#and dexter loses all his backstory and character layers

[index-wwe-gifs]

It is insane to me that by releasing Indi Hartwell you're not only losing her and her potential but also any possible chance of having The Way or InDex on the main roster. They were INSANELY popular in NXT. They didn't even use scripts for backstage bits cuz their improv was so good, Shawn just let them loose. I just can't believe HHH would never ever want to do that, they would have ruled the main roster so hard they were such an untapped gold mine. Such a waste all round.

[prurienthellhound]

Character Name: Najelon “Naj” Bast’adeul Bulgae Age: appears 33, actual age 400+ (lost count) Pronouns: he/him, they/them Date of birth: December 27th Faceclaim: Park Seo Joon Species: Demon, Incubus Faction/Side: The Dominion, East Sexuality: just about everyone and anyone Ocupation: owner of The Nepenthe

Frequented Locations: everywhere in The Dominion, The Slaughter Ring, Elysium Circus, Solace, Polaris, Eamon’s Apothecary, Myre Casino, Havelowe’s, White Swallow, Sinsation, Asylum, Ruins of Battles Past.

Motivation: “Some men just want to watch the world burn” would be an accurate quote to describe Najelon, he’d like to see some places be consumed by literal black flames, especially where those that oppose his very own existence reside. However, that’s not all there is to him, underneath the many layers of egotism, impure appetite and hedonistic lifestyle there is an ambitious demon that wants to rule the world from the shadows. He’s on his way there, having built his own monument to honor his father and satisfy his hunger: The Nepenthe.

Why is he in Calamity: making Bastian proud drives him. He seeks power, for himself and his kind, and where could he achieve his goals if not in the center of Calamity? Right in The Haven, where creatures from every faction converge.

Descriptors/Traits:

 Positive: charming, witty, clever  Negative: sadistic, conceited, spiteful 

Headcanons:

Naj has a good relationship with Vampires and Fae, with the required cautiousness. He’s interested in Merfolk, but given the current animosity between the two species he’s growing more distrustful. Humans are mere entertainment and food to him, often mockingly referring to Loyalists as ‘pets’ or ‘snack’ and ‘strays’ to any other. He naturally despises light beings to the point of hatred, he wants to get rid of them or, at least, corrupt them. He tolerates their presence only when sinning is on the plate, which only ever happens with Witches and Werewolves. Angelics are completely hopeless in his eyes, he calls them ‘stiffs’.

Apart from his demonic abilities, he’s well trained in kickboxing and knife combat. Najelon can use a very limited amount of hell fire at the moment, even though he’s been trying to improve his skills for centuries, so he continues to train and investigate it.

Feeding off the lust of his patrons and loyalists can be very addictive, sometimes he loses track of time for days, overstimulated by the rush, which leads to neglecting responsibilities and the few people he actually cares about. On occasions like this he can be seen around The Nepenthe holding his pet human’s leash and chatting with customers.

Some people have seen him in the Ruins of Battles Past, seemingly just standing with his eyes closed, enthralled. He comes here on his own to remember those he lost right there, otherwise he would completely forget about them after so many years.

He usually displays his horns, sometimes his tail as well if his clothes don’t make it uncomfortable. His eyes only turn completely dark when he uses his powers or when he is trying to intimidate.

Summarized backstory

Back in time when alliances were being formed and each faction was growing in numbers, Najelon was born among many other members of his demonic soul family. As expected, he wasn’t raised in the traditional concept of a family, his kind took care of his basic needs until he was old enough to hunt his own preys, which came rather early with a show of innate dexterity and predisposition to corrupt all types of creatures and lure humans in The Dominion for consumption. At the time, leaving his home for long periods of time was dangerous not only for himself, but for everyone else.

Then The Haven came to existence and with it, Najelon started experiencing something else than his permanent hedonistic hunger, he came to know ambition. He could see the potential of neutral ground, somewhere he could get to know people from every corner without automatically drawing his claws out. Testing his abilities on them and their limits, feeding off them, learning from them… Always to his own advantage of course. The Haven presented a lot of opportunities and benefits, but somehow, as it was, it didn’t let him enjoy himself as much as he wanted, being an Incubi, indulgence was his first priority. Surely he wasn’t the only one feeling like that, as The Outerworld was accorded the new neutral way more vicious land. He could have the best of both worlds. He desired for The Haven to be as corrupted, but until he could pervert it himself he conformed to letting go of his inhibitions back home and in the various establishments that started surfacing in The Outerworld.

Years later, after humans rebelled and created The Hideout, Najelon took after some of his fellow dark beings and took some time to hide and built his strength, he could feel the tingling sensation of a war coming. And it came. And it flattened the world. Everything destroyed, everyone he ever cared about dead. Devastated he secluded, only coming out to feed.

The Nepenthe came to life after a long time, once Najelon stopped feeling sorry for himself, brooding was never a good look on him. He was an immortal, a creature of darkness and sin, and he would corrupt every single soul before devouring it. His depraved creation started as a showcase and slowly developed into what it is nowadays as Najelon webbed a network that encompassed almost every territory, except for those he purposefully avoided or couldn’t find.  

// art credit @|pheberoni 

[kendrixtermina]

It is me or are ppl really sleeping on Dedue?

To the point that ppl seem to shoehorn other characters into that same role/ space while he’s right there. 

Like whatever Rhea’s backstory is she’s been in power and privilege for the last 1000 years, she’s a fantasy creature, and everything about the distant past is subject to unreliable narration as we hear like 5 different versions of it all from biased sources (though I’d say Seteth is probably the most believable one, he was there, and he’s an honest guy)

Whereas Dedue is flat out a survivor of extreme prejudice, no ambiguity, no metaphors, no fantasy magic nor unreliable narration involved, absolutely non-debatable.

If you’re looking for a character who’s totally focussed on their social role/another person because of poor self-esteem and not sufficiently knowing that they matter themselves that’s also Dedue. 

Not Hubert. Like noo guys. Hubert states many times that he follows Edelgard out of conviction and no longer because of the tradition or because his father made him. He has his own reasons for hating corrupt nobles and the church. (Most apparent, I think, in the Byleth A and the Hanneman B support, but he mocks the church and the knights like all the time.). If anything, he’s less scrupulous than her (though I wouldn’t say that he’s completely amoral; He definitely has things that he repudiates (corruption) and outright tells Linny that he wouldn’t be friends with someone who’d abandon a person in need, or tells Byleth that he’s one of those people who can’t bring themselves to believe in a just god because of the evil in the world).

He also does pretty much whatever the fuck he wants, which is also established many, many times. Which Edelgard most certainly knows. She likes this. She listens to him (insofar as she listens to anyone), but she does so because she likes and agrees with his attitude. She chose to make this guy her right-hand advisor. She cares nothing for tradition and would’ve given him the boot and grabbed another advisor/attendant if she didn’t think he was supremely useful, and, as she put it “always right”. She kept him despite the tradition, because she likes intelligent, reason-driven people and he’s the third smartest person in all of Fodlan (numbers one and two are, of course, Claude and Lysithea). Plus he’s an accomplished mage without a crest. He isn’t even the loosest cannon in the imperial arsenal. She cares only about results, whether you’re from a peasant background like Manuela and Dorothea, unconventional/quirky like Linhardt or Bernie, or... whatever you’d call Hubert and Jeritza. So you could say that her leadership style certainly has both advantages and disadvantages. But Hubert himself seems overall pretty content with his position and doesn’t really expect anything else, because, after all, he chose it. Though we certainly have his father’s treahery as a cynism catalyst that lead him to be this super disillusioned cynical irreverent person who’s very slow to trust. 

It also can’t be because Dedue is boring. This is evident when you compare him to say Cyril, who also has the sort of effed-up past that, in RL, would deserve sympathy by default, but in the end this isn’t a charity for real people but fictional entertainment and he’s just not likeable. (likeability being subjective of course - there’s clearly SOME ppl who DO like him, and why shouldn’t they?)

 I mean boringness is subjective but Dedue has a whole load of characterization besides the fucked up backstory. there’s always that protective layer you need to get through (which is only realistic) but if you actually try to get to know him he’s got a lot of traits and hobbies and distinctive attitudes and complexities tragic plots. 

Like on the one hand he and Dimitri are as glued-together as they are because no one else can remotely understand what it means to have all your friends and family massacred in front of you, they’re both people who are naturally nice and peace-loving but wound up with the capacity for ugly desperate actions because of what they’ve been through but there’s also a contrast, they’re both sort of repressed but in different ways (though you could say that both struggle to express anger on their own behalf and thus channel it onto anger on behalf of others), Dimitri’s clumsy and emotionally volatile whereas Dedue is very careful/dexterous and calm, and that’s where the tragic part comes in. 

Because while he’ll go on with whatever Dimitri says cause he owes him his life and has nowhere else to go it’s quite clear that that’s not exactly what he wants (You get support points if you ask him what he wants even if he doesn’t give you a clear answer) - I bet he’d like nothing more than to just go live a peaceful life somewhere together without bothering with the revenge thing. (Though he’s got a better explanation/excuse than the rest of Team Kingdom, among whom no one will tell Dimitri to stop because of their culture’s overemphasis on loyalty. Even Felix doesn’t do much more than complain. It takes Byleth, a more pragmatic, cool-minded outsider to Faerghus, to put a stop to the kamikaze mission. )

He also has really sweet dynamics with Ashe and Flayn (who canonically like him even on other routes), also Mercedes and Sylvain if you did those supports. Because he’s kind of retreated completely into his social role as a vassal cause he has little else left and at this point he’s so used to being scorned that he preemptively tells ppl to keep their distance, but if you put in  the minimum effort to actually get to know him you see this sweet, chill domestic young man who’s still there underneath.  (Again contrast Hubert, whom you can’t really get much personal conversation out of, even Edelgard who’s known him all her life struggles to get him to spill what he’s really thinking, cause he’d just tell her what he thinks it would be useful for her to hear. And with Byleth he plain doesn’t trust them early on. He’s simply committed to being a consummate professional, by deliberate choice, though he definitely does have his own dephts to get to know, like being a bit self-conscious about his ‘scary’ mannerisms or ultimately being motivated by wanting to do something worthwhile and impactful with his short human life)

Ultimately, Dedue is very honorable, community-minded and reputation-conscious which means that he ironically fits in quite well with the Kingdom students, though that also probably makes it a special kind of hell to not only lose his community but to be stereotyped as a dishonorable scoundrel, because he cares quite a bit about his honor and reputation and that of his friends (see the Dimitri, Sylvain and Byleth supports) which puts him in this situation where he feels he can’t really be their friend without tarnishing their honor, there’s a complex mix of feelings where he’s of course as frustrated as any human being would be but has also partially internalized some of the crap from years of constant bombardment. 

The function of anger as an emotion is to ensure just treatment in the group, so for someone to just lie down and take crap like that it shows that they’ve totally given up on getting justice so for me at least this is really a character that I really want to see good things happen to and that makes me cheer every time someone thinks of him or when something good happens to him.

Like in a setting where nearly everyone’s backstory sucked his is quite possibly the worst. Only Jeritza and Lysithea (mostly because of the early death thing) even come remotely close. 

I feel like ppl would be all over this character if he were a bishie or cute girl, like just because of the “hides behind defense mechanisms but you can see his true self if you bother to be halfway decent” thing. Like usually ppl are all over that. 

Like to summarize we have a sad backstory, a tragic loyalty conflict, a frequently misunderstood demeanor that’s the product of a tragic past,  a basically sweet disposition that’s still not without the capacity for darkness, ample potential for wholesome Friendships (or more romantic ‘ships), what’s not to like?

Plus he’s got like one of the sweetest goddess tower events and S-supports. He gives you his jackets and looks at the starts with you etc. Bit too wholesome for my personal tastes [stuffs El, Hubert, Felix and Linhardt paraphernalia back into closet] but objectively loveable. 

tl;dr: Let’s all appreciate Supreme Chef Deddie-pie.