r/mythology

Season 5 of Residents of Proserpina Parks has been out for a while now. And I finally got around to reviewing it.

This is the flashback arc. The framing device is that Alina and the gang are at the coffee shop that Drew works at. Jessica and Sam are telling stories. They talk about how Junichi and Jessica discovered the park. They talk about the adventures they had with various creatures. They talk about how Junichi and Sam fell in love. But most of all, they talk about how they decided to make their own creation. And of the price they paid for their hubris.

So, this is the season where we finally get answers to long standing questions. Let’s start with the new creatures. Now, way back in season two, we were promised a creature from regional folklore. Sara Roncero-Menendez, who voices dog, mentioned that her family is from the Cantabria religion of northern Spain. It has Celtic heritage, and a slightly different culture from the rest of Spain. This also factors into their folklore.

We did get the Tooth Mouse, which is the equivalent of the Tooth Fairy in a lot of European countries. But that didn’t really feel specific to Cantabria. Well, come season five, and the promise is finally delivered. We get to meet the Ramidreju. It looks like a green weasel, and its nose is exceptionally good at sniffing our buried gold. They’re only born once every 100 years, usually to a family of ordinary weasels. Oh, and they can cure any illness you have. You just need to rub the Ramidreju all over your body.

Okay, now we’re talking! And what’s more, it even proved to be important to the overall plot of the season. It was encountering the Ramidreju that gives Junichi, Jessica, and Sam the idea to create their own creature. Specifically, one that can grant their wishes, and make their lives easier.

I’d been advocating having the leshy appear as far back as season one. Well, I finally got my wish this season. Leshy are forest spirits, and protectors of the forest, from Slavic Mythology. Think of them kind of like the Ents from \*Lord of the Rings\*. \*Residents of Proserpina Park\* showed a side of the leshy I hadn’t thought about before. You see, houses are made of wood, boats are made of wood, baseball bats are made of wood…sometimes. The point is, a lot of very hard things, and things that can do a lot of damage, are made of wood. An angry leshy would be a very scary sight indeed.

We also get to hear the story of Stingy Jack. He was a man so wicked that neither Heaven nor Hell wanted him. As a result, he was forced to wander the Earth, with only a turnip lantern to light his way. Irish immigrants brought this story with them when they moved to the United States. But they swapped the turnips for pumpkins. And that’s where jack o’ lanterns came from. I bring this up because \*The Moonlit Road\*, another podcast I absolutely adore, also did a retelling of Stingy Jack. And they released it around the time \*Residents of Proserpina Park\*’s episode came out. It was an amusing parallel.

Another amusing coincidence came with the cast for this season. One of the Aos Si is voiced by Cameron Gergett. I had previously cast him in \*The Books of Thoth\*. He came recommended by the creator of \*Brave New Frontiersman\*. Specifically, I cast him as the homeless man in “It Was the Best Day Ever.” It was the first time I had encountered one of my actors in an audio drama that I hadn’t previously heard them in.

Now, all that being said, I did also have a few critiques of this season. At times, it felt like Sam’s relationship with both Junichi and Jessica developed a tad fast. It felt like we were jumping around in time a lot, and that there was missing connective tissue. Granted, I kind of understand why this is. Angela Yih probably didn’t want to cover too much territory that she’d already done with Alina and Alina’s friends.

Then there was the episode where we finally meet Hades. We’ve met gods, such as Anansi, on previous occasions. But this is the first time we’ve encountered one of the Olympians. That’s a completely different weight class of mythical being. So, I was expecting those scenes to be fittingly grand and ominous. But when we meet him, Hades just sounds like a regular dude. It feels very underwhelming and anticlimactic. Also, the trip to meet Hades was a little underwhelming. One instant we are in the park, and then boom, we’re in the underworld. Granted, this is going to be rectified come season six.

But how would I know that? Well, Angela Yih has taken me onto the production staff for season six of \*Residents of Proserpina Park\*. I’m helping to write the scripts and produce the episodes. I’d like to thank Angela Yih for this opportunity.

I’d also like to thank Angela for helping to promote \*The Books of Thoth\*. We recorded a bonus episode of \*Residents of Proserpina Park\* where she interviewed me about this blog, reviewing audio dramas, my day job at Shreveport Aquarium, and my work on \*The Books of Thoth\*. It was really fun to get to do, and I’m grateful for the opportunity.

Have you listened to season 5 of Residents of Proserpina Park? If so, what did you think?

Link to the full review on my blog: https://drakoniandgriffalco.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-audio-file-residents-of-proserpina.html

(Here is an audio version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIWrJ-j-QjQ . It was written as scenario seed for a Lovecraftian RPG).

Modern works drawing on Greek mythology usually make Hades (completely wrong) or Kronos (a little more) the Big Bad, but they forget about Zeus’s greatest enemy – Typhon. After defeating the titans and then the gigants, the Olympian gods had to face the main boss on the way to dominating the world – Typhon. Here is an example of its description: It was larger than the largest mountains, its head touched the stars. When he stretched out his hands, one reached the eastern ends of the world and the other reached the western ends. Instead of fingers, he had a hundred dragon heads. From the waist down he had a tangle of vipers (yay, tentacles!) and wings at his shoulders. His eyes were shooting out flames. In other versions of the myth, Typhon was a flying, hundred-headed dragon. In any case – appearance and stature worthy of the Great Old One. Typhon attacked Olympus, and all the gods except Zeus fled in panic. The supreme god took up the fight… and lost it. Only in the second duel did he manage to defeat Typhon, but not kill him – he only imprisoned him, hitting him with a mountain which is known as Etna. And volcanic activity is the result of Typhon’s anger, trying to break free.

Typhon equaled the lord of heaven not only in strength, but in fertility. His wife was Echidna, about whom Hesiod wrote: „She also gave birth to another creature, invincible, huge, unlike neither men nor immortal gods, in a hollow cave – the divine violent Echidna, half a sharp-eyed young girl, with beautiful cheeks, half a huge snake, a great and powerful, spotted, cruel – in the depths of the holy land. This pair spawned many, if not most, of the monsters found in Greek mythology. Their offspring were very diverse and strange, as befits the spawn of enemies of the divine order, including:
– Ladon, the hundred-headed dragon who never slept and guarded the apples that gave immortality,

– Cerberus – we all know the dog guarding the gates of hell… but not all of us know that, according to some accounts, it had not three heads, but as many as 50, it was also covered with scales, and it had a snake for a tail… so what does this have to do with a dog?

– Scylla – this lady inherited the most from the human, beautiful part of Echidna… at least initially, but eventually, as a result of various perturbations, she turned from a beautiful nymph to something like her siblings, becoming a six-headed sea beast, so hideous, according to Homer, that even the gods could not stand sight of her – she dwelt in a cave, from where she opened her mouth to devour the crews of ships,

– Gorgons – I mean, those ladies with snake hair, not monstrous bulls. Medusa was one of them – the story that Athena turned her priestess into a monster as punishment for being raped by Poseidon is an invention of later poets,

– Lernaean Hydra – a multi-headed monster with many reptilian or human heads. In place of each severed head, two others grew, and in addition, the main head was completely immortal – therefore, after chopping off the mortal heads, Heracles had to burn the stumps and bury the immortal, still hissing head underground. Hydra’s breath was poisonous,

– various other creatures, such as the Sphinx, the dog Ortus, the Nemean Lion or the Chimera.
Each of these descendants has the potential to be portrayed as an Eldritch abomination in its own right. To be precise – according to some accounts, the father of these creatures (and Echidna herself) wasn’t Typhon, but a monstrous, ancient (older than Poseidon) sea god, Phorcys.

How to use Typhon? Well, Typhon clearly has the potential to be a Great Old One, imprisoned by… Nodens? Some other Elder God? Weak gods of humanity? Maybe his cult is trying to free him from Etna? What if he succeeds? What might distinguish Typhon from many other Great Old Ones? I would recommend focusing on his monster progenitor aspect – if he manages to reunite with Echidna, they will immediately start spawning various blasphemous beasts in series.

More Lovecraftian inspirations You will find in the free brochure: https://adeptus7.itch.io/lovecraftian-inspirations-from-real-life-and-beliefs

Hi everyone,

I built this site because I have always been interested in Japanese folklore and mythology, but trying to read about it online usually means navigating incredibly cluttered wikis, and sites buried in ads.

The original stories from texts like the Kojiki or local folklore records are fascinating, and I felt they deserved a better presentation. They should feel like artifacts in a museum, not content in a content mill.

So I started putting together Odyst. It’s a plain, carefully structured archive of yokai, demons, historical figures, and sacred places.

I focused on three things:

Writing clean, encyclopedic entries that cite primary sources.
Creating a minimalist design with strong typography that stays out of the way of the reading experience.
Keeping it completely private. There are no accounts, no tracking cookies, and no favorites synced to a server. You just read and leave.
Right now there are about 54 curated entries, and it's growing slowly. I'm treating this as a long-term reference project rather than a fast-moving product.

I would love for you to take a slow look around. If you notice any historical inaccuracies or know a piece of folklore I should add next, I'd really appreciate your feedback. I'll be around to answer any questions.

https://www.odyst.com/