#had to read gilgamesh for a class and man
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I just read the little ballerina and boxer one and wanted to ask you if you can continue it. Maybe Gil showing up to one of her shows and invites her to dinner afterwards. And of course, he brought a single flower, because one flower says more than a thousand.
Hugs and much love! 🖤✨
"Bye Miss Thena!"
"Goodnight, girls," Thena bid her little goslings goodbye, the young women flitting out of the dressing room and already laughing about the cast party about to take place. Everyone was on their way for it, and as the newest troupe of performers making their debut, they would be the toast of things.
Thena was just looking forward to going home and getting some hard earned rest. Then, she could finally wake up to her normal life again. No more rehearsals, no more gruelling days of endless practise. She could go to the studio again.
She could see Gilgamesh again.
She hated to admit it, but she had missed even just seeing him in the hallway deeply over the past two weeks. The most intensive rehearsals required full commitment and attention, and that meant leaving classes to Sersi while she was chained up in the Eternal Theatre all day and most of the night.
She never used to think of it that way before.
But she missed the less pressured atmosphere of teaching classes with Sersi. She liked keeping a more normal schedule. She liked getting to see Gil's big, bright smile and his cute little wave in the mornings.
Thena groaned, running her fingers through her hair and throwing her scarf around her neck. She could torture herself more with those thoughts when she was home, preferably sinking into a hot bubble bath.
"Uh, sorry," he poked his head in with a sheepish smile, "door was open, so..."
Thena blinked as he walked in, one hand behind his back and the other in his brushed back hair. He looked rather dashing in a suit. "Gil?"
"Hey," he smiled at her, and the ache in her feet faded from her mind. "You were...wow."
Thena gulped, feeling her cheeks flood with warmth. She looked down, not-so-accidentally burying her nose in her scarf. "You're sweet."
"Well, you were, though," he shrugged, stepping in a little closer. He looked around him, seeing the many, many bouquets of flowers set around the counters. "But I guess you knew that."
Thena looked at the bundles of mostly red roses and arranged bouquets, shrugging at them. "It's a standard practise on the last night. Not all of them are for me, mind you."
"So a good number of them are?" he raised a brow, and she offered a more sheepish smile. He blushed, rocking back on his heels as he pulled out his hidden hand. "It's no bouquet, but-"
Thena gasped. It was a rose - singular - white in colour, clipped of thorns and leaves, bare stemmed save for a shimmering green ribbon tied in a bow around it.
Gil handed it over to her delicately accepting hands, his shyness showing through as he looked everywhere but at her. "I figured you'd get plenty, so maybe this would stand out...or something. And they offered me a white ribbon to match it. But I saw the green one and i-it matched the colour of your eyes, so I chose that one instead."
Thena's eyes were wide, bouncing between the flower in her hands and the beautiful man presenting it to her.
"I don't-"
"It's perfect!"
It wasn't the first time their words overlapped, and once again, Thena felt as if she was saying far too much within the two word sentence. But she pulled the flower as close to her as she dared, not wanting to rustle a single petal. It really was perfect, just like the gifter.
Gil flushed red to his ears, his laugh bubbling out of him. "O-Oh, good! I, well, uh-"
Thena looked up at him again from sniffing the rose gently. It was sweeter than any of the nameless, faceless bouquets around her from nameless, faceless people. "Gil?"
He tugged at his tie, clearly unused to it. "I was wondering...if - maybe - you'd, uh, wanna get dinner--sometime! Doesn't have to be tonight--you probably have a party, or something, with-"
"I'm free."
It was quieter than she thought it would be, but somehow she just couldn't get the air to stay in her lungs.
Gil looked surprised by her interruption, but he clearly didn't mind at all. He smiled, a sureness - a confidence - falling over him as he stepped closer still. He reached out, pulling her hair out of her scarf and fanning it out behind her. "I never get to see you with your hair loose."
Thena's eyes fluttered closed as he used the proximity as an excuse to kiss her forehead.
Then the flirtatious smirk faded against the brightness of his usual megawatt smile. "It's cute!"
Thena reached for her purse hung over the back of one of the chairs, hoping that maybe her blushing would subside a little (somehow, in the three seconds it took her to do it). "Well, where were you thinking of going?"
"I guess wherever you want to go," he shrugged, happily claiming her hand in his as they started to walk out of the dressing room. "I don't know if you want a big, huge meal or if something lighter would be better."
Thena laughed faintly, feeling his fingers squeezing tighter around hers. "If I had another show tomorrow I'd suggest something quite light. But I'm free as of tonight, so maybe something richer than usual wouldn't be the end of the world."
"If that's the case, I know this great Korean barbecue place."
"Sounds-" Thena startled as the backstage door slammed open.
"Miss Thena, are you coming to--oh!"
"Don't interrupt, didn't you see her boyfriend looking for her earlier?"
"Yeah, they probably have a date planned!"
The door closed again but the damage was done. Thena sighed; she was going to kill her little goslings for this.
#I actually might have some implications of a ballet past planned in another fic#so I wasn't sure how to go about the first one of this#but I ended up really liking it#so I'm glad to know the dynamic of it captured other people too#and for the record#Gil spent the whole two weeks#looking into the studio everyday#and being bummed when Thena wasn't there#Sersi had to tell him Thena hadn't had the chance to even come and check on them#but she was the one to tell him how to get a ticket for the last night of the show#and she was sure Thena would l o v e to see him there#Gil picked the white rose himself#and he secretly is a little curious when he doesn't see it in the studio#or her office or whatever#but Sersi tells him#entirely without Thena's knowledge#that it has a place of honour#in a vase on Thena's nighstand at home#and now Thena has to kill Sersi too#Thenamesh Ballerina/Boxer AU
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Potential Character for Mrs. Kelsey and Tumblr 2/1/2023:
Airman Third Class Axel “The Unstoppable” Higgs, Wulfenbach Hero and Secret Jagergeneral:
Appearance: (See above).
Background:
Airman Third Class Axel Higgs was a bosun aboard the airship “Rozen Maiden” as it carried Baron Klaus Wulfenbach to safety after the battle at Sturmhalten. When the ship was hit by cannon fire and the rest of the crew were eaten by monsters, Higgs dragged the Baron and the murderous pirate who served the Baron, Bangladesh “Bang” DuPree into a launch and escaped, all while being repeatedly attacked by a delirious DuPree. When the launch crashed into a pond, Higgs had his arm broken by an angry goose. That was the least of his concerns, as he was also being shot at by nearby troops. They apologized once they realized who he was and who was in his care, and arranged for transport to Mehanicsburg.
Having earned some downtime after his rescue of the Baron, Higgs ended up at Mamma Gkika’s (a bar frequented by Jagermonsters and run by a Jagergeneral), where he got into a lovely bar fight next to Zeetha, Daughter of Chump (a warrior princess far from home and one of the allies of Agatha Heterodyne). He also bumped into Gilgamesh “Gil” Wulfenbach (Baron Wulfenbach’s only son), who pulled rank to press Higgs into their expedition into the psychotic and sentient Castle Heterodyne. Higgs protected Agatha Heterodyne and Gil from a dangerous clank (read: “robot”) – which he took down with one hit. Most assumed it was perfectly normal, as it was an old clank that had seen lots of wear and was probably full of sprocket weevils.
His first genuinely challenging fight came after Zola Anya Talinka Venia Zeblikya Malfeazium (who, at the time, was pretending to be the Lady Heterodyne for the “Storm King Conspiracy”) drank some Moveit #11 (a potion that enhances speed). She stabbed Zeetha nearly to death with her own swords and inflicted a LOT of damage on Higgs. With Gil’s permission, Higgs left the castle and took Zeetha to Mamma Gkika’s for healing. After that, he fought to defend Mechanicsburg along with Zeetha, and the two realized that they were attracted to each other. They were out of the city when the Baron’s time bomb (and by “time bomb” I mean a bomb that created a literal bubble of stopped time) went off.
Over the next two and a half years, Higgs remained Gil’s right hand man, a position that left him little time for interludes with Zeetha until they both reached England around the same time.
Most people assume Higgs was just a particularly lucky and resilient crewman. However, he keeps much of his past hidden, and there is a LOT of it to hide. Higgs is not only a Jager, but part of the very first batch; he is the “missing” seventh Jagergeneral.
Those who survive the Jagerdraught begin to mutate. Fangs, a tail, scales, horns if one is lucky – these are to be expected, but even after hundreds of years, Higgs’ appearance hasn’t changed at all. He has the strength and resilience of Jagerhood, but none of the physical marks. He considers this horribly disappointing, not to mention embarrassing, like a human adult who perpetually looks like a small child. When it comes down to it, the other Jagermonsters respect him and his rank as a general, but will often treat him like a goofy kid brother unless things are very serious.
Because of his looks and unusual advantages, Higgs has become the Heterodyne family’s spymaster. Over the centuries, in this capacity, Higgs has joined the ranks of hundreds of different armies. Joining the Baron’s armed forces was just another job. This position unexpectedly transitioned into working for Gil directly, and it worked just as well for his purposes, as – theoretically at least – it put him closer to Agatha.
Normally, of course, he would have made himself known to the Heterodyne immediately. Unfortunately, Agatha was carrying the mind of the sinister Lucrezia “The Other” Mongfish-nee-Heterodyne, and the Jagers HATE Lucrezia. They knew that secrecy is their best defense against her, and Higgs has so far kept quiet.
Personality:
Higgs is a stoic individual despite his Jager nature. This is probably a result of his long, long life, during which he has seen many friends come and go. He rarely shows much emotion or draws any attention to himself. The one exception is Zeetha; the only time he has displayed worry or anger in the story is when she was badly injured.
Higgs is a Jager. Stronger. Tougher. However, he LOOKS perfectly human. From the perspective of a roleplaying game, this means he doesn’t have the disadvantages given in the Jager template. He also has average intelligence; he maintained his wits during the conversion. He still retains all the advantages (except for Claws – a pity, that)!
How he is like me:
We both are different from most people (he’s different from most humans in that he’s actually a Jager and he’s different from most Jagers in that he looks human, meanwhile, I’m different from a number of people due to my Autism, and there are Autistic people I’m not like due to my high-functioning Autism. Also, I have trouble socializing with my peers due to the fact that they don’t always have similar interests, so I prefer to socialize with adults, who are willing to be flexible and listen to my fan fictions). Also, I sometimes feel like I don’t have much time to do things most of the week (due to me having to adjust to an extra half-hour of Inspire). Similarly, he has trouble spending time with Zeetha.
How he is NOT like me:
He’s quite stoic and calm under pressure. I am not, at times. Also, he tries to avoid drawing attention to himself. When I get frustrated, I sometimes draw attention to myself.
#I Have Autism#Autism Blog#I#Have#Autism#Blog#Stories-Me#Stories#Me#Fan Fictions#Fan Fiction#Fan#Fictions#Fiction#Axel Higgs#Axel#Higgs#The Unstoppable#The#Unstoppable#Airman Third Class#Airman#Third#Class#Zeetha#Daughter of Chump#Daughter#Of#Chump#How He Is Like Me
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The Furies Master OC Index
Created This to keep track of all my OC and published volumes
Vol 1 | Vol 2 | Vol 3 | vol 4 | Vol 5 | Vol 6 | Vol 7 | Vol 8
The Furies is an ever expanding series, with no true end in sight. I started this series while in High School. At first, the series only had Kida. In the end, we decided to add the character Gilgamesh, and then history was made. In this series, my brother helped me quite a bit. I drew the linearts, and I pitched some of the raw dialogue. When the drawings where finished, they where scanned and made into perfect line arts in the photoshop. With that concluded, he puts the shading and the dialogue boxes. It is a bit of a bother to always try to do dialogues boxes on the manga. I feel that it distracts from the overall composition. The first version of The Furies manga was like a complete mess. We had to go back to square one, and start all over. Even when the new Volume 1 was completed, we had to go back and add more pages. Mainly, I added the origin story of both Gilgamesh and this Kida. I also added how Gilgamesh ran into Brahma, or Krishna. When I got to University, I took a bunch of religious classes. Of all the Gods I studied, I developed an affinity for Krishna. He just seemed like a fun, yogurt loving type of God. Since I also like Yogurt, I ended up putting him on the Manga as a supporting character. Krishna has played a supportive role in a lot of Hindu legends. So, the role fits him like a shoe. Aside from Kida, there are 3 other furies as well. They start by being a bother to Gil, and eventually the manga focuses on Kida more. The manga has a huge cast that rivals that of One Piece. I try not to have too many folks on the same page, at the same time. Still, I acknowledge that they exist from time to time. For those that do not know, The Furies are a revenge type of Goddesses. They are known as the Kindly Ones. The represent the past order. They are what life was all about, before the Jury system was implemented in Greece. In their titular story, Orestes committed matricide. Gil killed his father, and did not get punished because he was royalty. It is for this reason that the Furies started bothering Gilgamesh. When I say Gilgamesh, you must take his name with a grain of salt. It is like being named Jesus or something. This Gilgamesh happens to have a friend named Enkiku, which is very close to the name Enkidu. From a normal type of setting, Gilgamesh and Kida get into some crazy adventures in their fight against the Abandons. The human leader of the Abandons is a man named, Gates. He steals the suns from Solar Systems. This makes him a step more evil than Galactus. I can empathize with Galactus. When I get hungry, I feel like I could eat a whole planet. Have you ever been that hungry? I certainly have. Anyhow, the core of the show is the relationship between Gilgamesh and Kida, as it grows as the manga progresses. Before you think this is a sappy romance manga, let me assure it is not. I don’t even think I remember drawing them kissing. The show is an action, comedy. As the manga progresses, I lean more towards comedy, but I am not afraid to throw a bit of action in the mix just for giggles. I also do musical numbers. Every so often, I do little song parodies, or reference songs that nobody seems to remember. I am just trying to keep it fresh as all. If you are not having fun drawing the manga, then how can you expect for the reader to have fun while reading it? Aside from the music, I have like a bunch of paintings and art references. You need to be an art historian to catch all the references I make. I should have marked them when I was making the manga. I eventually forgot most of the names of the works I referenced. Paintings are just easy for arranging scenes in the manga. For now, there is about 11 volumes of the manga. Depending on when you are reading this, there might be more out there. It takes time to publish. I hope you have as much reading the Furies as I had drawing it.
Characters
Gil - Bio
Kida - Bio
Enkiku -Bio
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Seigfried, Chevalier d'Eon, Medusa, Zhuge Liang (Lord El-Melloi II)
fghshs thank you SO MUCH for indulging me wings
First impression
Seigfried: Oh I know him!!! He's hot, coo-- SUWABE???? OH SHIT OH NO
D'Eon: Ohhhhh, I've heard of them! Like that manga!
Medusa: That's the, uh...least snakey Medusa I've ever seen. Why is she a Rider? Huh.
Waver (because it's basically Waver): AWWWW BABY I LOVE YOU ALREADY, you poor bastard getting roasted in the middle of your class by your professor...
Impression now
Siegfried: You're so stupid. You're so noble. Dear good lord christ you absolute heroic idiot, I love you. Good lord. Go apologize to your wife you dumb wonderful himbo.
D'Eon: They haven't had much time to shine, but I do like them! And reading up on their historicity is fascinating!
Medusa: DAUGHTER QUEEN YAS SLAY I LOVE YOU DUSA WHAT A GIRL, WHAT A LOVELY SWEET GIRL WHO WILL MURDER FOR HER POOR ABUSED MASTER WHAT A GREAT SERVANT
Waver: King shit, nothing like sneaking into an entire ass mage war you were NOT supposed to be part of, somehow being the only mage survivor (Kiritsugu doesn't count he died in all ways but physical), and going back home to STEAL YOUR DEAD PROFESSOR'S NAME AND JOB???? On TOP of somehow scoring an ancient bara king as a boyfriend????? Absolute legend, the El Melloi classroom is the best place to be.
Favorite moment
Siegfried: I haven't finished Apocrypha yet but dude his immediate 'aight time to kill myself for this random homunculi kid who needs help' was kinda legit if stupidly heroic. Also him showing up in Traum pretty much literally to go "i am so sorry I'm such an idiot I love you" and defusing Kriemhild in seconds was fucking amazing. Also his summer alt puts me in hysterics.
D'Eon: Them being basically the only sane NB in Agartha was pretty hilarious, poor d'Eon.
Medusa: I have not watched HF because Reasons but I hear she goes fully fucking apeshit to protect Sakura and I say slay queen you go girl. Also her being just sweet and chill and vibing with Sakura in Emiya Gohan gives me life.
Waver: The finale when he stares down Literally Gilgamesh and manages to survive was glorious. Also everything about Case Files, but specifically the final bit where he gets to talk to Iskandar for a bit. Also also in Accel Order when he's committing so much violence against his baby self and when he absolutely fucking plays Kayneth like a fool, that was hilarious.
Idea for a story
Siegfried: I don't have TOO many ideas here, actually, but I'd like to see Kriemhild put up with his event shenanigans, bless her. Go on double dates with Sigurd and Bryn.
d'Eon: More screentime! Go hang with Marie!
Medusa: I think I'd like to read things dealing with her past and her sisters and the other Greek Servants, but also I would read everything involving Medusa beating the fuck out of Zouken and Shinji :)
Waver: Go make out with your bara boyfriend, also solve more mysteries, also also take a nap. Though Waver teaching Fujimaru mage basics would be adorable! He's in charge of Modern Magecraft Theory, they'd get it a little better.
Unpopular opinion
Siegfried: Uhhhh, call me back after Apocrypha?
d'Eon: It's only tangentially related, but I don't hate Agartha. Like, it's DEFINITELY not Good, but it's not terrible either.
Medusa: /shrug emoji
Waver: IDK man, what are Waver opinions? I love this guy.
Favorite relationship
Siegfried: Him and his wife, him and Sieg so far, he and Kotaro were kind of adorable buddies in the Vegas event.
d'Eon: Them and Marie for sure, it's sweet. Also them and Astolfo is a kind of funny duo, NB RIGHTS.
Medusa: SAKURA FOR SURE.
Waver: ISKANDAR ISKANDAR ISKANDAR, but also Grey and the rest of his class, like damn, I'd kill for Waver as my professor.
Favorite headcanon
Siegfried: I don't actually have many hcs yet.
d'Eon: Neither for d'Eon, admittedly.
Medusa: She and Parvati hang out all the time for sure.
Waver: Like I mentioned above, I definitely hc Waver helps teach Fujimaru how to use basic magecraft so they don't Die. He also helped in EoR to deal with the Mage's Association. I also hc he tagged along with my Fujimaru into the London Singularity.
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RIP Fate Stay Night, the power creep happened with Fate Grand Order. The cast need the upgrade as well.
RIP Shirou’s powers.
Still, I am happy that Tsukihime is getting love.
Heck no. You want to upgrade Hercules? Gilgamesh?!
The cast of Fate/Stay Night generally maintained the same levels in the power hierarchy even after FGO came out. Archer was never supposed to be strong, he was supposed to be versatile. His stats fucking sucked even with Rin powering him, but his ability to copy noble phantasms gave him an edge in heroic spirit battles, and his lack of fame kept his enemies from figuring out his identity. The likes of Herc and Gil were meant to be overwhelming monsters with Fate/Stay night, and pretty much still are in FGO. Jason's whole strategy in the Temple of Solomon was to have the entire Argonaut crew throw all their supportive spells on Herc while he one-man armied his way through multiple Demon Gods to fantastic effect. That's not even going into how tons of players have just come to rely on getting him to Bond 10 and ungga bunggaing the entire game with his brute strength, or how Gil remains Gil.
The rest are middle of the pack heroic spirits, or even weak with the likes of Kojirou and Cursed Arm Hassan. The latter two are shown to be heavily reliant on technical skill and strategy to make up for their power, while Medea abuses the Caster class' Territory Creation ability to hide away and build power rather than face the others immediately.
It might even be a grave mistake to call Cu or Artoria middle of the pack really, considering their potential as fighters. Just because their powers don't read like a Yugioh card doesn't mean they aren't incredibly dangerous. Just look at what happens when Artoria is allowed to interfere in the events of Extella, she ends the three way war by crushing Nero, Tamamo, AND Altera's forces on her own, with Altera specifically losing in a straight up duel when Nero and Tamamo had to resort to trickery to defeat her due to her strength. The only other character in Extella that overpowers Altera like that is Gil.
Sometimes a big laser is all you need
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What are your thoughts on Jekyll/Hyde and his archetype of the human periodically changing into a monster ?
Jekyll & Hyde was the 2nd horror story I read following Frankenstein, I got it off the same library and it always stuck very strongly with me even before I got into horror in general. I even dressed up as Jekyll/Hyde as a kid for a school fair by shredding a lab coat on one side and asking my sister to make-up claw gashes on my exposed arm and paint half of my face, although in hindsight I think I ended up looking more like Doctor Two-Face than Jekyll/Hyde, but I was 12 and didn't have any Victorian clothing to use so I had to make do. The first film project I tried doing at film school was intended to be a modern take on Jekyll & Hyde, and I didn't get much farther than a couple of discarded scripts
Much like Frankenstein, Mr Hyde as a character and a story is something that's kind of baked into everything I do artistically. And it's not just me, as even in pop culture itself, none of us can escape Mr Hyde. I would go so far as to argue Mr Hyde may be the single most significant character created by victorian fiction, if only by the sheer impact and legacy the character's had.
(Fan-art by guilhermefranco)
Part of what makes Mr Hyde such a powerful and lasting icon of pop culture is that the very premise of the book invites a personal reading that's gonna vary from person to person. Because everyone's familiar with the basic twist of the story, that it's a conflict of duality, of the good and evil sides, but everyone has a more personal idea of what those entail. Some people make the story more about class. A lot of readings laser-focus on sex and lust as the driving force, and there's also a lot of readings of Mr Hyde that tackle it to explore a more gendered perspective, and so forth.
I don't particularly take much notice of the Jekyll & Hyde adaptations partially because the novel's premise and themes have become baked so throughly into pop culture and explored in so many different and interesting ways, that I'm not particularly starving for good Jekyll & Hyde adaptations the way I am for Dracula and Frankenstein. The Fredric March film in particular is one that orbits my head less because of the film itself (although I do recommend it), but because of one specific scene, and that's when Jekyll first transforms into Hyde on screen.
Out of all the things they could have shown him doing right that second, they instead took the time to show him enjoying the rain.
Just Hyde taking off his hat and letting it all cascade on his face with this sheer enthusiasm like he's never been to the rain before, never enjoyed it before, and now that he's free from being Jekyll, he gets to enjoy life like he never has before. It's such an oddly humanizing moment to put amidst a horror movie, in the scene where you're ostensibly introducing the monster to the audience, and it makes such a stark contrast to the rest of the film where Hyde is completely irredeemable, but I think it's that contrast that makes the film's take on Hyde work so well even with it's diverging from the source material, even if I don't particularly like in general interpretations of Hyde that are focused on a sexual aspect.
Because one, it understands that Jekyll was fundamentally a self-serving coward and not a paragon of goodness, and two, it also understands one of the things that makes Hyde scary: He wants what all of us want, to live and be happy. He's happy when he leaves the lab and dances around in the rain like a giddy child, he's happy when he goes to places Jekyll couldn't dream of showing up, he's happy as a showgirl-abusing sexual predator. Hyde is all wants, all the time, and there's not that much difference between his wants, his domineering possessiveness, and the likes exhibited by Muriel's father and Jekyll's own within the very same film, which also works to emphasize one of the other ideas of the original story, that Edward Hyde doesn't come from nowhere. That no monster is closer to humanity than Mr Hyde, because he is us. He is the thing that Jekyll refused to take responsability for until it was too late.
(Art by LorenzoMastroianni)
While many of the ideas that defined Mr Hyde had already been explored in pop culture beforehand, Hyde popularized and redefined many of them in particular by modernizing the idea. He was the werewolf, the doppelganger, The Player On The Other Side, except he came from within. He was not transformed by circumstance, he made himself that way, and the elixir merely brought out something already inside his soul. To acknowledge that he's there is to acknowledge that he is you, and to not do that is to either lose to him, or perish. Hyde was there to address both the rot settling in Victorian society as well as grappling concerns over Darwinian heritage, of the realization that man has always had the beast inside of him (it's no accident that Hyde's main method of murder is by clubbing people to death with his cane like a caveman).
I've already argued on my post about Tarzan that the Wild Man archetype, beginning with Enkidu of The Epic of Gilgamesh, is the in-between man and beast, between superhero and monster, and that Mr Hyde is an essential component of the superhero's trajectory, as the creature split in between. That stories about dual personalities, doppelgangers, the duality of the soul, the hero with a day job and an after dark career, you can pinpoint Hyde as a turning point in how all of these solidified gradually in pop culture. And I've argued otherwise that The Punisher, for all that his image and narrative points otherwise, is ultimately just as much of a superhero as the rest of them, even if no one wants to admit it, drawing a parallel between The Punisher and Mr Hyde. And he's far from the only modern character that can invite this kind of parallel.
The idea of a regular person periodically or permanently transforming into, or revealing itself to be, something extraordinary and fantastic and scary, grappling with the divide it causes in their soul, and questions whether it's a new development or merely the truest parts of themselves coming to light at last, and the effects this transformation has for good and bad alike. The idea of a potent, dangerous, unpredictable enemy who ultimately is you, or at least a facet of you and what you can do. That these are bound to destroy each other if not reconciled with or overcome.
You know what are my thoughts on the archetype of "human periodically changing into a monster" are? Look around you and you're gonna see the myriad ways The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde's themes have manifested in the century and a half since the story's release. Why it shouldn't be any surprise whatsoever that Mr Hyde has become such an integral part of pop culture, in it's heroes and monsters alike. Why we can never escape Mr Hyde, just as Jekyll never could.
It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie-doll president, with his Barbie-doll wife and his boxful of Barbie-doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde.
He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts on nights when the moon comes too close… - Hunter S. Thompson
There is a scene in the movie Pulp Fiction that explains almost every terrible thing happening in the news today. And it's not the scene where Ving Rhames shoots that guy's dick off. It's the part where the hit man played by John Travolta is talking about how somebody vandalized his car, and says this:
"Boy, I wish I could've caught him doing it. I'd have given anything to catch that asshole doing it. It'd been worth him doing it, just so I could've caught him doing it."
That last sentence is something everyone should understand about mankind. After all, the statement is completely illogical -- revenge is supposed to be about righting a wrong. But he wants to be wronged, specifically so he'll have an excuse to get revenge. We all do.
Why else would we love a good revenge movie? We sit in a theater and watch Liam Neeson's daughter get kidnapped. We're not sad about it, because we know he's a badass and he finally has permission to be awesome. Not a single person in that theater was rooting for it to all be an innocent misunderstanding. We wanted Liam to be wronged, because we wanted to see him kick ass. It's why so many people walk around with vigilante fantasies in their heads.
Long, long ago, the people in charge figured out that the easiest and most reliable way to bind a society together was by controlling and channeling our hate addiction. That's the reason why seeing hurricane wreckage on the news makes us mumble "That's sad" and maybe donate a few bucks to the Red Cross hurricane fund, while 9/11 sends us into a decade-long trillion-dollar rage that leaves the Middle East in flames.
The former was caused by wind; the latter was caused by monsters. The former makes us kind of bummed out; the latter gets us high.
It's easy to blame the news media for pumping us full of stories of mass shootings and kidnapped children, but that's stopping one step short of the answer: The media just gives us what we want. And what we want is to think we're beset on all sides by monsters.
The really popular stories will always feature monsters that are as different from us as possible. Think about Star Wars -- what real shithead has ever referred to himself as being on "the dark side"? In Harry Potter and countless fantasy universes, you have wizards working in "black magic" and the "dark arts." Can you imagine a scientist developing some technology for chemical weapons or invasive advertising openly thinking of what he does as "dark science"? Can you imagine a real world leader naming his headquarters "The Death Star" or "Mount Doom"?
Of course not. But we need to believe that evil people know they're evil, or else that would open the door to the fact that we might be evil without knowing it. I mean, sure, maybe we've bought chocolate that was made using child slaves or driven cars that poisoned the air, but we didn't do it to be evil -- we were simply doing whatever we felt like and ignoring the consequences. Not like Hitler and the bankers who ruined the economy and those people who burned the kittens -- they wake up every day intentionally dreaming up new evils to create. It's not like Hitler actually thought he was saving the world.
So no matter how many times you vote to cut food stamps and then use the money to buy a boat, you could still be way worse. You could, after all, be one of those murdering / lazy / ignorant / greedy / oppressive monsters that you know the world is full of, and that only your awesome moral code prevents you from turning into at any moment. And those monsters are out there.
They have to be. Because otherwise, we're the monsters - 5 Reasons Humanity Desperately Wants Monsters To Be Real, by Jason Pargin
(Two-Face sequence comes from the end of Batman Annual #14: Eye of the Beholder)
For good or bad, Hyde has become omnipresent. He's a part of our superheroes, he's a part of our supervillains, he's in our monsters. He lives and prattles in our ears, sometimes we need him to survive, and sometimes we become Hyde even when we don't need to, because our survival instincts or base cruelties or desperation brings out the worst in us. Sometimes we can beat him, and sometimes he's not that bad. Sometimes we do need to appease him and listen to what he says, about us and the world around us. And sometimes we need to do so specifically to prove him wrong and beat him again.
But he never, ever goes away, as he so accurately declares in the musical
Do you really think
That I would ever let you go...
Do you think
I'd ever set you free?
If you do, I'm sad to say
It simply isn't so
You will never get away
FROM MEEEEEE
(Art by Akreon on Artstation)
#tw: injury#tw: blood#tw: disfigurement#replies tag#dr jekyll and mr hyde#the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde#robert louis stevenson#two-face#batman#monster tag#universal monsters#horror tag
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The Importance of Antiheroes
By Brooksie C. Fontaine (me) and Sara R. McKearney
Few tropes are as ubiquitous as that of the hero. He takes the form of Superman, ethically and non-lethally thwarting Lex Luthor. Of Luke Skywalker, gazing wistfully at twin suns and waiting for his adventure to begin. In pre-Eastwood era films, a white Stetson made the law-abiding hero easily distinguishable from his black-hatted antagonists. He is Harry Potter, Jon Snow, T’Challa, Simba. He is of many incarnations, he is virtually inescapable, and he serves a necessary function: he reminds us of what we can achieve, and that regardless of circumstance, we can choose to be good. We need our heroes, and always will.
But equally vital to the life-blood of any culture is his more nebulous and difficult to define counterpart: the antihero. Whereas the hero is defined, more or less, by his morality and exceptionalism, the antihero doesn’t cleanly meet these criteria. Where the hero tends to be confident and self-assured, the antihero may have justifiable insecurities. While the hero has faith in the goodness of humanity, the anthero knows from experience how vile humans can be. While the hero typically respects and adheres to authority figures and social norms, the antihero may rail against them for any number of reasons. While the hero always embraces good and rejects evil, the antihero may do either. And though the hero might always be buff, physically capable, and mentally astute, the antihero may be average or below. The antihero scoffs at the obligation to be perfect, and our culture's demand for martyrdom. And somehow, he is at least as timeless and enduring as his sparklingly heroic peers.
Which begs the question: where did the antihero come from, and why do we need him?
The Birth of the Anti-Hero:
It is worth noting that many of the oldest and most enduring heroes would now be considered antiheroes. The Greek Heracles was driven to madness, murdered his family, and upon recovering had to complete a series of tasks to atone for his actions. Theseus, son of Poseidon and slayer of the Minotaur, straight-up abandoned the woman who helped him do it. And we all know what happened to Oedipus, whose life was so messed up he got a complex named after him.
And this isn’t just limited to Ancient Greece: before he became a god, the Mesoamerican Quetzalcoatl committed suicide after drunkenly sleeping with his sister. The Mesopotamian Gilgamesh – arguably the first hero in literature – began his journey as a slovenly, hedonistic tyrant. Shakespearian heroes were denoted with an equal number of gifts and flaws – the cunning but paranoid Hamlet, the honorable but gullible Othello, the humble but power-hungry MacBeth – which were just as likely to lead to their downfall as to their apotheosis.
There’s probably a definitive cause for our current definition of hero as someone who’s squeaky clean: censorship. With the birth of television and film as we know it, it was, for a time, illegal to depict criminals as protagonists, and law enforcement as antagonists. The perceived morality of mainstream cinema was also strictly monitored, limiting what could be portrayed. Bonnie and Clyde, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Scarface, The Godfather, Goodfellas, and countless other cinematic staples prove that such policies did not endure, but these censorship laws divorced us, culturally, from the moral complexity of our most resonant heroes.
Perhaps because of the nature of the medium, literature arguably has never been as infatuated with moral purity as its early cinematic and T.V. counterparts. From the Byronic male love interests of the Bronte sisters, to “Doctor” Frankenstein (that little college dropout never got a PhD), to Dorian Grey, to Anna Karenina, to Scarlett O’Hara, to Holden Caulfield, literature seems to thrive on morally and emotionally complex individuals and situations. Superman punching a villain and saving Lois Lane is compelling television, but doesn’t make for a particularly thought-provoking read.
It is also worth noting, however, that what we now consider to be universal moral standards were once met with controversy: Superman’s story and real name – Kal El – are distinctly Jewish, in which his doomed parents were forced to send him to an uncertain future in a foreign culture. Captain America punching Nazis now seems like a no-brainer, but at the time it was not a popular opinion, and earned his Jewish creators a great deal of controversy. So in a manner of speaking, some of the most morally upstanding heroes are also antiheroes, in that they defied society’s rules.
This brings us to our concluding point: that anti-heroes can be morally good. The complex and sometimes tragic heroes of old, and today’s antiheroes, are not necessarily immoral, but must often make difficult choices, compromises, and sacrifices. They are flawed, fallible, and can sometimes lead to their own downfall. But sometimes, they triumph, and we can cheer them for it. This is what makes their stories so powerful, so relatable, and so necessary to the fabric of our culture. So without further ado, let’s have a look at some of pop-culture’s most interesting antiheroes, and what makes them so damn compelling.
Note: For the purposes of this essay, we will only be looking at male antiheroes. Because the hero’s journey is traditionally so male-oriented, different standards of subversiveness, morality, and heroism apply to female protagonists, and the antiheroine deserves an article all her own.
Antiheroes show us the negative effects of systematic inequalities (and what they can do to gifted people.)
As demonstrated by: Tommy Shelby from Peaky Blinders.
Why he could be a hero: He’s incredibly charismatic, intelligent, and courageous. He deeply cares for his loved ones, has a strict code of honor, reacts violently to the mistreatment of innocents, and demonstrates surprisingly high levels of empathy.
Why he’s an antihero: He also happens to be a ruthless, incredibly violent crime lord who regularly slashes out his enemies’ eyes.
What he can teach us: From the moment Tommy Shelby makes his entrance, it becomes apparent that Peaky Blinders will not unfold like the archetypical crime drama. Evocative of the outlaw mythos of the Old West, Tommy rides across a smoky, industrialized landscape. He is immaculately dressed, bareback, on a magnificent black horse. A rogue element, his presence carries immediate power, causing pedestrians to hurriedly clear a path. You get the sense that he does not conform to this time or era, nor does he abide by the rules of society.
The ONLY acceptable way to introduce a protagonist.
Set in the decades between World War I and II, Peaky Blinders differentiates itself from its peers, not just because of its distinctive, almost Shakespearian style of storytelling, powerful visual style, and use of contemporary music, but also in the manner in which it shows that society provokes the very criminality it attempts to vanquish. Moreover, it dedicates time to demonstrating why this form of criminality is sometimes the only option for success in an unfair system. When the law wants to keep you relegated to the station in which you were born, success almost inevitably means breaking the rules. Tommy is considered one of the most influential characters of the decade because of the manner in which he embodies this phenomenon, and the reason why antiheroes pervade folklore across the decades.
Peaky Blinders engenders a unique level of empathy within its first episodes, in which we are not just immersed in the glamour of the gangster lifestyle, but we understand the background that provoked it. Tommy, who grew up impoverished and discriminated against due to his “didicoy” Romany background, volunteered to fight for his country, and went to war as a highly intelligent, empathetic young man. He returned with the knowledge that the country he had served had essentially used him and others like him as canon fodder, with no regard for their lives, well-being, or future. Such veterans were often looked down upon or disregarded by a society eager to forget the war. Having served as a tunneler – regarded to be the worst possible position in a war already beset by unprecedented brutality – Tommy’s constant proximity to death not only destroyed his faith in authority, but also his fear of mortality. This absence of fear and deference, coupled with his incredible intelligence, ambition, ruthlessness, and strategic abilities, makes him a dangerous weapon, now pointed at the very society that constructed him to begin with.
It is also difficult to critique Tommy’s criminality, when we take into account that society would have completely stifled him if he had abided by its rules. As someone of Romany heritage, he was raised in abject poverty, and never would have been admitted into situations of higher social class. Even at his most powerful, we see the disdain his colleagues have at being obligated to treat him as an equal. In one particularly powerful scene, he begins shoveling horse manure, explaining that, “I’m reminding myself of what I’d be if I wasn’t who I am.” If he hadn’t left behind society’s rules, his brilliant mind would be occupied only with cleaning stables.
However, the necessity of criminality isn’t depicted as positive: it is one of the greatest tragedies of the narrative that society does not naturally reward the most intelligent or gifted, but instead rewards those born into positions of unjust privilege, and those who are willing to break the rules with intelligence and ruthlessness. Each year, the trauma of killing, nearly being killed, and losing loved ones makes Tommy’s PTSD increasingly worse, to the point at which he regularly contemplates suicide. Cillian Murphy has remarked that Tommy gets little enjoyment out of his wealth and power, doing what he does only for his family and “because he can.” Steven Knight cites the philosophy of Francis Bacon as a driving force behind Tommy’s psychology: “Since it’s all so meaningless, we might as well be extraordinary.”
This is further complicated when it becomes apparent that the upper class he’s worked so arduously to join is not only ruthlessly exclusionary, but also more corrupt than he’s ever been. There are no easy answers, no easy to pinpoint sources of societal or personal issues, no easy divisibility of positive and negative. This duality is something embraced by the narrative, and embodied by its protagonist. An intriguingly androgynous figure, Tommy emulated the strength and tenacity of the women in his life, particularly his mother; however, he also internalized her application of violence, even laughing about how she used to beat him with a frying pan. His family is his greatest source of strength and his greatest weakness, often exploited by his enemies who realize they cannot fall back on his fear of mortality. He feels emotions more strongly than the other characters, and ironically must numb himself to the world around him in order to cope with it.
However, all hope is not lost. Creator Steven Knight has stated that his hope is ultimately to redeem Tommy, so by the show’s end he is “a good man doing good things.” There are already whispers of what this may look like: as an MP, Tommy cares for Birmingham and its citizens far more than any “legitimate” politicians, meeting with them personally to ensure their needs are met; as of last season, he attempted a Sinatra-style assassination of a rising fascist simply because it was the right thing to do. “Goodness” is an option in the world of Peaky Blinders; the only question is what form it will take on a landscape plagued by corruption at every turn.
Regardless of what form his “redemption” might take, it’s negligible that Tommy will ever meet all the criteria of an archetypal hero as we understand it today. He is far more evocative of the heroes of Ancient Greece, of the Old West, of the Golden Age of Piracy, of Feudal Japan – ferocious, magnitudinous figures who move and make the earth turn with them, who navigate the ever-changing landscapes of society and refuse to abide by its rules, simultaneously destructive and life-affirming. And that’s what makes him so damn compelling.
Who needs traditional morality, when you look this damn good?
Other examples:
Alfie Solomons from Peaky Blinders. Tommy’s friend and sometimes mortal enemy, the two develop an intriguing, almost romantic connection due to their shared experiences of oppression and powerful intellects. Steven Knight has referred to Alfie as “the only person Tommy can really talk to,” possibly because he is Tommy’s only intellectual equal, resulting in a strange form of spiritual matrimony between the two.
Omar Little from The Wire, an oftentimes tender and compassionate man who cares deeply for his loved ones, and does his best to promote morality and idealism in a society which offers him few viable methods of doing so. He may rob drug dealers at gunpoint, but he also refuses to harm innocents, dislikes swearing, and views his actions as a method of decreasing crime in the area.
Chiron from Moonlight, a sensitive and empathetic young man who became a drug dealer because society had provided him with virtually no other options for self-sustenance. The same could be said for Chiron’s mentor and father figure, Juan, a kind and nurturing man who is also a drug dealer.
To a lesser extent, Tony from The Sopranos, and other fictional Italian American gangsters. The Sopranos often negotiates the roots of mob culture as a response to inequalities, while also holding its characters accountable for their actions by pointing out that Tony and his ilk are now rich and privileged and face little systematic discrimination.
Walter White from Breaking Bad – an underpaid, chronically disrespected teacher who has to work two jobs and still can’t afford to pay for medical treatment. More on him on the next page.
Antiheroes show us how we can be the villains.
As demonstrated by: Walter White from Breaking Bad.
Why he could be a hero: He’s a brilliant, underappreciated chemist whose work contributed to the winning of a Nobel Prize. He’s also forging his own path in the face of incredible adversity, and attempting to provide for his family in the event of his death.
Why he’s an antihero: In his pre-meth days, Walt failed to meet the exceptionalism associated with heroes, as a moral but socially passive underachiever living an unremarkable life. At the end of his transformation, he is exceptional at what he does, but has completely lost his moral standards.
What he can teach us: G.K. Chesterton wrote, “Fairy tales do not tell children that the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” Following this analogy, it is equally important that our stories show us we, ourselves, can be the dragon. Or the villain, to be more specific, because being a dragon sounds strangely awesome.
Walter White of Breaking Bad is a paragon of antiheroism for a reason: he subverts almost every traditional aspect of heroism. From the opening shots of Walt careening along in an RV, clad in tighty whities and a gas mask, we recognize that he is neither physically capable, nor competent in the manner we’ve come to expect from our heroes. He is not especially conventionally attractive, nor are women particularly drawn to him. He does not excel at his career or garner respect. As the series progresses, Walt does develop the competence, confidence, courage, and resilience we expect of heroes, but he is no longer the moral protagonist: he is self-motivated, vindictive, and callous. And somehow, he still remains identifiable, which is integral to his efficacy.
But let us return to the beginning of the series, and talk about how, exactly, Walt subverts our expectations from the get-go. Walt is the epitome of an everyman: he’s fifty years old, middle class, passive, and worried about identifiable problems – his health, his bills, his physically disabled son, and his unborn baby. Whereas Tommy Shelby’s angelic looks, courage, and intellect subvert our preconceptions about what a criminal can be, Walt’s initial unremarkability subverts our preconceptions about who can be a criminal. The hook of the series is the idea that a man so chronically average could make and distribute meth.
Just because an audience is hooked by a concept, however, does not mean that they’ll necessarily continue watching. Breaking Bad could have easily veered into ludicrosity, if it weren’t for another important factor: character. Walt is immediately and intensely relatable, and he somehow retains our empathy for the entirety of the series, even at his least forgivable.
When we first meet Walt, his talents are underappreciated, he’s overqualified for his menial jobs, chronically disrespected by everyone around him, underpaid, and trapped in a joyless, passionless life in which the highlight of his day is a halfhearted handjob from his distracted wife. And to top it all off? He has terminal lung cancer. Happy birthday, Walt.
We root for him for the same reason we root for Dumbo, Rudolph, Harry Potter: he’s an underdog. The odds are stacked against him, and we want to see him triumph. Which is why it’s cathartic, for us and for Walt, when he finally finds a profession in which he can excel – even if that profession is the ability to manufacture incredibly high-quality meth. His former student Jesse Pinkman – a character so interesting that there’s a genuine risk he’ll hijack this essay – appreciates his skill, and this early appreciation is what makes his relationship with Jesse feel so much more genuine than Walt’s relationship with his family, even as their dynamic becomes increasingly unhealthy and Walt uses Jesse to bolster his meth business and his ego. This deeply dysfunctional but heartfelt father-son connection is Walt’s tether to humanity as he becomes increasingly inhumane, while also demonstrating his descent from morality. It has been pointed out that one can gauge how far-gone Walt is from his moral ideals by how much Jesse is suffering.
But to return to the initial point, it is imperative that we first empathize with Walt in order to adequately understand his descent. Aside from the fact that almost all characters are more interesting if the audience can or wants to empathize with them, Walt’s relatability makes it easy to understand our own potential for toxic and destructive behaviors. We are the protagonist of our own story, but we aren’t necessarily its hero.
Similarly, we understand how easily we can justify destructive actions, and how quickly reasonable feelings of anger and injustice swerve into self-indulgent vindication and entitlement. Walt claims to be cooking meth to provide for his family, and this may be partially true; but he also denies financial help from his rich friends out of spite, and admits later to his wife Skylar that he primarily did it for himself because he was good at it and “it made (him) feel alive.”
This also forces us to examine our preconceptions, and essentially do Walt’s introspections for him: whereas Peaky Blinders emphasize the fact that Tommy and his family would never have been able to achieve prosperity by obeying society’s laws, Walt feels jilted out of success he was promised by a meritocratic system that doesn’t currently exist. He has essentially achieved our current understanding of the American dream – a house with a pool, a beautiful wife and family, an honest job – but it left him unable to provide for his wife and children or even pay for his cancer treatment. He’s also unhappy and alienated from his passions and fellow human beings. With this in mind, it’s understandable – if absurd – that the only way he can attain genuine happiness and excel is through becoming a meth cook. In this way, Breaking Bad is both a scathing critique of our current society, and a haunting reminder that there’s not as much standing between ourselves and villainy as we might like to believe.
So are we all slaves to this system of entitlement and resentment, of shattered and unfulfilling dreams? No, because Breaking Bad provides us with an intriguing and vital counterpoint: Jesse Pinkman. Whereas Walt was bolstered with promises that he was gifted and had a bright future ahead of him, Jesse was assured by every authority figure in his life that he would never amount to anything. However, Jesse proves himself skilled at what he’s passionate about: art, carpentry, and of course, cooking meth. Whereas Walt perpetually rationalizes and shirks responsibility, Jesse compulsively takes responsibility, even for things that weren’t his fault. Whereas Walt found it increasingly acceptable to endanger or harm bystanders, Jesse continuously worked to protect innocents – especially children – from getting hurt. Though Jesse suffered immensely throughout the course of the show – and the subsequent movie, El Camino – the creators say that he successfully made it to Alaska and started a carpentry business. Some theorists have supposed that Jesse might be a Jesus allegory – a carpenter who suffers for the sins of others. Regardless of whether this is true, it is interesting, and amusing to imagine Jesus using the word “bitch” so often. Though he didn’t get the instant gratification of immediate success that Walt got, he was able to carve (no pun intended – carpentry, you know) a place for himself in the world.
Jesse isn’t a perfect person, but he reminds us that improving ourselves and creating a better life is an option, even if Walt’s rise to power was more initially thrilling. So take heart: there’s a bit of Heisenberg in all of us, but there’s also a bit of Jesse Pinkman.
The savior we all need, but don’t deserve.
Other examples:
Bojack from Bojack Horseman. Like Walt, the audience can’t help but empathize with Bojack, understand his decision-making, and even see ourselves in him. However, the narrative ruthlessly demonstrates the consequences of his actions, and shows us how negatively his selfishness and self-destructive qualities impact others.
Again, Tony Soprano. Tony, even at his very worst, is easy to like and empathize with. Despite his position as a mafia Godfather, he’s unfailingly human. Which makes the destruction caused by his actions all the more resonant.
Antiheroes emphasize the absurdity of contemporary culture (and how we must operate in it.)
As demonstrated by: Marty Byrde from Ozark.
Why he could be a hero: He’s a loving father who ultimately just wants to provide for and ensure the safety of his family. He’s also fiercely intelligent, with excellent negotiative, interpersonal, and strategic skills that allows him to talk his way out of almost any situation without the use of violence.
Why he’s an antihero: He launders money for a ruthless drug cartel, and has no issue dipping his toes into various illegal activities.
Why he’s compelling: Marty is an antihero of the modern era. He has a remarkable ability to talk his way into or out of any situation, and he’s also a master of using a pre-constructed system of rules and privileges to his benefit.
In the very first episode, he goes from literally selling the American Dream, to avoiding murder at the hands of a ruthless drug cartel by planning to launder money for them in the titular Ozarks. Despite his long history of dabbling in illegality, Marty has no firearms – a questionable choice for someone on the run from violent drug kingpins, but a testament to his ability to rely on his oratory skills and nothing else. He doesn’t hesitate to engage an apparently violent group of hillbillies to request the return of his stolen cash, because he knows he can talk them into giving it back to him. The only time he engages other characters in physical violence, he immediately gets pummeled, because physical altercation has never been his form of currency. Not that he’s subjected to physical violence particularly often, either: Marty is a master of the corporate landscape, which makes him a master of the criminal landscape. He is brilliant at avoiding the consequences of his actions.
It’s easy to like and admire Marty for his cleverness, for being able to escape from apparently impermeable situations with words as his only weapon. He’s got a reassuring, dad-ly sort of charisma that immediately endears the viewer, and offers respite from the seemingly endless threats coming from every direction. He unquestionably loves his family, including his adulterous wife. As such, it’s easy to forget that Marty is being exploited by the same system that exploits all of us: crony capitalism. The polar opposite of meritocratic capitalism – in which success is based on hard work, ingenuity, and, hence the name, merit – crony capitalism benefits only the conglomerates that plague the global landscape like cancerous warts, siphoning money off of workers and natural capital, keeping them indentured with basic necessities and the idle promise of success.
Marty isn’t benefiting from his hard work in the Ozarks. Everything he makes goes right back to the drug cartel who continuously threatens the life of him and his family. He is rewarded for his efforts with a picturesque house, a boat, and the appearance of success, but he is not allowed to keep the fruits of his labor. Marty may be an expert at navigating the corporate and criminal landscape, but it still exploits him. In this manner, Marty embodies both the American business, the American worker, and a sort of inversion of the American dream.
In this same manner, Marty, the other characters, and even the Ozarks themselves embody the modern dissonance between appearance and reality. Marty’s family looks like something you’d respect to see on a Christmas card from your DILF-y, successful coworker, but it’s bubbling with dysfunctionality. His wife is cheating on him with a much-older man, and instead of confronting her about it, he first hired a private investigator and then spent weeks rewatching the footage, paralyzed with options and debating what to do. The problem somewhat solves itself when his wife’s lover is unceremoniously murdered by the cartel, and Wendy and Marty are driven into a sort of matrimonial business partnership motivated by the shared interest of protecting their children, but this also further demonstrates how corporate even their family dealings have become. His children, though precocious, are forced to contend with age-inappropriate levels of responsibility and the trauma of sudden relocation, juxtaposed with a childhood of complete privilege up until this point.
Conversely, the shadow of the Byrde family is arguably the Langmores. Precocious teenagers Ruth and Wyatt can initially be shrugged off as local hillbillies and budding con-artists, but much like the Shelby family of the Peaky Blinders, they prove to be extremely intelligent individuals suffering beneath a society that doesn’t care about their stifled potential. Systemic poverty is a bushfire that spreads from one generation to the next, stoked by the prejudices of authority figures and abusive parental figures who refuse to embrace change out of a misguided sense of class-loyalty.
Almost every other character we meet eventually inverts our expectations of them: from the folksy, salt-of-the-earth farmers who grow poppies for opium and murder more remorselessly than the cartel itself, to the cookie-cutter FBI agent whose behavior becomes increasingly volatile and chaotic, to the heroin-filled Bibles handed out by an unknowing preacher, to the secrets hidden by the lake itself, every detail conveys corruption hidden behind a postcard-pretty picture of tranquility and success.
Marty’s awareness of this illusion, and what lurks behind it, is perhaps the greatest subversion of all. Marty knows that the world of appearance and the world of reality coexist, and he was blessed with a natural talent for navigating within the two. Like Walter White, Marty makes us question our assumptions about who a criminal can be – despite the fact that many successful, attractive, middle-aged family men launder money and juggle criminal activities, it’s still jarring to witness, which tells us something about how image informs our understanding of reality. Socially privileged, white-collar criminals simply have more control over how they’re portrayed than an inner-city gang, or impoverished teenagers. However, unlike Walt, Marty’s criminal activities are not any kind of middle-aged catharsis: they’re a way of life, firmly ingrained in the corporate landscape. They were present long before he arrived on the scene, and he knows it. He just has to navigate them.
Just like our shining, messianic heroes can teach us about truth, justice, and the American way, so too does each antihero have something to teach us: they teach us that society doesn’t reward those who follow its instructions, nor does it often provide an avenue of morality. Even if you live a life devoid of apparent sin, every privilege is paid for by someone else’s sacrifice. But the best antiheroes are not beacons of nihilism – they show us the beauty that can emerge from even the ugliest of situations. Peaky Blinders is, at its core, a love story between Tommy Shelby and the family he crawled out of his grave for, just as Breaking Bad is ultimately a deeply dysfunctional tale of a father figure and son. Ozark, like its predecessors, is about family – the only authenticity in a society that operates on deception, illusion, and corruption. They teach us that even in the worst times and situations, love can compel us, redeem us, bind us closer together. Only then can we face the dragons of life, and feel just a bit more heroic.
Other examples:
Don Draper from Mad Men. A similarly Shakespearian figure for the modern era, Don is a man who appears to have everything – perfect looks, a beautiful wife and children, a prestigious job. He could have stepped out of an ad for the American Dream. And yet, he feels disconnected from his life, isolated from others by the very societal rules he, as a member of the ad agency, helps to propagate. It helps that he’s literally leading a borrowed life, inherited from the stolen identity of his deceased fellow soldier, and was actually an impoverished, illegitimate farmboy whose childhood abuse permanently damaged his ability to form relationships. The Hopper-esque alienation evoked by the world of Mad Men really deserves an essay all it’s own, and his wife Betty – whose Stepford-level mask of cheerful subservience hides seething unhappiness and unfulfilled potential – is a particularly intriguing figure to explore. Maybe in my next essay, on the importance of the antiheroine.
#my writing tips#writing tips#tommy shelby#peaky blinders#walter white#breaking bad#jesse pinkman#bojack horseman#don draper#writing advice#antihero#the types of antiheroes#long post for ts
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Parhelion Headcanons (sir this is all for you) @greenbeany
Putting 'em under the cut because they got very long O.O
I- the gnome is Neon I take no criticism. They are often good-natured souls with a more mischievous side, and if that doesn’t describe Neon I’m not sure what does. Playful, funny, good intentions, that my good Bean is our lovable cat personified. Okay Parhelion dnd au with gnome Neon please /j.
I AM SMACKING THE GUN OUT OF YOUR HANDS [runs into a glass wall] dammit,, guess I gotta talk now
I- oh no,, time to fail the exam I guess (turns all your head canons upside down)
Okay they do sleep yes they do. Actually that’s a lie only Ciel sleeps, the other two are insomniacs. Ciel has all of her day to day life planned out to the minute, so she heads to bed at a certain time and wakes up at a certain time, the other two are more of a “we’ll sleep when we’re tired” kinda duo. Unfortunately due to Ilia’s night terrors and Neon’s ADHD they almost never rest. No they do not sleep in a SANE bed, ha why would they have a bed? They sleep in a hammock all tangled up with each other. It’s hard to tell what order they sleep in when they kinda curl into each other. They do not use a duvet, why have a duvet when Neon is a space heater? There are no pillows on the hammock X). OKAY THEIR ROOM, THIS I GOT, it’s a funky mess that is somehow organized thanks to Ciel. Ilia doesn’t own a lot in general but it was her life’s dream to paint her bedroom rainbow so guess what they have now. The other two are too soft and they supported her efforts and they love her despite her poor design sense XD.
I- why closet ASDFG I mean— No they do not share a closet they all have completely different fashion sense and if that was all in one place people would be genuinely terrified. But since they’re broke they had to make do with one walk in closet that they partitioned off into sections. YES THEY DO HAVE MATCHING OUTFITS THEY ARE SO CUTE LIKE THAT. They tend to be like those cute couple outfits with a few variations to match their own personal style. But their favorite matching outfit are these duck hoodies they own courtesy of once again Ilia living out her childhood dreams. No they don’t own many outfits because like I mentioned earlier they are broke x). Hmm thinking about each other’s styles… Ilia think both of her girlfriends have great taste, she loves the well, neon of Neon, and the prim and properness of Ciel. Neon just doesn’t care XD. And Ciel is just, she’s just standing there wishing she could help their fashion sense, but she holds back because “It does suit them in an odd way.” Ciel gets the most compliments on her style hands down, she looks organized and you can bet she saves money to buy outfits that actually accentuate her cuteness. They don’t wear makeup no time for that (in which you learn Z has little to no knowledge in how to apply makeup and doesn’t know how to answer that question)
OH OKAY I LOVE VIDDY GAMES. Ciel likes real-time strategy games because she’s insane and that’s literally all she knows in life thanks to being raised in an upper class family in Atlas. Neon likes open world games, something something she likes the chance for adventure and determining one’s fate for themself. Ilia has never once played a video game until after she defected from the White Fang but I can see her playing something light like Stardew Valley, low stakes kinda games. Hmm, they might play Animal Crossing together? Since it has aspects they all enjoy. They each have an individual switch (Ilia has a coral switch lite) and one shared PC. Okay game with most hours, maybe Minecraft? They still haven’t beat the enderdragon because Neon keeps getting distracted XD. Neon is the bomb at party games though, you can bet she has a perfect score on all the songs in Just Dance. Ciel is a sharpshooter, god knows who taught her how to shoot like that. The biggest splatoon fan is unfortunately not Neon it is Ilia, she loves all the colors in the game ^^. But she and Neon have wracked up quite a few hours in co-op.
Uhhh books!! Ilia likes fanfics :) it’s unfortunately one of the only ways for her to see positive representation of herself. Neon for some reason reads Epics?? Like her favorite is the Epic of Gilgamesh what is up with that?? Ciel reads webtoons :), she reads enough serious stuff for school work and such, she likes to just kick back and relax after all that. Yes they have schedules reading time courtesy of Ciel :). Uhh, they relax by baking together. None of them had many chances to indulge in sweets while growing up so they make full use of their time now. ?? SPOON?? Cuddle hours happen on a whim, the one thing that Ciel can never schedule because she never knows when it’ll occur. They relax the most in the kitchen x) because that’s where they bake, it’s not unusual to find Neon asleep on the counter while she waits for their sweets to rise. They read in the light, Neon is afraid that by reading in the dark that they’ll all ruin their eyesight. Ciel likes the sunrise because she’s up the earliest and is the only one to see it, the other two prefer sunset because that’s usually when their day is about to begin XD.
Favorite spot for dates! The park ^^, they like to go on picnic dates with all their baked goods. There is no plan, usually one of them will randomly pull the other two out of the house because they haven’t touched grass in a while XD. There are no ideas, they share one braincell and they spend too much time doting on each other to use it. Uhm favorite movie genre,,, they like comedy movies :). Their favorite place to eat is this tiny store on the corner of their street that makes mean gyros, they heccin’ love them. Coping with horror, Ilia is desensitized to horror because of the things she’s seen in life, Neon treats it like a game because she knows it’s not real, Ciel, is okay with it, but she gets shook more easily than the other two and they often have to reassure her. No they do not like theme parks, there are too many people around for Ilia and Ciel and Neon respects their boundaries so they tend to go to more quiet places. Uhm heights, Ciel is used to heights because she’s friends with Penny and woah can that girl toss her in the air like she’s a couple of grapes. Ilia doesn’t mind heights but she would prefer to have her feet on the ground. Neon loves the ground so damn much if it leaves her she will cry because man she can’t roller-skate in the air can she, what will she do if the ground is suddenly gone? They like evening dates because it’s normally the only time all three of them are awake enough for it XD. They end a night by sleeping I am not quite sure if there are other ways to end it lmao. They absolutely despise Neon’s roller skating dates but they love how excited she gets about them so they end up becoming as good as professional roller skaters because the smile on Neon’s face when they join her is dazzling.
I am slowly going insane. Yes each girl has a hobby I sure hope they do. Ilia knits, Ciel paints, and Neon writes. I would like to imagine that Ciel would try to schedule time for their hobbies she ends up giving up because all their sleep schedules are wack. Designated chef is Neon (probably made food for FNKI back in atlas), designated driver is Ilia (I mean I like to imagine she stole cars and stuff in the White Fang XD), designated decorator for stuff is normally Ciel though Neon does try to hijack a few of her plans occasionally, designated shopper is Ciel because the other two have no concept of Saving money, and they all work together to clean :). They don’t work together, they believe in keeping their work life and home life separate to prevent their feelings from getting in the way. They do not have pets, none of them have the energy or responsibility to do that, but Ilia did once bring a moose home one day for some reason.
I am nomming on your arm sir. Ilia and Neon get along with Penny surprisingly well, though I do think Ilia would get along with Weiss better? Ruby and Weiss look at Ciel and see a beacon arc Weiss and more or less adopt her despite Ciel being older than the two of them. They might like.. play board games together? Like some of those more team based board games I can’t think of anything off the top of my head, may the best polycule win. I cannot see them in a cuddle puddle to be honest ajcnjsanjs I am so sorry— hmm Ruby and Neon do not know the meaning of formal, as far as they are concerned these are their girlfriend’s friends and that means that by extension these are their friends. Weiss would like nothing to do with Neon after Neon insults Yang during the Vytal festival but she begrudgingly goes on outings with her and hey, now they’re make up buddies for some reason. The parhelion gals take the fs gals to the gyro place they like :). Parhelion gang Is a lot more vocal on their dates because their love language happens to be words of affirmation while the fs gang’s happen to be physical touch. Both polycules are very very affectionate though I will die on this hill.
DARN IT TUMBLR ONLY LETS ME HAVE 10 IMAGES PER POST THIS IS FINE IT WAS JUST ONE MORE PROMPT DARN IT
(Parhelion angst! How do Neon and Ciel react to the news about the dust mine? How do they find out about Ilia getting expelled? Do they find out about the white fang? Is there any faunus stigma afterwards? How does Ciel react to people bullying her Faunus GFS? Does Neon talk to Ciel much after? Do they ever reunite? Does Neon attempt to help Ciel while she grieves Penny? Where the fuck is Ciel now? Is Neon still alive? Does Ilia ever think about them? Does Blake know about them from Ilia?)
BUDDY I CAME TO THE LAST ASK AND NOW ONLY DID I REALIZE YOU MEANT PARHELION BACK WHEN THEY WHERE IN BEACON THIS WHOLE TIME I’M CRYING. (This ask is answered under the assumption that they are already dating back in Atlas Academy) Ciel is fiercely protective of her girlfriends, though people only know that Neon is a Faunus because Ilia masks her traits during her time at the academy. Neon and Ciel are horrified about the news about the dust mines. They know that Ilia is a Faunus and that her parents were working there so they rush to see her as soon as possible. But they’re too late,,, Ilia’s already been expelled for attacking her fellow students. They don’t hear from Ilia for a few years after that and the two slowly drift apart, each blaming the other for not getting to Ilia soon enough. They don’t find out about the White Fang until they reunite with Ilia unfortunately, but they feel sad that Ilia had felt that they only way for her to get revenge for her parents was by joining a militant group (I’m working under the assumption that Sienna only took control of the White Fang shortly before Ilia joined). When Neon learns that Penny didn’t make it after the Fall of Beacon she hesitantly reaches out to Ciel for the first time in a year, and she does try to help. But for Ciel it’s blow after heccin’ blow and she pushes Neon away in a rage. Ciel leaves the Academy after that and goes rogue, working as a huntsman without a license for the poorer parts of remnant. Ilia is unaware of all this drama during the Beacon arc. The next time she hears of any news is during the Fall of Atlas, and she’s scared, scared because she’s still recovering and she just heard Ruby announce to the world that Remnant is under attack, and oh my gosh her ex girlfriends live in Atlas. Neon makes it out alive, though not entirely in one piece, she now has a prosthetic leg. Ilia is the first person to see her, it’s a tearful reunion and they haven’t fully made up yet, but hey it’s a work in progress, now they just have to find out where Ciel is, but when they do they’ll BOTH be there to greet her. Blake has no idea who the fuck Ciel and Neon are lmao, Ilia never told her anything about her past romances when she was in the White Fang.
Oh gosh I think that's it-- And that is it thank you for listening to me ramble about Parhelion you get a juice box for making it this far. Sir I am sincerely sorry for turning your ship upside down please forgive me.
#parhelion#ilia amitola#ciel soleil#neon katt#I have been typing for an eternity n' a half...#I swear I have essays for school that are a fraction of this post#2172 words of pure headcanon you are welcome sir#I hope you'll enjoy it when ya wake up sjancjkack#[runs]#zenta writes
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BFCD Story Concepts by Nesha
Story Concept 01: No Saviors in the Wild Pt. 5
Read Pt 1 | Pt 2 | Pt 3 | Pt 4
I Am Light by India.Arie plays in background, as it is Shani’s theme.
A Savior is Born: The Rise of the Rebels 02 - A Cage Big Enough for Hundreds
Shani knew what it meant whenever she was escorted back to the dormitories and her files were pulled up and changed. She knew what it meant for the administration to remove her arm cuff, explaining to her that the government had given her a full scholarship for the rest of her studies. When her record was expunged and she was allotted a grace days to recuperate and get back to her regularly scheduled classes with her tuition and lodging paid in full and no sign of the unjust sentence in her history, she knew.
They wanted her to shut up and move on. To just forget about not only what happened to her in the woods, but to the others. To Atlas. She tried to see if she could look him up whenever she got back to the library. The directory didn’t cover Wasteland citizens, so she had to give up after a few days.
Since she now had free time, not having to work for her education, she decided to get a part time job, for a life skills practice and a few non-academic pleasures that weren’t covered in the tuition + nutrition supply. She started a beret collection, and learning various hobbies as a distraction from thinking about the woods every time she wasn’t involved with a school project.
She bought every single type of M&M that she saw in the store, then grabbed jars to separate them - all plain reds in a big jar, smaller jars for other reds - peanut, almond, etc, and the biggest jar had all of the excess red M&Ms of all sorts put into it. Then... she had several bags of several M&Ms that weren’t red. Researching what to do with them, besides toss them, she found a few recipes for cookies and other treats. Maybe this was a nice time to learn how to bake!
She went knocking on doors of other dorms in her building and nearby buildings, "Hi, I brought you some M&Ms cookies." and they're like... You know what idec. Yes, thanks. Because, the dorms weren’t where the rich students lived. It got her a few suspicious folk, but mostly, people were grateful for something to eat that wasn’t a strict and cheap meal or an even cheaper and far less appealing meal paste. It was the first time that people seemed to begin liking her.
She thinks about getting a tattoo, but they're ridiculously unsafe and very expensive, so instead she gets a tattoo art piece, which is a realistic painting of your body part with a tattoo on it. It's relatively costly, but safe, and hers is an Atlas tattoo, holding the world on his shoulders, on her back, because Atlas had had her back.
She researches Atlas and then goes and finds Greek mythology books in the useless books depository, and takes on learning about it as a hobby. Greek mythology, baking, school, part time job doing data entry, and collecting berets. It kept her occupied, though her mind was frequently on what happened. Months had passed, years were beginning to. She thought for sure that one day, her pain had to be numbed and so she tried not to harp on it. But, how do you just forget somebody who was willing to throw away their life for yours?
18 marked the legal age of adulthood. Shani immediately had a job, right out of school as an interpreter and translator. She was hired at a firm that also allotted her to take more college level courses to advance herself in the field and she began saving up for a place in the city that wasn’t a job related lodging when she had the most important appointment set up for her that she would ever have.
“Hi. I’m Shani, I’ll be helping you today with your assessment. Have a seat.” The wasteland woman looked at the chair that Shani gestured to and smiled, her canines showing and the smile wider than Shani was comfortable with. “Ummm... Sit down?” The woman laughed and nodded.
“Have a seat. Sit down. Yes. Yes, that makes sense. It took me a moment. You might guess, the wasteland isn’t very prim and proper.”
Shani didn’t want to talk about the wasteland. Instead, she began typing into her computer, “So, Miss... Free... What is your first language?”
“I don’t believe that you have a word for it. I’ll call it wolfen. I doubt it is in your machine.”
Shani furrowed her eyebrows. “No. I’ve never heard of that before. Where did it originate? If you know...”
“Hmmm... The Epic of Gilgamesh, maybe.”
Shani frowned and clasped her hands over each other. “Ma’am. What is this meeting about?”
“I remember you, but you don’t remember me. It’s because you didn’t see me. You didn’t know to look for me. But, I knew to look for you. I’m here, because I have finally found you... Did you think it was right? For them to come in that way? They sent us food. We ate, then they attacked and took my people, took your people, took the wolf with the hair like flames...”
“What are you talking about?” Shani whispered.
“Your mate. He was torn open, then he tasted blood. He became as we are. Not fully, but enough. He became a man who is no longer a man, a man who is now a wolf.”
“Atlas.”
“They took my people. They took your people. You.. were special, somehow. You didn’t go where others went. Why were you special? Why were you spared?” Shani had never considered that she had been either of these things. She lamented over Atlas for so long, she figured that she, too, had been made to suffer. “They were taken to a cage. Some as beasts, some as feed. You were taken to a cottage, and given gifts. Are you a queen?”
“Far from it...” Shani tried to remember what happened in those moments. She vaguely recalled a voice saying, “She was falsely accused. She shouldn’t have been there in the first place, much less get taken to the Kennel. She’s got an arm cuff. She belongs to somebody.” The school. She had been property of the school. She still owed them money and had their equipment on her person, to indicate such...
Her schooling was paid off, not as a means to keep her quiet... but to keep the school quiet. To ensure that they got what she was worth and not ask questions about potential damages she faced while serving a bogus sentence. Sure, she made the most of that, but it had less to do with her and more to do with money.
“They... took them to a cage?”
“A cage big enough for hundreds.”
Tears poured from her eyes and Free took the initiative to offer the woman’s own tissues to her, as she must’ve forgotten that they were on her desk, in her... emotional release. Shani snatched two and tried to clean her face up. They took Atlas to a prison? “A prison! They... took Atlas to a prison?”
Whenever Free said this, her dark brown eyes glowed amber and at that moment, Shani knew. This... is a wolf. This woman is what she described. A person who is not a person, but a person who is a wolf. “They took everyone there. Everyone but us.”
NOTES: I enjoy the idea of Free being far removed enough from human society that she doesn’t know anything about mannerisms and only has a limited amount of English, that she’s picked up since she’s been scavenging through the wasteland, but that she’s smart (I’d say the smartest wolfen in the series), and she’s adaptable and quick. She’s like a wolfen counterpart to Shani, and that’s why they eventually get on so well. They’re in similar positions, but with vastly different backgrounds. @tiarathief (You are still the first name that comes up whenever I at somebody. Let me know if you don’t want to be tagged to these, please. @shslargue @jacksope-lives
#BFCD Story Concepts by Nesha#story concept#stories#original content#Shani Saviors#A Savior is Born: Rise of the Rebels#writing#Free Saviors#A Cage Big Enough for Hundreds#Story Concept 01: No Saviors in the Wild
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A Horror History of Werewolves
As far as horror icons are concerned, werewolves are among the oldest of all monsters. References to man-to-wolf transformations show up as early as the Epic of Gilgamesh, making them pretty much as old as storytelling itself. And, unlike many other movie monsters, werewolves trace their folkloric roots to a time when people truly believed in and feared these creatures.
But for a creature with such a storied past, the modern werewolf has quite the crisis of identity. Thanks to an absolute deluge of romance novels featuring sometimes-furry love interests, the contemporary idea of “werewolf” is decidedly de-fanged. So how did we get here? Where did they come from, where are they going, and can werewolves ever be terrifying again?
Werewolves in Folklore and Legend
Ancient Greece was full of werewolf stories. Herodotus wrote of a nomadic tribe from Scythia (part of modern-day Russia) who changed into wolves for a portion of the year. This was most likely a response to the Proto-Indo-European societies living in that region at the time -- a group whose warrior class would sometimes don animal pelts and were said to call on the spirit of animals to aid them in battle (the concept of the berserker has the same roots -- just bears rather than wolves).
In Arcadia, there was a local legend about King Lycaon, who was turned to a wolf as punishment for serving human meat to Zeus (exact details of the event vary between accounts, but cannibalism and crimes-against-the-gods are a common theme). Pliny the Elder wrote of werewolves as well, explaining that those who make a sacrifice to Zeus Lycaeus would be turned to wolves but could resume human form years later if they abstained from eating human meat in that time.
By the time we reach the Medieval period in Europe, werewolf stories were widespread and frequently associated with witchcraft. Lycanthropy could be either a curse laid upon someone or a transformation undergone by someone practicing witchcraft, but either way was bad news in the eyes of the church. For several centuries, witch-hunts would aggressively seek out anyone suspected of transforming into a wolf.
One particularly well-known werewolf trial was for Peter Stumpp in 1589. Stumpp, known as "The Werewolf of Bedburg," confessed to killing and eating fourteen children and two pregnant women while in the form of a wolf after donning a belt given to him by the Devil. Granted, this confession came on the tail-end of extensive public torture, so it may not be precisely reliable. His daughter and mistress were also executed in a public and brutal way during the same trial.
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?
The thing you have to understand when studying folklore is that, for many centuries, wolves were the apex predator of Europe. While wolf attacks on humans have been exceedingly rare in North America, wolves in Europe have historically been much bolder -- or, at least, there are more numerous reports of man-eating wolves in those regions. Between 1362 and 1918, roughly 7,600 people were reportedly killed by wolves in France alone, which may have some bearing on the local werewolf tradition of the loup-garou.
For people living in rural areas, subsisting as farmers or hunters, wolves posed a genuine existential threat. Large, intelligent, utilizing teamwork and more than capable of outwitting the average human, wolves are a compelling villain. Which is probably why they show up so frequently in fairytales, from Little Red Riding Hood to Peter and the Wolf to The Three Little Pigs.
Early Werewolf Fiction
Vampires have Dracula and zombies have I Am Legend, but there really is no clear singular book to point to as the "First Great Werewolf Novel." Perhaps by the time the novel was really taking off as an artform, werewolves had lost some of their appeal. After all, widespread literacy and reading-for-pleasure went hand-in-hand with advancements in civilization. For city-dwellers in Victorian England, for example, the threat of a wolf eating you alive probably seemed quite remote.
Don't get me wrong -- there were some Gothic novels featuring werewolves, like Sutherland Menzies' Hugues, The Wer-Wolf, or G.W.M. Reynolds' Wagner the Wehr-Wolf, or even The Wolf Leader by Alexandre Dumas. But these are not books that have entered the popular conscience by any means. I doubt most people have ever heard of them, much less read them.
No -- I would argue that the closest thing we have, thematically, to a Great Werewolf Novel is in fact The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Written in 1886, the Gothic novella tells the story of a scientist who, wanting to engage in certain unnamed vices without detection, created a serum that would allow him to transform into another person. That alter-ego, Mr. Hyde, was selfish, violent, and ultimately uncontrollable -- and after taking over the body on its own terms and committing a murder or two, the only way to stop Hyde’s re-emergence was suicide.
Although not about werewolves, per se, Jekyll & Hyde touches on many themes that we'll see come up time and again in werewolf media up through the present day: toxic masculinity, the dual nature of man, leading a double life, and the ultimate tragedy of allowing one's base instincts/animal nature to run wild. Against a backdrop of Victorian sexual repression and a rapidly shifting concept of humanity's relationship to nature, it makes sense that these themes would resonate deeply (and find a new home in werewolf media).
It is also worth mentioning Guy Endore's The Werewolf of Paris, published in 1933. Set against the backdrop of the Franco-Prussian war and subsequent military battles, the book utilizes a werewolf as a plot device for exploring political turmoil. A #1 bestseller in its day, the book was a big influence on the sci-fi and mystery pulp scene of the 1940s and 50s, and is still considered one of the best werewolf novels of its ilk.
From Silver Bullets to Silver Screens
What werewolf representation lacks in novels, it makes up for in film. Werewolves have been a surprisingly enduring feature of film from its early days, due perhaps to just how much fun transformation sequences are to film. From camera tricks to makeup crews and animatronics design, werewolf movies create a lot of unique opportunities for special effects -- and for early film audiences especially (who were not yet jaded to movie magic), these on-screen metamorphoses must have elicited true awe.
The Wolf Man (1941) really kicked off the trend. Featuring Lon Chaney Jr. as the titular wolf-man, the film was cutting-edge for its time in the special effects department. The creature design is the most memorable thing about the film, which has an otherwise forgettable plot -- but it captured viewer attention enough to bring Chaney back many times over for sequels and Universal Monster mash-ups.
The Wolf Man and 1944's Cry of the Werewolf draw on that problematic Hollywood staple, "The Gypsy Curse(tm)" for their world-building. Fortunately, werewolf media would drift away from that trope pretty quickly; curses lost their appeal, but “bite as mode of transmission” would remain an essential part of werewolf mythos.
In 1957, I Was a Teenage Werewolf was released as a classic double-header drive-in flick that's nevertheless worth a watch for its parallels between werewolfism and male aggression (a theme we'll see come up again and again). Guy Endore's novel got the Hammer Film treatment for 1961's The Curse of the Werewolf, but it wasn't until the 1970s when werewolf media really exploded: The Beast Must Die, The Legend of the Wolf Woman, The Fury of the Wolfman, Scream of the Wolf, Werewolves on Wheels and many more besides.
Hmmm, werewolves exploding in popularity around the same time as women's liberation was dramatically redefining gender roles and threatening the cultural concept of masculinity? Nah, must be a coincidence.
The 1980s brought with it even more werewolf movies, including some of the best-known in the genre: The Howling (1981), Teen Wolf (1985), An American Werewolf in London (1981), and The Company of Wolves (1984). Differing widely in their tone and treatment of werewolf canon, the films would establish more of a spiderweb than a linear taxonomy.
That spilled over into the 1990s as well. The Howling franchise went deep, with at least seven films that I can think of. Wolf, a 1994 release starring Jack Nicholson is especially worth a watch for its themes of dark romantic horror.
By the 2000s, we get a proper grab-bag of werewolf options. There is of course the Underworld series, with its overwrought "vampires vs lycans" world-building. There's also Skin Walkers, which tries very hard to be Underworld (and fails miserably at even that low bar). But there's also Dog Soldiers and Ginger Snaps, arguably two of the finest werewolf movies of all time -- albeit in extremely different ways and for very different reasons.
Dog Soldiers is a straightforward monster movie pitting soldiers against ravenous werewolves. The wolves could just as easily have been subbed out with vampires or zombies -- there is nothing uniquely wolfish about them on a thematic level -- but the creature design is unique and the film itself is mastefully made and entertaining.
Ginger Snaps is the first werewolf movie I can think of that tackles lycanthropy from a female point of view. Although The Company of Wolves has a strong feminist angle, it is still very much a film about male sexuality and aggression. Ginger Snaps, on the other hand, likens werewolfism to female puberty -- a comparison that frankly makes a lot of sense.
The Werewolf as Sex Object
There are quite literally thousands of werewolf romance novels on the market, with more coming in each day. But the origins of this trend are a bit fuzzier to make out (no pun intended).
Everyone can mostly agree that Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire was the turning-point for sympathetic vampires -- and paranormal romance as a whole. But where do werewolves enter the mix? Possibly with Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter books, which feature the titular character in a relationship with a werewolf (and some vampires, and were-leopards, and...many other things). With the first book released in 1993, the Anita Blake series seems to pre-date similar books in its ilk.
Blood and Chocolate (1997) by Annette Curtis Klause delivers a YA-focused version of the classic “I’m a werewolf in high school crushing on a mortal boy”; that same year, Buffy the Vampire Slayer hit the small screen, and although the primary focus was vampires, there is a main werewolf character (and romancing him around the challenges of his wolfishness is a big plot point for the characters involved). And Buffy, of course, paved the way for Twilight in 2005. From there, werewolves were poised to become a staple of the ever-more-popular urban fantasy/paranormal romance genre.
“Sexy werewolf” as a trope may have its roots in other traditions like the beastly bridegroom (eg, Beauty and the Beast) and the demon lover (eg, Labyrinth), which we can talk about another time. But there’s one other ingredient in this recipe that needs to be discussed. And, oh yes, we’re going there.
youtube
Alpha/Beta/Omegaverse
By now you might be familiar with the concept of the Omegaverse thanks to the illuminating Lindsay Ellis video on the topic (and the current ongoing lawsuit). If not, well, just watch the video. It’ll be easier than trying to explain it all. (Warning for NSFW topics).
But the tl;dr is that A/B/O or Omegaverse is a genre of (generally erotic) romance utilizing the classical understanding of wolf pack hierarchy. Never mind that science has long since disproven the stratification of authority in wolf packs; the popular conscious is still intrigued by the concept of a society where some people are powerful alphas and some people are timid omegas and that’s just The Way Things Are.
What’s interesting about the Omegaverse in regards to werewolf fiction is that, as near as I’ve been able to discover, it’s actually a case of convergent evolution. A/B/O as a genre seems to trace its roots to Star Trek fanfiction in the 1960s, where Kirk/Spock couplings popularized ideas like heat cycles. From there, the trope seems to weave its way through various fandoms, exploding in popularity in the Supernatural fandom.
What seems to have happened is that the confluence of A/B/O kink dynamics merging with urban fantasy werewolf social structure set off a popular niche for werewolf romance to truly thrive.
It’s important to remember that, throughout folklore, werewolves were not viewed as being part of werewolf societies. Werewolves were humans who achieved wolf form through a curse or witchcraft, causing them to transform into murderous monsters -- but there was no “werewolf pack,” and certainly no social hierarchy involving werewolf alphas exerting their dominance over weaker pack members. That element is a purely modern one rooted as much in our misunderstanding of wolf pack dynamics as in our very human desire for power hierarchies.
So Where Do We Go From Here?
I don’t think sexy werewolf stories are going anywhere anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no room left in horror for werewolves to resume their monstrous roots.
Thematically, werewolves have done a lot of heavy lifting over the centuries. They hold up a mirror to humanity to represent our own animal nature. They embody themes of toxic masculinity, aggression, primal sexuality, and the struggle of the id and ego. Werewolf attack as sexual violence is an obvious but powerful metaphor for trauma, leaving the victim transformed. Werewolves as predators hiding in plain sight among civilization have never been more relevant than in our #MeToo moment of history.
Can werewolves still be frightening? Absolutely.
As long as human nature remains conflicted, there will always be room at the table for man-beasts and horrifying transfigurations.
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Oh hey. I forgot I have a writing blog. Here’s a WIP of my short story collection for my creative writing class. It’s a WIP for one of my major ideas I want to do.
Once every century, it is said that the planets of the solar system align perfectly. In a perfect row, they cast upon the ultimate shadow upon one another; opening the gates to other realms far from our own. It was said that the fallen god rose from this gate and set his sights on destroying our system just like his own. But where evil went, goodness was sure to follow. Out from this gate came the Holy Maiden and her summoned knight. Together, they sealed away the fallen god and cast light back into our system. The two understood that the battle was far from over. “Catch a fish for a man, he would eat for a day. Teach the man how to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.” Despite their love for each other, the Holy Maiden and her summoned knight agreed to go on separate pilgrimages to spread their teachings. The Holy Maiden remained in our system and founded us, the Holy Order, to pass on her teachings and traditions to future Holy Maidens. Her summoned knight, on the other hand, returned into the gate and spread his words to the numerous realms behind the gate. With their sacrifice, we have prevented the fallen god’s awakening over a thousand times…
“Ay yo… so, like… cool lore but like… pretty cringy not gonna lie. You lost me at the “aligning of the planets” bit. It went from horoscope bullshit to cliched pre-teen novels with a bit of a JRPG elements in there,” a voice spoke out, breaking the breathtaking spell that weighed heavy in this beautifully painted dream.
The wind blew soft through the empty courtyard as no one said anything. In a walled-off garden stood seven bodies, each facing each other in a circle with a pond that separated each figure. Each stood on their own path that was surrounded by the water on each side but behind. A mini pier if you wish to imagine. The water was clear, yet the light was too blinding to see past the surface. All seven figures were outlined well enough to show that they were all women, yet a shadow covered their faces to remain a mystery to one another. Sitting above all this was a pink-haired woman. Her hair was braided back and looked far too youthful to be talking like an elder. Her prink eyes scanned each woman to search for the back talker, a glare like a dagger and on edge. Despite that, she kept an icy façade.
“Who cut me off? Head Nun of the Holy Order?” the pink-haired woman spoke up, looking down at the crowd of women below her.
“Uh, me.”
Slicing through the air, the Head Nun’s eyes locked on to the woman who spoke up; her hand raised slightly while maintaining the image of being smaller than what she was. Her limbs were tightly held together like a defensive turtle yet flashing a Chester cat grin in reception of the attention. “No offense lady but I felt like I heard this exact same plot with some gacha game I played last month. Can we just skip all this tutorial nonsense to get to the fuckin’ point already?” the woman continued, her blunt and straightforward words not matching the lowkey appearance she was trying to give off.
“Oh! You played Fate/Grand Order too? I’ve been trying to pull Gilgamesh for my team for months,” the woman on the right of the back talker chimed in. Though she was covered in shadow, the third party was animatedly clapping her hands together in excitement that she found a companion who played the same game.
“Eh, I stopped after two months. The drop rates are insane for that game and you don’t get enough of the in-game currency. I prefer Epic Seven since you actually win the gamble in summoning a strong hero-“
“Silence!”
Slamming her hand against the armrest of her chair, the Head Nun demanded all attention back onto her. The sound of flesh against marble echoing throughout this supernatural courtyard. Zeroing in out the outlier, the Head Nun sized her up before letting out a scoff. Receiving this judgmental look was a young woman of 21 years. If she never stood by herself, she might have blended in with a crowd with her rather ordinary looks. Brown hair, matching brown eyes, and a pair of glasses. Tell that description to any sketch artist and they would draw any other woman. One in five women look exactly like her. Was that statistically correct? Of course not, but most would believe it these days.
The nun craned her neck over these seven girls, peering down with arrogance. Who would have thought that the bold one in this group wasn’t the goth but this… loser. Despite not being affected by the spell, the rebel was overseen like the shadow of her chair or the tree’s. “Are you done speaking over me?”
“No, actually. You aren’t hurrying the fuck up and you rudely cut me off from having a pleasant and stimulating conversation from my neighbor here,” the woman said, “If you aren’t going to tell me what my horoscope is, I don’t want to hear another hour of lore.” From her sides, the woman could hear the reactions from the other girls who listen in to this back and forth. Some ‘tsk’ from her disrespectful actions while others acted a bit shocked. Of course, there were those who snickered from the show while one seemed to be rather disinterested. Tough crowd… To be fair, she wasn’t normally as blunt as she was today. She knew when to keep things to herself but quite frankly, this lady was going on for the last hour about prophecies and cosmic evils. This nun sounds like those writers who only focus on worldbuilding and not writing their story.
“Hurry up? We’re talking about the end of the world- YOUR world. This “lore” is vital. People’s lives are at stake with this information, Two,” the Head Nun said.
“Shit, really? Then why don’t you act it? Literally… no agency. This is the part where a creative writing teacher tells you “show don’t tell”,” Two answered right back; sarcasm dripping from every syllable. She wanted to correct the hag. Her name was Mia, but she understood there was anonymity for a reason. She was tactless, not stupid. Well, Mia would argue she had some tact, but her patience ran thin do this grossly, mishandled magic society. She thought those campy young adult books with groups run by idiots were meant to be… you know, fiction?
It all started right when Mia got to bed. She just got home from a long shift at work and all she wanted was nothing more than lay in bed. And that she did once she took an evening shower before bed. It was normal, everyday stuff for the third-year college student. She had school tomorrow and Mia just wanted to rest her aching body. As soon as her head hit the pillow, she opened her eyes to a completely new world. Looking around, she found herself not alone. There was one other person with her face covered and the pink-haired woman as well. Mia was greeted as “Two” and was told to wait for the other five to show.
That was an hour wasted in waiting and add in the additional hour for the hefty speech, we got our recipe for an irritated Mia. She didn’t go to bed just to stand up for two hours for some fantasy bullshit. Any other time? Sure. It’s cool. But now??? WHEN SHE HAS A TEST TOMORROW?! INCONVENIENT! It killed Mia since this was pretty fucking cool and different from the norm. Everyone dreams of being picked the chosen one but, come on… this was too predictable. If you read a fantasy book or consumed any fantasy media before, then you know what’s going on.
“Rude child. This information isn’t something as trivial as a novel,” the Head Nun spoke, looking down at Mia like a haughty teacher.
“I’m gonna assume that we’re all candidates in being chosen as the new Holy Maiden. We chose our knights or whatever. Compete and whoever wins must reseal the fallen god then tada! Happy ending! Yay!” Mia said. She even raised her hand at the ‘yay’ portion of her phrase. “Listen dude, I play too many games and read a shit ton of books for this. Can we please not do this while I’m in my pajamas?” Mia said, practically begging to be released from this mild inconvenience.
“… You guys weren’t exactly chosen. The universe brought you to us…” the Head Nun spoke, not really arguing with what Mia said. There was a cocky grin on Mia’s face as she just couldn’t help but find it funny how she got some otherworldly person tongue-tied.
“A lottery system huh… sounds about right. An NPC like me wouldn’t be chosen normally… I’m way too smart to be a main character,” Mia thought. She glances to the side for a moment before back on the show.
“Well… I’ll work with Two on this point and speed things up. Time is of the essence,” the head nun spoke, acting as if she was graciously fulfilling Mia’s wish. At this point, Mia didn’t care. Whatever helped the nun feel powerful or whatever… “As Two pointed out, all seven of you are candidates for becoming the new Holy Maiden. You will come into this realm three times a week for your lessons to strengthen your magic and during your regular days of the week, you seven will compete with one another. Your knights are the extension of your magic. When one knight trumps the other, they prove you are the strongest magic user and your defeated candidate is knocked out of the running. This continues until the last one is standing,” the nun explained, “We have hidden your faces and names from each other to keep you guys from cheating and attacking each other when you aren’t ready for combat. If you wish to fight, it’s up to you guys to discuss how to go about it.”
“A battle royal? I thought dystopian novels where kids kill each other in a game was out of fashion? I mean- they already got the Mirai Nikki vibe with the covered faces in the central hub…” Mia thought. She laughed under her breath with mild amusement at the situation. She decided to keep her thoughts hidden now as she surveys the competition. She wasn’t sure if she was going to take this seriously, but she thought she should start hiding her thoughts on the matter now. “The Head Nun never said we couldn’t figure out each other’s identity and jump them… nor any etiquettes of battle… how curious,” she continued her train of thought as she waited for the nun to finish.
“We’ll now do the summoning ritual. One, please kneel down and place your hand into the water to help your knight rise,” the Head Nun spoke. One looked around confused by the order, but she soon nervously did as she was told. She knelt and placed her hand inside. There was a good pause before One jolted. Slowly, One stood up to her feet as a tall figure rose from the water. Just like the girls, his face was hidden from everyone else but his master, no doubt. But his figure was very much noticeable.
“YO! Did you just summon a furry?!” Mia exclaimed before bursting out laughing. She pointed a finger at the girl next to her in a mocking fashion. While she couldn’t see the competition, Mia could at least see a pair of fuzzy dog ears on the knight’s head. But despite her words, Mia knew that, realistically, this knight was most likely a beast man or even a werewolf. She simply didn’t want to lose this chance to taunt her competition.
“Two! Please restrain yourself and respect your fellow maidens and their knights,” the Head Nun spoke. The pink-haired woman coughing into her hand to break up the interaction. “Now, for the love of God. Please shut up, kneel, and summon your knight.”
“Damn, at least ask for my consent before forcing me on my knees,” Mia muttered before kneeling as instructed. She felt rather stupid but seeing how the first maiden got a knight, Mia decided to just trust the action. She submerged her hand in the opaque lake. It was wet alright. Yet despite being in spitting distance to the surface, Mia couldn’t see past her reflection. “Come on RNG don’t fail me now. A hot guy would do wonders for my mental health,” Mia joked, “I hope re-rolls are free.”
On the edge of non-existence and existence, a subconscious mind rose to consciousness once more. He drowns in nothingness and breaths in hopelessness.
There was no sky nor ground to define his abysmal prison. Not even a memory to keep him company.
A hand reached out from above. A hand surrounded by light and a promise of warmth. He attempted to reach for it, yet he was restricted from moving and was forced to watch another steal the opportunity from the shadow. He watched the pair of hands meet and just like that, the light was gone.
He sank deeper into the depths of this unholy waiting room.
Yet again, a hand was extended from the dark with the temptation of freedom. Cautious to reach for it after the first time, he looked around for others who wished to take it. Many came and all walked away. No one wanted to take this hand.
He made an attempt to take it, if only to escape, but found that he was unable to pry himself free. Defeated, he decided to give up on the opportunity. It was pointless anyways.
Left unheld, the hand does not reel empty handed. No. Instead, it curled its fingers until one finger remained up.
One big ‘fuck you’.
What the fuck? So much for an inviting presence. Who did this person think they are? It wasn’t like he didn’t try to take their hand. But seeing this middle finger dangling in front of him like a fishhook with bait, he reached for it once more to drag the hand down into the depths with him. He was tied in place but after some furious tugs, he was freed with a pop.
Taking the hand, it became evident that the one getting snatched wasn’t them but him. Curled fingers shifted forms into a vice grip around his wrist upon skin contact. The dark veil that covered him were ripped off in that instance. Lights, sounds, textures, tastes, and smells flooded his senses as he became a person once again.
Planting both feet on the ground, Mia used both hands to reel up her prey. This summoning was nothing graceful like the girl next to her. It was primal and chaotic as Mia’s partner was floundering under the water. So much for a knight in shining armor. This guy isn’t fighting any dragons anytime soon if he’s having difficulty wrestling against an inanimate substance.
Letting out a battle cry, Mia used all her strength to bring her knight to the surface and onto the pier with her. It wasn’t his entire body but enough of it was on land that it was easier to drag the rest of him out with less trouble. Mia fell backwards on her butt and was slightly out of breath after that intensive ritual. Shiiiit. Carrying a body is a lot harder than it looks kids! Don’t trust what you see on TV. The more you knowミ★
Mia was the image of ‘tired’ with her slightly flushed cheeks and skewed. Fanning herself, she patiently waited for the man she pulled out to make the first move, yet he was belly-down, still as a door nail. For someone who had a lot of energy to fight against help, he suddenly became as complacent as a kitten.
Oh fuck... he isn’t dead, is he? Cause that’ll be pretty awkward ngl ┐(´-｀)┌
Mia leaned forward to inspect what she pulled out. She lifted his pale arm to search for a pulse. It was cold to the touch and she couldn’t tell if the steady thud she felt was his or an echo of her own. Upon letting it go, it limply fell to the ground with no flinch from him. Crap. Don’t tell her that she accidentally pulled out a dead body?! Well, Mia knew that pulling trash can happen during fishing mini games but she thought that this more of a “guarantee knight summoning” deal. Mia refused to believe that she waited five humiliating minutes waiting just to pull out a corpse. She wants a refund, god damn it!
Moving his head, Mia planned to check his pulse from his neck to double check if he was dead. There was no resistance in the action, yet she found herself meeting a pair of responsive red eyes peaking from between snowy white hair. The two of them stared at each other for a moment as they both seemed like caught criminals in the middle of a crime. The man’s chest raised up and down as he breaths; a piece of evidence that doesn’t escape Mia’s attention. He’s…
“HE’S HOT!!!”
Scrambling to her feet, Mia put both her hands in the air and let out her victory screech to the worried silhouettes surrounding her. No wait- she should be yelling how he was alive, not his appearance. Yet here she was, doing a victory dance on top of her knight in a pair of polka dotted pajamas. Give her a pitchfork and a tail then you got the image of an imp dancing on a grave. “Bro! He’s so hot... Edward Cullen lookin’ ass- I mean, not like the musty looking Robert Patterson version but how you imagine he look like based on the description,” Mia explained to anyone listening with a wildly inaccurate and vague description of the man. She waved her arms animatedly as she gossiped with her peers with the person in question crawling to his feet.
“Dude, that should be the last of your concerns,” Five said.
“I think you should make sure he’s okay…” Seven said, joining Five in expressing concern.
“Whoa there! You can’t really blame my maiden here for getting hung up on my dashing good looks. Dead or alive, you’ll notice my face first before anything else.”
Laying a heavy hand on Mia’s right shoulder, the man wrapped his arm around the woman to stand in solidarity it her. Surprised by the action, Mia tilt her head to the side to look at her knight to judge which side he was playing on. She locked eyes with him once more but not on accident this time. His touch was uncomfortable, yet she doesn’t push him away. They were a pair of souls with two different goals yet had a silent agreement to meet in the middle for the moment.
“Good to see you again, Catherine. You hardly look over two thousand years old,” Mia’s knight said, being the first to break their line of sight to look at the Head Nun. The nun sneered as the source of her stress doubled over the course of ten minutes.
“Ashley…” the Head Nun said, nearly hissing out the name. Her knuckles were turning white due to how tightly she held onto her armrest.
“Ash,” he corrected her, with equal amount of distaste in return. Ash was smiling but he on edge just like the Head Nun. But this rivalry was interrupted when Mia pinched Ash’s hand to catch his attention. He looked back down to receive Mia’s disapproving expression at his brief quip with the Head Nun. It seemed hypocritical that Mia was suddenly policing his attitude considering she was flaunting on the competition, but Ash clocked on what’s making her step in. “It’s okay,” Ash said, leaning down to whisper into Mia’s left ear, “This was just between me and her. No one heard me use my name. Not like it matters.”
“I’m just disappointed that you don’t have a chainsaw arm,” Mia whispered back, pretending she never had that concern by throwing out a seemingly random thought. Ash stared at her as if she was insane and as if to say ‘what are you talking about’ with expressions alone. “What? You never seen the Evil Dead franchise?” Mia whispered, “Not a fan of zombies movies?”
“You watched me rise from the depths, fight other knights, and you’re asking me if I’ve seen a movie?” Ash said, in disbelief at her question yet finding himself amused by it at the same time.
“I take it that you don’t have Netflix in the void then.”
Watching the duo snicker and conspire with each other like a pair of high school delinquents, the Head Nun rubbed her forehead as a migraine began to surface. She was losing control once again thanks to double trouble. Even the other girls who were patiently waiting began talking among each other. “Oh my god… like I thought, this was the worst combination I’ve ever seen in my lifetime…,” the Head Nun muttered to herself. She covered her face as she shook her head slowly as if she was contemplating something. “I didn’t realize it would be this bad… Out of all the times for that guy to make an appearance, he had to end up with her,” she continued muttering before ultimately lifting her head to look down at Mia and her summoned knight. The Head Nun needed to separate them. “Ah, Two? I don’t mean to disturb your… fun. But you summoned one of the more… troublesome knights considering his background. I’ll allow you to “re-roll”. How does that sound?” the Head Nun spoke, her voice sickening sweet and obviously fake.
Mia and Ash quickly turned to look at each other for how their partner would react. They wordlessly conversed with Mia gesturing the two of them then to the Head Nun. Ash’s only reply was an uncaring shrug but ended up nervously shaking off the water that stuck to his hair to appear distracted. “Yeah… no deal, Howie Mandel,” Mia said, trailing off for a moment to gauge last minute expressions from Ash before turning her full attention on the Head Nun. “You doing that makes me want to stick with Mr. Abominable Albino even more,” she said.
“Abominable Albino?” Ash said. He had a hand over his chest and appeared almost offending by the alliteration. He was hardly offended by being called such a thing but the fact that Mia wasted a braincell to make an awful pun in the middle of a fantastical end-of-the-world scenario.
“Whenever some untrustworthy figure makes some inflammatory comment about one of the leads, they’re obviously doing that to cause aa divide between the leads for their own benefit,” Mia continued as she ignored Ash’s offense to her words. She waved her hand in the air as if to disperse the fog of misinformation. “You even had a mini aside moment where you muttered to the readers that there’s something more about Ash!”
“Pardon?”
The Head Nun looked completely lost as Mia’s rambling turned to the meta and spoke about invisible audience members. But just like Ash, Mia ignored her words to continue her spiel. “And even if he’s a piece of shit. Worthless. Good for nothing. Pathetic. Dead weight. Only a pretty vase-“
“Okay. I think she gets it already,” Ash said, cutting in as the terms began to pile in his heart. He squeezed Mia’s shoulder to have her move on to the point.
“I will never give him up,” Mia said.
“And... why is that?” the Head Nun asked, wringing her dress in fear that Mia figured something out that she wasn’t supposed to.
“Because he is hot. I made that pretty clear since the beginning,” Mia said. She held her head high and mighty with not even a hint of shame. For a moment, Ash was about to feel touched by Mia coming to his defense. Touched enough that it would make him loyal to her and act as a spark to a turbulent but heartfelt young adult love story which would turn into a mildly popular trilogy with an eventual movie deal before fading into obscurity. But the curtains closed on that sparkling yet oddly specific future as Ash realized that he was stuck with the weird kid. “I mean- I guess I value him as a person too… or something. Power of belief or whatever inspirational term author’s like to use to tug on heartstrings.”
#my writing#this is isekai believe it or not#writer on tumblr#pov you're my classmate who sees me uploading this to our blackboard discussion board
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tagged by the glorious @sl-walker
How many works do you have on AO3? 44
What’s your total AO3 word count? 265.827
How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?
Star Wars, Shadow and Bone/Six of Crows, Supernatural. If we're counting stuff that never got polished enough to post, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Harry Potter, Cobra Kai, Lord of the Rings, Inu Yasha, .......
What are your top 5 fics by kudos?
The blue man (Star Wars TFA; Kudos: 547)
Armor (Star Wars TFA; Kudos: 417)
Coarse and irritating (Star Wars TFA; Kudos: 358)
Head shot (Star Wars TFA Kudos: 344)
Reveille (Star Wars TFA; Kudos: 344)
All the same series!
Do you respond to comments, why or why not?
I respond but sometimes I'm super slow. I do appreciate every single comment and some of them I've read so often I can almost recite them, but I'm not actually good at making the words go (yeah I know I write for fun but that's one of the reasons why I'm such a slow writer, and also I love suffering)
What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?
They're both about Maul after losing to Sidious, which is such a miserable point in this life already: the one in which I made it Worse aka the OG zombie Savage fic, Coming home early is always a mistake, and then there's Maul decades after, trapped with something that might just be his brother, Keep quite still and wait
Do you write crossovers? If so what’s the craziest one you’ve written?
I invent crossovers to torture my best friend. In the last one, Gilgamesh was made Hokage. Generally though, I sometimes enjoy the characters-in-world-from-different-story type but I haven't written anything of the sort. Except! My Supernatural/Mines of Falun crossover. And I'm currently writing a Shadow and Bones fic with a de Sade pastiche in it. Those are my kind of crossover
Have you ever received hate on a fic?
I'm not remotely visible enough to get hate I think! Like, I generally get less than 500 hits, so why would anyone bother
Do you write smut? If so what kind?
I do write sexually explicit fic when the characters vibe with it (like From Each According to Their Ability, To Each According to Their Need which is Jesper/Kaz/Inej) but I would describe it as... more interested in the tenderness you get from being utterly weird in the way that makes your partners feel understood than in sexiness, I guess.
Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Not that I know. As I've said, I am a minuscule slug in a massive ocean
Have you ever had a fic translated?
Someone asked about translating Your death is a number but I cannot count that high into German! They haven't finished and sent me the link though, and really, I don't envy them. Translation's fucking hard
What’s your all time favorite ship?
I've never had one single favourite for anything in my life! I like way too many things
Whats a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?
I genuinely plan to finish very single one of my million WIPs posted at some point. Yes, even Epicenter
What are your writing strengths?
Weird set-ups and texture through details maybe? Honestly being positive about myself is hard except in terms of: I do really like the ideas I come up with and how I'm spinning out the implications
What are your writing weaknesses?
Humour is super hard and not my strength, which means the fact I've decided that Jesper is the most interesting character in Shadow and Bone/Six of Crows should be classed as an act of self-harm. Honestly, why. Part of that struggle is that there's so many kinds of funny and in-between working out the character's sense of humour and trying really hard, I sometimes stop caring about what possible readers might find funny as long as I do.
Also, I'm slow. So slow. I plot several fics per week and take weeks to write a chapter
What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?
I've written dialogue in other languages! Maul talking to Jagrub in Your death is a number but I cannot count that high, where Jagrub speaks way better Mando'a than basic and because Maul only half-understands some Mando'a words that's how I wrote it.
Death Watch must be getting impatient. As soon as Maul forces himself to raise his eyes—turning away from the coddling indifference of the holocam—Jagrub starts talking. “Mand’Alor? Vercop’ashnar verborir—” and then she lets out a jumble of other words, even more unfamiliar, before she cuts herself off.
She’s not one of those, usually, who address him directly. Maul understands Death Watch’s tendency to converse in Mando’a—if he is to avoid appearing an outsider and risking another schism, replying in kind is indispensable—but his early training held no space for anything that would not advance the revenge of the Sith, let alone the languages of minor regional hegemons, and neither Kast nor him prioritized resuming the lessons interrupted when Sidious attacked Sundari. Jagrub’s brow bunches up with the effort of simplifying her words to a level he can understand. “We should… Permission to send… scouts to find more of Rook’morut'yc?” A frustrated grunt. “No, what will he… Weapons? Goore.”
Kast glances at Jagrub, and then at Ventress. She must decide the suggestion is urgent, because she explains in Common, “Jagrub is talking of slugthrowers. Impossible to deflect with a lightsaber. Mandalore has not fought a war against the Jedi in centuries, but they were more effective than blasters then, and enough should remain as heirlooms or in museums to furnish our army. A delay of a few days to retrieve them, if you believe that Savage will survive that long. Else, we’ll make do with the five we currently have.”
What was the first fandom you wrote for?
I've been spinning off stories from what I've read for as long as I can remember. The first thing I actually wrote and posted was an Inu Yasha fan comic about extremely minor characters the Shichinintai, because even as a thirteen-year-old I was niche
What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?
I love most of them, but the ones that made me dive really into myself are probably my favourite. Your death is a number, Down in the Ground where the Dead Men Go, Riches and Wonders, To Each According to Their Ability
tagging @expatgirl @humanformdragon @submeowchinegun @skitter-kitteruwu @pomodoriyum @merfilly
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W, X, Y, Z for the writing asks! ☺️
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W: Are you a planner or a pantser? Or somewhere in between?
I’m a pantser to the extreme, I’ve found 😂😂 I don’t write in order, I usually start at a part that I’m interested in and build from there, and pretty much all of the time I have no idea what’s going to happen before I write it. I’ve tried various methods of planning, including but not limited to bullet points, index cards, and scribbled notes on the back of envelopes, but usually the minute I start writing, the characters veer off somewhere entirely different, so I have to abandon the plan. There is a vague plan and plot in my head which is quite difficult to describe, but any attempt to write it down just. Does not work. So I’ll write a scene that takes place at point X and then jump back to point B and then write a little for point M, and so on, and that’s how I piece the plot together.
X: What inspires you as a writer?
Lots of things! Any piece of art (book/tv show/painting) that makes me go, “wow. I want to do something like that” (whether it’s quality or trope or character, etc.). If I see something in real life that makes me want to record it, and then incorporate it into something (a beautiful autumn tree, a conversation overheard on the bus, and so on). Talking with my friends and reading their writing; often, during times where we’re all writing and exchanging pieces I find that I’m more inspired to write.
Y: Are your characters based off of people you know? Yourself? Or no one at all?
Already answered!
Z: What made you decide to write your story?
I have several stories in the works right now, so I’ll do a quick sentence or two for each one:
The Raven’s Return—I’ve been interested in Irish mythology since I was a child, and in the question of what would have happened had the Roman Empire invaded Ireland since high school. The worldbuilding arose from that, while the characters were a family I’d been playing around with for a while before that.
In the Garden of An—I wanted to have a story with looser worldbuilding than Raven, and also to do a story that dealt with the consequences of what would happen if, in humanity’s arrogance, man could bend the divine to his will. Combine that with a love of the Epic of Gilgamesh and a young girl who insisted on telling her story, I had to start writing it.
I See It Crimson, I See It Red—Originally this was a short story for a college writing class, that I wrote because I always wanted to see Greek and Irish mythology in some kind of crossover. Cassandra of Troy and Fedelm (a female seer from the Irish epic the Táin) visit important moments of each other’s legends and discussing philosophy. There’s also time travel involved. It’s weird.
And I Speak A Barbarous Tongue—Set in the same universe as Raven, but in the future. I wanted to write a story explaining the mechanics of various magics and also a story set at a school. The kicker is that the school happens to be the first school for magic in the only country that doesn’t believe in magic.
Untitled vampire story—I wanted to write a supernatural story from the perspective of someone who not only would normally be a side character, but someone who would also want nothing to do with the supernatural. As you can imagine, this is a difficult perspective, and that’s why it’s been on the backburner for ages. I also wanted to write a supernatural story from the perspective of someone who was religious.
#asks#my writing#the raven's return#in the garden of an#i see it crimson i see it red#and i speak a barbarous tongue#untitled vampire story#there are more stories but like they're not really something I consistently work on or think about#thanks for the ask!!
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The Doctor and the Hunted Pt 5 (Gudako, Solomon/Romani)
So Far In The Adventure: One, Two, Three. Four
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“Good morning, Solomon!”
Solomon blinked in surprise at the sight of Gudako hurrying down the hall. Her red hair was loose now, far different than it had been before. It wasn’t just an attack that had knocked her hairtie from her hair then. She looked older, like she’d seen things.
Well- technically, she’d seen a great deal of things.
“Good morning,” he greeted. “I was just on my way to greet my-“
“Breakfast has been prepared! Hakuno is already relaxing and enjoying some company so I thought it might be nice for you and I to spend some time catching up! We could watch Magi*Mari’s blog or we could just have breakfast and I could give you a tour of the facility. We’ve done a lot of expanding.”
The woman leaned forward a little, looking up at him.
Expanding?
He looked around at the walls, bearing the Chaldean logo upon them. The windows were the same. The fluorescent lights were still as strong and as harsh to the early morning sight as ever. Had he not been in his true form, he’d probably be tempted to go get a crappy cup of coffee from Da Vinci and go see what trouble Olga or Gudako had gotten up to this morning and late last night.
He had still climbed out of bed like it was the past. He’d still opened the drawers of the dresser in his chambers, expecting to see his uniform.
The past had come and gone. People had died and many more had suffered, but he was still the same fool underneath it all. He still wanted to go back, to live like he had before, when his worst fear had been Magi*Mari not updating her blog or her lamenting a broken nail.
“Solomon? …Should I say Romani?”
“Either is fine, Gudako.”
The woman smiled, the same goofy, up to no good smile he’d seen so many times before.
Gods, but the woman was precious.
It hurt. There was some strange part of him that ached at the sight of such a smile, knowing that he wasn’t the same doctor that she’d come to know for all of that year they’d been together. He wasn’t the same man who ducked underneath bedsheets with her and read dossiers on magecraft and servants just so that the two of them could tease the stubborn servants. He wasn’t the same doctor who bandaged Gudako’s knees when the child servants would be weeping that Gudako had scraped her knees.
“Romani then.” Gudako beamed. “Let’s go have some breakfast and get up to something fun today. Since Hakuno wants to explore on her own, it might be nice for you to do the same.”
Damn it, Hakuno.
Hopefully, she would keep her distance from that blond servant. He hadn’t liked the look the fool had given her. He’d been far too keen on having Hakuno near.
Speaking of-
“How’s your patient?”
“Oh- Gilgamesh?”
He’d remember that name.
Gudako laughed, “Well, he had a hard night, but he’s been bandaged up and we had a couple other casters look at him. It seems a couple scientists helped out or something. He’s been healed a great deal. Thank you for helping him.”
“He didn’t heal for me. You should be thanking whomever did the real work.”
He hadn’t liked the fact that the man had been unable to heal. It wasn’t natural. Every inch of power he gave, it would be thrown back immediately, like the man was refusing to accept the treatment. He’d asked for Hakuno, of all people, to come to help him.
As though Hakuno was that strong at healing.
“Come on, don’t get all silent on me now, Romani!” Gudako nudged him a little, opening the doors to the dining hall. “Come on. I’ll show you around the place first and then I’ll show off some of the servants I’ve gotten. Did you know there’s a situation where servants can change class if they put on a swimsuit and then forget or refuse to change their clothes back? It’s wild.”
“They forget?”
The woman laughed, nodding. “Oh, my friend, you’ll have to see. It’s awesome. Some of my best servants are like that.”
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Cascú + Caster Gil Friendship Headcanons (oh yeah, I'm back in business)
It was literally hate at first sight
Cascú may be wiser than his counterparts, but there's something about Caster Gil that rubs him the wrong way...especially after seeing how his Archer counterpart acts. Yeah, no, not dealing with that if he doesn't have to
Caster Gil, meanwhile, has barely interacted with any of the Cús, but after going to the 5th Singularity with his Master he's...reluctant to even be considered the associate of someone who lives for the sole purpose of killing
And then, their Master takes them both to farm Assassin Ascension materials. It couldn't get any worse; they were sending each other casual but scathing insults which were born from their perspective of the other, and tensions kept rising
"Are you all bark and no bite?"
"That's funny, considering that you let your treasury do the work for you."
Their Master got fed up with it. Once the team was done and returned to Chaldea, they pushed the two Casters into a room and said "Talk it out. Now. You know, you two have more in common than you think." before slamming the door and locking it.
It was silent for around a minute before they started to step around the subject, Caster Gil making a mental note to get back at his Master for this while Cascú sighed and dropped onto a spare couch.
"When do you think they'll let us out?"
Caster Gil closed his eyes as he leaned against the wall, already knowing the answer. "Who knows?"
Cascú glowered at him. "You son of a bitch...you already know, don't you?"
Caster Gil kept his expression neutral as he cracked open an eye, staring at Cascú with utter disdain. "It seems your penchant for petty insults remained even as you grew older."
If looks could kill a Heroic Spirit, Caster Gil would be six feet under right now. Cascú had begun to growl, hands curled into fists at his sides as he held himself back. "Don't act like you know everything there is to know! You go around with that pompous air of yours, using those chains when you can't handle the small fry yourself. I know the truth; those chains are En-"
"You do not have the right to say that name, cur," Caster Gil hissed, both eyes open now as he pushed off the wall.
Cascú smirked, standing up even as he spat venom-filled words back at him. "I was right; you're exactly like your Archer counterpart. It seems even being a different class doesn't fix that arrogance of yours."
"I could say the same thing about you, Cú Chulainn."
The arguments escalated from there into a full-on fistfight, the two Casters tussling on the ground as they punched and kicked whatever they could
It was about 10 minutes of fighting before they stopped, backing off and sizing the other up.
Cascú was the first to speak, spitting a gob of blood onto the ground. "I gotta say...for a king, you sure know how to fight."
Caster Gil wiped his mouth. "I must say the same of you. For one who has chosen the path of a Druid, you were able to land quite a few hits in."
"I have to protect myself somehow if my Runes fail me." Cascú chuckled before straightening up, all signs of humor gone. "I'll cut to the chase. You had plenty of opportunities to use your Gate of Babylon on me. Why didn't you?"
Caster Gil seemed to ponder the answer to that question, mulling over a few replies that he would rather carry to his grave. Instead, he just looked away and sighed. "You are a mage; figure it out yourself, mongrel."
Unlike the other times he's called Cascú names, this one has no bite to it. Cascú grinned, laughter escaping him even as his wounds stung. "I figured that was why! Who knew the King of Heroes was - "
"When did I permit you to speak? Silence yourself."
Cascú walked over and sat down with his back against the wall, motioning for Caster Gil to do the same. After a moment's hesitation the King of Heroes did, making sure to keep some space between them as he let out a puff of air to relax himself.
Cascú stared up at the ceiling, his head resting against the wall. "...About E-"
"Don't." Caster Gil said sharply. Then, with a humorless smile, he added "Did you forget that I can see the future? What you are about to say...does not need to be uttered aloud. I understand, and what king would I be if I could not forgive?"
Cascú snorted. "Damn mind reader."
Caster Gil sent him an exasperated look. "It is not mind reading, you primitive mage, it's - "
"I'm sorry."
Caster Gil blinked, seeming to see Cascú for the first time. The Druid kept his gaze on the ceiling, but his eyes gave away the difficulty of expressing his apology.
Cascú continued. "I was...wrong, about you. You're not the same as the golden-armored dick who walks the halls like everything is his property. I said things that hurt, and I did it with the intention to hurt, so...I'm sorry."
Caster Gil was quiet next to him. Cascú then heard a faint hum of recognition as the other Caster looked up at the ceiling as well. "While I am not sure how to feel about you unintentionally calling me a "golden-armored dick", as you put it, I confess that I have made the same assumptions. You may be your counterparts, but at the same time you are your own individual person. I knew this, and yet it was easier to avoid the issue altogether since at the time it was a minor annoyance."
Cascú tiredly punched his shoulder, although he made sure that it didn't hurt him. "Oi, who are you callin' a minor annoyance?!"
Caster Gil gave a quiet laugh, which had a different impact compared to his loud, pride-filled ones. It was genuine, it was raw, and maybe...Cascú could actually like this guy.
"It seems that we need to start anew with each other. I am a Servant of the Caster Class, Gilgamesh: the King of Heroes."
Cascú felt his eyes slip shut as he introduced himself. "Servant Caster, Cú Chulainn at your service. I wish I...was summoned as a Lancer, though..."
He fell asleep, head tilted to the side yet not falling completely over. Caster Gil huffed in amusement at the sight, settling against the wall for a bit of shuteye himself. What a brash introduction, and yet...no other would have fitted.
Master found them in a couple of hours still asleep, leaning against each other and littered with both cuts and bruises
From then on, the two could hold normal conversations, which never ceases to surprise their Master as well as the other Servants in Chaldea
Fsn Cú one day asked his Caster counterpart, "When did you get all chummy with the King of Heroes?"
Cascú just gave him a mysterious smile. "I could say the same thing about the bowman you claim to hate so much."
Caster Gil and Cascú meet with each other at least thrice a week at night to discuss their Magecraft
Cascú will never admit it out loud, but he never ceases to be amazed by Caster Gil's Melammu Dingir
Caster Gil would rather die than admit that Cascú's Wicker Man has gotten him out of a few tight spots during a battle, and is surprisingly useful outside of fights
Cascú ends up learning how to read the symbols inscribed in Caster Gil's tome
Caster Gil actually picks up on Runecraft and can now use a few himself
The two will do all sorts of crazy experiments "For Magecraft" and if Merlin joins them then it's game over for Chaldea's sanity
(One day, Ishtar will be able to go a full week without her hair being dyed a horrendous color)
Mondays become their unofficial "Hangout Day". Better to start off the week on the right foot, right?
They end up getting into some board games, and -
"H..How...How did you pull out that Jenga piece?! There was no way to pull it out without the entire thing falling!"
Caster Gil's voice was smug. "Because I am the superior mage."
Their insults aren't gone; the venom and hostility in them, however, are
They often remind each other to go to sleep at a reasonable hour...at least, what they considered a reasonable hour
Cascú introduced night raids in the fridge to Caster Gil and, honestly, the King of Heroes became hooked
Cheese. He likes to steal cheese. Once Cascú found out, he went on to call Caster Gil "Mouse" for a couple days until Caster Gil threatened him with the business end of his axe
Sometimes, they go to a Singularity on their own for camping (it was Cascú's idea)
Caster Gil always put up a fight, but gave in once Cascú had introduced s'mores to him (he has a bit of a sweet tooth)
Actually, Cascú pulls Caster Gil to do stupid shit 99% of the time
The 1% is when Caster Gil does, and usually Chaldea comes very close to exploding once his idea of "fun" is put into place
Overall, an enemies-to-friends situation. They don't confess their deepest fears and concerns to each other, but whenever one of them has something on their mind the other is a constant presence at their side, offering wordless support.
#long post#fgo gilgamesh#caster gilgamesh#fate go#fate grand order#fate/grand order#caster cu chulainn#fgo emiya#fgo merlin#god this is long and i don't know what possessed me to write this#lancer cu chulainn#gender neutral master#tl;dr: it used to be hate but after a fistfight they're sorta bros which grows into broship and now they raid fridged at night#and whatever other tags i need to add I'll do it later#fgo cu chulainn#tw swearing
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WHO WERE THE IGIGI?
If you have been studying the ancient astronauts, there are likely a number of terms you have become familiar with: Anunnaki, Nephilim, reptilians. But one word which you may not be as familiar with is “Igigi” (sometimes also spelled “Igigu”). This term doesn’t crop up a whole lot in Sumerian and Babylonian lore, but where it does, it has fascinating implications.
Who or What Were the Igigi?
Simply put, the Igigi seem to have been a lower rank of gods. They were a servant class which existed before human beings were created.
Occasionally, the term is used synonymously with “Anunnaki,” but this seems to be inappropriate. Consider the following passage taken from the myth of Atra-Hasis, an Akkadian creation myth and flood story:
When the gods, man-like,
Bore the labour, carried the load,
The gods’ load was great,
The toil grievous, the trouble excessive.
The great Anunnaku, the Seven,
Were making the Igigu undertake the toil.
This passage definitely denotes the Igigi as separate from the Anunnaki, and certainly a lower caste of beings.
What is the context of the passage above? The Igigi were being forced to dig a watercourse. They got tired of it, so they revolted against Enlil, one of the head Anunnaki. They burned their tools and surrounded Enlil’s estate. When the Anunnaki realize that the Igigi are not going to give up the strike, they decide it is time for a new solution to their labor problem—and that solution is the creation of human beings.
Enki, Enlil, and the Creation of Human Beings
At this point, if you are not all too familiar with Mesopotamian mythology, you probably have a few questions. Who was Enlil? Why was all this labor needed? Where does humanity fit into the picture?
To summarize briefly, the Anunnaki pantheon begins with Anu, the Great Father of the Sky (also “An”). Anu was originally the supreme ruler of the Mesopotamian gods. He did have parents, two primordial gods named Kishar and Anshar, but they do not play into this tale.
Anu’s consorts were Ki, the Earth Mother, and Antu, the Great Mother of the Sky.
He bore children by both of them.
Anu and Ki’s son was Enlil, Lord of the Air and Earth, Guardian of the Tablet of Destinies (for a while). They also had a daughter, Nin-khursag, Lady of the Mountain.
Anu and Antu’s son was Enki, Lord of the Earth and Waters, also called “Ea.”
This made Enki and Enlil half-brothers.
Now you might think that being a god is easy, but apparently maintaining creation takes a lot of work. That or gods are just really lazy.
Either way, the Anunnaki didn’t want to do it. So they saddled the lesser gods—the Igigi—with all that toil.
After the Igigi went on strike, the pantheon naturally fell into some pretty heated conflict and disarray. In a bid to gain power, Enlil offered to solve the problem if in turn the gods would name him their supreme ruler.
At this point, Enki, Enlil’s half-brother, was fast asleep (he must have been quite the heavy sleeper!). Enlil spoke to Enki’s mother Antu, who was able to speak to Enki in his sleep. On Enlil’s suggestion, she told him the following:
Oh my son, arise from thy bed, from thy (slumber), work what is wise,
Fashion servants for the Gods, may they produce their (bread?).
Enki then woke up and had a brilliant idea—implanted in his head of course by Enlil. He was going to create a new race of slaves.
Gathering clay and mixing it with the blood of the slaughtered god Kingu, Enki crafted human beings. They replaced the Igigi as the new slaves working for the Anunnaki.
Human beings are noisy creatures however, and Enlil soon tired of them. He decided to kill them all with the flood of legend—the same that shows up in the Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Enki wasn’t a fan of this idea, so he warned a man named Utnapishtim about what was coming, and told him to build an Ark. He then loaded it up with mating pairs of animals and boarded with his wife. The flood destroyed all other life on earth, but the waters eventually receded. Utnapishtim then released the animals and the planet was repopulated.
Enlil either was feeling guilty or he admired Utnapishtim, because he later made him and his wife immortal.
So now you know the context of the story of humankind’s creation—and how and where the Igigi fit into it. As you can see, their role (at least on paper—er, clay) was minor. You can read more about Enki, Enlil, the creation of human beings, and the flood here.
Was Marduk One of the Igigi?
So your next big question is probably, “But what were the names of the Igigi?”
Sadly it is hard to come up with a lot of decisive answers here, but Marduk almost certainly was one of the Igigi.
Marduk was the patron god of Babylon. Marduk was Enki’s son (his mother was Damkina). He is known as “The Avenger.” As Babylon rose to power in the historical world, so Marduk rose to prominence among the gods.
Marduk’s main significance lies in that rise to power.
Here is the brief version of the story:
At the top of the Anunnaki family tree, Tiamat, the Dragon Mother, and Apsu, her consort, had a falling out regarding the young gods they had created, which led to Tiamat murdering Apsu. Years later, her bitterness led her to take out her guilt and anger at his death on the young gods.
Tiamat created 11 monsters to wage war against the young gods. Marduk, like Enlil, made a deal with the gods to elevate him to supreme leader status if he can solve the problem and restore order.
He was able to kill Tiamat in one-on-one combat, as well as her general, Kingu. You will recall that it was Kingu’s blood which Enki then used to create humans.
Kingu had the Tablet of Destinies, which conferred absolute authority upon Marduk when he seized them.
Now, there is some confusion among believers in the ancient astronaut hypothesis as to whether Marduk was an alien leader or a planet. So whether or not he was among the Igigi in the extraterrestrial version of the story is debatable.
It depends on whether he was a person or not. Read more about Marduk here.
The historical evidence that Marduk may have been among the Igigi comes from the Code of Hammurabi. This famous law code mentions that Marduk was elevated by the Anunnaki from the ranks of the Igigi.
You now are familiar enough with the story of Marduk to know that he was indeed elevated—so it does make sense that he may have been among those lesser gods before he achieved his exalted supreme status.
Other gods that scholars have identified as possibly being Igigi (or both Igigi and Anunnaki) include Ištar, Asarluhi, Naramṣit, Ninurta, Nuska, and Šamaš.
What it might mean to be both Igigi and Anunnaki is not all that clear. But perhaps Anunnaki refers to a species, and Igigi simply refers to a caste within that species. So say that Ištar was both. Going by the extraterrestrial theory, this might mean that she was both a member of the reptilian race (an Anunnaki) and a servant caste within that race (an Igigi).
There appear to be very few references to the Igigi in ancient texts, so it is difficult to research them. This page over at the University of Pennsylvania contains some pretty thorough references. Reading through it, you can at least discover a few sources to check out in your own studies.
The Igigi Are One of the Great Anunnaki Mysteries
Judging by the lack of Igigi references in ancient texts, humanity must have had little or no direct contact with the previous servant caste. The Igigi may or may not have been a class of Anunnaki, but whoever they were, whatever they were—they faded into the woodwork after human beings were created.
Did they return home to Nibiru? Did they simply ascend to the same class as their fellow Anunnaki now that a slave race had been created to fill their prior role? Why don’t we know more about them? Was knowledge of the Igigi concealed on purpose by the Anunnaki? If so, why?
Perhaps the only thing we can say for sure about the Igigi aside from the fact that they were servants to the gods is this: They raise more questions than we can currently answer.
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