random bitter aspiring authors on “writing advice” blogs: Don’t make your main characters super special mary sues. don’t make them better than other people or more interesting. your main characters should be boring average guys with the personalities of wood pulp
the Epic of Gilgamesh: Gilgamesh was objectively the best man ever. He was the hottest, sexiest, most gorgeous hunk of pure manly awesomeness that ever lived and he used a sword that weighed 120 pounds.
The lesson here is that your main characters can be as special, overpowered, and unrealistically skilled at everything as you want, as long as this has the purpose of driving the plot via all the problems they cause (because they’re an egotistical nightmare and a gigantic raging asshole).
The second lesson here is that no matter what randos on writing blogs say, people like stories where the characters are unique and iconic. Or at least they rememberthem.
(I have a theory that the stories that form long-lasting fandoms, and/or are recognized and referenced frequently in pop culture, are stories that have the same sort of “iconic” elements that are long-lasting in folklore and mythology. I think superheroes are particularly well suited to lasting centuries/millennia into the future because they’re just so simple and memorable conceptually.)
Hi my name is Gilgamesh Hammurabi Ziusudra Euphrates Ishtar and I have the same heroic build as my lordly ancestors (that’s how I got my name) with bulging muscles and chiselled features moulded by the goddess Aruru, and icy blue eyes like the limpid waters of the Great Flood, and a lot of people tell me I look King Enmebaragesi of Kish (AN: if u don’t know who he is get da Kur out of here!). I’m not related to Ishtar but I wish I was because she’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a demi-god but I’m not immortal. I possess extraordinary strength. I’m also a king and I rule a city called Urduk, where I force my subjects to erect lots of ziggurats (I’m known for my cruelty). I’m a Sumerian (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly animal skins. I love the forbidden Cedar Forest and I slay and skin all my beasts from there. For example today I was wearing a skin made from the Bull of Heaven with a matching sheep hide skirt, gold armlets, a carnelian headband, and black combat sandals. I was wearing black kohl eyeliner to ward off conjunctivitis. I was walking outside the twin peaks of Mount Mashu at the end of the earth. I came across a tunnel which no man before me had ever entered, which I was very happy about. Two guards that were giant scorpion monsters stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.
This is objectively genius writing but the size of the audience that can properly recognize its brilliance is so small
Some D-Day Matt; I headcanon him as a paratrooper with the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion. Content warnings: Injury, violence, death mention.
6th June, 1944
Through a thick bank of clouds—and then they’re out the other side—into hell.
The brilliant, glowing white streaks of German anti-aircraft fire light up the inky blackness. So much for hoping to sneak in, Matthew thinks. The dark silhouettes of the other C-47 Dakotas flying through this lethal gauntlet, crosses against the blinding, thunderous flashes of light.
Through the open door of the plane, a glimpse of sheer pandemonium and chaos above, behind and below. The fiery outline of a damaged plane in front spiralling down to the ground, its fuselage brilliantly wreathed in fire.
A series of violent lurches, like that of the worst out-of-control rollercoaster ride, a thousand times over. The C-47 is bucking hard, as the pilots took evasive measures, slamming several men to the side of the plane in a tangle of limbs. Loud cursing and groans of pain, as several who were sent careening into one another furiously fought to untangle their static lines, which were clipped to the main anchor line above.
Matthew grits his teeth, braces himself on the door handle as the plane banks violently again, to the right.
