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fightsintheshadeplayer information.
name: Jen
are you over 18?: yep
personal lj: @17965 on LJ and @wuzzafuzzle on DW
email/msn/aim/plurk/etc: Wuzzafuzzle everywhere /o/
characters in abax: All errybody. Jack, Carver Hawke, Alex Summers, Ghanima Atreides
in character information.
series: 300 [Film]
name: Stelios
sex: M
age: 29
race:SPARTAN Human
height: 6’0”
weight: 197
canon point: End of film
previous cr: N/A
history: 300 (film) on Wiki
Random other note: It was required that the men coming with the 300 have a son to replace them should they fall in battle, and the only one excluded from this rule was Astinos, therefore, Stelios must have both a wife and a child somewhere back home, unless something happened to that wife (because ancient Greeks didn’t really do divorce).
personality:
Much of what Stelios is is defined by the Spartan culture that is built up in 300 - note, this is not historically accurate Spartan culture (though the heroic code is accurate and the social roles played are, it is greatly exaggerated in how it's presented), it’s like Spartan culture if you pumped it full of steroids, oiled it up like a Maxim model and took it sky diving. On top of that, Stelios is the wild extreme of what Spartan culture and philosophy represents in the film so essentially I am apping the Kamina of classical antiquity action films. GRIT YO TEETH, ABAX.
Before focusing on Stelios specifically, let’s talk a little about what makes a Spartan in 300’s hyper-stylistic concept of Sparta. Life is hard and meant to be so for Spartans from birth, an intense focus on strength of both body and character completely driving the community as a whole. If a child is born deformed, they are tossed out to the wild for the wolves. Children are trained to fight from a young age and young boys are sent out into the cold winter woods (wtf, snow in the Mediterranean? Yeah, okay. ) to fight giant demon-wolves with nothing put their leather speedos and a pointy stick. No joke, this is canon. All Spartan men are warriors - it is what they’re born and bred to do. This is the environment that birthed Stelios and he embraces it completely, being a sort of symbol of the insane extreme of the spectrum that it can be. Life as a Spartan is very black and white - you must be hard, strong, and while you may feel for things, you are not allowed to let it show. Everything is for King and Country and representing Sparta as the strongest, hardest nation in the Greek isles. The honor code demands the show no fear and run screaming into battle with enthusiasm and blood thirst. It’s very Viking-like in concept in that glory in battle is the ultimate ideal and to die a ‘beautiful death’ while in combat is the highest honor (this expressed directly by Stelios while laughing in the face of an Arcadian calling him mad for it). The Spartans, as well as Stelios himself in several instances, display a very particular kind of warrior or Spartan arrogance. Stelios, while recognizing the necessity of other facets of life (like potters and blacksmiths and politicians) thinks very little of them, and thus thinks very little of peoples from other nations such as the Athenians, Arcadians and Thespians. The nation of Sparta puts great value in the freedom and an absolute refusal for submission, a code of law being ‘never retreat, never surrender’, and this is reflected in almost everything they do. A strong of spirit as well as body is the ideal (and this part is actually accurate to ancient Greek philosophy) and the Spartans, and Stelios, push that point to a T. If he is ever challenged for some kind of competition of ‘I bet you can’t do this’, Stelios will immediately take it up, regardless of the likelihood he will succeed or not - that isn’t the point of it.
So now that we have Spartan warrior culture as a whole covered, let’s focus on Stelios himself. As I said previous, he’s like the radical extreme of the Spartan spectrum. Hyper and jumpy (lol), and ridiculously enthusiastic. Even in scenes he has no lines in, Stelios is at the front of the crowd either giving incoherent yelling or fist pumping or forcing unnecessary physical contact on people, like some kind of hyped up Spartan cheerleader. Mainly he’s incredibly passionate in most all things, be it battle, feelings of nationalism, mourning, or jackassing around with his comrades in arms. He’s spontaneous about things, acting as he feels at the time and damning the consequences. He flings himself at things fully, both in lifestyle and... physically, ah ha ha, jumping and stabbing joke goes here, to the point that’s openly mocking death to come and get him. It’s a sort of enforcing of fearlessness on himself by being out there about most things. Spartans do not feel fear and therefore Stelios does not - this is something he has decided and that is just the way it is. It’s a very simple, black and white sort of thing.
On Glory and Death - something very important to Stelios's character is that he lives to achieve a 'glorious death', almost in a Viking-esque sense of ideology in that it's the highest honor to die in battle. His is a desire to find someone who is capable of besting him, not in a sense that he wants to be killed or taken out, but that he wants to be pushed fully to his limit and achieve his greatest potential and go out in an awesome, badass fight with his name alongside great warriors and kings in history. The Battle of Thermopylae isn't any kind of tragedy for him - it's a dream come true. All things in life are secondary to that drive, just icing on the cake. Death isn't something he fears, (though perhaps a part of him does because it is human nature and he simply does not allow it in the way that he simplifies things - you could interpret fear of death in his death scene is you squinted and analysed) it's an exciting catharsis to his existence - a pinnacle point.
Because of the black and white sort of ideology, Stelios is morally and idealistically uncomplicated, not only because Spartan philosophy of life is simple and cold cut, but because if something isn’t Stelios simply makes it so. He’ll simplify it to a point that seems ridiculous and may (likely will) even be called madness by someone else. He’s not too concerned about how others view his opinions, leanings, and passions. He knows what makes life feel full to him and he has no shame in pursuing it exactly as he desires it - so if he desires gross murder and awesome death, who cares if it makes no logical sense in a psychological kind of way. He wants it and he’ll strive for it and laugh at you if you look horrified at his obsession with it, Arcadian. Another instance of that being the Persian emissary telling him their arrows will blot out the sun - which is a very real and terrifying threat, considering the immensity of their army, and Stelios simply turns it into a ridiculous joke, saying “then we will fight in the shade.”
While he may be both simple and hyper as he is, he’s not stupid. Stelios is modeled after the Dienekes in the Battle of Thermopylae, who was supposed to be the bravest of the 300 and often appears at the head of the crowd and formations, reporting directly to Leonidas, running errands for him and being called on by name for tasks, which may suggest he was some sort of high office within the army or has at least fought alongside Leonidas often enough to be trusted close at his hand. He’s clever in the sense of battle movements, jumping and rolling here and there and weaving his way past an enemy force to take out a stock of wizard-bombs or whatever they call them. He’s animalistic and primal in the way he moves - jumping, rolling and crouching low to the ground - and it could also be a relfection of his personality and that previously discussed simplicity, but he’s also pragmatic about things.
As for more a reflection of disposition, Stelios is clever and a fan of not taking too much seriously. He’ll treat most things that aren’t hideous, disfigured tragedy (the tree o’ people they happen upon) or a threat against his land and people, with a snarky quip and a no-fucks-given kind of humor. However, his gears can switch quickly from trolly fun to ‘I will hack your freaking arm off and claim it as my own’, as in the Persian emissary scene where their people are threatened with slavery and Stelios is very obviously pissed by it. He leaps up, hacks the dude’s arm off and gives a really threatening, barbarously kind of violently hideous speech, claiming an arm and talking about using dead bodies as mortar for a wall, and then makes the ‘then we will fight in the shade’ quip a moment later with a shit-eating kind of grin.
He seems like he generally tends to get along with people, as he appears to be on friendly terms with several of the other Spartans, along with forcing love on the Arcadian captain, though perhaps it’s just his overbearing, hyper as fuck, passionate and enthusiastic as fuck personality just forcing himself on people and they just come to accept him for it. Yeah. He's that friend. There’s a solid canon friendship between Stelios and Astinos based on playful shoving and teasing comments between the two, so Stelios likes to be something of a troll in casual conversation - even so in serious conversation, cracking jokes mid-battle and of course the Persian emissary thing. He seems to be very capable of enjoying life and letting the violence of the lifestyle just naturally flow into it and not interrupt his character - it is all a part of him and all of it he carries into each conversation he has, regardless of the setting.
Just another fun culture note: It's historically accurate that ancient Greeks thought of pants as barbarous. Not that leather speedos were in for them, but bifurcated garments (things with two legs in them) were the fashion of the northern tribes that required a lot more coverage due to weather and well as, lol, riding horses in skirts kind of sucks (chafing). The northern people wore pants and boots and really hideous dirndl skirts and fashioned clothes out of animal skins with the fur turned inside for insulation because it made sense and it was practical. And the Greeks... well, the Greeks ran around in safety-pinned bedsheets and leather sandals. But the Greeks were also terribly full of themselves and thought this change of dress was totally uncivilized, so if Stelios refuses to put on pants in Abax and instead pins a bed sheet to himself, NOW YOU KNOOOOOW.
abilities/powers:
HE IS SPARTAN \o/ So, he’s very athletic, fit, can jump ridiculous distances and throw a spear the length of a football field. He’s highly trained for combat and was put out in the wild as a young child to fight wolves and survive in the cold while in leather panties, so he’s pretty set for any of that kind of business. But otherwise, he’s squishy and human. If he’s much like Leonidas, he should be able to scale things without needing too many tools. Uuuhm, he speaks Ancient Greek? Can probably bench press most people in Abax?
first person sample: An Abaxoploy post aaand a Dear Mun post
third person sample:
The frigid breeze was a stabbing chill across Stelios's skin, wind whipping hard like needles against him, but he stood firm, unflinching. Wide stone structures with a soft sheen of what appeared to be glass rose up from the ground before him like a bizarre, twisted mountain range - flames alight on every other surface making the night cloaking the area seem obsolete. The Spartan had seen many bizarre things in the past handful of days - disfigured men deemed Immortals, beasts from distant lands, sorcerers heaving their exploding magic baubles. But a stranger landscape, Stelios had never seen.
Calloused feet padded over smooth concrete as he wandered out onto the sidewalk to stare up at the towering structure he emerged from, seemingly glowing from withing. It wasn't fear that gripped him, but unease - a creeping uncertainty. He'd been sure the hail of arrows had come, puncturing him through the heart and bringing him to bleed out, the vision of his mighty King bravely welcoming oblivion slowly fading above him. This was no Hades, no River Styx. As his eyes darted from the glowing building to the clocktower that seemed to pierce the very sky in it's height he realized he'd been denied that glorious, hard earned death alongside his brothers and Liege, and a slow anger built in him.
Taken from his homeland - his King, country, and wife, all that meant the most to him - and exiled by whatever devious sorcerer's hand to this cold, lifeless place with flat, shining surfaces and nothing of great Greece's nature, but even as the anger at his misplacement fueled him, Stelios's fists clenched at his sides as he stared up and up and up at the massive landscape and a cruel, bloodthirsty grin cracked across his face. If they thought this would defeat him, crush the Spartan spirit he thrived on, they were sorely mistaken. Missing sword, shield and spear. Brothers in arms, country and familiar ground. The law was still 'Never retreat, never surrender' - these new adversaries would know this in their bones, he would make sure of it. He was not truly alone, because wherever a son of Sparta goes, Sparta goes with - embedded in their very blood. Staring up at the bright, daunting structure, he let out a mighty roar into the dead night air, a battle cry ripping through the silence. Stelios was ready.
case no: 30-03-00
name: Jen
are you over 18?: yep
personal lj: @17965 on LJ and @wuzzafuzzle on DW
email/msn/aim/plurk/etc: Wuzzafuzzle everywhere /o/
characters in abax: All errybody. Jack, Carver Hawke, Alex Summers, Ghanima Atreides
in character information.
series: 300 [Film]
name: Stelios
sex: M
age: 29
race:
height: 6’0”
weight: 197
canon point: End of film
previous cr: N/A
history: 300 (film) on Wiki
Random other note: It was required that the men coming with the 300 have a son to replace them should they fall in battle, and the only one excluded from this rule was Astinos, therefore, Stelios must have both a wife and a child somewhere back home, unless something happened to that wife (because ancient Greeks didn’t really do divorce).
personality:
Much of what Stelios is is defined by the Spartan culture that is built up in 300 - note, this is not historically accurate Spartan culture (though the heroic code is accurate and the social roles played are, it is greatly exaggerated in how it's presented), it’s like Spartan culture if you pumped it full of steroids, oiled it up like a Maxim model and took it sky diving. On top of that, Stelios is the wild extreme of what Spartan culture and philosophy represents in the film so essentially I am apping the Kamina of classical antiquity action films. GRIT YO TEETH, ABAX.
Before focusing on Stelios specifically, let’s talk a little about what makes a Spartan in 300’s hyper-stylistic concept of Sparta. Life is hard and meant to be so for Spartans from birth, an intense focus on strength of both body and character completely driving the community as a whole. If a child is born deformed, they are tossed out to the wild for the wolves. Children are trained to fight from a young age and young boys are sent out into the cold winter woods (wtf, snow in the Mediterranean? Yeah, okay. ) to fight giant demon-wolves with nothing put their leather speedos and a pointy stick. No joke, this is canon. All Spartan men are warriors - it is what they’re born and bred to do. This is the environment that birthed Stelios and he embraces it completely, being a sort of symbol of the insane extreme of the spectrum that it can be. Life as a Spartan is very black and white - you must be hard, strong, and while you may feel for things, you are not allowed to let it show. Everything is for King and Country and representing Sparta as the strongest, hardest nation in the Greek isles. The honor code demands the show no fear and run screaming into battle with enthusiasm and blood thirst. It’s very Viking-like in concept in that glory in battle is the ultimate ideal and to die a ‘beautiful death’ while in combat is the highest honor (this expressed directly by Stelios while laughing in the face of an Arcadian calling him mad for it). The Spartans, as well as Stelios himself in several instances, display a very particular kind of warrior or Spartan arrogance. Stelios, while recognizing the necessity of other facets of life (like potters and blacksmiths and politicians) thinks very little of them, and thus thinks very little of peoples from other nations such as the Athenians, Arcadians and Thespians. The nation of Sparta puts great value in the freedom and an absolute refusal for submission, a code of law being ‘never retreat, never surrender’, and this is reflected in almost everything they do. A strong of spirit as well as body is the ideal (and this part is actually accurate to ancient Greek philosophy) and the Spartans, and Stelios, push that point to a T. If he is ever challenged for some kind of competition of ‘I bet you can’t do this’, Stelios will immediately take it up, regardless of the likelihood he will succeed or not - that isn’t the point of it.
So now that we have Spartan warrior culture as a whole covered, let’s focus on Stelios himself. As I said previous, he’s like the radical extreme of the Spartan spectrum. Hyper and jumpy (lol), and ridiculously enthusiastic. Even in scenes he has no lines in, Stelios is at the front of the crowd either giving incoherent yelling or fist pumping or forcing unnecessary physical contact on people, like some kind of hyped up Spartan cheerleader. Mainly he’s incredibly passionate in most all things, be it battle, feelings of nationalism, mourning, or jackassing around with his comrades in arms. He’s spontaneous about things, acting as he feels at the time and damning the consequences. He flings himself at things fully, both in lifestyle and... physically, ah ha ha, jumping and stabbing joke goes here, to the point that’s openly mocking death to come and get him. It’s a sort of enforcing of fearlessness on himself by being out there about most things. Spartans do not feel fear and therefore Stelios does not - this is something he has decided and that is just the way it is. It’s a very simple, black and white sort of thing.
On Glory and Death - something very important to Stelios's character is that he lives to achieve a 'glorious death', almost in a Viking-esque sense of ideology in that it's the highest honor to die in battle. His is a desire to find someone who is capable of besting him, not in a sense that he wants to be killed or taken out, but that he wants to be pushed fully to his limit and achieve his greatest potential and go out in an awesome, badass fight with his name alongside great warriors and kings in history. The Battle of Thermopylae isn't any kind of tragedy for him - it's a dream come true. All things in life are secondary to that drive, just icing on the cake. Death isn't something he fears, (though perhaps a part of him does because it is human nature and he simply does not allow it in the way that he simplifies things - you could interpret fear of death in his death scene is you squinted and analysed) it's an exciting catharsis to his existence - a pinnacle point.
Because of the black and white sort of ideology, Stelios is morally and idealistically uncomplicated, not only because Spartan philosophy of life is simple and cold cut, but because if something isn’t Stelios simply makes it so. He’ll simplify it to a point that seems ridiculous and may (likely will) even be called madness by someone else. He’s not too concerned about how others view his opinions, leanings, and passions. He knows what makes life feel full to him and he has no shame in pursuing it exactly as he desires it - so if he desires gross murder and awesome death, who cares if it makes no logical sense in a psychological kind of way. He wants it and he’ll strive for it and laugh at you if you look horrified at his obsession with it, Arcadian. Another instance of that being the Persian emissary telling him their arrows will blot out the sun - which is a very real and terrifying threat, considering the immensity of their army, and Stelios simply turns it into a ridiculous joke, saying “then we will fight in the shade.”
While he may be both simple and hyper as he is, he’s not stupid. Stelios is modeled after the Dienekes in the Battle of Thermopylae, who was supposed to be the bravest of the 300 and often appears at the head of the crowd and formations, reporting directly to Leonidas, running errands for him and being called on by name for tasks, which may suggest he was some sort of high office within the army or has at least fought alongside Leonidas often enough to be trusted close at his hand. He’s clever in the sense of battle movements, jumping and rolling here and there and weaving his way past an enemy force to take out a stock of wizard-bombs or whatever they call them. He’s animalistic and primal in the way he moves - jumping, rolling and crouching low to the ground - and it could also be a relfection of his personality and that previously discussed simplicity, but he’s also pragmatic about things.
As for more a reflection of disposition, Stelios is clever and a fan of not taking too much seriously. He’ll treat most things that aren’t hideous, disfigured tragedy (the tree o’ people they happen upon) or a threat against his land and people, with a snarky quip and a no-fucks-given kind of humor. However, his gears can switch quickly from trolly fun to ‘I will hack your freaking arm off and claim it as my own’, as in the Persian emissary scene where their people are threatened with slavery and Stelios is very obviously pissed by it. He leaps up, hacks the dude’s arm off and gives a really threatening, barbarously kind of violently hideous speech, claiming an arm and talking about using dead bodies as mortar for a wall, and then makes the ‘then we will fight in the shade’ quip a moment later with a shit-eating kind of grin.
He seems like he generally tends to get along with people, as he appears to be on friendly terms with several of the other Spartans, along with forcing love on the Arcadian captain, though perhaps it’s just his overbearing, hyper as fuck, passionate and enthusiastic as fuck personality just forcing himself on people and they just come to accept him for it. Yeah. He's that friend. There’s a solid canon friendship between Stelios and Astinos based on playful shoving and teasing comments between the two, so Stelios likes to be something of a troll in casual conversation - even so in serious conversation, cracking jokes mid-battle and of course the Persian emissary thing. He seems to be very capable of enjoying life and letting the violence of the lifestyle just naturally flow into it and not interrupt his character - it is all a part of him and all of it he carries into each conversation he has, regardless of the setting.
Just another fun culture note: It's historically accurate that ancient Greeks thought of pants as barbarous. Not that leather speedos were in for them, but bifurcated garments (things with two legs in them) were the fashion of the northern tribes that required a lot more coverage due to weather and well as, lol, riding horses in skirts kind of sucks (chafing). The northern people wore pants and boots and really hideous dirndl skirts and fashioned clothes out of animal skins with the fur turned inside for insulation because it made sense and it was practical. And the Greeks... well, the Greeks ran around in safety-pinned bedsheets and leather sandals. But the Greeks were also terribly full of themselves and thought this change of dress was totally uncivilized, so if Stelios refuses to put on pants in Abax and instead pins a bed sheet to himself, NOW YOU KNOOOOOW.
abilities/powers:
HE IS SPARTAN \o/ So, he’s very athletic, fit, can jump ridiculous distances and throw a spear the length of a football field. He’s highly trained for combat and was put out in the wild as a young child to fight wolves and survive in the cold while in leather panties, so he’s pretty set for any of that kind of business. But otherwise, he’s squishy and human. If he’s much like Leonidas, he should be able to scale things without needing too many tools. Uuuhm, he speaks Ancient Greek? Can probably bench press most people in Abax?
first person sample: An Abaxoploy post aaand a Dear Mun post
third person sample:
The frigid breeze was a stabbing chill across Stelios's skin, wind whipping hard like needles against him, but he stood firm, unflinching. Wide stone structures with a soft sheen of what appeared to be glass rose up from the ground before him like a bizarre, twisted mountain range - flames alight on every other surface making the night cloaking the area seem obsolete. The Spartan had seen many bizarre things in the past handful of days - disfigured men deemed Immortals, beasts from distant lands, sorcerers heaving their exploding magic baubles. But a stranger landscape, Stelios had never seen.
Calloused feet padded over smooth concrete as he wandered out onto the sidewalk to stare up at the towering structure he emerged from, seemingly glowing from withing. It wasn't fear that gripped him, but unease - a creeping uncertainty. He'd been sure the hail of arrows had come, puncturing him through the heart and bringing him to bleed out, the vision of his mighty King bravely welcoming oblivion slowly fading above him. This was no Hades, no River Styx. As his eyes darted from the glowing building to the clocktower that seemed to pierce the very sky in it's height he realized he'd been denied that glorious, hard earned death alongside his brothers and Liege, and a slow anger built in him.
Taken from his homeland - his King, country, and wife, all that meant the most to him - and exiled by whatever devious sorcerer's hand to this cold, lifeless place with flat, shining surfaces and nothing of great Greece's nature, but even as the anger at his misplacement fueled him, Stelios's fists clenched at his sides as he stared up and up and up at the massive landscape and a cruel, bloodthirsty grin cracked across his face. If they thought this would defeat him, crush the Spartan spirit he thrived on, they were sorely mistaken. Missing sword, shield and spear. Brothers in arms, country and familiar ground. The law was still 'Never retreat, never surrender' - these new adversaries would know this in their bones, he would make sure of it. He was not truly alone, because wherever a son of Sparta goes, Sparta goes with - embedded in their very blood. Staring up at the bright, daunting structure, he let out a mighty roar into the dead night air, a battle cry ripping through the silence. Stelios was ready.
case no: 30-03-00
