The Marvelous Deer - Television Tropes & Idioms

Even when giving advice, they can be impressive.

Deer, being wild animals, can easily be magical and mysterious presences while still being hard to reach for humans.

Marvelous deer are often the quarry in hunts. Catching them may be another matter, especially since the marvelous deer tends to be a lone animal; herds of marvelous deer are impractical for maintaining the marvelousness. It can lead to Follow the White Rabbit.

Because they are not predators, they can feature in either the Ghibli Hills or The Lost Woods.

For the deer to be white — or golden — is common.

Contrast Bambification.

Examples

Anime & Manga

In Nichijou Principal Shinonome battles a deer in hand-to-hoof combat, in a sequence which may be symbolic, mystic or just Yuuko's imagination. It's certainly a numinous moment.
The Deer God from Princess Mononoke.

Ballads

In some variants of The Famous Flower of Serving Men, the king is hunting and led off by a milk-white hind.
Oh the hind she broke, the hind she flew
The hind she trampled the brambles through
First she'd mount and then she'd sound
Sometimes before, sometimes behind
In A Lyttle Gest of Robin Hood, Little John uses the tale of one — which, he claims, is green — to lure the sheriff into the woods.

Fairy Tales

In The King Who Would Be Stronger Than Fate, he finds the hermit who tells him his daughter's fate while hunting.
In the course of the beat his dogs disturbed a beautiful snow-white stag, and directly he saw it the king determined that he would have it at any cost. So he put the spurs to his horse, and followed it as hard as he could gallop.
The Brothers Grimm:
- The Two Brothers, one brother, having rescued a princess from the dragon and married her, goes hunting and is lured into danger by a deer.
- In Brother and Sister, Brother is transformed to a white stag, and the king discovers that he can talk and lives with his (still human) sister in the woods. This may be an Americanization, as in the case of Bambi. In the original German, Brother is a roe fawn, not a stag, but roes are not native to North America.

Fan Fiction

In Its A Dangerous Business Going Out Your Door, the Deer of Shimmerwood are the setting's equivalent of wood elves.

Film

Snow White and the Huntsman approach a marvelous deer deep in the forest that seems to be some kind of nature spirite.
Bambi. Bambi's father is the Great Prince of the forest who guards the woodland creatures from the dangers of hunters.
Princess Mononoke tells of the hunt to take the head of the Deer God, the avatar or embodiment of the life of the sacred forests of Japan. By day he is a deer-like god of life with tapir-like feet, a human-like face, and bushy antlers. By night he is the vaguely-bipedal, star-spangled-black god of death. Killing him is a hugely bad idea — all the sacred forests in Japan immediately die, and the beheaded death-god comes close to killing all humans as well.
The large stag in Fantasia 2000 that awakens the Sprite of Spring at the end of winter, and then revives and comforts her after the Firebird wreaks havoc on the forest.

Literature

In C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, they are hunting a stag that grants wishes when they stumble back out of the wardrobe.
In Kate Seredy's The White Stag, it leads them onward at various times.
Harry Potter's patronous is a stag, to symbolism his father's animal form and that he's still watching over him. The seventh book also prominently features a mysterious silver doe that leads Harry to the Sword of Gryffindor. Its actually Snape's patronous, and represents Lily, the woman he loved.
James Thurber's The White Deer. Its nature is central to the story.
In the Dragonlance novel Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the Forestmaster is a sentient, majestic deer that charges the Heroes of the Lance to travel to Xak Tsaroth to retrieve the Disks of Mishakal, an ancient artifact that could help bring back Krynn's gods.
In P.N.Elrod's 'His Father's Son', a mystical boy character who entered a dreamworld-like setting and communicated with a white stag as a spirit guide.
In the Magic Tree House, Merlin is able to turn into a stag.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, while they are in the Mirkwood, one of the first marvels they see is a deer that leaps a wide river. Thorin's shooting it only causes it to stumble a bit.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians:
- Artemis' chariot is pulled by a pair of silver deer that can fly. Percy thinks they look like Santa's reindeer which she takes credit for inspiring.
- In the The Demigod Files short story "The Sword of Hades", Thalia is led to meet Percy and Nico by the Golden Hind, which is, in fact, literally gold.

Myth & Legend

One of the Twelve Labors of Heracles was that he had to capture - alive and unharmed - the Golden Hind sacred to the goddess Artemis.
According to a tale, legendary Japanese warrior Tadakatsu Honda managed to escape his enemies and safely cross a river thanks to a deer. Since that day, he put antlers on his helmet as a sign of respect for all deers.
Saint Patrick and his clerics were going to a hostile king's court, and prayed for protection. The ambushers saw them all as deer. (Which is why the prayer is known as "The Deer's Cry.")
This trope applies to Santa Claus 's reindeer, at least in those versions of holiday folklore that attribute their flight to their own innate abilities (as opposed to Santa's magic, to eating magic grain, etc). Any child who's stayed awake on Christmas Eve listening for their arrival can testify that they're both mysterious and elusive.
In Ars Goetia and other grimoires, the demon Furfur usually looks like a white angelic stag.
The demon prince Ravanna used a golden one of these to kidnap Sita in the Ramayana. Rama tried to capture it for her, leaving his brother Lakshman to guard her. Ravanna then imitated Rama's voice yelling for help to lure Lakshman away, leaving Sita defenseless.

Tabletop Games

Dungeons & Dragons
- Module IM3 The Best of Intentions. During the Olympic Trials, the Immortal PCs compete in an event called "The Wild Hunt". They must chase and kill a great white hart twice as large as a normal deer. The hart is actually another Immortal in deer form.
- Module O2 Blade of Vengeance. Karelia the faedorne sends a magical and intelligent white stag to lead Erystelle to the Circle of Dreams.
Shadowrun. Shasta deer live on the slopes of Mount Shasta in California. They have some connection with local nature spirits and appear to have latent magical abilities similar to those of spirits.
Warhammer's Wood Elves are essentially The Fair Folk, and their leaders have the option of riding Great Stags, which they see as being Nature Spirits in animal form.
Chivalry & Sorcery 3rd Edition adventure Stormwatch has a possible random encounter for a highly chivalrous character. At night they will see a patch of moonlight shining down on a beautiful white hart (roe deer). All attempts to capture the hart will be unsuccessful. A white hart is an old symbol of honor, purity and valor.

Video Games

The King Of Dragon Pass has a recurring event where a hunter from another clan has tracked a white stag to your lands and wants your permission to hunt it.
From the Pok�mon series:
- Stantler, from Pok�mon Gold and Silver . It's said to be able to hypnotize and psychologically affect people and Pokemon with its antlers, which give the illusion of two large eyes in the center of each side.
- Arceus, the God of Pokemon, looks like a white deer.
- Deerling and Sawsbuck from Pokemon Black And White also seem to be based off this concept, being the only Pokemon that change forms with the seasons. Sawsbuck's antlers particularly are marvelous as they're tree branches with leaves that grow and die throughout the year.
- Pok�mon X and Y will feature Xerneas as the cover legendary for X. Its antlers resemble chromosomes, lending credence to the theory that the games will have a genetic theme.
Hircine, the god of hunting in The Elder Scrolls universe, has a white stag as one of his avatars in Skyrim. Hunting the stag is necessary if the Dovahkiin wants to earn Hircine's favor.
In Neverwinter Nights expansion pack Shadows of Undrentide, one of the side-quests involves hunting the Shadow Hart, a magical deer with teleportation powers.
In Assassins Creed III, Connor can accept a quest to hunt a unique deer. According to the huntmaster, several hunters have tried and failed to bring it down before, and they all swear it's got some mysterious power that makes it Immune to Bullets.
In Mabinogi, the deer of Corrib Valley are a minor example. They give you herbs (including the exceedingly rare White Herbs) in exchange for mushrooms.
In Quest for Glory I the hero followed the white stag to its resting place. It led him to the Dryad who was a spirit of nature. If the player attempts to harm the stag the Dryad will turn him into whatever he attacked, invoking a Game Over.
Beast girl Sveta of Golden Sun Dark Dawn is nicknamed "The White Deer" by the people of her homeland, but her werewolf traits show more.

Web Comics

In Tales of the Questor, Quentyn is urged to be true to himself by a white stag, and receives a mark of favor from it. It later wakes him up just before he succumbs to his injuries in a later arc, telling him "Not yet, little one."
In Erstwhile, a deer is one of the forest creatures that looks over Snow White and Rose Red.

Real Life