DE: Ass-kicking goes both ways

[yakalskovich]

 Stealing this DE just because.

After a major fight with my current bosses (hopefully no that much longer) yesterday, my question to everyone is: Fights and struggles shape one's personality, and conflicts drive plot. What is the most important conflict or the most prominent enmity in your charries' canons, and in their personal plot line?

Comments

[bigarmy_strangepants]

For one thing, Ragnar would not have become who he is if Earl Haraldson hadn't opposed him quite as badly as he did, practically forcing his hand towards taking him down in holmgang. Left to his own devices, Ragnar would have been happy to farm, explore and raid, and spend the winters contentedly among his family at home, giving his earl a percentage of his loot for being left alone, and never meddling with politics at all.

[yinyangwizard]

Seimei's rivalry with Ashiya Doman back in his mortal days, which ended with a magical fight in the Imperial Palace. Ashiya Doman used magic (including black magic) for all the wrong reasons, and one of the things Seimei fears is that he will become like Ashiya Doman himself someday.

[inlovewithwords]

Eriond: Both in world and in personal, the conflict between the two potential Purposes is the big one.

Henry: Near as I can tell, 'The Dark One' versus everyone likable.

Evelyn: Personal: Starts with Corypheus, shifts to [SPOILER: SOLAS YOU TRAITOROUS faldsfalkvvskdjflsdk]. World: Hmm. Option a) Everyone versus whatever taint it was that created the darkspawn, because it made the Blight, it made the red lyrium that escalated matters in DA2, and it made Corypheus and, well; option b) Everyone versus Next Game's Villains because stuff and things and traitors.

Lois: Personal, I'm honestly not sure. She gets some lower level stuff. I'd have to think about this. Later on, post-canon, it's definitely LexCorp and Intergang. Canon: Clark versus Various Forces of Evil (Luthor, Zod, Darkseid). The usual.

Tavi: Most important conflict is with the Vord Queen, both global and personal. The greatest enmity, though, in his personal sphere is probably him and the Kalarans. Invidia's more awful in some ways, but she and Isana have more of a thing and also Tavi is like "well, at least she's not a sadist."

Star Wars: Obviously the greatest conflict is between the wielders of the Dark Side of the Force and their followers and, well, everyone else.
R2-D2: For him, personally? Probably greatest conflict is with the Emperor. Guy screws everything up.
Anakin: Himself.

[sunbaked_baker]

Sunshine's major canon conflict is against the Master Vampire trying to ensure her and Con's deaths. They were supposed to have died while in that Master Vampire's clutches, and really pissed him off by escaping and refusing to die like they were supposed to. Rae's other major canon conflict is internal, between the life she chose for herself as a neighborhood coffeehouse baker, and the other life that involves blood and violence and helping to save the world. There's no way the ability and responsibility to help deal with the vampiric threat to the world wouldn't conflict with the personal life of the squeamish, vegetarian, pacifist baker. Now, the main fight is against the Goddess of Pain, deputy director of SOF, who is seeking to expose what Sunshine is doing despite her work having a positive impact and her having been asked to help out by SOFs in the first place.

Yrael's canon's main conflict is between the benevolent magic of the Charter and the chaotic, corrosive Free Magic, in whatever form it takes. Charter Mages, the Abhorsen, et al, versus necromancers, Free Magic sorcerers, and Free Magic creatures. Yrael's own internal conflict is less obvious in canon, but mirrors the greater struggle between the Charter and Free Magic, as he is a Free Magic creature tied to the Charter against his will. He wants his freedom, but has developed a begrudging enjoyment and respect for the Life that the Charter protects.

[jedi_interrupted]

Looking at the whole of her canon for this one.

So many fights, many stick out but I think the biggest one that has been the elephant in the canon since she was first introduced is Ahsoka vs Vader. Without going into spoilers, we finally had it in the season finale of Rebels. And boy was it a doozy. Much like the finale of season 05 of The Clone Wars I was surprised by Ahsoka's actions. She accepted he was her old master, actually got through to him a little, and still fought to try and keep him from harming the galaxy.

I am not sure what the effect of this fight will be, tbh, and canon has removed Ahsoka from the board to bring focus back to the main characters of the show. There may be some doubt as to if she is still alive, but I believe she is and I am not sure what she is going to do now.

[my_brothers_shadow]

This is an interesting and challenging question when applied to Rollo. First fight that comes to mind is the conflict with Jarl Borg, when Rollo and Ragnar almost came to blows, but I think what changed in Rollo goes back farther.

I know canon says the jealousy started with Lagertha and a lot of fans run with that, but I think things really shifted when Earl Haraldson captured Rollo and tortured him to get to Ragnar. I think that's when part of Rollo started seeing how many sacrifices he paid for Ragnar and didn't like how they added up to his personal gains.

[genarti]

Thor: ...Loki.

Even before Loki went all supervillain, Thor's relationship with Loki (including a lot of competition and squabbling) shaped him in a lot of fundamental ways. And so far in the MCU, Loki is definitely his primary recurring conflict, whether they're opponents or allies.

Enjolras: Injustice. Most immediately and specifically: the French monarchy. (Not the king, which would be two different kings during his four years onscreen anyway, but the concept and institution of the monarchy.)

Cosette: ...Uh. Good question! She's not a very conflict-driven person, and she definitely wouldn't see things this way, but narratively speaking -- social expectations, maybe? Specifically, ones about keeping people in their places. She hasn't consciously fought against those, but her mother did and her father ducked them both around expectations, and Cosette herself has quietly fought for what she wanted, and nothing about her current life is what her society would want or expect for the child she'd been.

Kazul: Wizards.

They're recurring meddlesome nuisances (she says) who keep trying to break or duck around their treaty with the Dragons, and it's a happy day when they break the treaty sufficiently that she can eat them for it.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato: Broadly speaking, the whole conflict in Adventure is driven by Apocalymon and the Dark Ocean, but they're both big, distant villains (and it's questionable if the Dark Ocean even has any kind of will), eldritch abominations on a fairly grand scale, and Apocalymon is mostly interacted with via his servants, only actually making a personal appearance in the final two episodes of 01.

On a slightly more personal level, Vamdemon serves as a personal villain for the entirety of the Chosen, and Pinocchimon for Yamato. Vamdemon is effectively middle management, but he's also the longest running arc villain in 01, and the main villain of 02, and has a knack for not staying dead (he dies three times in total).

Pinocchimon, meanwhile, is probably barely aware of Yamato's existence except as 'the other blond one', but it's his underling who sets Yamato off onto his nervous breakdown, and results in the group splitting up, and he takes a very keen interest in Yamato's brother. Yamato and Gabumon eventually kill him while he's trying to flee, freezing him and then leaving him to die while he pleads to be told what he was lacking, in what might actually be the most coldblooded act committed by a Digimon protagonist.

Hawke: Kirkwall, broadly.

There are actual people he has conflict with: The Arishok (who is so repulsed by the city that he'd rather see it burn), Meredith (who is a vicious, paranoid bigot with massive and unchecked power), Sister Petrice (who is a religious zealot), Quentin (who's a serial killer), and Anders (who's a mass murderer who wants to start a war, even if you can definitely make the argument that Anders isn't fully in control of his own actions at the time), but they're all symptoms of the problem, and the problem, at least on a small scale, is Kirkwall, where every horrible thing about Thedas seems to be magnified to the nth degree.

Which is interesting because Hawke swears to defend Kirkwall - there's a line in one of the DLCs where Tallis says that the Qun could give Hawke a purpose, and his response is "I have a purpose. I protect Kirkwall." It's a massive part of his character, to the point where his perceived failure to do so is an enormous blow to him.

It's a bit of a Batman/Gotham situation, really, where Hawke might have sworn to protect Kirkwall, but it's really not entirely clear if Kirkwall can be saved.

[bjornwilde]

And before I forget, thank you for stealing today's DE! I had woken up very late and was rushed this morning.

Hank: His driving/defining conflict is definitely accepting who he is. There is of course his conflict with Erik/Magneto, but I think accepting himself and his physical mutation is the truer conflict.

Izana: The conflict with the gauna is definitely a big one, though it is rather large in scale. It has defined their personal life and the lives of all aboard Sidonia, but it is much like the nuclear threat for those who lived during the Cold War. It will become more personal now that Sidonia is deep in gauna territory and have attracted their attention.

Beyond that, I would say battling for Nagate's affections are a pretty defining struggle for Izana. It causes physical changes to their person, results in them becoming more assertive, and results in them making new friends.

Eliot: OMG. First big fight was with a bully and that ended when he was 14 and in a rather graphic fashion. It proved to Eliot beyond a shadow of doubt that magic not only existed but that he could do it. My head canon is that he ran away from home after this fight and become the person he is today. (Ignoring future canon for now because spoilers and damn but it is painful what Eliot is going through right now.)

[varadia]

X-23 has been shaped by many conflicts. The most fundamental one to her existence is Zander Rice's hatred of Wolverine, the Weapon X project that killed his father. Without that, no existence for X. But from her own life I think the two biggest shaping conflicts are her struggle for personhood against a history of being a mute automaton who obeyed orders because there was nothing else, and X vs the Facility.

Ysalwen has been hugely shaped by the 'everyone reviles the elves' thing Thedas has going on, as well as 'mages are awful and need to be locked up for everyone's safety', less so the mages vs templar dichotomy, compared to some, I think. The civil war in Ferelden and the Fifth Blight conflict then took the person made by those and hammered her sharper and finer, so now we have the Ysalwen of today. She's sort of built for war, though, so that kind of works out?

Raven is mostly shaped by the conflict he leaves behind him. Or he does the shaping. Or both.

Flemeth has been shaped by at least two betrayals, maybe three. One of them was romantic, I think, and the others were not.

Michael has the whole Lucifer vs God thing that formed a lot of who and what she is, as well as pop culture and literature responses to that narrative. So. Hooray? Her world is shaped by the changes in stories, which is always a kind of conflict. Because stories.

[ceitfianna]

Will: The Sheriff and that sense of being pushed down by the world, when he was with Robin he was able to truly play a part in that conflict. For a long time, his inner conflict was with the sense that he wasn't good enough, but not that's faded a good bit. He's at this point in time not that conflicted.

Charles is caught between his compassion, his ambition and his knowledge of how horrible humanity can be. He tries to balance them all to create a future for mutants without destroying his own values along the way. Its a fine line and one he often falls or leaps over and he and Erik are constantly testing what will they do for mutantkind.

Quentin inner conflict is about where does he fit in the Fae world, understanding his privilege and what he can and can't do. Outer conflict is basically whoever's trying to kill Toby this week.

Moist doesn't actually have much inner conflict, he loves setting himself up against people who think themselves smart and better and conning them. Canon introduces him to Vetinari who aims him.

William's inner and outer conflicts reflect each other. He's trying to help his family not just survive but thrive and prove to everyone that he can do it and he's worthy as well as proving that to himself.

Sameth's inner conflict used to be not feeling like he belonged and that he was failing the Old Kingdom. Now its more trying to understand his role and aiding the Old Kingdom. External is all the dangers of the Old Kingdom, Free Magic, necromancers and politics.

Jane's conflicts are both about finding ways for the outside world to help match what she knows is possible inside herself. That means a lot of what she deals with is choosing what she's willing to sacrifice and what she has to and finding ways to get what she wants from within the constraints of society.

Ivan at this point in canon actually isn't that conflicted. At the end of his book, his story was headed in a good direction. Someone on a reviewing site speculated that the last couple of books are Bujold tying up characters plotlines. I'm not sure, but Ivan is someone who has never been terribly internally conflicted. He worries about disappointing his family but by the time he meets Tej, he's realizing that he actually is both doing what suits him and satisfying others. The outer conflict depends a lot on who's Barrayar or his extended family's enemy.

Demeter is at peace with herself internally, she has points of hating her family and what's come of their choices. Externally, she wants to help the world grow and at the moment, her heart is breaking for all the landless people and she can only help so many.

Tumnus isn't terribly internally conflicted, he was when he first was introduced as he tried to protect Narnia and himself and ended up caught up in the Witch's plans. Now a lot of what he does is helping the Pevensies help Narnia against whatever diplomatic or more trouble they face.

[have_no_mercy]

Tess - Lex and her adoptive father.

Kylo - Right now his parents and Luke, but I have a feelings it's going to end up being Snoke.