No, you're not going to try this tactic. I'm tired of people giving me a hard time whenever I make a reasonable request to be debated with respectfully. Chaosmancer and others have been able to disagree with me without ignoring what I said; I want you to do the same.
Deadly deadly Alpacas are watching this thread.
Mods, can someone step in here?
We're hashing it out in PM; please return to your regularly scheduled angelic debates.
Couple of layers to that pun there. Nice!
One thing I wanted to ask but forgot to (have a tendency to do that) with the relation of the Host to Fanatic is...does the nature of the Host make Fanatic immortal?
Like, if Fanatic's physical form were to die, could the Host possess another body and resume where he/she left off (albeit maybe in a different form, possibly without the memories of the past incarnation of her possession). Or, would the Spirit of Vengeance/Justice simply cease to be?
The Host gives me a real Eldrazzi vibe for some reason, where it's more of a being beyond our physical realm/comprehension but can still interact in our realm by taking over physical objects. (Imagine like a hand going into a fishbowl. The fish can see the hand in their bowl, sure, but can't necessarily comprehend that there's an arm that reaches back to the bigger part, let alone the bigger part.)
Hopefully Tuesday will give us more insight.
I doubt Fanatic just let Apostate go after their confrontation so it might make sense that he took over other bodies so that he came back to threaten heroes later on.
There's no doubt in my mind that Apostate can do it, He can turn any body he has to look the way it wants, but Apostate knows he is a Host member, what happens to the spirit inside Fanatic when it rejoins the host?
Maybe I’m starting to read too closely into it, but I’m starting to believe The Host is probably one of the entities Christopher was alluding to when he mentioned other beings as powerful as OblivAeon.
Especially if it’s in it’s nature to possess beings on a lower realm than its own and play around with them like toys.
I get a bit more of a 'Space Phantom with more power' vibe from the Host than gods, but I guess we just have to wait till Apostate's episode to learn more.
[quote="Jeysie"]
Chaosmancer wrote:
She doesn't bother looking for bank robbers, sure she'll get involved if she sees one (and then is promptly stymied by the other heroes when her reaction is more extreme than they find acceptable)
Which is my point, really. She never really learns to moderate herself, just to go after threats where she wouldn't need to moderate.
[/quote]
But maybe that's the best that Fanatic is able to do? And that itself is evidence of growth and change?
To use a very different example: Alcoholics (in the vast majority of cases at least) don't learn to moderate their consumption of alcohol, they stop consuming alcohol all together. Middle ground or gradual improvement isn't a possibility. Fanatic is a spirit of judgement, that is what she both is and does. It's highly possible that there's nothing she can do to change that. After all, if Judgement could change to Mercy, then The Host would only need to be one spirit and not many.
So what does she do? She directs herself at threats where she doesn't need to moderate. Being aware of a shortcoming that she can [seemingly] do nothing to address, she does the only thing she can and directs herself to situations where that shortcoming isn't a problem.
Yes, this isn't the same degree of character growth and change that we see in the other heroes of the multiverse, but with Fanatic we get someone who for all her immense power is unable to change who she is. That she manages to harness that power and even her basic character flaw as a force for good is inspiring.
Won't worry, I sent in almost that exact question for Apostate right after I finished listening to Fanatic's episode, so hopefully they'll read it this week.
After years of going from extreme to extreme, Fanatic finally found some moderation, and her allies in the Prime Wardens had no small part in helping the avenging angel center herself. Now, she stands more resolute than ever - not for vengeance or for zealotry, but for the defense of the innocent and the advancement of the greater good.
The last hero to join the ranks of the Prime Wardens, Fanatic had been witnessed most recently fighting a dark-winged Deceiver. As a result, the Avenging Angel had donned more protective armor and a face-plate that obscured her vision. So, when Fanatic joined the fray against Akash'Bhuta wearing armor that allowed greater mobility and freedom of movement, half her face-plate torn off, and a her sword a jagged shard, the other heroes were as taken aback as they were pleased to see her.
Her faith stronger than ever, Fanatic as a member of the Prime Wardens is a resolute opponent of evil in its many forms. She fought against demons and deceivers, and takes the fight to the Court of Blood against blood mages and vampires. The hero called Fanatic does not fully know her role in this world, but she knows one thing: she is Justice.
(Copy and paste from the Wiki)
This is why I say I really enjoy Fanatic's journey of faith.
Fanatic starts out with untested Faith, faith that is ignorant and strong. That faith is shaken by Apostate, who wishes her to join him in conquering the world. She retreats, meditates and comes back, blinding herself to his words and their implications. She will not abandon her role because her faith is shaken.
I don't see that as her blocking out the questions and relying on purposefully ignorant faith, because she doesn't stop there. She questions, she mellows, she sees her allies doing good differently from how she does it and allows that to give her more options.
The one thing she doesn't budge on is her mission to stop evil, to bring justice.
One of the reasons I love PW Fanatic so much is because of the theme behind it. Her faith has grown up a lot. She can admit she doesn't know, and she may be wrong, she can adapt to new truth she runs into, and yet she does not waver in her resolve to bring justice.
That is a fantastic journey of faith, and she comes out in a good place.
I know many who grew up Christian, many who stopped identifying as Christian, many who changed branches, some who reject all faith, and others who found a different one.
The only ones who disappoint me are the ones who gave up on the cause of doing what is right. Which includes people on every path I listed.
To branch into dangerous theological territory here, Jesus was pretty clear in Matthew 25, those who help others are the ones in the right. Guessing the right faith gets you nowhere if that is all you have.
"Be excellent to each other, and party on dudes," is essentially the message of the Bible, and most faiths. People just keep finding it really hard to do the first part. I honestly don't care what it takes for you to find your way to being excellent to your fellow human beings, whatever it is it is leading you to truth, so follow it.
Admittedly I feel like faith can get in the way of letting you be excellent to your fellow human beings, as it forces you to choose between basing actions on what you believe to be true and your religious dogma, versus working with what actually is true and what actually will really help people.
Like as much as my Catholic upbringing still informs a lot of my ethics, there's also other areas of Catholic teaching I think cause more harm than they grant help so I dropped them.
I think I disagree with your conclusion. She actively works to minimize damage that could harm innocent bystanders. I can't imagine her, for example, leaving a civilian behind in a burning building to chase after a cultist. She would be murdering that person and she would not let that stand. She judges actions, and if her actions led to the direct death of an innocent person she would find herself in need of judgement.
Now, if she was working with a partner, then she would take off without hesitation because she can really on that other person to help them. Legacy would organize, either doing it himself or calling out directions to someone else. Fanatic would take action, forcing others to adapt to her.
I will agree with you that most of the heroes have an arc that moderates them eventually. I think there are two things that make the perception of her slightly different.
One, she has a lot farther to move than quite a few of the other heroes. AZ for example doesn't want to be a hero, but he's just a guy that life's kicked around a lot. His accepting of the heroic mantle is a much shorter journey than a spirit of judgement working on mercy.
The second is that she has moderated a little bit, and that you keep talking about her reaching a place of moderation "Eventually". Her story isn't done yet. The moment with Ra declaring his faith in her is a massive moment for her, which led directly into Oblivaeon. The RPG is her time to process those events, she's been looking for her place in the world, how does she fit in the grander scheme of things, she knows what her mission is, but things aren't working out perfectly. She;s still moving forward, it is just a very slow process for her. She doesn't change easily or quickly
This all seems like an awful lot of assumptions to go on from what very little we heard about the RPG timeline. :P
I'm really not going to budge on wishing we had instead seen a more moderate religious figure from the get-go if we were going to have one. It'd actually be kinda fun to have a D&D Paladin like figure or Guardian Angel type in Sentinels, I think.
Instead Fanatic is a character I just find totally orthogonal to my ability to relate to at best and highly problematic at worst.
That's completely fair, and yeah, I'm coloring in a lot of blank space.
I apologize if I came off as a bit curt.
Since, I agree with you completely that Fanatic's storyline follows logically from her axioms. The problem is that I don't know if I like the axioms themselves, and where she might end up I don't know if it fits the sorts of axioms I would have preferred to see.
No need to apoligize, you didn't come off as curt (to my perception) at all.
Everyone has those stories or literary elements or beliefs that just don't quite jive with them. And sometimes being open to interpretation like this vague form of storytelling doesn't help.
There is a webcomic I've been reading called Daughter of the Lillies that had a big reveal sometime back, the author is very religious and the comic revolves around the reemergence of "totally not god from the bible" into the world and the main character is the chosen messiah of this god.
I'd enjoyed the webcomic immensley up until that point, but that reveal made me leery. They've handled the story very well since then and I'm confident now that I'll continue to enjoy it, but in that moment I saw a possibility for this to become the kind of religious story I cringe at. I have no problem with religious characters, but I would never go to the "Christian literature" section of a bookstore, because the kinds of stories they write just tend to rub me the wrong way.
All of that being a long way to reiterate, we all have our hang ups.
Now I'm reminded of the time I found out as an adult that the Chronicles of Narnia were intended as a Christian allegory (yes I realize in retrospect I am really clueless for not picking up on this as a kid, but I totally didn't).
Granted, it didn't really diminish my appreciation of the story that terribly much since it didn't change the story that terribly much, but it did go a long way towards finally explaining why I related to Edmund even though I knew he was a jerkass.
Well, in Edmunds defense there aren't any people who are "good guys" in CS Lewis's books without a fair number of redeeming qualities.
Edmund always struck me as a guy with a good heart and a bad attitude. Which is understandable, every once in a while everyone becomes convinced that their family sucks(because sometimes they do), doesn't make them bad people.