The Good King is a trope that is used to counteract badness in the world or an enemy’s evilness. He will be good, honourable, truthful and a perfect gentleman. There are three kinds of Good King.
The Warrior
The Statesman
The inspiration
(None of these men are perfect btw. Some were functional alcoholics or violent. Here we focus on their ruling ability or their archetype.)
The Warrior
The Warrior is the heroic conqueror who defends his people in battle. He will have a long rap sheet of victories and will always be brave and skilled in battle.
Alexander The Great: Alexander was the son of Philip of Macedonia. When his father was killed by an assassin, Alexander suspected that the Persian King Darius had paid for the hit. Alexander began to conquer. He took Egypt, put down a rebellion in Greece, built a land bridge to take the Island of Tyre, he took Persia and march all the way to India. The entire campaign took over a decade and it was only because of his men that he turned back and returned to Babylon. He died at the age of 32 having created one of the world’s largest empires.
Edward IV: Edward was not born to be a king. He was the second son of Richard, Duke of York. When rebellion his father started to gain the English crown was crushed, his father and older brother, Edmund were killed. Unable to take this lying down, he rebelled against the throne claiming the crown for himself. He drove out the last royal family and seized the throne. Years later, his ally and friend Warwick rebelled to throw him off his throne but Edward fought yo reclaim it and was successful. He was never once defeated in battle.
Henry V: Henry came to the throne after his father. As one of his first acts, he decided to reignite the Hundred Years War. Henry won a great victory at Agincourt destroying the French. Henry crippled France and forced the old king to name England his heir once he died.
Richard I, Lionheart: Richard was the son of the mediaeval power couple of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. He loved fighting and decided to fight a crusade in the Holy Land. Richard was a renowned warrior and was killed on campaign due to an arrow fired by a young boy.
The Statesman
This king is good at the ruling part of his job. He will be politically savvy and smart.
Augustus Caesar, Octavian of the Junii: Caesar was his great-uncle and upon the death of the general, Octavian was named his heir. Octavian was a relatively unknown figure until this point and suddenly he was Caesar’s heir. This put some tension between he and Marc Anthony who everyone believed would be named heir. The tension was abated for a time and the two brought down the killers of Caesar. When Cleopatra and Anthony threatened Rome, Octavian crushed them in battle and conquered Egypt. He went on to become the Emperor of the Roman Empire. He came to control Rome while it was built of brick and left it built of marble.
Suleiman the Magnificent: The Lawgiver and most revered Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Suleiman made laws that gave his people rights and heavily enforced them. He was a very fair ruler and regulated taxes once even stopping one nation from being over charged. He may have won numerous battles and conquered many lands but it is his laws that he is remembered for.
The Inspiration
This king is a hero in their deed or word. His reign is the stuff of legend and he will most likely either be made fun of or denounced for his role. His story is expansive and astonishing but may not have a happy ending.
Richard III: I can hear you asking yourself why he is on the list. Hear me out a moment. Richard was born into the begins of a bloody struggle for a crown. When he was a boy he lost a brother and father in the war and witnessed his brother become the king. Richard was loyal to his brother Edward and stuck by him in most things, even going into exile with him. When his brother died, Richard was left in a predicament. The Queen and her family were not well-loved and they were in a position to oust Richard as Protector. Fearing another civil war, Richard seized the throne. He placed his nephews under guard at the Tower. Here, the tale is muddy. It is not known whether Richard had the boys killed. It’s always been accepted he did, but in truth was it really in his interest? Killing an enemy heir is one thing but to kill his brother’s children? Richard’s motto was Loyalty Binds Me and he had lived it his whole life. So why dishonor himself then? Two years after Richard was crowned, a claimant to the throne landed in Wales. The two met in battle and Richard died in his attempt to cut down the pretender, the last king. Oh, and he did this with scoliosis.
George VI: This man was not meant to be King of England. Albert or Bertie, was second the son of George V. He struggled throughout his life with a speech impediment. As Duke of York, he married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and fathered two princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret. When his father died, his elder brother Edward was proclaimed king. Due to love of Wallis Simpson, Edward gave up his throne in favor of his younger brother. Bertie became George VI. WWII came around and the king began to work in earnest. Delivering speeches and sharing in his people’s hardships during the war. He became a beloved and respected monarch throughout his reign.
Kings are not exempt from being as evil as their queens. Kings have all of the power in their kingdom and some yield it with cruelty. There are categories of the Evil King.
The Cruel
The Mad
The Cruel
The Incompetent
The Cruel
This king loves to exercise his power over others. He is savage and will torture his people to get all he can from them. He is mostly likely vain and savage and will do anything for power.
Henry VIII: You knew he would be on this list. Henry began his reign as a charismatic and lovable monarch. When his desire and obsession for a son grew, Henry grew more crueler and sadistic. He cast off four wives, killing two of them and abandoning two more. His third and fifth wives are the only ones who experienced a natural separation in death from Henry. While stuffing his face and getting the mediaeval equivalent of catfished, he put thousands to death including the eighty year old Margaret Pole, his mother’s cousin. He was unendingly cruel to his wives and children
Tiberius: The heir of the first Emperor of Rome. He took power after his mother murdered Augustus. He secured his power by killing his popular nephew and two of his grand-nephews while imprisoning his last nephew and grand-nieces. He is rumoured to have built a palace with a pool of young boys to nibble at his genitals whilst he bathed. He was reputedly murdered by his heir, his final grand-nephew Caligula.
Nero: The Roman Emperor who they called the Anti-Christ. Nero kicked his own pregnant wife to death and has his own mother killed. He was fond of sacrificing Christians to lions and making them human candles.
Leopold II, King of the Belgians: You might know this fucker from every show/movie/book made about Queen Victoria. In these adaptations he is presented to be grasping and evil but the truth is far worse. Claiming the Congo as his, he sent in soldiers to force the natives to resource rubber for him making him a wealthy man on the backs of thousands of dead natives.
Genghis Khan, Khan of All Khans: Though he has an awesome back story, the crimes of this Mongolian conqueror are unforgivable. He sacked thousands of towns and cities, burning and destroying as he went. He also allowed his men to rape millions of women some even before their families. He himself has thousands of descendants through these heinous acts.
The Mad
This king is off his rocker. He has lost his marbles and he runs a nation holding thousands of innocent lives. Gods save us.
George III: Mad King George began his reign as a well-liked king but grew worse as he went on. George suffered two periods of illness, one thought to be Alzheimer’s. He was one of the longest reigning British monarchs. Some believe that his madness led to was the cause of his mental instability. He spent his last few years under the Regency of his son.
Henry VI: The son of Henry V. He came to the throne as a baby. In 1453, he became catatonic, unable to speak or do anything. This led to a civil war that lost him the crown in 1461. Henry was reinstated in 1470 but was overthrown within months.
Caligula: The Mad Roman Emperor. Caligula, “Little Boots” was made emperor after the demise of Tiberius. Though popular because of his tragic back story and his hero father, Caligula was as mad as a box of frogs. He tried to make his horse a consul, made the navy build a bridge across a bay so he could ride across it, went to war with the sea and raped his sisters. He was murdered by his bodyguards after a few years in power.
Charles VI of France: Came to the throne at the age of 21 and came to be called “the Beloved”. However, he grew mad and killed four of his knights and attacked his brother. He attacked his wife so much that she employed a mistress so the king could have sex with somebody rather than her. His madness sparked the Hundred Years War.
The Incompetent
This king is useless. He is not fit for the job and he sucks at it so badly, he’s considered a loser.
John I of England: England’s worst king, or so people think. The son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, John sh p uld have been a good king. However, he usurped his hero-brother Richard the Lionheart and had his nephew killed. He mistreated his nobles so much, by forcing himself on their wives and taxing them, that they revolted leading to the Magna Carta.
Richard II: This king came to the throne at a young age. He began as a pretty ok, king bravely riding out to meet the peasants who revolted against him. He rebelled against his impressive uncle, John of Gaunt leading to five lords taking him aside, (i.e kidnapping him and holding him prisoner) and having a chat with him. Richard got revenge on these lords later and so incited a coup led by Gaunt’s son, Henry Bolingbroke. He was left starve to death in a cell.
Edward II: the son of Edward I. He came to the throne to relevant peace but then decided to fuck up the applecart. He lost Scotland, the country his father fought bloody wars, at Bannockburn to Robert de Bruce. He lavished titles and honours to his rumoured lover Piers Gaveston and leant on his counsel whilst sidelining his more competent queen. He picked fights with his nobles making them rebel more than once. When Gaveston was murdered, Edward found a new buddy in Hugh Despenser. Edward was such a shitty king that the county supported his wife’s foreign invasion and her regency over their twelve year old son.
George IV: The Prince of Whales, as he was so dubbed. He was more interested in mistresses and extravagance than ruling. He married Catholic to his father’s despair and was bailed out by Parliament frequently due to the massive debts he incurred. George married Princess Caroline and slept with her twice to produce an heir which miraculously he did.
Princesses are why we love fantasy, am I right? They are the reason we get into fantasy at a young age. As children we are told stories of princesses being rescued by handsome princes from horrifying dragons and stepmothers. But this is childhood fantasy. Princesses are not clear cut and not all will have happy endings. There are types of princess.
The Classic
The Warrior
The Willful
The Tragic
Now, we may play fast and loose with the term princess here as there are so many we know much about. So any daughter of a ruling figure may be mentioned here.
The Classic
These princesses will fit the fairytale version perfectly. They will be beautiful, kind and good. They will be so sweet that everyone will love them. The Classic princess will most likely evolve into the Good Queen. Any of the stories told here have a simple pattern if you look closely. Beautiful youth, in danger and married happily. Of course this is not the full story and I advise you to read into each.
Princess Mary Rose Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk and Queen of France: Mary was the youngest daughter of Henry VII and the sister of Henry VIII. She was renowned as the most beautiful woman in Christendom and all the eligible men of the known world wanted to marry her. The highest bidder and eventual winner was the elderly King of France. Mary was married to him for some months before he died and was returned to England. Mary fell in love with the dashing friend of her brother, Charles Brandon and married him. Despite a few fines and threats, they lived happily together until Mary died.
Elizabeth of York: Elizabeth was daughter of a relatively new dynasty. She was the daughter of a love match between Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV. Elizabeth was one of the most beautiful and learned princesses in the world at the time. When her family fell from grace, she lived in a dingy sanctuary beneath Westminster Abbey. There are RUMOURS (which I don’t believe, cause I stan Richard III, fight me hoes) that her uncle planned to marry her but along came Henry VII across the sea to marry her and cast down her evil uncle. This story is highly stylized through Tudor propaganda. Much of it may not be so smooth and unfortunately, nobody bothered to ask Elizabeth how she felt about it all.
Cleopatra Selene, Princess of the Nile, Queen of Maurentia: Cleopatra Selene was the daughter of Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII. In her youth, her parents made the mistake of antagonizing the might of Rome. After her parents committed suicide, Cleopatra Selene was carried back to Rome to be raised by the new Emperor’s sister and her stepmother. Her elder brother was murdered fleeing from Rome and her twin brother vanished (hem, hem, see: Murdered) Cleopatra Selene was married to another of Rome’s wards, Juba of Maurentia. The two remained vassals to Rome and lived happily away ever after. Cleopatra Selene was renowned as a beautiful and well learned woman in the Ancient World.
Princess Elizabeth Windsor: Now, Queen Liz II of England, the princess was not always meant to be queen. She came to her new role as heir fairly young and at the beginnings of WWII. Elizabeth or Lilibet, was always mindful of her duty and place she would one day occupy. She served in WWII as a mechanic and found her prince in Prince Philip. They have been married for decades.
The Warrior
Some princesses are born outside the classical view of life. These princesses fight for what is theirs. Some may become bad queens and some will become good queens.
Caterina Sforza, Duchess de Forli: Caterina was the bastard daughter of the Duke of Milan. She received a very strange kind of education for a girl in those days. In those days, the Pope was a Spaniard who nobody liked much. Caterina was very much opposed to the Pope, so much that she rode at the head of an army while pregnant to oppose him. When trapped in her castle by the Pope’s son, Cesere Borgia, he threatened to kill her children. Caterina flashed him and said that she had the means to make more. Sadly the castle fell and Cesere won.
Catalina of Aragon, Queen Catherine of England: Catalina was raised in an army camp in Spain whilst her parents fought the Moors. Here she learned the ways of battle and war, never shrinking from her duty. After she became queen, Catalina was left alone to run the country while her useless cock of a husband was playing at war in France. When the Scots encroached on England, Catalina rode forth and smashed them in a bloody battle that claimed the life of The King of Scots. Later on, Henry VIII was stated to say that he was afraid that she would raise arms against him and smash him in battle.
Princess Pingyang: Pingyang was the daughter of Li Yuan, founder the Tang dynasty. As her father rebelled to gain the throne, Pingyang raised an army to help her father rather than sit at home. Pingyang conquered Huxian County and destroyed two armies in Shaanxi. she was the first woman to ever be honoured Marshal.
The Willful
These princesses are not your pets. They will raise hell to get their chance of happiness. They are mostly heroes in their stories.
Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan: Christina was the daughter of Isabella of Austria and Christian II of Denmark. Despite one turbulent and strange childhood, Christina grew into a clever beauty. Her uncle the Spanish Emperor Charles V married her off to Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, a man 26 older than the twelve year old princess. Two years later her husband was dead and Christina was sent to the Netherlands. Henry VIII cane sniffing and Christina shut him down with a burn that he would never recover from, “If I had two heads, I would gladly give him one" Christina married the Duke of Lorraine and lived happily with him.
Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales: Diana is the Princess. The People’s princess. Married to the Prince of Wales, Diana seemed to be living the dream. Her husband was in love with his mistress Camilla. After years of marriage, the two divorced. Diana became more outspoken and beloved. She championed numerous causes to support sufferers of HIV, hunger and walked through war zones to prove points. Diana defied the royals in a million different ways forcing them to change the way they approached the public and others. Diana was killed in a fatal car crash in Paris, still mourned by millions.
Princess Margaret Rose, Countess of Snowden: Margaret was the sister to present Queen of England, Elizabeth II. Renowned for being the more engaging and willful of the girls, Margaret was the OG wild child of the present royal families. Margaret fell in love with photographer Peter Townsend and sought to marry him. When the engagement was vetoed, Margaret was heartbroken. She married but it wasn’t a marriage of love. Margaret continued to be the wild child even rumoured to have a romantic involvement with many notable stars of the day.
Julia the Elder: Julia was the daughter of Augustus, mother the heirs, Lucius and Gaius, and wife of future emperor, Tiberius. She was arrested for adultery and treason. She lost her husband and freedom and was exiled to an island to live with any men and wine.
The Tragic
Some princesses do not find their happily ever after. Some will die young or live horrid lives. Most of these princesses will not evolve into queens but remain trapped as princesses.
Charlotte, Princess of Wales: Charlotte was the only child of George IV and Queen Caroline, conceived quickly into their marriage. Her parents loved her but hated one another leading for an unbalanced kind of childhood. Charlotte was second in line to the throne. She was perhaps one of only members of the royal family that the public actually liked. Charlotte was seen as the only hope of the dynasty. A desired bride everywhere, Charlotte chose to marry a low German Prince, the future King Leopold II of Belgium. The couple fell madly in love and soon the princess was pregnant. Charlotte died delivering a son who also died. She was a queen who was meant to be but never was.
Olga, Tatiana, Marie, Anastasia Romanov, Grand Duchesses of Imperial Russia: The four beloved daughters of the Tsar of Russia and his wife. OTMA as they like to be known as, lived a privileged life in the palaces of Russia while many of their father’s people starved. Olga was the eldest and said to be the most like her father, a thoughtful and deep young lady. Tatiana was the bossiest of the sisters and the most assertive. Marie was the kindest and gentlest. Anastasia was the wildest, most prone to joking than being a lady. When WWI came, Olga and Tatiana trained and worked as nurses in one of the many converted palaces of Russia. Marie and Anastasia often entertained the soldiers. The Bolshevik Revolution tore through Russia and soon, the royals were imprisoned. Taken to the basement of the ominously named House of Special Purpose in the dark of a summer night in 1918, the four girls and their family were gunned down and killed. Their bodies were destroyed in acid before being dumped. None survived.
Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, Bastard Princesses: Both daughters of Henry VIII, neither had a good run as princess. Mary was once called the Pearl of Henry’s world but when her mother couldn’t provide a male heir, she was casted off. Ripped away from her mother, she was put in the household of her new sister who was now the only princess of England. When Elizabeth’s mother fell, she was stripped of her title and status. At one point she outgrew all her clothes and Henry did not replace them. Mary helped raise her sister and the two were close. When they were placed in the line of succession and their brother died, Mary became queen. Religion proved a divide. Mary’s world had a dark and bloody end. She once imprisoned Elizabeth in the Tower under the threat of death. Elizabeth overcame her tragic princess phase and became the good queen.
“Persephone”, “Hermes” by Vera Bousiou. A modern dialogue between the two gods that were often associated with matters of the soul. The two figures were drawn in a spontaneous way, emerging straight from the unconscious mind, the mystical cave or gate of imagination and creativity. Persephone, the fruitful and the uncanny, standing for the primordial female, all embracing, element, while Hermes representing the analytical, spiritual processes, the “animus” of the artist.
Kings are not exempt from being as evil as their queens. Kings have all of the power in their kingdom and some yield it with cruelty. There are categories of the Evil King.
The Cruel
The Mad
The Cruel
The Incompetent
The Cruel
This king loves to exercise his power over others. He is savage and will torture his people to get all he can from them. He is mostly likely vain and savage and will do anything for power.
Henry VIII: You knew he would be on this list. Henry began his reign as a charismatic and lovable monarch. When his desire and obsession for a son grew, Henry grew more crueler and sadistic. He cast off four wives, killing two of them and abandoning two more. His third and fifth wives are the only ones who experienced a natural separation in death from Henry. While stuffing his face and getting the mediaeval equivalent of catfished, he put thousands to death including the eighty year old Margaret Pole, his mother’s cousin. He was unendingly cruel to his wives and children
Tiberius: The heir of the first Emperor of Rome. He took power after his mother murdered Augustus. He secured his power by killing his popular nephew and two of his grand-nephews while imprisoning his last nephew and grand-nieces. He is rumoured to have built a palace with a pool of young boys to nibble at his genitals whilst he bathed. He was reputedly murdered by his heir, his final grand-nephew Caligula.
Nero: The Roman Emperor who they called the Anti-Christ. Nero kicked his own pregnant wife to death and has his own mother killed. He was fond of sacrificing Christians to lions and making them human candles.
Leopold II, King of the Belgians: You might know this fucker from every show/movie/book made about Queen Victoria. In these adaptations he is presented to be grasping and evil but the truth is far worse. Claiming the Congo as his, he sent in soldiers to force the natives to resource rubber for him making him a wealthy man on the backs of thousands of dead natives.
Genghis Khan, Khan of All Khans: Though he has an awesome back story, the crimes of this Mongolian conqueror are unforgivable. He sacked thousands of towns and cities, burning and destroying as he went. He also allowed his men to rape millions of women some even before their families. He himself has thousands of descendants through these heinous acts.
The Mad
This king is off his rocker. He has lost his marbles and he runs a nation holding thousands of innocent lives. Gods save us.
George III: Mad King George began his reign as a well-liked king but grew worse as he went on. George suffered two periods of illness, one thought to be Alzheimer’s. He was one of the longest reigning British monarchs. Some believe that his madness led to was the cause of his mental instability. He spent his last few years under the Regency of his son.
Henry VI: The son of Henry V. He came to the throne as a baby. In 1453, he became catatonic, unable to speak or do anything. This led to a civil war that lost him the crown in 1461. Henry was reinstated in 1470 but was overthrown within months.
Caligula: The Mad Roman Emperor. Caligula, “Little Boots” was made emperor after the demise of Tiberius. Though popular because of his tragic back story and his hero father, Caligula was as mad as a box of frogs. He tried to make his horse a consul, made the navy build a bridge across a bay so he could ride across it, went to war with the sea and raped his sisters. He was murdered by his bodyguards after a few years in power.
Charles VI of France: Came to the throne at the age of 21 and came to be called “the Beloved”. However, he grew mad and killed four of his knights and attacked his brother. He attacked his wife so much that she employed a mistress so the king could have sex with somebody rather than her. His madness sparked the Hundred Years War.
The Incompetent
This king is useless. He is not fit for the job and he sucks at it so badly, he’s considered a loser.
John I of England: England’s worst king, or so people think. The son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, John sh p uld have been a good king. However, he usurped his hero-brother Richard the Lionheart and had his nephew killed. He mistreated his nobles so much, by forcing himself on their wives and taxing them, that they revolted leading to the Magna Carta.
Richard II: This king came to the throne at a young age. He began as a pretty ok, king bravely riding out to meet the peasants who revolted against him. He rebelled against his impressive uncle, John of Gaunt leading to five lords taking him aside, (i.e kidnapping him and holding him prisoner) and having a chat with him. Richard got revenge on these lords later and so incited a coup led by Gaunt’s son, Henry Bolingbroke. He was left starve to death in a cell.
Edward II: the son of Edward I. He came to the throne to relevant peace but then decided to fuck up the applecart. He lost Scotland, the country his father fought bloody wars, at Bannockburn to Robert de Bruce. He lavished titles and honours to his rumoured lover Piers Gaveston and leant on his counsel whilst sidelining his more competent queen. He picked fights with his nobles making them rebel more than once. When Gaveston was murdered, Edward found a new buddy in Hugh Despenser. Edward was such a shitty king that the county supported his wife’s foreign invasion and her regency over their twelve year old son.
George IV: The Prince of Whales, as he was so dubbed. He was more interested in mistresses and extravagance than ruling. He married Catholic to his father’s despair and was bailed out by Parliament frequently due to the massive debts he incurred. George married Princess Caroline and slept with her twice to produce an heir which miraculously he did.
We’ve all been there. Staring at our planning document with a long list of characters who are like our children. We love every single one of them, but what about the reader? Will they get confused? Will they be able to keep track? Will they care about any of your characters if they don’t get enough page time?
If these questions have plagued you, it might be time to think about who gets the chop. To help with the dilemma, I have put together a list of questions to ask yourself.
What does each character bring to the story thematically?
List what each character does to advance the plot?
Could any of these things easily be done by another character?
Do they all have distinctive personalities?
Do they all have distinctive mannerisms/speech/appearances?
If you’re struggling to answer these with a clear yes or no, it might be time to bin some characters. Bonus questions to consider are:
Is there potential to merge two characters into one?
Does this character need a name, or are they just an extra?
Hope this helped!
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So while researching for this Mega-Post (which will probably become one part of many), I’ve found that myths, legends and folklore as a whole is really just a cool thing to read about.
There’s so much creativity and wonder in every myth, and it’s been super fun to find story elements that have persisted all the way to the modern day.
With that said, and wait for it: Making a D&D Setting can be really really tiring.
So, after rediscovering my love of mythology, I thought I’d take a new approach to all this: Using “Comparative Mythology”.
“Wait! What’s Comparative Mythology?” I hear you ask. Well Comparative Mythology is when you compare myths from different cultures and identify all the things they share.
So let’s start this Mega-Post by ending this long-winded intro and getting to the whole point of this: The Common Myths!
The Creation of Mankind from Clay
The creation of man from clay is a thing that recurs throughout a bunch of world religions and mythologies. In this Myth, Mankind is created from dust, clay or earth by a single deity.
In Greek Mythology, Prometheus molded men out of water and earth.
In Egyptian Mythology, one of the several ‘Creator Gods’, called Ptah, is a Potter who fashions the bodies of humans (and some Gods) from clay.
The Theft of Fire
The theft of fire for humanity is another that recurs in many world mythologies. Where a deity, sometimes the deity of earth, the forge, or the deity that actually created Mankind, steals a portion of the Sun or a Magical Heavenly Flame and gives it to humanity so they don’t freeze to death or starve because they can’t cook their food.
Probably the most famous version of this Myth comes from Greek Mythology, where the Titan Prometheus stole the heavenly fire of the gods and gave it to humanity, the thing he created from clay, so they could build their first civilisation.
The Great Flood
Cultures around the world tell stories about a great flood that leaves only one survivor or a group of survivors. Sometimes the Flood is meant to restart the world, defeat a great evil, or as a punishment to Mankind for some known or unknown thing.
In the Hebrew Bible, probably the most famous example of this, God sends down a global flood that wipes out humanity, with only one man surviving and saving the world’s species by taking them aboard a giant boat.
In Greek Mythology, a Myth says that Zeus, Head of the Gods, sent down a great storm to flood the world after people started trying to sacrifice humans to him, which was completely against the Greek Laws of Hospitality and a big ol’ no-no in the eyes of Zeus.
The Dying-And-Rising God
Many Myths feature a God or Goddess who dies somehow and returns to life thanks to the help of the other Gods.
In Egyptian Mythology, Osiris, who was slain by his brother Seth, was brought back to life by his sisters Isis and Nephtys. Osiris eventually became the ‘King of the Dead’ while his Son became ‘King of the Living’, which may have something to do with a Father-like Figure giving power to their Son, which is another theme that pops up in a few cultures…
In Greek Mythology, it’s Adonis, a beautiful man born from his Mother that just so happened to be turned into a tree. But after being left in a Forest by Aphrodite and told to avoid any wild Boars (also known as Ares in disguise), Adonis immediately decided to do the opposite and hunt down the wild Boar (also known as Ares, the God of War). The fight didn’t really go in Adonis’ favour, and after Aphrodite found out, she stormed into the Underworld and demanded her Boyfriend back, and eventually Zeus got involved, deciding to split the Year in two, the warmer months (summer and spring) where Adonis would be with Aphrodite, and the colder months (autumn and winter) where Adonis would go back into the Underworld. This is why Adonis is associated so much with spring, renewal and rebirth.
The Creative Sacrifice
Many cultures have stories about divine figures whose death creates a certain part of reality.
These myths seem especially common among cultures that are farmers or have agriculture as a major part of their society.
In Norse Mythology, the First Giant, known as Ymir or ‘The Cosmic Giant’ was killed to create the World of Norse Myth.
In Aztec Myth, after Huitzilopochtli kills his sister Coyolxauhqui and his 400 brothers, Coyolxauhqui’s severed head becomes the moon, and her 400 dead brothers become the stars in the night sky.
In Greek Mythology, when the many-eyed Giant Argus was slain by Hermes, Argus’ eyes were transferred by Hera to the tail of the peacock, hence the beautiful tail feathers of a peacock!
The Seat of the World
The seat of the world is usually noted as a place that sits at the centre of the world and acts as a point of contact between different levels of the universe: Usually Heaven, Earth and the Underworld.
And as a small Sidenote, there’s a LOTof mythologies and world religions that use a giant ‘Cosmic Tree’ to represent the seat of the world, and they usually describe it as “a great tree joining heaven, earth, and the underworld”, with branches that reach the Heavens and whose roots that reach the Underworld.
In Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist Mythology, Mount Meru (also recognised as Sumeru, Sineru or Mahāmeru), is a sacred five-peaked mountain, and is considered to be the centre of all universes, both physical and spiritual.
In Norse Mythology, Yggdrasil is an immense mythical cosmic tree that connects the Nine Worlds of Norse Cosmology.
In Greek Mythology, the “Seat of the World” was the City of Delphi, the literal centre of the Greek Mythological World. Delphi was almost always seen as “the belly-button of the world”, with many tales surrounding the famous Oracle of Delphi. You could also consider Mount Olympus to be a sort-of “Seat of the World” too, since that’s the famous place where only the Gods lived…
The Ideal God
This is usually referring to a King, Queen or some kind of Head of a Pantheon, a God to rule the Gods.
Even actual Official D&D Settings do this by having an ‘Overgod’.
In Norse Mythology, Odin is the Leader of the Gods.
In Greek Mythology, Zeus is Head of the Gods, though Hera (his Wife) also has some influence on the Pantheon.
In Roman Mythology, which is extremely similar to Greek Mythology, they have Jupiter as the Head of the Pantheon and King of the Gods.
In Egyptian Mythology, Ra is Head of the Pantheon, though some interpretations vary on his actual name.
And as a side-note, it seems most ‘Head of the Pantheon’ Gods are male with some sort of connection to the Sky, the Sun, or Storms, and are often extremely wise or extremely powerful, usually depicted as extremely ripped and wielding big ol’ stabby weapons…
And weirdly enough, most have some sort of connection to birds, I can’t really find out where that comes from, but it’s cool nonetheless.
The War with the Titans
This is usually the Myth that creates the “Official Pantheon” for a Place’s Religion. The Titans (or sometimes called Primordials, beings that represent chaotic and destructive elements like Fire and Lightning) fight the Gods, sometimes a few Gods die, but the Gods always win.
Again, the most famous version of this Myths is In Greek Mythology, where the Titanomachy was a ten-year series of battles consisting mostly of the Titans fighting the Olympian Gods and their allies. This event is also known as the War of the Titans, Battle of the Titans, Battle of the Gods, or just The Titan War, which is just a cool name in general…
Gargantuan Giants
By“Gargantuan Giants”, I mean Gargantuan compared to Humans, who in most cultures were less than 6 Feet Tall, so sometimes Giants were as short of 8 Feet, and others they are quite literally the size of the Universe…
In Greek Mythology, there’s the myth of Ourion (or more commonly known as ‘Orion’) the Giant, a Huntsman famous for being placed among the stars as the constellation of Orion. There’s also the Hecatonchires, also known as the Hundred-Handed Giants, as well as the Myth of the Cyclopes and a bunch of other Gods and Demigods who are described as “Giant” in size.
In Norse Mythology, there’s dozens of famous giants, also known as Jotuun in some texts. From Surtur, the fire giant that leads his kin into battle during Ragnarok, to the trickster giant Utgard-Loki, famous for annoying the Hel out of Thor and thoroughly embarrassing him in front of all the other giants.
Mythical Dragons and Serpents
Sometimes just large snakes and other times gigantic snakes, legendary snakes and serpent-like creatures appear in the folklore of a bunch of different cultures around the world. And speaking of Dragons, while they vary from region to region, they’re almost always depicted as gargantuan serpentine creatures with four-legs.
Mythical Serpents in Mythology
In Egyptian Mythology, Atum shaped the world thanks to four mythical serpents. Also in Egyptian Mythology is Apophis, a gargantuan mythical serpent that symbolises chaos, who tries to eat the sun every day as part of the Journey of Ra and his Sun-Barge/Sun-Boat.
In Greek Mythology, there’s the Lernaean Hydra, more often known simply as the Hydra, a multi-headed snake monster killed by Heracles as part of his Twelve Labours. There’s also Python, a big ol’ sea snake with the gift of prophecy, that was then promptly killed by a Baby Apollo…
In Aztec Mythology, there’s Quetzalcoatl, a giant feathered serpent (and sometimes a dragon!) characterised as the God of Wind, the Dawn, the Planet Venus, Arts and Crafts, Wisdom and Knowledge.
And another thing, it seems some Myths depict these giant snakes as pets or living weapons used by Kings, Queens or even the Gods to keep their subjects in check.
Dragons in Mythology
In Eastern Cultures and Mythologies, Dragons are usually depicted as wingless, four-legged, serpentine creatures with above-average intelligence and the ability to control rivers, the ocean, the wind and the weather.
In Western Cultures and Mythologies, Dragons are often depicted as savage, winged, horned, four-legged, and capable of breathing fire.
The Myth that founds a Custom
This myth is waymore varied than the rest. Many cultures have myths describing the origin of their customs, with most societies often justifying their customs by claiming that the Gods or the Mythical Heroes of their Culture established those customs.
The Curse of Cannibalism
Human cannibalism features in the myths, folklore, and legends of many cultures and is most often attributed to evil characters, with the idea that consuming human flesh is an evil act that usually transforms the person into a monster of some kind.
In Greek Mythology, there exists the Lamia, a woman who became a child-eating monster after her children were destroyed by Hera after Hera learnt of her husband Zeus’ little “escapades”.
In Native American Myth, there’s the famous Wendigo, a creature (or sometimes depicted as an evil spirit) from folklore, with some sources saying Wendigos are created when a human resorts to cannibalism to survive.
The Hero’s Adventure to save their Lover
This is usually a story of three parts: Hero gains a Lover, Lover dies through unforeseen circumstances, and finally the Hero goes on an Adventure (most commonly going to the Underworld) to meet/save/resurrect their Lover.
This Myth can also be known as the “Hero goes to the Underworld to save their Lover” Myth, which is also super common when you look at all the different world cultures.
In an old Babylonian Myth, the Babylonian Goddess Ishtar (Goddess of Love, War and Fertility) gets trapped in the Underworld with the Queen of the Dead after trying to save her husband from the Underworld. But then Asushunamir, a gender-ambiguous individual constructed by Enki (a Babylonian Ocean God), is sent to the Underworld to save Ishtar, so I guess that’s two stories in one?
In Japanese Mythology, Japan has two Creator Deities: Izanagi and Izanami. But after the Birth of Kagi-Tsuchi (the Fire God), Izanami dies. So Izanagi decides to just go on down to the Underworld to get her back. But after lighting a torch in the Underworld when he’s specifically told not to, Izanami is understandably peeved and sends a bunch of monsters after Izanagi to chase him down until Izanagi decides to block the entrance to the Underworld with a giant rock so no monsters get out. Yay?
In Greek Mythology, Orpheus (one of Apollo’s kids) walks on down to the Greek Underworld to chat with Hades and maybe get his dead lover Eurydice back. Hades says “Yeah, sure bro! Just don’t look at her before you two get back to the World of the Living again, okay?” But Orpheus, like an idiot, decides to immediately do the opposite after thinking Hades is tricking him, and Eurydice is dragged back down in the Underworld to stay there forever…
The Sun gets eaten by a Giant Beast
This is usually what Cultures and World Religions use to explain celestial events such as an Eclipse.
In Aztec Mythology, they had a God called Huitzilopochtli (Yay! I spelt it right!) who was their Sun God and God of War and Human Sacrifice. Huitzilopochtli also had 400 Brothers and one Sister: Coyolxauhqui. After murdering his sister, Coyolxauhqui’s severed head becomes the moon and several of Huitzilopochtli’s brothers become the stars. And now the sun is constantly at risk of being devoured by the night sky and to put this all short: Huitzilopochtli is constantly fighting off the severed head of his sister (The Moon) to stop her eating/murdering the sun and the earth. FUN!
In Norse Mythology, at some point during Ragnarok (the Norse “End of the World” Myth), the sun and moon are eaten, possibly by Fenrir, but definitely by Mythical Wolf of some variety, sources differ.
In Egyptian Mythology, the Egyptians would pray against Apophis (the giant snake in the Underworld) to squash his nightly attempts to eat the sun as it passed through the Underworld.
And as a side-note, this one doesn’t have to be a Beast, sometimes the sun is stolen by a thief, or something happens and it’s sealed away or just straight up nopes out and disappears for a few days…
Gods named after Planets
It’s right in the name, a lot of Gods are named after Planets, Stars, Constellations and other Celestial Objects.
In Egyptian Mythology, the Gods are actually named after the various Stars and Constellations that can be seen in Egypt’s night sky.
In Roman Mythology, examples include Jupiter, Head of the Pantheon, as well as Mars the God of War, Mercury the God of Merchants, and Venus the Goddess of Love and Beauty, as well as Neptune, Saturn and More!
The Beast to be Released and Kill the World
This is usually a Wolf, Snake, or other Giant Beast that, when the Apocalypse comes, is released from whatever bindings they have and wreak havoc on the Mortal World. Sometimes the Beast is chained away or trapped in the Underworld, but other times they’re just sleeping until the Apocalypse comes knocking…
In Egyptian Mythology, this Beast is known as Apophis, a Giant Snake trapped in the Underworld that tries every day to eat the Sun (and sometimes eat Ra too!) before Apophis is defeated by the powers of Gods and the apocalypse is stopped for another day.
In Norse Mythology, this Beast is Fenrir, a Giant Wolf and Son of the Trickster God Loki. Fenrir is bound by a series of heavy chains, and when Ragnarok (the Norse version of the Apocalypse) comes, Fenrir will break his chains and go on a big ol’ god-killin’ spree!
Facing our dynasty, the energy shaping and influencing us, being like water for a fish, I definitely come to meet The Moon. Dreams, going and coming back from the underworld, always somewhere in the shadows, walking dreamy and killingly strange landscapes, always in search of your hidden self, anxiety, depression, pain, over worldly dreams and chaos of rebirth of light. My dynasty, the water I swim.
Tell something about your approach, what should I know before purchasing a reading from you?
Hello! I’m delighted to share my sacred space with you.
Firstly, I’m an ethical holistic tarot reader, I approach every reading with compassion, sensitivity, fully committed. I constantly continue studying tarot and astrology to give my querents authentic spiritual experience.
Tarot is a powerful spiritual tool, making possible for us to connect with the deepest parts of our psyche and farthest corners of universe. I wish to uphold the dignity of this powerful spiritual method, so I’d like to say that I’m not a fortune-teller.
Another thing to consider, tarot is not for faint-hearted, it can become a catalyst for spiritual growth and transformation, when used correctly. Tarot is also famous for telling what you need to hear at present moment, not what you wish.
And lastly, tarot reading is our working together, I wish you provide me as much information about your present situation as possible, so I may formulate the question. That’s how it work - I ask, tarot tells. Great question is in the heart of reading and make possible for us to dive deeper.
The possibilities I’ll help you to explore (but please, don’t hesitate to contact me with your specific question)
soul path questions: your soul mission, what you carry from the past, how to be healed, transformed and grow spiritually (you might check my soul reading, designed specifically for that inquiry)
⭐your spirit guides: in what direction you should look to meet them (ancestors and animal spirits, ascendant masters, angels, extraterrestrial beings, your Higher self), how you can connect, your unique spiritual gifts and powers, what you need to hear at present moment (you might check my spirit guides reading)
going through Moon \ cosmic circles: fully align and explore the possibilities unique energies of specific Moon \ cosmic circle is offering to us. Work closely with the energies of new Moon, full Moon, Scorpio season or Cancer season, planets retrograde. I’ll help you to understand uniqueness and open for that time, advice rituals and directions for spiritual work.
twilight questions: meet your Shadow, the most difficult and denied parts of self, start understanding and integrating, heal and discover what pears (your powers, gifts, undiscovered beautiful aspects) are hidden in the darkness of your Shadow.
Shadow work is a slow and deep process, it needs commitment and bravery, when done correctly and with compassion, it can lead to huge break through and transformation. Dear heart, ask yourself if you’re ready for that?
***archetypes and aspects of self
***self-love
***rituals and witch power
***your authentic spiritual path
Do you offer some special readings?
Yes!
Soul reading
A grand 12 cards spread, excellent mixture of tarot and astrology.
Connect on a deeper level with your heart and life purpose, get insight into the themes of this life, personal powers and challenges, lessons to learn
Study the contours of your life map and attune into the sacred energy of your authentic self.
Discover your personal myth.
Raise your spiritual energy, open up for understanding, self-love, healing with high vibrational energy of this reading.
Got ideas and inspirations for new projects.
Transform, revise, make big plans.
Accurate yet mystical.
To tune into your energy I’ll start with casting and reading your astrological natal chart. It’ll give me a direction and some initial insights and then I’ll lay down cards and read them as your life map expressing your unique energy and showing how healing, transformation and spiritual growth is possible.
Read more about the spread I use for this reading —-} here.
Spirit guides reading
Grand 9 cards reading (I’ll pull additional 16 card in special occasions)
Get to know your spirit guides (ancestors and animal spirits, ascendant masters, angels, extraterrestrial beings, your Higher self) and how they try to connect with you.
Explore the uniqueness of your connection, its pragmatic purpose in your current situation and its mystic roots.
Learn about your unique abilities and psychic predispositions + study personal myth.
Learn how to open up and deepen the connection with the spirit guides, what is blocking you and how to work through that.
Receive the messages you need to hear at present moment.
If you have a question for your spirit guides, let me know with your request and I’ll incorporate it in the reading.
Read more about the spread I use for this reading —}here.
My mystical new year
Grand 12-cards spread + card of the year (calculated through numerology of your date of birth)
Dive into the main theme of your next year, the cosmic / archetypal energy which will shape and influence you most
Get a message from every month
Prepare, open up for mystery, see patterns, discover your map.
I need to know your name, date, place and time of birth (that’s okay, if you don’t know the time)
Let me know which reading you’re interested in or your specific question \ your present situation (so we can work together on the question to ask tarot).
I’ll answer with confirmation and let you know when your reading will be with you — usually within 1-2 days
What you’ll receive in email:
***interpretation of your spread + short description of every card
***the image of your spread
I work on donation basis, so what our exchange involves is donation (made through paypal) and feedback \ testimonial.
Tarot deck I presently work with:
Sasuraibito tarot
Tarot of Vampires
Privacy policies
Your privacy is important to me. All personal details you provide will always remain private and confidential.
Ethical requirements for tarot reading
You should be 18 or older to purchase a reading from me.
My readings can’t be a substitute for the professional advice of doctor, psychologist, mental health professional.
Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have further questions.
The Epic of Gilgamesh has sparked me into thinking about women in literature and storytelling, and how in some ways we are unusually misogynistic in the way we tell stories compared to…most of history
I’ve been reading the Foster translation of the epic, and it’s striking how…not-antagonistic the text is toward women.
For one thing, a significant portion of the characters with important roles are female. Gilgamesh and Enkidu are obviously the important ones, and Utnapishtim to a degree, but we also have Inanna, Ninsun, Shamhat, Siduri, Utnapishtim’s wife, and even Aruru, who gets credit here for being the supreme creator being.
I was surprised as well by how neutral the text is in portraying them. Shamhat, the ‘harlot’ (“sex worker” doesn’t work here, because there are some spiritual/religious connotations here as well i think?), is…just a character. She isn’t demonized, we aren’t supposed to despise her. Siduri is just a weird lady running a tavern at the end of the world all alone. Ninsun, Gilgamesh’s mother, is a source of wisdom and authority.
There are repeated occasions throughout the story where other characters seek out female characters because of their power and/or wisdom (e.g. Gilgamesh going to Ninsun for help interpreting his dreams, the gods summoning Aruru to create someone to oppose Gilgamesh). They’re also actually allowed to speak in the story.
I remember being surprised by it when I read the Iliad that we actually got to hear Briseis speak, just as I was by how much talking women do in Shakespeare.
I think I expected less because the storytelling produced by the present day world around me set the bar so low.
In the Original and Prequel trilogies of Star Wars, there are, like, at most six female characters with speaking roles that I can remember (Leia, Padme, Mon Mothma, Zam Wessell, Beru Lars, and the decoy queen in The Phantom Menace whose name I can’t remember). You probably don’t even remember some of these, because they were not important at all. It’s like if Dexter Jettster happened to be female.
That’s just the thing, though, isn’t it? Dexter Jettster is male. Chewbacca is male. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, Yoda and Qui-Gon Jinn are male. Sebulba, the pod-racer that explodes in Episode 1, is male, Jen Porkins is male, Greedo is male, Poggle the Lesser is male, Boss Nass is male, Salacious Crumb is male, Captain Panaka is male, even the droids are at least coded as male. There is no reason for it.
I don’t know quite enough about Marvel to compare, and honestly haven’t bothered with Marvel in a few years, but only one of the original Avengers is female, as well as only one of the original Guardians of the Galaxy, both were defined by their relationships to major male characters, and both died. The focus on the male characters is overwhelming. 
We’re used to stories that barely have any female characters in them. The Lord of the Rings has what, three? four? women? Stories that actually have similar proportions of men and women receive backlash, as Scott Lynch did when Red Seas under Red Skies had “too many” women (it was still predominantly male!) Even books that are praised as “feminist” or appear to be focused on women neglect the actual presence of women. I only read the first two Throne of Glass novels, but I can only remember two female characters in it apart from the main character, and iirc both of them die. (It’s not a 'feminist’ series at all, but I digress.)
We’re actually backsliding in some respects, if you ask me—in visual media, traditionally “unattractive” women are disappearing. Weird women are disappearing. “Strong Female Character” has become just another trope as restrictive as any of the other roles “allowed” for women. We see people looking backward at characters like Edna Mode as unusually human and well-represented when I’m not convinced that they were at the time.
And now the Epic of Gilgamesh seems unusually woman-focused and not-misogynistic. I wonder how we got here…
I’ve just started to really look at people funny when they praise books, esp YA books, for having “strong female characters.”
Like someone in my YA lit class praised Children of Blood and Bone for having women that are “allowed” to fight and be independent and have significant roles in the story, and how important the book is for including that. And I just.
Alanna: The First Adventure is 30+ years old, Dealing with Dragons is 30+ years old, Sabriel is 25+ years old, so it’s not like independent, self determining female leads were invented yesterday in YA. Graceling, the Hunger Games, and a lot of the foundational Girl That Fights YA turns fifteen years old soon. A girl that was 16 when the first of the Hunger Games trilogy came out is now 30, and in a few years may be able to give the books to her own daughter to read.
Meanwhile, over the recent 3 or so years popular YA books are dominated by plots about girls trapped in castles, bound by curses, or in arranged marriages whose stories all hinge on falling for boys.
YA romance and romance subplots have always been a thing, sure.
But I seriously feel like, idk, 10 years ago, plots where the romance was a vital element (or the primary element)fit into their own niche significantly more, and books that were primarily “fantasy” actually were, well, primarily fantasy.
Am I making this up in my head? Has anyone else noticed this? There definitely used to be YA fantasy that actually centered significantly on worldbuilding and non-romance plot instead of being primarily romance with either a court intrigue or a fairy tale retelling backdrop.
What i’m trying to highlight is the huge boom in YA books where
the female protagonist falling in love with a man
the female protagonist being betrothed or otherwise having her sexuality controlled and restricted
is a REQUIRED element of the plot (and often the magic and worldbuilding) as in the story itself hinges on it.
There’s also been a small explosion of YA books with the female MC being a “sacrifice,” being given over to something as currency/appeasement, or otherwise fulfilling a very passive, inanimate role (e.g. Poppy being the “Maiden” in From Blood and Ash or whatever the title was.) What is UP with that.
It would be ridiculous to attribute something like this to a single author, but I’m still going to say that Sarah J. Maas did not help any of this good god
YA readers are growing up with ACOTAR and TOG now, not any of the numerous “strong” heroines that were defining in the 90’s and 2000’s, which means they’re growing up with SJM’s INTENSELY gender essentialist, tradwifey A/B/O lite faeries labeled as “feminist” fantasy.
Both series have a 500+ year old faery “male” “claim” and impregnate an 18-19 year old girl, and both series sexualize the “domination” and aggression of the “males” (in the throne of glass series, the endgame love interest fucking. bites the protagonist without her consent to uhh. “claim” her.) In ACOTAR in particular the plot eventually revolves around the pregnancies of the main female characters, by their aggressive, controlling fae “male” “mates.”
I have read excerpts from later Throne of Glass books and the way female characters are described is. disgusting?? like one thing in particular that’s branded into my brain is a teenager being described as looking like she would have been “barely past her first bleed, if not for the size of her breasts” or something like that.
And the smut scenes aren’t even sexy.
The upside to this is that the YA category seems to have collapsed quite a bit overall and doesn’t enjoy anywhere near the popularity that it did even just 3 years ago.
Hopefully when it all settles we’ll have new areas of growth in the places all the readers have cleaved off to.
Recently I’ve been reading King Warrior Magician Lover by Robert Moore and Douglas Gilette, a book about the four archetypes of the mature masculine, for writing and personal reasons. I felt the need to put it into practice by comparing the archetypes to characters I like and analysing them appropriately.
I want to start off with taking a look at the Warrior archetype of the masculine psyche since the Warrior (and its bipolar shadow counterparts) are by far the most troublesome. This, when applied in an imbalanced and immature way, is the abusive boyfriend, the ruthless boss, the rapist, the schoolyard bully, the genocidal maniac, the sadistic war criminal; all the roles that violent men (emphasis on the men) seem to adhere to.
At first glance, and for good reason, the Warrior is the most problematic archetype of the four. But, despite this negative representation, the Warrior can be used in a positive and effective way when present in a mature masculine psyche. So why not analyse the Warrior within the protagonist of one of my favourite FPS protagonists, the testosterone-fueled demon hater Doom Guy (aka Doom Slayer).
I will primarily be using his current incarnation as the Doom Slayer from Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal (and subsequent Ancient Gods DLC) as new game technology showcases his character a bit better than the old sprite work of old. I will still refer to those past games, however, as details there are still important (Doom, Doom II). I’ll also throw in some reference to the 1995 Doom Novels because they’re a bunch of fun.
Doom Guy is a powerhouse. The definition of a power fantasy. His representation as Warrior is pushed to the extreme to the point of becoming a force of nature. For that reason he is considerably simplistic in character. Like [true-to-form] Superman, who purely exists to use his abilities to help those in need, Doom Guy exists for one single purpose: to kill demons.
This seemingly one-dimensional agenda against all things hell-related is a totality of his character; we barely know anything else about him. We don’t know his name, his place of birth, whether he had a family. All we know is that as long as Hell exists, he will. His current form as the Doom Slayer exemplifies this where he is essentially a god that suddenly appears during times of demonic activity; a mythic figure personified by violence. Violence itself is often deemed a negative aspect of humanity, and yet Doom Guy is undoubtedly beloved by gamers everywhere, especially with men (myself included).
The Warrior is an archetype that is based in action. It doesn’t think because, as Moore and Gilette put it, “thinking too much can lead to doubt, and doubt to hesitation, and hesitation to inaction”. Because of this focus on action, the Warrior shines when it comes to motivation, commitment, and progression; the worker who climbs the corporate ladder, the student who gets the straight A’s, the artist who masters their craft.
But the Warrior is impersonal. It’s focus on ‘getting it done’ leaves little room for anything outside of a goal, let it be personal relationships and needs or the feelings of others. We see this in high-achievers who seem to have little room for anything else outside of work. In it’s negative aspect, a Warrior will bring harm and isolate not only its friends and family, but it will also eventually break itself down, inflicting personal harm. The “burn out” that many high-achievers experience is a result of this unmitigated Warrior aspect.
For this reason, the Warrior shines best under the guidance from the other archetypes of the mature masculine. A Warrior King dynamic within a man can create strong leaders who care for the prosperity of their workplace and imbue courage into their peers. A Warrior Magician dynamic creates the scholars and scientists who are able to turn their ideas into reality. The Warrior Lover dynamic returns compassion and relatedness to the Warrior’s drive to success and duty, creating the advocates for justice and harmony.
An example of a character who properly embodies all four archetypes would be Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings. This is a man who fights orcs with sheer ferocity, naturally becoming a leader and giving wise council to his peers, yet he sings and writes poetry and is not afraid to openly cry when a member of the fellowship falls (not to mention his complete mutual respect for the women in his life).
Anyway, let’s get back to Doom Guy. To say he is a man of inaction is deplorable. Every thing he does has forward momentum, ripping through every demon he sees until he reaches his goal. He is violent, merciless, and most definitely very very angry. And yet his violence isn’t driven by blind rage, it seems, a quality that would make Doom Guy a messy and uncoordinated little ogre like Marvel’s Hulk. What’s made clear through character cues and actions during 2016 and Eternal’s cutscenes is that he very much has control over this rage and uses it only when it is required and necessary.
Doom Guy is a destroyer, something that Moore and Gilette attribute to the Warrior. But in a positive aspect a Warrior destroys only what needs to be destroyed – evil, corruption, tyranny, oppression, injustice – in order to build a better world. It goes without saying that Doom Guy, despite everything that could lead him to becoming a villain, is a good man.
In the 1995 Doom Novels it tells of how Doom Guy assaulted a senior officer when ordered to fire upon citizens (the canon of these novels is debatable but they add to the Doom Mythos anyway). This man clearly has morals. He is not shredding up people with shotguns and chainsaws, he is killing demons and only demons. He is a Warrior that fights for others, not for himself, a defining feature that separates the true Warrior from the Shadow Warrior (the Sadist/Masochist).
This is turning into more of a Doom Guy character study more than anything but hey let’s just go with it. Doom Guy is undoubtedly ruled by the Warrior archetype, but what deepens his character is his relationship to the King, Magician, and Lover archetypes.
The Magician seems to be the closest to his ruling Warrior. As described earlier, Doom Guy isn’t a mindless brute. He is intelligent, tactical, and most importantly rational (in his own Doom Guy way). The Magician is often the “bullshit detector” in the psyche. It observes and assesses what is truth and what is lie, what is good intention and what is bad intention. The Magician also attains mastery of his tools, attaining knowledge that only he knows.
Doom Guy has a “bullshit detector” and this is most evident in 2016 and Eternal. The very opening sequence of 2016 has a cheeky moment where, after he awakens from his sarcophagus and dons his praetor suit, he reaches for a screen and assesses a status report on the security system, immediately learning of the demonic presence. Dr. Samuel Hayden, the head of the facility, then communicates to him in diplomatic fashion, suggesting teamwork that benefits them both.
Doom Guy is having none of that, and pushes the screen aside. There are demons here, and that is all that matters. Later in the level when he reaches an elevator, Hayden reaches out yet again. He says he is willing to take accountability yet demands that Doom Guy understands the reason for the outbreak; “our interest in their world was purely for the betterment of mankind”. Doom Guy looks down to the dead body next to him, punches the intercom, and sets foot on the martian landscape to clean up the mess.
Doom Guy, no matter how rationalised an action, understands that if it is inherently evil, he will do what must be done. His Magician’s bullshit detector and his Warrior’s call to action are the perfect combination. This can be seen time and time again throughout the 2016/Eternal games where he seemingly blindly follows manipulation up until he gets to where he wants to be, breaks away from his instructor, and demolishes their plan. This can be seen with Samuel Hayden, both in 2016 and Ancient Gods DLC, where he seems to be going with his plan until he makes Hayden’s day even harder.
[Another interesting thing to note is his actions that at first seem stupid but ultimately benefit his end goal. Awakening the Icon of Sin and the Dark Lord, for example, seems ridiculous, yet he awakens them so he can put them down permanently rather than letting them slumber for X amount of millenia.
It should also go without saying that Doom Guy’s tools are his onslaught of weapons, and he is undoubtedly a master of every single one. Pretty self-explanatory.]
Interestingly, Doom Guy’s relationship to the Lover is quite intact. It is hard to imagine this 6ft beef of a man would have any relation to sensitivity and compassion and yet he does. For one, Doom Guy once had a pet rabbit, Daisy, before she was killed by the demons at the end of the original Doom game. A rabbit, being of feminine quality, isn’t a pet that would be likened to the Slayer.
Another aspect is his compassion, most prominent in 2016 where he discretely backs up and saves VEGA from self-destruction, and we see this softer side of his personality when he interacts with secret collectables littered throughout the levels for players to find, most notably with a figure of himself who he comically fist-bumps. His man-cave in Eternal also show small tidbits that display his Lover archetype – his self portrait with Daisy and a left over rabbit cage. Doom Guy, if present in another setting, could easily be a kind-hearted and pretty chill guy. A shame that demons have to keep getting in the way.
The King archetype is also present but not overtly. Doom Guy is not a leader and does not take charge of an army or government; he is still a lone wolf of the Warrior. However he does incite courage (whether intentionally or not) among the human race as they form alliances and rebellions against Hell. Like a true King, he takes charge of his domain (Earth) to rid it of its corruption and bring prosperity to it. With the authority of a ballistic cannon he slams his way through and purges the demonic infection. With his destruction he generates a better one.
He also isn’t self-serving. He does not want to become ruler of Earth or of humanity, he simply steps in to do a job and then leaves. At one point in Eternal, logs can be uncovered that insinuate a cult following of Doom Guy’s presence, worshipping him as a god. He could easily play into this idea, and yet it does not interest him. Like Aragorn, he fights not for recognition or rule. He fights because it must be done.
Now I want to talk about Doom Guy as an archetype in himself and how that impacts our world. As a Warrior-ruling character he is still defined by his warrior traits, despite his relations with King, Magician and Lover. Doom Guy can (and is) seen as an appropriate role model, or at the very least an archetype one can call within themselves to improve their inner self. He achieves what needs to be done. Using Doom Guy within oneself a person can push through and complete a task effectively and efficiently.
Whether it be chores, a promotion, a hardlife choice, or an obstacle, Doom Guy can instil a confidence in us so that we are constantly improving ourselves externally and internally. When life gets us down and we float through the tougher parts of adulthood, the Doom Guy-Warrior will tell us to push through it. To rip and tear the demons in our lives and bring harmony back into play.
This is undoubtedly positive, however Doom Guy can also be dangerous if used inappropriately. The “slaughter your demons” ideology, like the Warrior, has justified crimes and injustice throughout human history. What people define as “demons” in this context changes. Just as how religious texts and well intentioned philosophies are skewed and transformed to justify evil, so too can people misinterpret the Doom Guy archetype for their own selfish and bigoted ways. A look at the news to see the latest obscenity perpetrated by a man in the name of some backwards ideology is evidence of this. It is the Warrior turned Shadow Warrior with the polarity of Sadist/Masochist, where a weakened psyche projects and thrusts pain onto others.
In regards to us males, Doom Guy can be an aspect of ourselves to properly harness; to take control of our lives and become men of action, to speak up against Hell and cut out the toxic nature of demonic energy in the world (for women, they can harness Doom Guy alongside the goddess Athena, an archetype described by Jean Shinoda Bolen’s Goddesses in Everywoman).
But for boys – men who have not grown up yet – Doom Guy is an image of their envy. They see an all powerful masculine figure and think to themselves “I want to be like that” without putting in the psychological work.
Rather than becoming a man, they pretend to be a man, using violence to harm others for their own gain. They become the abusive boyfriend, the ruthless boss, the rapist, the schoolyard bully, the genocidal maniac, the sadistic war criminal. They wear Doom Guy’s skin to feel good about themselves – a set of muscular armour to hide the pathetic snivelling boy within. They put down others, demean women, and ride a sense of superiority and false-masculinity. They crush any sign of femininity within themselves, deeming it as a weakness, thus creating imbalance and chaos in their whole being. A boy pretending to be Doom Guy will never have a pet rabbit named Daisy.
In this sense, the image of Doom Guy becomes Silent Hill 2’s Pyramid Head – a shadow image of protagonist James Sunderland (who we will represent as the boy). James is weak, psychologically passive, and sexually frustrated, and so Pyramid Head represents everything that he is not but in its most negative aspect. Pyramid Head is indestructible but ruthless, able to have his way with little consequence, including sexually abusing the other monsters in the town. He is what boys wanting to be men become – a self-serving monster, Shadow Warrior-possessed.
Pyramid Head however is a necessary evil for James, as he shows him upfront his sins and the need for punishment – destroying the boy ego and allowing a better man to take its place. If boys can acknowledge the destructive behaviour of their Shadow Warrior – their own Pyramid Head – then perhaps they can learn to destroy this part of themselves and become the self-owned, responsible and life-affirming Doom Guy that rids evil rather than creating it.
Anyway that’s all, my brain is tired. Thanks for reading my rambling Doom fan fic.
As to the source of visions, traditional peoples and folk magic have always said that they emanate from an unseen realm of spirits and greater spiritual beings, that is, the gods. Contemporary pagans and witches can attest to the reality and power of these beings. Through focused, committed trancework and journeying we can indeed reach the gods, know them and be known by them. When we shift away from normal consciousness we dive into Spirit, where everything and all beings can be known, if only we pursue our magical work diligently. It is said magic works according to karma, and so we will encounter not only our allies but our personal challenges. And so visioning is also a path of self discovery, growth, unfoldment and healing.
Remember that your INTENT is the key. The psychological view is that visions arise as symbolic communications from dimensions of our minds beyond our everyday awareness, which may be experienced in dreams, reveries or spiritual visions. Such psychic forms were called Archetypes by the famous Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. He considered them fully as intelligent and powerful as the legendary spirits of old. Realize that our minds ARE Spirit, and are inseparable from the fullness that It is. We descend and ascend through levels and planes of being, now in our personal dreams and fantasies, now encountering divine beings, now blending mystically with realms beyond the personal. Your experiences will no doubt lead you to your own insights, your own conclusions, and your own philosophy. Whatever you may believe about this, trance and visions allow us to realize that the potential of our minds is far beyond what we have been told about ourselves. We are magical beings. (end of series) ( revised 3/1/22 @mysteryoftheuniverse)
