[posts]


Why "Asterion"?
by Asterion
16 MAR 2026

A thought occured to me a few days ago that whoever visits this blog may wonder why it's called Asterion's Labyrinth, or why I call myself Asterion. It seems worth explaining as I think it would give people a clue as to what I'm like.

Asterion, if you don't know, is the Cretan name for the Minotaur: a character who I've identified with for a long time.

My interest in the character started some time in 2022. In the midst of my teen angst, I happened to find a visual novel themed around the Minotaur. The story, writing, art and sound work all made for an experience that blew me away the first time I played it. I was inspired to research the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur, including where it's been referenced in popular culture. I started with the short story of The House of Asterion in a book I had already owned, Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. Come 2026, the game led me to add Steven Sherrill's The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break and The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time to my bedroom bookshelf, as well as Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red.

The House of Asterion is narrated to the reader by Asterion himself. He describes his endless house (the labyrinth), the games he plays, his routine of delivering the nine men who arrive every nine years from evil, and how he waits for someone to come and "redeem him". The twist comes abruptly at the end after Asterion wonders what his redeemer will be like, as Theseus says to his companion, "Would you believe it, Ariadne? The Minotaur scarcely defended himself." I interpret this as Asterion welcoming death as redemption (if death is what he even expected).

Sherrill's novels are quite different. The premise is that the Minotaur (known here simply as "M") escaped the Cretan Labyrinth at some point, and has since lived an immortal, semi-nomadic existence. Cigarette Break is set in 1990's rural North Carolina where M works as a line cook at a steakhouse, living in a boat-shaped trailer and fixing motor vehicles as a hobby. Sweet Time is set 16 years after Cigarette Break, where M now works as a Civil War reenactor in central Pennsylvania and lives out of a motel. But both novels portray the Minotaur as "a socially inept, lonely creature with very human needs" who tries fruitlessly to find human relationships, having shed his ferality a long time ago. The way M tries to navigate the world, often coming up at dead ends, having to uproot his life and move when "change" comes again, leads me to believe that immortality is this Minotaur's new labyrinth.

Autobiography of Red is a reimagination of Stesichorus' fragmentary poem Geryoneis as a queer coming-of-age story. Geryon here is another monstrous, yet human character. He is a winged red creature that grows up in a dysfunctional family, taking to photography as an escape and eventually, as a teenager, falling in love with a rebellious young man named Heracles who leaves him at the peak of his infatuation. I should probably read this one again, as I don't have any interpretation of it to share.

There is a common set of themes these stories all have, which is basically that they humanize characters traditionally seen as monsters. The visual novel, Borges' short story, and Sherrill's books humanize the Minotaur, and Carson's verse novel humanizes Geryon. These monsters are alone, different, shunned, misunderstood. They yearn for genuine human connection. The Labyrinth, in the Minotaur's case, is either figuratively or literally his prison.

These have all been themes of my own life as my first post mostly shows. But something I didn't mention there was the strange mind I grew up with. It's some form of neurodivergency to be sure. It was first diagnosed as Asperger's syndrome, but over the years I have seen it be referred to as autism or something and such else. I personally believe my condition is too nebulous for proper classification. Whatever it may be, I have struggled with it to an extent for most of my life. Others have considered me childish or disabled for it. It has given me physical and mental tics that are uncomfortable or even alarming at times. It makes me very forgetful. 

But as much of a curse as my condition can be, it's just as much a blessing if not moreso. It has given me a mental clarity and strength of will that I haven't seen many others possess. I can also confidently attribute to it my lifelong love of learning, which would even interfere with my public school "learning" at times. I've developed a strong empathy for all kinds of animals, and a healthy skepticism of what many others take as good or unchangeable at face value.

It's in these stories that I've found great perspective on my own life. I don't need to be rescued or cured to become worthy of love. I don't need to hate myself for who I am. I can live free without apology, warts and all. I will wear my horns with pride and, if I dare, engrave them with intricate designs. I can live with being a monster that is yet still human.

That is why I am Asterion.