(no subject)

[fpb]

I just had a rather silly revelation.

A while ago, I asked my friend sanscouronne how she would see herself if she were to cast herself as a superhero or fantasy character. She chose "a Tolkien elf! Paradoxically old but young, whimsical, very perceptive, with sharp senses, able to flit about soundlessly, adept with a bow and arrow.." So - for the first time ever in forty-seven years - I found myself asking myself how I would cast myself. I came up with a beast-warrior - a fat, lumbering, fierce brown bear.

I wonder if any of you have any idea along these lines.

Comments

[arhyalon.livejournal.com]

A bear like Beorn in the Hobbit? He was cool!

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Yes, but not as big. I cannot see myself solving a battle of many armies by my appearance alone. But still enemies should beware of me!

You?

[arhyalon.livejournal.com]

Elf. Definitely elf. (I don't look so elfish any more, but I did once. ;-)

Though I suppose I wouldn't mind being Storm of the X-Men either and stirring up tempests as I flew.

[elegant-bonfire.livejournal.com]

I thought of Beorn right away too! For me, one of my friends always told me I look like I should be wearing a hat with horns (aka Viking) so a Valkyrie? (although more mythical than fantasy).

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Plenty of Valkyries in superhero comics. There is even one in the Barbieri universe, although I doubt you would identify with her. Your warrior woman would be on the strapping side, I take it? And of course you would choose something horsy. The Valkyries ride, we all know that...

Valkyries & Shield maidens

[joetexx.livejournal.com]

Don't people alwsys mix 'em up? The latter fight, the former fetch heroes
to Vahalla and serve mead.

Re: Valkyries & Shield maidens

[fpb.livejournal.com]

We're talking about superhero comics here. In superhero comics, the best-known Thor is blonde and clean-shaven.

[elegant-bonfire.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that tall, broad-shoulder N. European look. And of course I would have to have a war-horse (that's where dressage comes from after all)!

Bear works for me

[joetexx.livejournal.com]

I'm short, have thick brown hair and reddish beard and my favorite method of location is a determined lumber.

A cute Mexican girl once called me el oso hermoso

Re: Bear works for me

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Yes, but if we don't look out we'll end up with a whole herd of bears and not much of anything else!

Re: Bear works for me

[joetexx.livejournal.com]

Considering how many male fans are fat and lumbering we could end up with
....

The Ursine Legion!

Sorry, just can't leave the bears alone

[joetexx.livejournal.com]

In EE Knight's Vampire Earth which is actually more like military fantasy on the lines of Glen Cook's Black Company than it is 'vampire fiction' we have the Hunting Bears.

During the first incursion, these enhanced warriors were identified by animal fetishes that appealed to early man's atavistic nature. The Hunting Cats took their enemies by stealth and surprise, usually working alone as scouts, spies and assassins. The Hunting Wolves were pack fighters, whose specialty was stamina, endurance, and covering vast stretches of terrain at a steady, loping run. The most formidable of the Hunters were the Bears, pure killing machines of berserk power.

These are the near-unstoppable shock troops of the Human resistance. When modified by a Lifeweaver to become a Bear, a human soldier becomes "a walking tank", fighting like a berserker of old and possessing tremendous strength and power. Bear physical capabilities are actually on par with the Reapers themselves, able to fight and even kill Reapers in single combat. They also possess an incredible faculty for healing, to the point of regenerating nerve damage and internal organs that have been lost. Lost & Found, a Bear introduced in Valentine's Rising, actually revives from beyond clinical and physical death. Bears induce a trance-like state called "going Red", which seems to induce the berserker rage for which the Bears are famous....

That me - normally placid and even torpid - but watch out when the bear-shirt goes on! And I love that regeneration package.

Re: Sorry, just can't leave the bears alone

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That's Wolverine of the X-men.

Sorry, don't feel much like joking any more. I've just received a letter that means that someone is trying to defraud me.

Wolverine?

[joetexx.livejournal.com]

Ah, but my bearish alter ego is no antisocial wiseass. He is mild, reseved, penitent & suffers fools gladly. Imagine the powers of Logan crossed with the personality of Kurt Wagner.

I left off reading X-Men too early to make much acquaintance with Nightcrawler.

He must surely read von Balthasar & cherish special devotions to SS. Edith Stein & Maximilian Kolbe.

I suggest you unleash Mr Wright's Shadow on the defraudering malefactors. Surely he must have a file in them in his secret courtroom. Burbank will check it out.

[humantales.livejournal.com]

I'd probably be cast as the damsel (or whatever) in distress. I'd love the magician role, but hmm.

I like the bear idea as well; I've been calling Goofy my teddy bear for a long time.

And the first thing I noticed in your post is (unless you're counting from after your birth) is that we're the same age. Which amuses me.

(Yes, I'm a little random. Long day of work and child-rearing.)

[un-crayon-rouge.livejournal.com]

What I'd like to be is some kind of swift and deathly warrior women, kind of like River in Firefly, but without the being nuts, and possibly with a sword. I'd love to be fast and graceful...

But I suspect my talents lay more in the mental realm, so I'd probably be more along the lines of a mind-reader or something like that.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Good. A super-team can never have too many telepaths and mind-readers. 8-)

[elegant-bonfire.livejournal.com]

My best friend and I watched the Firefly DVDs in one huge marathon, and when you see the whole thing like that, you realize that River is less crazy than she is sort of a holy fool. Love that character. (I need some Firefly icons!)

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

A long, long time ago I wrote a long rambling fantasy story. There was a character called Stefan who in appearance was like a taller, thinner version of Brian Blessad. He started as a fairly minor character, the general of a rag-tag rebel army which he led against a witch-queen.

But ended up being the glue that held all the other characters together. I lent the story to a few friends to read. Two of them came back and said "he's you he is".

[elegant-bonfire.livejournal.com]

Brian Blessed FTW! Great actor.

[8bitbard.livejournal.com]

Off the top of my head I'd say I'd like to be the pilot of a giant robot, and an expert swordfighter outside the cockpit.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That sounds Japanese,

[geeklady.livejournal.com]

A hobbit. A love of food and cooking, fuzzy feet, and a tendency towards "using light words at such times and saying less than I mean"...

It's funny, I was just thinking about something along these lines. I despise those silly interview "what animal do you picture yourself as" questions. Who goes around assigning qualities to different animals in order to categorize themselves?

Then I realized that geeks do this all the time, just not with animals. We all know what Hogwarts house we belong in, or what fantasy race we are, or what our secret superpower is.

Well, since you asked...

[johncwright.livejournal.com]

I would of course cast myself as The Shadow, the man who uses the tools of crime to defeat crime -- he even dresses in the black cloak and sinister black hat of the Bad Guy. Unlike gentler, modern superheroes, the pulp era was particularly unsympathetic toward gangsters, and personality trait I share. The Shadow never read anyone his Miranda rights, any more than the crooks read rights to their victims.

Unfortunately, I am built more like Father Brown from GK Chesterton's detective stories than the super-athletic master crime-fighter from Maxwell Grant.

If I am allowed to pick a nonhuman race, I would select Vulcan, Houyhnhnm, Arisian, or Ent: for better or worse, I am an intellectual, and the logical, rational (or in the case of Ents) slow and careful thinkers win my admiration, even when they are meant to be foils in the story in which they appear.