Know Your Archetype: Arch Nemesis

Everywhere you go....you always take the weather with you...

Darren & Endora

Superman & Lex

Cartman & Kyle

Lindsay Lohan & Better Judgment

Power Puff Girls & Mojo Jojo

Jon Stewart & Fox News

Okay, you get the idea. But lest you think the Arch Nemesis is just another villain, think again, hero. The Arch Nemesis is a much more intimate relationship, if you will, to the protagonist. This specific antagonist is often so similar in characteristics, so aligned by the stars, a doppelganger with flowers, that sometimes it's difficult to discern just when or how the nemesis is actualized or becomes a problem. The  relationship is more like two sides of a coin; perhaps the two sides are aware of the other, but it gets dropped in the jukebox to play the song all the same.

In Azeroth, there are many arch nemesis and villains. There are full-blown rivals, soul-blasting feuds and battles, and then there are the little, itchy rash-bringers, who get under our skin for which there is no ointment. Consider your ubiquitous trade-chat personality, or perhaps even one fight you just can't learn the dance steps to.  There may be one or two other players in the guild who have crept into your mind, gotten under your skin. You can't explain why - but the undercurrents of tension are there. They may respond to you in ways they don't to others, the old-fashioned expression "butter wouldn't melt in their mouth" I never understood that one - guess it means the person is amazingly cool and self-possessed.

Whomever you may point to as your own personal arch nemesis, remember that scene in Star Wars where Luke takes a detour to the Dagobah system: the real nemesis is our own self-doubt, and fear. We take ourselves wherever we go, and if someone else is getting in our minds, it only takes casual analysis to see that that person is usually very similar to ourselves, and our own irritating ways. We just don't want to see it, or be around it. In our own heads, we can put our bad selves in time out; in the physical world, it is not so easy to squash. There is always that moment in the hero's path where he must go to the darkness, the wilderness, and be alone with his own goofy self for awhile.

If you find that you're being followed by a doppelganger who won't take the hint, it's time to take a walk, a break, a good look. And point of fact; you are probably more worried about them than they are about you. Unless of course you're Fox News.