you become a man, you have to let go of the childish things" (I am paraphrasing!)

Then again, to remain as possibly pure as can be given to us adults in a modern world plagued with so many negative influences as there are to be found out there, is believed to be the key to the Kingdom of God...! But that is another story entirely...

The fact is, in order to be deemed to be "normal" and to be functional in this world, we have to let go of the childish things of the past and move on to far more bopring and trite affairs, in the so-called adult society...

Some of us, though, never really let go at all - never fully so, at any rate.

And this is why we have a relatively long list of individuals that still follow the make-believe adventures of their childhood hero even as they reach their forties and fifties - and it continues beyond that too!

They still care about the character that once inspired some awe in them when they were but wee lads - learning to swim in the family pool, for instance (and it totally applies to this case right here.)

They still hope to see their erstwhile hero that inspired their paddling from the very beginning to "make it big" - and so they endure all and follow said hero through thick and thin, as the whims of the masses dictate that everything goes out of style for a while before making some sort of a comeback - ad nauseam. Verily, it's like the motions of seasickness - but we would be digressing if we got into that now, here...!

And so the character-devotion (the word devotion is NOT too strong - at all. Hence the "shrine" part of today's case-subject blog's name, indeed!) takes on new meaning altogether as the fan goes through death -literally: in the literary sense anyways- many times over whenever the character is killed off only to be brought back - again, ad nauseam. They say that every great hero has to cross the stygian river of death -with or without Charon's assistance, really- but this gets to be ridiculous very quickly.

This devotion also compels the fan to seek out any and every commercial form that the character (and its brand) has taken over the years - and so the fanatic quickly becomes both a collector as well as some sort of surrogate-associate of the company that is trying so desperately to market this character "à toutes les sauces" as the French would say - which basically means no matter which way they can!

At the very least, one's such devotion (today's blog-keeper of choice) led to such practical bits of advice to be gathered and delivered in such a way as to be truly helpful and, quite possibly, even life-altering and life-saving in the face of something as potentially deadly as Hurricane Irene (in August of 2011) - and here is the evidence of that:

Jose-Luis Garcia Lopez art -
finally put to less mercantile uses.

Clearly the character so-enshrined is the self-titled King of the Seven Seas - codenamed, alas, "Aquaman" for the joys of easy-marketing. It came with the territory that begat him: DC, comic-bookies, the home of Batmen, Supermen, IronMen, Spider-Men, X-Men and such... He is part of that new mythology that North America invented itself due to their obvious lack in that department: having no history older than a few centuries, they had no choice! Envious of Europe's thousands of years worth of tall tales, they tried to make up tons of their own too! Without anything comparable to the Greco-Roman pantheons or Norse mythology, they heavily borrowed from it, took that ball and ran with it. They could have easily chosen, instead, to embrace the pagan beliefs of the first inhabitants here - the so-called "indians", really Native-Americans. But somehow it never clicked between the populace at large and these vastly deemed as savage traditions and folk stories -not even in Canada (I should know!)- and so they had to look elsewhere. Pulp fiction started the trend of fighting crime in all its forms - with style. That style implied masks or fancy costumes - tight costumes too, ones that flaunted your biceps or curves, whichever the case may be! Add some mystical connotations -eventually uncanny abilities and outrageous powers that the normal joe simply does not have... From there, it was an easy step into super-heroics; and so it happened. And, now, the powers-that-be don't want to let go of that, even as sales are rather dismal, plummeting all the time, nose-diving to be more aquatic...! In the case of Aquaman here, more specifically, he truly exemplifies all this very well: in retcon fashion, he got involved with some native-american eskimo woman - it went nowhere (even when the eskimo woman became a mighty Elemental! And their bastard son, who displayed some promising gifts too, was unceremoniously killed off!) So the origin of the character and subsequent adventures started to directly link him to the fabled Greek mythology - Poseidon himself became obsessed with this "Aquaman" so imagine the fanboys and fangirls...! And, now, the commercial appeal of this offshoot of many years of fermenting ideas and myths is at an all-time high - in potential, at any rate.

It even begat the "aquaman shrine" that is our laudable effort of the day in praise here today - be grateful!

It follows all commercial aspects of the character; chronicles and repertoriates all of his appearances in whatever form it might have been (live-action TV, cartoons, collectibles, toys, video-games - and comic-bookies of course) and pushes for more - MUCH, MUCH MORE!

Now we can hope to see this same so-called "shrine" give its followers a feeling for the sea as well - as the character it enshrined once was scripted to say himself, lo, long ago:
"the sea gave back to you on this day and all I can hope for now is that you will give back to the sea, too, one day..."
(Again - I paraphrase! It would have sounded or read like that if I had scripted it myself, anyway!)

It is a fine devotional blog (ugh - the d-word doesn't feel right in the context here) and it certainly has tons of merit, otherwise it wouldn't get featured here at all...

I am, however, clearly not too fond of the "shrine" label here - to me, it is just as blasphemous as wrestling's sacrilegious use of 3:16, the monicker of "The Rock" and the title of "king of kings" - but let's not get into that now...!
We'd be digressing.

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