Ahriman - Day 182
Race: Tyrant Arcana: Tower Alignment: Dark-Chaos June 10th, 2025
...Look, I didn't say it had to be good gay rep, okay?
Finally, I'm talking about a boogeyman I've been avoiding for quite a while. Zoroastrianism is one of the most interesting rabbit holes of a religion out there, with several different ideas working together to create a massive, winding narrative. Being one of the oldest religions in the world, its tales are many and storied, and most of them originate from one man: the Iranian prophet Zarathushtra, better known as Zoroaster. Interestingly, Zoroastrianism can be seen as the source of many of the most prolific religions in the world today, such as Islam and Christianity, as it's essentially the ur-Abrahamic faith. It could even be seen as the first ever popular attempt at a monotheistic religion! However, just because the practitioners of this faith worship one god doesn't mean that there aren't more- in fact, the gods of the old Iranian religion were merged to become aspects of Ahura Mazda, the primary god of the religion; all except for one. Today's Demon of the Day, and the primary evil of Zoroastrian faith: Ahriman.
In Zoroastrianism, there are two sides: Good and evil, locked in an eternal struggle where good is destined to triumph. The good side is headed by Ahura Mazda, whose omnipotence is restrained only by this struggle, and with enough help, he can overcome his shackles to defeat evil... eventually. Meanwhile, his eternal rival is Ahriman, whose original name (Angra Mainyu) literally translates to evil spirit. I'm sure you can guess what he does. Ahriman is the source of all negativity, conflict, confusion, and controls all demons by his own will.
Now, why is he being spotlighted during pride month? Well, past the, uh... pridemon shirt (which I love and want really bad), Ahriman stands as representing evil, and it's not hard to see that one of the oldest religions in the world could represent homosexuality as being evil. As such, on top of being pure evil in every sense, Ahriman also became the patron of homosexuality. I am not kidding. He essentially sponsored gay sex, and in a story that I can't find for the life of me but desperately want to find, outlined in the book 'Men, Homosexuality, and the Gods' by Ronald E. Long, he... okay, bare with me for a second, I'm just gonna copy and paste off the Wikipedia article on LGBT themes in mythology because I think it's really fucking funny.
When Ahriman, the "Spirit of Aridity and Death" and "Lord of Lies", seeks to destroy the world, he engages in self-sodomy. This homosexual self-intercourse causes an "explosion of evil power" and results in the birth of a host of evil minions and demons.
He self-fucks and causes an evil explosion that spawns a ton of demons. Or maybe he masturbates? I don't know man lmao
So, yeah! If you're a homosexual man who's capable of doing that, tell me if you're capable of summoning minions to do your will if you do, okay?
Now, in SMT, Ahriman takes on a variety of forms- the one I personally most associate with him is his Reason form as one of the final bosses of SMT Nocturne, but he's also got a really fantastic design in Dx2, of all games.
Both of them capture the lord of evil thing well, and I love how they both share common traits in having horns and bug wings; it's a really nice connecting thread through both designs.
even still, i can't get over the burst of evil energy. god imagine jerking off and when you finish you give off such a malicious energy that demons follow you thats so fucking funny