The 12 labours of Hercules

Have you read the Twelve Tasks of Asterix? (Goscinny and Uderzo) It's based on the same idea, only set in 50BC. Due to the nature of Asterix (i.e. comedy that includes jokes about things in the modern world) some of them have a modern twist to them.

I would say the answers to these questions depends very much on the kind of world where you want the labors to be performed. In our current world, good old-fashioned physical challenges aren't that interesting because we have heavy machinery and similar tools that can pretty much get the job done. Today's challenges might be more like, stop the underground fires in places like Central or "the Gates of Hell," (that collapsed Russian gas mine). Or clean up some of the big recent oil spills. Make Fukushima safe. Find a breeding pair of ivory-billed woodpeckers, and a breeding pair of thylacines, and repopulate both species into the wild. Resettle the refugees. Stop the war in Syria, and the war in Iraq, and the war in Afghanistan, and the wars in Africa. Build a transcontinental maglev. Give Cape Town a water supply. Rebuild the crumbling US infrastructure (cause all that heavy machinery's no good when we don't want to pay for the work).

1. Cleaning the cat litter.
2. Changing a flat tire along a road at night when it's snowing.
3. Mowing the lawn.
4. Getting a teenager out of bed in the morning.
5. Plunging a jammed toilet.
6. Hanging sheetrock.
7. Filing a tax return.
8. Trying to make yourself heard above the sound system to the clerk in a BestBuy store.
9. Buying a new car.
10. Learning Welsh.
11. Giving medicine to a cat.
12. Getting anything commercially accepted for publication.

caw

+1 to benberri.

A lot depends on the world you're creating, the characters you want, and the tone you're going for. You can do a modern update - the sacred hind could be replaced with a critically endangered animal he needs to find, the stables could be a toxic waste site, the hydra a terrorist group with multiple "heads" that keep popping back up, etc. You could translate it to outer space, or move it to China or native America. You could make it more personal, an "epic quest" of redemption and growth told on a more human scale. You could make it a parody. What are your goals, here?

The other questions... again, it all depends on what you're going for. "The most powerful mythological creature" is entirely open to subjective interpretation; there's always a bigger, badder beast somewhere around the corner, popular or obscure. What do you consider the most powerful? What mythology do you consider the most fertile ground to play in - or are you doing a globe/era spanning interpretation (which will require a fair bit of research to avoid falling into stereotypes, but which would be truly epic if you could pull it off)?

Updates have been done of the Hercules tale (Percy Jackson touched on them, and of course Asterix - saw the animated movie as a kid.)

neandermagnon said:

Have you read the Twelve Tasks of Asterix? (Goscinny and Uderzo) It's based on the same idea, only set in 50BC. Due to the nature of Asterix (i.e. comedy that includes jokes about things in the modern world) some of them have a modern twist to them.

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Puns! Puns, puns, and more puns!

As an analogy to hunting down dangerous beasts, a serial killer or a terrorist might work, but it's hard to think of stuff that one super-strong man might do, on a large scale. You'd be better of to choose, as well as an era, a confined location. A small town or an island, where one man could have a big impact.

Doing the laundry and having to match up every single pair of socks...

Chelle_J said:

Doing the laundry and having to match up every single pair of socks...

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you mean finding?

Chelle_J said:

Doing the laundry and having to match up every single pair of socks...

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There are some tasks even demigods cannot accomplish...

leahutinet said:

What would be a seemingly impossible task to accomplish (unless you were a hero like Hercules)?

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• Making a joke without offending anyone
• Making a single meal for a group of more than four people that they can all eat
• Meeting a friend without calling them from the other bar
• Meeting a group of friends without social media
• Cycling without having to swear at a motorist
• Motoring without having to swear at a cyclist
• Joining the fastest moving queue
• Going into a supermarket and coming out with just what you went in for
• Making a round of teas/coffees to everyone's satisfaction
• Taking a cat for a walk
• Taking a cat for a car-journey
• Basically making a cat do anything other than exactly what it wants to...