Going absolutely insane over the concept of name and identity in The Odyssey. The concept of recognition. Like, the reveal of one's identity is present in both The Iliad and The Odyssey, but specifically The Odyssey drives me into despair.
The Phaeacians don't recognize Odysseus. His family doesn't recognize Odysseus (except his dog!! all praise Argos). Odysseus doesn't recognize Ithaca. There's barely any recognition without revealing, and Odysseus takes a while to reveal himself. Chronologically speaking, his first disguise in The Odyssey is Nobody. And when he does reveal his true identity, it causes him and his crew pain and suffering. Maybe that instilled a fear of revealing his true identity. His name invoked the death of his men. And all his other identities (too tired to remember/look for all the names he's gone under), while realistic and authentic sounding, are non-existent. All those people he claimed he was are not real. They are nobody. If he is not Odysseus, he is nobody, and if he is not nobody, he is Odysseus. But Odysseus, his fucking name drives me insane. His name means to hate. Since his childhood that hatred was imprinted on him. Do you think it left an lasting impact?? Some sort of "expectation" that he had to meet?? A curse, a constant shadow following him everywhere he goes?? Something he inherited, that is tied to him even if it's not his?? Hate was tied to him directly through his name that his grandfather gave him. In The Iliad, everyone refers to him as "Son of Laertes (which is obviously the way they identified as back then)", "sacker of cities", "long-enduring" etc etc. But Odysseus refers to himself as "Father of Telemachus". Also this:
He swears by his son's name, by the name of someone, something that is his. Something that is not inherited, that isn't placed upon him. Something that he earned himself. Something that he loves, the opposite of the hate that is his name. It's a part of him, part of his identity. And if he is not the son of Telemachus, then he isn't Odysseus. He is nobody.
But in The Odyssey, he refers to himself as the sacker of cities. When he introduces himself to the Phaeacians, he says that he is the sacker of cities. His invention of the Trojan horse was the bane of Troy. And that trick is a part of him, his cunning and trickery. He destroyed the home of hundreds, thousands of people. And do you think, that after every hardship he faced on his journey back home, he lost his sense of self?? In the war, he had the hope of going back home. He had the hope that he would see his wife and son again. As long as the other kings and soldiers are there, also longing to go back home, then his hope is real. He is real. But after all of his men died, he was alone. No one to share his longing, to share his hope. No one is there to remind him that he is real. So he only has his newer memories, new things that are tied to him. Sacker of cities. Long enduring. Doesn't sound all that happy. It almost sounds like hate. Without the hope of seeing everything that is his because he earned/worked for it himself, he goes back to his name. It might be the only thing grounding him, reminding him that he is real. And when he hears the bard sing of the fall of Troy, the man absolutely weeps. Because he sings about him. He sings about the fall of Troy, and it fell because of him. It fell because he is the sacker of cities. He is the sacker of cities because he is Odysseus. Because he doesn't know who he is. And even Penelope when she listens to the bard wants him to sing about something else. Someone else. Because that is not her Odysseus, her husband, her son's father. It hurts her to think that even though he might be alive, her Odysseus is gone. He is dead either way. And even his son when he sees him first thinks he is a god. That he is not human, that he is not a man. Because gods are immortal, ever lasting. And mortals have only a lifetime to make it worth it, to attach something to themselves and their names. And Telemachus thinks that his father is a god, that his father has no name and no identity of his own.
And when his loved ones recognize him, it's by the things he attached himself to during the war. The things that are a part of his real identity, of his identity. Odysseus tells his son that he is his father. Argos recognizes him as his master. Eurycleia recognizes his scar that he earned when he went hunting. He tells his father about the trees in the orchard. And Penelope finally believes it's him because of the olive tree bed story. The bed that he built himself. That he built his home around. And Penelope doesn't believe it's truly Odysseus, because he is not the man that left Ithaca twenty years ago. But when Odysseus is able to tell her about the bed, she can believe it's Odysseus. Or atleast a part of him is there. It's Odysseus Odysseus, the name and identity that he built. And not Odysseus, the name that simply means hate.
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Ranking Every Wolfwood!!
happy wolfwood wednesday! i've ranked every wolfwood and it very quickly got out of hand and turned into more of a character analysis/meta. it was really fun and helped me better understand why i love this guy so much!
yes, really!
i hope you guys enjoy and that my autistic rambling makes sense!
1. trimax wolfwood. yeah he’s perfect. nothing else to say. god bless
while i can’t fit everything i love about him into one post, just know that i’ve written almost 30,000 words in wolfwood (and vash) character studies. so when i say “i like trimax wolfwood” that really means “i am fucking obsessed with trimax wolfwood”.
he’s the perfect mix of silly and heartbreaking, funny and serious, annoying like an older brother, deeply kind, so so painfully human; and a PERFECT foil to vash. simply phenomenal writing.
my only complaint would be that his tits are not on display like they are in the 1998 anime. but i can appreciate the subtly, so this doesn’t detract from his otherwise flawless score.
2. 98 wolfwood. omg hiiiii hehe twirling my hair ohh he’s so handsome what an absolutely beautiful design for him. his nose, his spider-esque shape, his TITS…… they even kept his little whiskers!
on top of an amazing design, he’s a very good balance of silly, irritable, playfully annoying, and serious! he fits pre-trimax wolfwood to a T!
but, as trimax progressed…
he’s cool. too cool. he has too much pull. wolfwood should NOT have swag. genuinely it is imperative to his character that he is, and i say this as lovingly as possible, a fucking loser with no friends.
wolfwood is a deeply traumatized man. he isn’t nearly as charming as we, the audience, thinks he is. no one laughs at his jokes, his insults are crude and immature, he embarrasses himself in front of literal children…
god, he is so painfully awkward. and who wouldn’t be in his situation? to have your childhood stolen and forced to grow up as a weapon? not allowed to interact casually with anyone else during the most important developmental stage of your life?
he's just not suave like tri98 wolfwood is. so, while 98 wolfwood is an excellent character, he doesn’t entirely read “wolfwood” to me. similar to how 98 vash is good on his own, but he’s just not “vash”. this is, of course, the result of making an anime out of a manga that wasn’t even 30% finished at the time. while i don’t understand the reasoning behind this, i know that nightow desperately needed the funds the anime brought in, as well as the motivation to keep making trimax, so i have to simply make peace with the dated characterizations tri98 has.
but don’t get me started on the milly situation. really a godawful writing decision, idk who approved that mess.
3. tristamp wolfwood. he is so bullyable. he’s like a sopping wet cat. absolute fucking dweeb.
i debated this for a long time—whether i should rank tristamp wolfwood above tri98 wolfwood. and i asked myself, do i love tri98 wolfwood because he’s a good character and is similar to trimax wolfwood? does he even remind me of trimax wolfwood at all? well, not really, he’s very clearly based on pre-trimax, just like tri98 vash is.
ultimately i decided i do genuinely just prefer tri98 wolfwood, but i felt the need to defend tristamp wolfwood because i see a lot of fair criticisms but also really dumb discourse throughout the fandom about him. so here’s my attempt at trying to address these:
so, there are some things i really enjoy about him and some things i really dislike; and, unlike vash, most of these criticisms are not a result of time/pacing issues. they’re easily fixable.
like, for the love of god he NEEDS to get sillier. they got the loser part down, but he’s a bit too overtly sad in tristamp. i think he will be more like his trimax self in season 2, but wolfwood’s humor is in-part a coping mechanism and important to his character. he’s an older brother! he’s fucking annoying! he thinks he's funny when he isn't! we do get a little bit of this with him and meryl, when he's tormenting her at the campfire, and that’s what i want to see more of. even if he’s playing it up, he should be working on getting their guards down, convincing them he isn't going to betray them.
since tristamp takes place in a weird prequel sort of canon, i get that he would look/act younger than he is in trimax. i think he was modeled after the teenage wolfwood we see in the flashback scenes of him training for the eye of michael, where he’s noticeably less outgoing and more reserved.
however, this doesn’t change the fact that he WAS silly as a kid in trimax, before his “teenage angst phase” (hate to call it that when it’s more like a “realizing he’s going to die by the gun and not being able to do anything about it” phase). but he’s still a lot quieter and reserved in tristamp as a kid, so i think we really need to find a good balance here in the trigun adaptations.
another example of an easily fixable issue—i really hate how they did the “vash sees how kind wolfwood is” scene, in which wolfwood gives money/snacks to children. in tristamp, wolfwood already knows the kid is zazie, which tells us absolutely nothing about his character. this scene is almost entirely worthless, only good for reminding vash that he should eat, which gives tristamp its own not-as-good hospital yuri scene.
and, so, about the elephant in the room… i don’t think he was whitewashed. let me try to explain my thought process.
tristamp, as far as i can tell, doesn’t seem to be taking any inspiration from tri98, whose wolfwood is very explicitly a brown man. trimax wolfwood i feel is a bit more ambiguous in his skin tone, which alternates between dark screentones and completely uncolored pretty much at solid 50/50 odds. just fairly inconsistent overall, even on the official manga covers.
but this doesn’t mean wolfwood is white in tristamp, and it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his aquiline nose. the notorious scenes of him in the suns, looking white as a fucking sheet, shows us how a 3D environment can diminish a character’s silhouette and distinctive features.
compare this to scenes of wolfwood in a dim environment, or to the 2D scenes of child wolfwood and livio that i can't include bc i'm only allowed 10 pics. he looks MUCH better, much darker than vash, and as they both should appear in such lighting. it just doesn't add up—he should be much darker in strong light if they followed the same color values:
SO, even though i feel like all of this is more of a technical issue rather than malicious whitewashing, that doesn’t mean i think it’s acceptable. it looks fucking awful, and the lighting system needs major improvement to work with darker skin tones.
and, like, at the end of the day, wolfwood isn’t canonically latino, and he doesn't really have a consistent skin tone either. it’s a great headcanon, one i partially share, but it’s not canon. the only ethnicity that could technically be considered somewhat canon is japanese, as wolfwood was based off a japanese singer named tortoise matsumoto. you can see this resemblance best in early trigun!
and i really need to defend his nose!!! a lot of people say he lost his nose but he didn’t!! i promise it’s there!!! another victim of his 3D model, you can only see his nose from the side or in the 2D frame after he gets his shit wrecked. see how clearly he has a very well-defined nose when he’s hand-drawn? this is what i mean when i say a 3D environment can drastically alter a character’s important features, as much as i otherwise adore the animation for this show.
also, if you think nightow would let studio orange get away with not including his nose, you got another thing coming.
in conclusion, while i think tristamp wolfwood is a great start, he’s just not quite there yet. but i have immense faith that the next time we see him, he’ll look and act a lot more like he does in trimax!
i know this is true, because there are already some shots in tristamp where i’m just like. oh yeah. there he is. that’s wolfwood. there's the guy i love so much
...
well, that was long! this was really fun to write and i
oh jesus christ what the hell is that thing
4. badlands rumble wolfwood. ah, now here’s a great example of overt whitewashing. no lighting excuses this time, just blatant colorism.
even if he wasn’t ghostly white, there's just something about his design that makes me viscerally uncomfortable and i can’t pinpoint what it is exactly. he’s just so… angular. he has no scruff, no kitty cat mouth, his eyes are very oddly shaped, almost no eyebrows... i just really hate looking at him!
his ONLY saving grace is how mentally ill he acts in this movie. and his tits. otherwise i don’t really have much to say about him!
ok, now we’re done! and here’s a handy wolfwood chart i made to summarize everything.
really hope this was fun to read and if people liked this i'd be glad to write a vash version or other characters!! happy woowoo wednesday :)
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