The archetypal persona seems to move through every telling of their own life with access to explanations they do not extend to anyone else. When they prevail, it reflects strength, intelligence, resilience, discernment, character. When they do not, the result still has to preserve something essential about who they are. Win or lose, the story protects against one ordinary possibility: that they simply did not have what the moment called for, or failed to handle it superbly.

I continue, almost obsessively, returning to these archetypes, patterns, and systems because I am trying to identify the structure beneath them, with the hope that naming the whole may eventually matter more than cataloging its parts.

Have you ever felt reduced to a flaw by someone who is never wrong, while every one of their own failures comes with a full explanation- like either the hero or the victim of circumstances, but never simply a person who dropped the ball? It is exhausting for someone like me.