Grendel Villain Backstory

Grendel is one of the three antagonists in the Anglo-Saxon Epic poem Beowulf.He was a beast that was described, along with his mother, to be descendants of the Biblical Cain, and simply terrifying. Not much is known about Grendel, but he is mostly known for his attacks on the mead-hall of Herot, killing and eating everyone in sight within those walls. This attack was apparently caused by Grendel being disturbed by the noise of the drunken revelers.
During one of Grendel’s raids on the mead-hall, Beowulf is present, and after a long fight with Beowulf, Grendel gets his arm ripped off, in which he then retreats back to his cave and dies of blood loss.
Grendel’s mother then retaliates against the mead-hall, causing Beowulf to hunt her down and kill her in her cave, in which he finds grendel’s body, and takes Grendel’s head as a trophy.

Beowulf Hero Backstory

Beowulf was a legendary Geatish hero that is turned king in the poem epic named after him. He was the son of Ecgtheow, who he ended up causing himself to get banished for killing a prominent member of the weregild family, and his father ended up having to seek shelter with the Danes. Ecgtheow married King Hrethel’s daughter who gave birth to Beowulf, who grew up with the Geats.
When Hrothgar and his court were attacked by Grendel, Beowulf sailed to Zealand with 14 warriors to pay his father’s debt. During his stay in the hall, Grendel attacked again, taking down one of the Geats before seizing Beowulf. Beowulf attacked Grendel with his sword, but to no avail, seeing as no man-made weapon could harm him, so Beowulf engaged him in hand-to-hand combat and tore Grendel’s arm off. Grendel then ran off into the forest and died of blood loss. Grendel’s mother then attaacks the hall for revenge the next night. Furious, Beowulf hunted her down to the bottom of a bog. They both fought amidst Grendel’s corpse, until Beowulf took up an enchanted giant sword in the lair and cleaved her head off.

“What is the true meaning of beauty? How have fairy tales shaped this meaning in our society?

The meaning of beauty is that it’s absolute divinity that begins inside before it works it’s way outwards to physical appearances. It definitely takes precedence in this order as well, for having beauty in your physical appearance and not in your mind and judgement does not equal real beauty. That is merely fools’ gold. However, this is not visa versa, for true beauty starts on the inside, and is still beautiful even if you lack what is considered outer beauty. Unfortunately, our society has lost all bearings on this concept and has recently disbanded both things and thinking them as separate aspects. Today, someone can be beautiful on the outside and a complete monster on the inside, and none will be any the wiser. Either that or they dress it up as if they are a good person, but it still doesn’t hide the fact that they aren’t.

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” ~Albert Einstein

Life has many challenges that your children will have to face sometime in their life, as well as many ideals that will be hard to teach them due to them not being ready to understand the lesson by being too young. Fairy tales have all these aspects in an easy to understand medium that children can learn long before they have to face any of these challenges, and a little extra. Each story has lessons through the conflict of the story at hand, and even though they may not learn the lessons straight away, you will be filling their childhood memories with these stories that they will carry to later years in their life, so that they can remember back and possibly revisit to discover something new that they had overlooked.

“Take a look at your immediate surroundings, for the path you walk today might not be the same path tomorrow” -Jacob Arntsen

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” -FDR

Fear is not namely a specific thing that we are afraid of. That is a phobia. Take for example, Darkness. Darkness is the blackness that fills a space that has no light flooding through the area. It darkens our streets when the sun is gone and fills our homes when you blow out the candles. It puts everything we have grown accustomed to during the day with a filter that blocks it from our vision. This is used as an advantage and disadvantage by many things: wolves on the hunt for day-dwellers, patches of dark to hide from pursuers, or the closet your cousin jumps out of to scare you every fricking time. Due to its abilities, it can make a room that you are already accustomed to seem foreign before you switch the light on, because you never know what may be lurking in the dark corners of the walls. People afraid of the dark are not exactly afraid of the dark itself, but afraid of what the darkness may be hiding from them. In all honesty, humans as a whole have always had an dormant fear of what they don’t understand or can’t perceive. And due to these fears, it opens up the human mind to think, “what if?” This leads to stories that fuel the imagination and question reality and their own beliefs. So that feeling you get when you’re about to turn off the light to sleep, even though you know for certain that the monster or ghost from that horror film you watched today, and you start to think, “What if that monster is in this very room?” The minute you start to question what might be in the darkness, the thick shadow of the blackness filling your room will always definitely answer…. “maybe.” In short, Fear is not a specific thing, because at it’s root, it will always start with “the unknown.”

Dullahan

I’ve never actually thought of the Dullahan as being the figure of death, but now i can actually see the resemblance. To start off, the dullahan is a human figure that’s too big to be a normal human. It rides a black horse and appears in the dead hours of the night. The creature itself has no head on it’s shoulders, but carries it’s head in his hand or on his mount’s satchel. They end up chasing after people or citizens that are out late at night in the roads, and snatching them up. Other times they stop outside the door of a house and call a person’s name. Eventually, that person will die. They are even known to stop right where the person is going to die to declare the name. They have an irrational fear of gold though, and will disappear upon seeing the precious metal. It must’ve really sucked for Ichabod Crane to not have carried that with him. 🙂