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Fauns and Satyrs, while originally quite different, have often been fused together, both in the original myths and modern fiction. (Which is why they share a page.) Both are human from the waist up, but fauns have the legs of deer, while satyrs have the legs of goats. Both may have pointed ears, or horns, or both — and for some reason, both are very likely to be male (though fauns seem a bit more likely to have females.)
Originally, Satyrs had the tail and ears of either horses or donkeys, though later they acquired goat legs, becoming almost identical to fauns. Their goat parts may be a reminder of their nasty nature. In earlier Greek art they were portrayed as quite ugly, though later they became more youthful and graceful. They were associated with sex, wine, and pipe playing (the Classical Greek equivalent of Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll). They also laughed at everything, and had reverence for none but their patron deity, Pan.
A faun, more akin to deer than to goats, would be the satyr's more gentle and retiring cousin, preferring the forest to the field. They live in harmony with nature, and are generally just low-key and peaceful. They also had goat legs originally, though now they also have deer legs in popular art (maybe because faun sounds like fawn?)
The most famous of all goat people is the great god Pan, and his Roman counterpart Faunus/Inuus. Pan was the god of all wild creatures, and had a trickster streak a mile wide. Despite his wildness and temper (his shouts would inspire pan-ic in all who heard him) he was a true friend to shepherds and little critters. And if your Satyr lives underground in a cavern full of flame, as well being more red skinned than before, he might be a bit nastier...
See also Our Centaurs Are Different.
Anime and Manga[]
- Caesar Clown's Gas Mask Mooks in One Piece actually become this semi-biologically. They used to be fully human, but because they lost the use of their legs due to the poisonous gas on Punk Hazard, they were given new animal legs by Trafalgar Law.
Fan Works[]
- Speaking of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, "Satyrs" have become somewhat popular on 4Chan's /mlp/ board and brony sites like Derpibooru in the New Tens. Essentially they are the theoretical offspring of Anonymous and one of the ponies, with the entire Mane 6 having Fanon satyr children all with generally agreed-upon appearances and personalities. Even a number of minor characters like Gilda, a Griffin in canon, and Chrysalis have been done as well, and even one of the Diamond Dogsnote, a Dog humanoid in canon.
Film[]
- Disney and Pixar:
- Disney's Hercules has Phil the satyr, he was Hercules friend and trainer. He was also quite perverted, but being a Disney film he went through Bowdlerization to a Chivalrous Pervert.
- Disney's Fantasia also includes fauns.
- Pixar's Onward has some of them has background characters, but in one early idea that we even supposed to get a tritagonist named Jenny the satyress in one point of development.
- Pans Labyrinth has a wooden decay faun that guides the protagonist.
- Percy Jackson's Black Best Friend Grover, at least in the movie.
- Allegro Non Troppo features an eldery satyr chasing after nymphs, with no success.
- In Manos the Hands of Fate, Torgo is meant to be one, but instead just looks like a guy with deformed wonky knees in final cut.
- What little we in see of the real Santa Claus in Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale implies him to be a creature like this.
- My Little Pony: The Movie (2017): The main secret villain, the Storm King, has a mostly non-human satyric appearance, being essentially a yeti with goat-like hooves and horns.
Literature[]
- Mr. Tumnus, a faun in the The Chronicles of Narnia. Also, other fauns are mentioned thoughout the series, along with satyrs. The difference between them is that fauns have long tails, and satyrs have goat tails. The recent films expanded this difference, and made fauns human from the waist up with regular got tails, and satyrs looking more like human-sized goats that walk on their hind legs.
- In Xanth, Fauns love chasing nymphs and simulating summoning the stork with them.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a novel called The Marble Faun, though the faun there is the statue by Praxiteles, which is almost totally human in form. The faun has a human counterpart, however, in the novel's Donatello (no, not that one), Count of Monti Beni.
- Martin Silenus from Hyperion undergoes Space Opera style body modifications to turn himself into a satyric figure.
- One story by Thomas Burnett Swann (who apparently wrote a lot of mythology themed stories), was about a human's friendship with a faun, and portrayed them as having Blue and Orange Morality.
- In the Camp Half-Blood Universe, Satyrs and Fauns are considered as the same things.
- Satyrs appear in the Fablehaven books. They have some of the qualities of the original satyrs (they're often seen trying to impress girls, and at one point, they offer Seth wine), but they're also TV addicts.
- In the book Through the Ice the character Rame is in self-exile from the community of satyrs because he considers himself a faun. While he is less obsessed with sex and thus somewhat more acceptable to humans, his fellow satyrs treat him like a pervert.
- The Orphans Tales series features the Gaselli, who are obviously enough more related to Gazelle, but have a similar motif. A race of nature-oriented beings with cloven hooves. They tend to be more interested in food than sex however.
- Eshkol and her family represent more traditional version of this trope.
- The Firebringer Trilogy has "pans," which are basically blue-skinned fauns.
- Kate Forsyth's Witches of Eileanan universe has "satyricorns." While they mostly look like the traditional model in appearance (except for being seven feet tall, having a variable number and arrangement of horns, and having six mammaries) and behavior (albeit towards the nastier side), they zigzag the trope by being primarily female.
Mythology and Religion[]
- The original Fauns and Satyrs the Trope Namers.
- Glaistigs from Scottish mythology are similar to satyrs. Apparently, they were exclusively female.
- Diañu Burlón are pretty much Asturian or Northwestern Spanish version of both Leprechaun and Satyrs, but ironically less demonized entities and also they're a sub-mythical creature of Trasgu which they are just more Asturian/Spanish Leprechaun and like others, similar creatures are revisioned by Early Christians who want demonized Pagans by means demonized their mythological creatures.
- The Greek nature god Pan and his Roman counterpart Faunus, which is clearly the same word as 'faun'.
- The Gaulish/Celtic hunter god Cernunnos is sometimes the Celtic counterpart of Pan/Faunus.
- The English "ghost", Herne the Hunter who even acts as English pagan counterpart of Pan/Faunus as few portrayals are sometimes like this (Most examples are seen media are Over the Garden Wall who treated in theory as mixed of him and satan by appearance/personality or Webcomic Dreaming of Utopia that treated him as their Death-like Horned God from fictionalized version of Furry fandom where their universe they are religion)
- The Horned God, a variation on Cernunnos, is worshiped in certain Wiccan circles.
- Satan and his demons are often depicted similarly to fauns, (though never in The Bible) having cloven hooves and horns, with the addition of a long tail with a arrow head shape at the end, (sometimes) bat wings, and a bright red color. See Big Red Devil.
- "Satyr" is the translation of the Hebrew se'irim in the King James Bible. According to The Other Wiki, a more literal translation is "hairy ones."
- Krampus is mostly based on this and Satan, Who presents a Southern German version of Bad Santa Claus. Put their theory by historians that Krampus origins were connected to pre-Germanic paganism instead Christians combines Satan with other Pre-Alpine creatures.
- Goatman(s) from United States are the recurring urban mythical creatures in Southern United States. Interestingly, all of them wield an axe as their Weapon of Choice.
- Maryland's Goatman - One version claims he was a normal human turned into a goat hybrid possibly by genetic engineering.
- Texas Goatman/Lake Worth Monster - It haunts the aforementioned Lake and has the most goat-like appearance of the bunch.
- Kentucky's Pope Lick Monster - Said to live under a railway bridge with one of its origin stories claiming it was either Sheep or Goat hybrid-like Circus Freak that escaped and now kills people who dare enter its home (the aforementioned bridge).
Other[]
- Mallarme's poem, the tone-poem based on the poem, and the ballet based on the tone-poem, all sharing a name: L'Apres-midi d'un faun (The Afternoon Of A Faun).
Tabletop RPG[]
- Dungeons and Dragons Has satyrs that are a combination of the fauns and satyrs of Greek Mythology.
- Shadowrun. Both male and female satyrs have large curling horns like a bighorn sheep. They're implied to be the Awakened version of the wild goat. Their saliva can ferment sugary liquids into alcohol.
- Another type of Satyr exists, as a racial variant of the Ork Metatype.
- Beastmen in Warhammer are about all the darkest parts of this put together.
- Broos in Rune Quest.
- There are also actual satyrs. Mistaking the two for one another is not a good idea. The Broos are chaos creatures that breed by raping any creatures that are available (all Broos are male), and their offspring takes features of those creatures. Farm animals, especially goats are apparently most easily available for them.
- In GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, Saturs are a possible character race, which includes females as well.
Theater[]
- The famous Greek tragedies originally came in tetralogies. The first three were traditional tragedies following some sort of story arch. The final play was a Satyr play which satirized the first three (though "satyr" and "satire" aren't actually etymologically related) and also made tasteless jokes about well-known people. They were so-called because the actors wore fur leggings and big fake leather cocks, like satyrs.
Video Games[]
- Satyrs also show up in Dragon Quest VIII, in the bestiary. They use their flutes as a weapon.
- Satyrs in the Warcraft universe are half-demonic corrupted night elves, and Fauns are half-daughters of the Demigod Cenarius.
- Spyro the Dragon: Ripto's Rage/Gateway to Glimmer has both fauns and satyrs. In addition to primary character Elora, there are humanoid-looking fauns and satyrs in the Fracture Hills, and more monster-y looking fauns in the Magma Cone. Exactly what differentiates them is not entirely clear.
- It's also worth noting that the Fracture Hills fauns, and to a lesser extant Elora, aren't all that humanoid to begin with. The ones in Fracture Hills in particular look more like anthropomorphic wolves with goat legs.
- The fauns in Fracture Hills are all female, and the satyrs are male. However, Magma Cone has male fauns.
- Diablo has Goatmen, which are actually demons and not related to either goats or humans.
- Goat demons appears also in the second Devil May Cry game as Elite Mooks.
- The satyrs in Will Rock are mooks armed with bows.
- Lucifer in Dantes Inferno
- One of the two races of Beastmen in Radiant Historia, the appropriately-named Satyros, take this form.
- Satyrs feature in the God of War series as some of the toughest regular enemies.
- Undertale have one Faun literally named Faun who portayal as Deer-like monster.
Web Comics[]
- In Men In Hats, Aram tells Gamal he used to be one of these, before the forest burned down, the animals died and his goat legs "turned into butterflies and flew away."
- Ursula from The Horrifying Experiments of Dr. Pleasant! has horns and goat legs bellow her knees.
Web Original[]
- Though his species is named "the Dashkin", Bitey in Brackenwood is quite similar to a faun, with goat legs and horns, though his face is furry. He is also extremely fast and an amoral trickster.
- There are either independent species or just "race" nicknamed in-universe 'Faunus' in RWBY aren't fully related of Roman god of same name or his Fauns; put only share of idea are every Faunus people have different type of other animal traits by depends usually common for there ears, horns or rarely tails.
Western Animation[]
- Small unnamed Faun appear in Gravity Falls episode that serves as a guard for a group of Unicorns.
- In the Don't Dimension It plot of the canonical official graphical comic, Gravity Falls: Lost Legends, has a alternative version of Mabel Pines as "Faunbel" who is portrayed as a ram horned female faun, that wears a green leaf printed sweater.
- A few fauns were seen in Bacchus' fictional paradise in Lazy Smurf's dream in The Smurfs episode "Paradise Smurfed".
- Tewt from The Mighty Hercules was a recurring character as Newton's sidekick.
- In series finale of China, IL that one of main character discovered later on that he unknowledgely dates female satyress all long.
- Have one in episode of Mr. Pickles when his father dream and wished to be dog for one day.
- In the episode Daydream Believer from My Life as a Teenage Robot, has Jenny's newly installed dream mode chip was malfunctioning from a accident, has cause her to stuck on dream mode. Which cause her surrounding to resemble the world of Dr. Seuss crossed with Greek mythology. One of her malfunctions sees her closest two friends, Brag and Tuck, as Dr. Seuss-style fully goat satyrs.