[MEGA SUPER SPOILERS] My interpretations on Psychopomp

[LeCrinjus]

WARNING: This entire text is filled to the brim with SPOILERS!!! I'd highly recommend you to play the entire game first before reading any portions of it.

Alright so first thing, I have to congratulate the dev for making such an EPIC game, even the free version of it was pretty good and this one is indeed very better. (and also works really well on Linux! I played it to the end and haven't met any glitches mentioned so far in the discussions). I legitimately can't wait for Psychopomp 2, and I'll even check out the dev's other games whenever I can. That's some genuine good stuff right there.

Okay now for THEORY TIME...

After playing the full game I couldn't help but notice a couple oddities with it. I can see the world has lore and story behind it, and I do still find very interesting to read about what's going on in an objective concrete point of view, such as the entire thing with the "bug person" from the TV in daddy's bad place, the mentions of the dragonfly queen, the humans being weird clay creatures and all that, but that's stuff that at least in my view I believe was already talked about well enough by others, and I do have one interpretation that I don't think I've seen anyone bringing up anywhere else (either that or I didn't research well enough, at the very least the stuff I checked out didn't mention it at all), which is to consider the game with a more abstract and symbolic point of view.

Before I even begin though, I'd just like to bring up a rather important detail to all this, in the form of a rather simple question: What exactly is a "psychopomp"?

If you consider the classic interpretation, this would be based on the greek term "psychopompós", which translates to "guide of souls", or more specifically some individual or creature that helps the spirits of the recently departed by guiding them into the afterlife. You could associate Pompy as such thing, considering she just goes around killing a bunch of creatures in the entire game, in many instances being forced to do so to proceed, maybe there's some merit to this interpretation already. But to me the more interesting meaning and the one that I'm going to base my entire theory on due to how I see it applying to the rest of the game, is the psychological one.

According to jungian psychology, a "psychopomp" is a mediator between the unconscious and the conscious realms.

And now here comes the main kicker. When it comes to the main playable characters, being Pompy (Queen of Venus) and the king of Mercury, there's lots of details that at least from my interpretation can be associated further more with jungian psychology; I'd say both are a form of personification of the concepts of the conscious/ego and unconscious/id, and that Pompy is supposed to represent the id, and the king of mercury the ego. The main reason I think this is due to them being pretty much exact opposites in pretty much every way, but also still matching some symbologies that lead me to associate them with id/ego:

• Pompy's world is extremely dark and chaotic, while Mercury's is bright and seemingly orderly; the id and ego are usually associated with dark/chaos and light/order respectively.
  
  
• Pompy herself is a rather chaotic character, even her own way of speaking tends to have more abstract interpretations of things, and Mercury's descriptions are more straight and to-the-point and seem to be more objective. Even the way each of them reacts to a simple vending machine is incredibly different; to note, the id represents the unconscious mind which is more related to abstract and instinctive thougths, while the ego is the conscious mind more related to objective and analytical thoughts.
  
  
• Pompy is always seen with a goofy grin on her face, and Mercury is more stoic and harder to read emotionally; the id is where a person's uncontrollable instincts lie, and the ego is what puts your emotions in check.
  
  
• Pompy is a woman, and Mercury is a man; this matches the jungian archetypes of anima (feminine) and animus (masculine). And more so, Pompy is the queen of Venus and at the end of the game creates new life, and Mercury is, well, the king of Mercury, and is also a businessman; the names Venus and Mercury come from roman mythology: Venus was the goddess of fertility, and Mercury the god of finances. (this last tidbit doesn't have much to do with jungian psychology, but it's still interesting to bring up in my opinion)
  
  
• It's interesting to note that Pompy yields a hammer, and Mercury a nail. A hammer is a tool that can be used for applying force or causing destruction, while a nail could be used like a chisel to sculpt things or to hold two objects together.

There could be more symbology with Pompy liking dragonflies and Mercury liking beetles, but that one just escapes me entirely.

So if Pompy is the id and the king of Mercury is the ego, and the psychopomp is the "intermediator", then it's quite interesting that in the game (specifically at the home area) there's some NPC that says the psychopomp machine is working at 0% effectiveness. Which means that Venus and Mercury are NOT being intermediated by anything. In jungian psychology, a perfect balance between the id and ego (or the individuation process) is what leads to self-realization, and such process cannot really be made without such intermediation between the id's unconscious impulses and the ego's conscious control. This interpretation can explain the epilogue scene of the game, in which (at least from how I think went on to happen) there was going to be some fight between Venus and Mercury. That would be equivalent to either this individuation process, or considering the "psychopomp working at 0%" comment, could even be equivalent to the id taking over and causing a major inbalance; akin to a repressed id attempting to take over the ego.

Based on all that, I MAY have some speculation on where the game's overall storyline and the future sequel could end up going. Although I feel like I shouldn't ruin the surprise of it all, even if there could be a good chance I might be wrong. I may mention it if people are curious though (and I also remember to check this thread again).

TL;DR: The game may have symbolism that indicates themes based on jungian psychology, with Pompy (queen of Venus) being the id, and the king of Mercury being the ego.

I hope all this text was somewhat understandable, this is the first time I go on trying to interpret a game, and it just had to be with such advanced concepts such as jungian psychology. I don't claim to be a big brain genius on understanding psychology, I'm just a gamer nerd who's roamed way too many wiki pages. Also by the way I don't claim to be completely right in my interpretation, I could even just be completely entirely wrong. But that's the cool thing about art in general: it's not really much about what it means for real, but more so what kind of meanings people find for themselves. This just happens to be the meaning that I found. I'd say even the fact there's people trying to piece together what exactly goes on with the game is very cool, this is the kind of stuff that can make games live far longer than you can imagine (people still to this day discuss about Silent Hill for example).

Alright, that's all. Have a good day, and play some videogames.