Distant Skies App
Jan. 14th, 2012 04:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eternaliyahABOUT YOU
Name: Isabelle or Vibishan
Are you 18 or over?: Yes.
Other characters played: N/a
CHARACTER
Name: Daniel Abramowitz aka the State of Israel (Note: I spell his last name a variety of ways, over the years and dialects and different places he's lived, but this one is the default.)
Canon: Axis Powers Hetalia
Age: ~350 years old, but he looks to be in his early twenties
History:
The Great Big Wiki Article. Probably only necessary as reference if you want more info on something I mention, since I’ll go over a lot of that more briefly here.
I’m going to do my best to apply the lens of Hetalia personifications to that. There are three main periods: Ancient Israel (tribes, the Unified Kingdom, the divided kingdoms of Northern Israel and Southern Judah, the first exile and the Hasmonean kingdom), the Exile (divided into Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Mizrahim geographic/cultural groups), and Modern Israel. Daniel is the last of these, but nations are more metaphor than anything, and Israel is a very slippery idea; he’ll have instincts and emotional resonances that go all the way back to the ancient Israelites (his grandfather David), and include elements of experience from Ashkenazim (his father, Jacob) and Sephardim and Mizrahim (his aunts), but his own personal memories start in the late Renaissance, when persecuted Jews began contemplating Return in response to the injustices they suffered under the Spanish Inquisition and elsewhere.
In Hetalia, nations don’t begin with the founding of the state. We first see baby America when England sails to the New World and finds him playing with bison; by the time of the revolution, he’s a young man coming of age. So nations don’t begin with governments or proclamations, but with people, doing something different, going somewhere different, thinking of themselves in new ways that will eventually grow, even if there are false starts and lulls and backward progress (like the disappearance of Roanoke). Israel begins not with patchwork borderlines drawn in the U.N., but long before that, with the first stirrings of Zionism. More than anything, Daniel was hope, the feeling of a pressing and urgent need to Return, not as a matter of preference or biblical prophecy, but for the safety and well-being of the Jewish people.
The boy who would become Israel has a few scattered memories of earlier outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence that spurred ideas of Return or actual emigrations (particularly the Khmelnytsky Uprising), but his life begins in a coherent way in 1665, when Sabbatai Zevi declared himself the messiah, leading a huge migration of Jews across Europe with the intent to re-establish the kingdom of Israel. Before (and for awhile after) that time, it was considered blasphemous for mortal men to strive towards a Return; it was God who had cast them out, and only God could decide to return them. After Zevi’s capture and forced conversion by Muslims, his movement was destroyed, but the hope of return had been indelibly inscribed in the people’s imagination; it was conceivable, within the realm of the possible in a way it hadn’t been before, so Daniel survived.
In Hetalia fandom (this is common headcanon, with maybe a few references in canon), the official territory of nation-states is sometimes interpreted or paralleled as their ‘Houses’. Daniel and Jacob, of course, have no house of their own, so they are constantly moving and crashing with other nations. They lived in basements, attics, and backyards across Europe, especially the Netherlands, France, the German states, Poland and Lithuania, and other Eastern European nations (Daniel sometimes kipped with his aunts in Ottoman or Indian territory as well).
Daniel is partly raised by Jacob, a quiet, unassuming, academic man who just wishes to be left in peace, just as Zionism was nurtured by the community of Jewish Exiles. But inevitably, the were often apart: Jacob, as the spirit of the Exile, tended to live in the places where Jews were closest to being welcome, where they could truly establish their own communities and conduct their lives. Daniel, in contrast, manifested not only where Jews were thriving and could contemplate return in a spirit of ambition, but wherever the danger and prosecution was greatest, and consequently the desire for safety and homeland most keenly felt. He spent a fair amount of time living under the eye of nations like Russia and Austria, who behaved as wardens and overseers rather than any kind of parental influence. They were frequently physically abusive, in tandem with periodic pogroms. Russia, something of a psychopath even in cutesy Hetalia, terrorized Daniel horribly, up to and including beatings with his pipe. Austria, shown to be a strict taskmaster in the chibitalia episodes, was less random and brutal but would still strike or cane Daniel if he was displeased with anything – whether it was Daniel’s fault or not, as Jews were often used as a scapegoat for other social ills.
The French Revolution was a major turning point for Daniel, as well as Europe as a whole. In the Declaration of the Rights of Man, France gave Jews full legal rights and citizenship, something no European nation had done before. They were no longer alien nationals without a state, but “Frenchmen of the Mosaic persuasion”, whose religion was a matter of private choice, not civil suspicion. In the following decades, more nations would emancipate their Jewish residents, but popular opinion did not follow public decree – in fact, it was often the opposite. Just as Jews were defined officially as followers of a religion, they came to be seen more as a race in the modern pseudo-biological sense, and therefore still an excluded other, no matter their technical political status. In France, the highly publicized Dreyfus affair – where a decorated French Jewish officer was executed for treason on essentially no evidence – showed that laws alone would never protect Jews from hatred. Daniel attended the trial, along with the man who would become known as the father of Zionism, then-foreign correspondent Theodor Herzl. As Herzl began publishing on the need for a Homeland and building up Zionist organizations, Daniel began to spend more time in Austria and Germany, which had a thriving Jewish population, full emancipation, and a deep involvement of Jews in arts and culture in the major cities.
Tension in the Jewish community lead to strong mixed feelings for Daniel; although he was growing and starting to make the first immigrations to Palestine (largely with Russian Jews, who were much worse off than their German counterparts at the time), Jews were also assimilating into and participating in mainstream, partly secularized continental culture, more than ever before. Reform Judaism was established with the desire to make Jews less alien, to encourage their acceptance as true citizens of the nations where they lived. All of this added up to Daniel falling a little bit in love with Germany. It was partly puppy love – Germany as a unified country is much younger than most of Europe, and it’s my headcanon that young, pre-Confederation Germany was childhood friends with Zion/Daniel. It was partly hero worship, as Germany was a much better place for Jews than most nations. But it was also a genuine, slightly creepy love, like Belarus’s obsession with ‘becoming one’ with Russia: Daniel didn’t care about himself, only his people, and he wanted Germany to truly accept them, and for them to consider themselves wholly German and be right in that identity, even if that meant Daniel’s own death absorbed into him. Sadly, the more Jews tried to be part of Germany, the more right-wing anti-Semitism grew in reaction - the more harshly Ludwig pushed him away.
Nevertheless, the Jewish community came out to fight in vast numbers for Germany during WWI, out of patriotism, a desire to prove themselves, and above all because Russia was hideously repressive; the czarist army slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Jews. Some Zionist organizations even urged America to join Germany’s side because of this – though others remained officially neutral. Jacob fought for Germany, and although Daniel was too young to conscript, he slipped in as a drummer boy. It was quickly realized that this was a different type of war. Rather than keeping march time, Daniel and other drummers helped carry stretchers of wounded out of No Man’s Land under fire. He was wounded, and has a shrapnel scar on his collarbone from his service. At the same time, however, the Jewish Legion was formed by Zionists to promote their ideas, and helped conquer Palestine from the Turks as part of the British army. Daniel spent a lot of time with the Legion, really learning to fight for the first time.
In 1917, the British Foreign Minister wrote a letter that became known as the Balfour Declaration, stating that Britain approved of the formation of “a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.” Daniel was ecstatic. Immigration to Palestine increased as Eastern European persecution continued to worsen, while America, the other popular escape destination, strictly limited immigrants. Histadrut, an organization of Israeli trade unions, and Haganah, a defensive militia, were founded. Haganah protected Jewish settlements during skirmishes with local Arabs, while Histadrut build schools, infrastructure, and provided the beginnings of a social safety net – essentially the building blocks of a country, even though they had no authority to pass laws. An evangelical Briton named Ord Wingate believed Israel must be established to prepare for the book of Revelation to come to pass, and he trained Haganah into a top-rate, disciplined fighting force on the British model. He was a bit of a nut, but Daniel loved him, and learned to fight alongside them, despite still being a child. Haganah also recruited smart young boys directly from their classrooms to serve as code-runners, i.e., to spread coded messages between actual Haganah fighters quickly and efficiently during emergencies. (There were too few people to use grown soldiers for this, and the kids usually knew their way around the city well and could avoid suspicion more easily.) Daniel was one of these boys, the leader of his cell. This was a great time for him, learning as much as he could, scrapping and stealing fruit and telling tall tales with other kids on the streets of Jerusalem.
However, all was not perfect: the more Jews moved to Palestine, the more hostile native Arabs became, and England resented having to moderate between them, particularly when he had to risk police or troops to break up violent riots. England began to restrict Jewish immigration to Palestine, which infuriated Daniel – with anti-Semitism increasing in Europe, many Jews sought to flee, and no other countries wished to accept them either. For the first time in his life, Daniel felt as though he could fight back against injustice. More aggressive splinter groups left Haganah: Irgun and Lehi were essentially terrorist organizations. Several British officials were assassinated, and despite attempts to find a solution, tensions continued to rise. Allowing more Jewish immigration caused outbreaks of Arab violence and Jewish retaliation, while allowing less caused Jewish attacks. Daniel fought with England more and more, no longer enamored of him as England continued to walk back his promises.
And then, of course, WWII happened. Daniel was everywhere in the holocaust. He was murdered over and over and over. Hunted down and shot by Einzatzgruppen in Eastern Europe, poisoned in the gas chambers, frozen and starved and worked to death.
After the war, the starving Jewish refugees were just barely more welcome in war-torn Europe than they had been in Germany. No one was actively trying to murder them all, but no one wanted them around, either – and that went for everyone from the Poles, who saw a massive Catholic anti-Jewish backlash after the war, to the allies administering the various territories. Many Jews were still in the camps months after VE-Day, because there was ‘nowhere else’ to send them. Russia, Britain, and France all forbade Zionist propaganda in the camps/territories they administered, so Zionists concentrated in the American zones, trying to improve conditions and encourage people to come to Israel, and Jewish organizations elsewhere in Europe steered ever more refugees into the American zones as well.
The only problem was that England was still restricting immigration, out of fear of another Arab uprising. He eventually handed the Palestinian territory off to the U.N. just to get rid of the problem. Under America’s leadership (and, ironically, with Russia’s support, thanks to how communal and pro-labor Zionist leadership was), the U.N. outlined a dual state division of the territory, and Israel became and independent nation on May 14, 1948. Between 1945 and 1948, Israel grew fast, from a movement with some social systems in someone else’s territorial holding, to a full-fledged nation. His puberty was totally compressed, shooting up from 12 to 18 in just those three years. And then this terrified, traumatized, violent, desperate young man was immediately attacked on three sides – and he won.
It’s impossible to underestimate the effect the holocaust had on him. He knows he will never be safe, that there is no limit on cruelty. He has nightmares and flashbacks for years afterward. Literally everyone, of the millions of Jews flooding into the new nation after the Law of Return, had lost someone, often everyone in their families, while almost everyone who had managed to immigrate to Israel before the war had left someone in Europe who had died. There was little comfort or cozening for grief, because grief was simply the default, the normal way of being. The entire nation was heartbroken, and the entire nation had to keep going, had to work and fight to survive in a hostile desert surrounded by enemies. But from then on, Daniel could fight back.
The anti-Jewish violence in Poland, often overlooked, was the real nail in the coffin for Daniel’s ability to really trust or rely on anyone else, ever, because in the middle ages, Poland was much more tolerant of Jews than almost anywhere else. It was called a paradise, and Daniel adored him, with the pure gratitude of a small child. At that moment was he was most hurt, most desperately in need, when they had just suffered through the Nazis' oppression side by side, Poland turned on him. On top of a long, long history of seesawing back and forth between welcome and hostility, this ultimately confirmed that no matter how good to him anyone was, eventually they would betray him. This hasn’t stopped Daniel from enjoying and exploiting times when people are disposed to him kindly – he just understands ahead of time that it can never, ever last.
In 1952, Germany offered to pay Israel reparations for stolen property and slave labor used. After bitter, protracted debate about blood money, Israel accepted. This was a major decision for Daniel: ultimately, he needed the money to settle and integrate the refugees, and survival came before pride, before decency, before everything. He’s a deeply pragmatic person, and though he’s profoundly bitter about everything he’s suffered, he’s able to divorce his pain from the people who caused it enough to work with them. It’s not that he’s capable of forgiveness, but simply that he doesn’t have the emotionally energy to hate everyone who has earned his hatred and still have anything left to live with, so he doesn’t.
It leaves him in a limbo between moving on and being stuck in the horror of his trauma; in many ways he does both at once. He keeps living because he must, but every line of him, everything he does, is still affected by what happened to him, and by his deep and unshakable fear that yes, it could very well happen again, if he let it. At the same time, as the years go on, people who are unaffected don’t want to keep hearing about it from someone who’s less downtrodden, so he underplays the hold it has on him as much as he can to keep from seeming ‘weak’ or ‘whiny’.
Israel’s life after the Holocaust is defined by different wars, and how each one affects him differently. In 1967, several neighboring states began mobilizing their forces. In response, Israel attacked first. Although condemned, this made strategic sense – Israel’s small population made it almost impossible for it to maintain mobilization during a long standoff. Essentially, this was the war in which Israel officially decided to ignore what the rest of the world considered civilized martial conduct in favor of being brutally effective, and it worked. The war lasted six days, with minimal Israeli casualties, and doubled Israel’s size. He was elated.
But the aftermath of ’67 is more complicated than a simple victory: Israel assumed that once he had proven his military superiority, proven that he could not simply be gotten rid of, that the Arab nations would negotiate. Israel planned to return most of the territory it had gained in exchange for peace agreements. But it didn’t happen: not a single Arab state would negotiate; they continued staunchly refuse to recognize the right of Israel to exist. This made Daniel more paranoid and emotionally stunted, rough and uncompromising and bitter. Why should he compromise, when no one would negotiate in good faith with him? What was the point, when his opponents were irrational in their unwillingness to deal with him? At the same time, Israel enjoyed a brief period of security and prosperity, and he could afford to tell everyone else to fuck off if he wanted. Which is more or less what he did.
That changed in the Yom Kippur war of 1973. Although Israel won, he took more casualties, in no small part because America deliberately waited a few weeks to resupply him with necessities, including ammunition, that Israel couldn’t produce when nearly his entire population was drawn up in reserves. The lesson was clear: unless Israel scored an immediate, decisive victory, he was at the mercy of his allies. Alfred put Daniel thoroughly in his place, and though Daniel resented the humiliation, he acquiesced. Daniel would cooperate with him – but more than ever he favored devastating, disproportional attacks in later wars, seeing this as the only tactic that could safeguard him without relying on perpetually unreliable others. Just a few years later, a hard-line security party finally won control of the government, after decades of rule by Labor parties.
The very same year, Egypt finally agreed to talk to him, and although Daniel no longer expected anything at all of his neighbors, he eagerly signed peace accords, returning the Sinai peninsula and agreeing to other concessions. Daniel was still willing to talk, as long as he actually thought he might get anything in return and from Egypt, for a while, he did. They were wary friends at best, but Daniel would take what he could get, and the quiet, calm nation could handle Daniel’s prickliness. Israel knew he cared about Egypt more than Egypt cared about him, because Daniel had so few friends and Egypt’s alliance with him imperiled Egypt’s position in the Arab world, but Israel tried not to let it sour what they had.
In the eighties, Israel had a more protracted war against Lebanon, and dealt with the first Intifada, a violent Palestinian uprising with Daniel met with disproportionate retaliation, earning him near-universal condemnation. For the most part he didn’t give a damn what the rest of the world thought – but it made life harder. More importantly, Israelis themselves weren’t entirely comfortable with the idea of shooting boys for throwing stones. This was the time when Daniel finally started to really be the bad guy, and he didn’t like it, but he also didn’t know what else to do. He was just tired of fighting all the time, and getting so little to show for it.
In the early nineties, Israel tried more compromise, more concessions, anything it could offer to win a scrap of peace. And for awhile, it worked: the PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist, Israel gave the PLA some governing authority, and Israel established a peace treaty with its closest neighbor, Jordan. But both sides had trouble committing: Arabs were infuriated by continued Israeli settlements, and Palestinian suicide attacks punctured Israel’s attempt at goodwill. When a far-right-wing Jew assassinated President Yitzhak Rabin, the architect and champion of pro-peace policy, Daniel became disheartened, but for the most part, he kept trying. Although Camp David talks fell apart, he withdrew from Gaza and Lebanon, still hoping for some reciprocation. In January of 2006, the PLO lost the Palestinian elections to the more radical Hamas. Daniel was simply at a loss. He didn’t know what to try next. Hope, idealism, and sacrifices had failed. Daniel's reaction wasn't truly despair – he could manage just fine – but he felt disillusioned and ultimately resigned. Perhaps he simply would always have to fight for right to live. If that was what how it had to be, he could live with that. As long as he could live.
He finds the window while brooding about this, and he’ll be delighted to have a new world to explore to distract him a little from the seemingly intractable problems of his own.
Point in canon: February 2006, after the election of Hamas but before the death of Ariel Sharon.
Window Location: In one of the restricted areas on Masada, a fortress on a flat mountaintop in Israel were his grandfather made his last suicidal stand against the Romans. Daniel goes up there to think a lot, and since parts of it are restricted for archeological reasons, the likelihood of anyone else finding the window is very slim.
Universe: The Hetalia universe is historically just like our own, only nations and similar entities have a walking, talking, physical person living as a metaphor for them.
Abilities: Daniel won’t die for good unless the country of Israel is destroyed, his culture erased, and all his people killed. Short of that, he’ll heal more quickly than most, though not immediately – minor injuries in a day, major ones in a few days or a week. If he’s bodily killed, he’ll still come back, but if his body is destroyed, it will reappear in Israel. If his PHD doesn’t come with him and his window has closed, that could be problematic.
Daniel is several times stronger than a man of his size ought to be, and capable of extremely fast, impossible movements. In Hetalia, America is the only one who has confirmed ‘super-strength’, though popular fanon holds that the USSR did as well. Daniel isn’t even close to their league – he can’t throw a car or punch through a safe – but he is one of the few countries with nuclear weapons, and his military and political strength as a linchpin country in the middle east are both much greater than his geographic/population size would indicate. I’d say he’s in the range of 5-10 times stronger than the normal human range. As for speed: Israel can mobilize faster than any other nation on the planet. Every TV and radio in the country broadcasts certain code words between programs. Almost everyone is in the reserves after serving their universal conscript time, and if your unit’s code comes up, you know where to report to form up. The whole point of the Yom Kippur war was that by attacking on a day when radio and TV would not be broadcasting, Israel’s enemies gained a whole twelve hours, almost no time at all on a historical/national scale, to surprise him without nigh-instantly raising the reserves. Israel can’t keep it going for long periods, so he isn’t a speedster proper, and he can’t run across the city in a few seconds; but if he’s fighting someone normal, they’ll never see the first punch coming.
As a desert, Daniel’s normal temperature runs a few degrees hotter than human average, and he has less trouble dealing with heat, especially dry heat. He won’t collapse faster in the cold, but he will be significantly more miserable.
As for the more mundane skills one picks up over the centuries, building his own society from the sand up, and/or in Mossad: He’s extremely experienced with hand-to-hand combat, especially Krav Maga, the martial art developed by the Israeli Defense Force. He’s a crack shot with all sizes of guns, good with knives, and has Special Forces training in all kinds of things – rappelling, interrogation, hostage negotiation, and so on. He’s trained in field medicine, some engineering, and agriculture, especially water management and irrigation. He has a small one-man sailboat and he’s a decent sailor, but not great. He’s a good cook, handy with carpentry, plumbing, and electric wiring, and he makes a mean cup of coffee.
Possessions: Daniel’s a paranoid bastard, he goes around well-armed as a matter of course. He’ll have two guns, a Browning Hi-Power in a shoulder holster (with a special reflective strip used by Mossad) under his jacket, and a smaller Beretta .22 at the small of his back. He has wrist sheathes for knives on both arms, a butterfly knife in one pocket, and a throwing knife in his left boot. He has an old-school cell phone, his keys and swiss army knife key chain attachment, a half-used pack of pocket tissues, his dog tags, his wallet with a few bills, his ID, a few different fake IDs, a small lockpick set, and various business cards. In his shirt pocket there’s a laser pointer and good, fancy pen America gave him. He’ll also be wearing a partly-full roll-up canteen on a strap around his neck, since Masada is out in the desert.
Personality:
Daniel is, in many ways, a person who seems deeply contradictory, even though all his facets fit together. If you try to talk to him about trust, he’s the most depressing pessimist you’ll ever meet. He’s not the guy that says most people are pricks but is dead loyal to his friends: he’s the guy who is absolutely, unshakably sure that one day, sooner or later, every one of his friends will stab him in the back, because it’s happened every single time before. But at the same time, he’s cheerful and affable with them most of the time, and it’s not an act; he doesn’t let the inevitable betrayal make him too bitter to enjoy the good times (mostly), because he also knows, just as fundamentally, that the good times are all he has, all he will ever have. So he throws himself into them and makes the most of them, even though he never stops sleeping with one eye open and a gun under the pillow, just in case today is the day it ends.
Daniel has been through more horrific cruelty than most people can imagine. It makes him understanding of what other victims go through, but not necessarily sympathetic. He’s willing to be cruel and abuse power of his own to keep himself safe, but it’s a far, far cry from anything as bad as continuing the cycle of abuse. In some ways, he’s a little in denial about the rights he denies Palestinians (and he refuses to admit the personification of the nascent Palestine is his brother); but in other ways, he knows exactly how bad it is, and he’s accepted it, not because he’s amoral or doesn’t care, but because he doesn’t know what else to do. He’s worn down and morally calloused enough to live with the culpability of it.
He’s incredibly gruff and cranky with people who dislike him, or who have more power than him, paranoid, reactionary, with a hot temper and a preference for deliberate and brutal overreaction; he’s prickly and defensive because he’s had to be, because people everyone around him has been arrayed against him for so long, because appealing in honest vulnerability only results in derision and ‘playing the victim’. He doesn’t want to be a victim ever again, and if that means other people have to be, so be it. On the other hand, give him a trauma victim, and he’ll be calm and gentle with them, knowing exactly how careful he needed people to be with him, and rarely got. With his own people, be they Israelis, Jews in general, or just people he’s taken in, he’s doting and incredibly protective. Hospitality is incredibly important to him culturally, and once he lets someone into his space, expect to be fed to bursting, given well-intentioned lectures, and generally doted on. More than that, being a haven is an incredibly strong part of his identity, so when people he considers his responsibility need aid or shelter, he’ll move heaven and earth to protect them. And whenever he finds someone he can relax around even a little, he’s incredibly affectionate, because he’s so starved for touch and affection.
Daniel has a wry sense of humor that swings from playful to painfully dark. He likes to push boundaries and see how far he can get away with things, and unless his survival is actually in the balance, he does not give a single fuck what the entire rest of the world thinks, making him very stubborn and sometimes difficult to deal with. Conversely, he’s very smart, and anyone willing to bargain with him will find a willing (albeit shrewd) listener. He’s as tough as nails in the face of difficulty, but he wants to be able to relax (a little, at least) and have fun, and as long as danger isn’t immanent, he’ll enthusiastically do just that. He lives life to the fullest and doesn’t take anything for granted, because tomorrow it could all be ripped away – but he’ll fight tooth and nail and be crazy prepared to prevent it.
He’s incredibly pragmatic even when it makes him miserable, and self-reliant to a fault because other people simply cannot ever truly be depended on. He’s a man of action, not philosophy, but he also values thought, education, and careful planning. He’s not prone to introspection but he’s also deeply self-aware. He’s lonely because he holds people at a distance, but as long as he has a place to build and keep himself safe, he can be content on his own, if not completely happy. Daniel remembers being an ephemeral, indefinable thing, the light of hope for people who needed it, and part of him misses that. He doesn’t want to be a fortress forever – but better strong, brittle, and alone than at anyone else’s mercy, ever again. More than anything or everything else, Israel is a survivor. He will do or become whatever it takes, not just for himself, but for his people. He doesn’t let it rule him most of the time, when his back is against the wall, he can be noble or completely shameless, stubbornly independent or begging on America’s doorstep, laughing or stoic or ruthless – whatever it takes to live.
Thread Sample: Note: The thread is set in a mash-up verse between Hetalia and Marvel comics 616 main continuity, but Daniel’s character is basically unchanged. General context: shortly after Magneto blasted the entire planet with an EMP after they backed him into a corner, he crash-lands in Israel. Since he used to be in Mossad, Daniel feels obligated to take care of him, even though he's dangerous. Also you don’t have to read the whole thing, since it goes on forever, but it’s fun so you can if you like. XD
http://memebells.livejournal.com/82505.html?thread=139697481#t139697481&format=light
Prose Sample: Note: This prose sample is set in 1952, during the debate over German reparations. It’s a while earlier than his canonpoint, but I think it exemplifies his personality, and it’s one of the moments that modern Israel’s mindset first really crystallizes.
Israel stares at himself in the mirror, shoving messy brown curls away from his face, the elbow patches of his secondhand suit pressed against the dusty, chipped, off-white tile of the bathroom sink. His collar is crooked and the shadows under his eyes make his sockets look even deeper than usual. He pokes one hollow cheek and scowls.
It’s been seven years, and he still looks like a fucking skeleton. Of course, his growth spurt hadn’t exactly helped him regain long-lost baby fat. Israel can’t ever remember seeing a nation grow as fast as he has recently, shooting up from a frail wraith of a lost little boy to full nationhood in less than a decade, his newly desert-weathered skin stretched taut over taller bones. He doesn’t regret it, not for a second, but it would be nice to look less dead, to look a little bit recovered when Israel has to face him.
Quit kvetching and play the hand you’re dealt. The voice sounds suspiciously like his father, voice tinny through the transatlantic cable from New York, and Israel sneers, then drops the expression, too tired to bother. He takes a breath, straitens his spine to stand at his full height of 150 centimeters with all the aplomb of Napoleon on parade, and sucks in his cheeks just a little to make his face gaunter before he strides out of the bathroom and down the hall to the spartan, unused office room where Germany is waiting.
Germany looks up, and Israel watches his eyes darken and dart away even though he doesn’t let himself flinch. Germany doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask questions or make demands of him. He simply waits for Israel to decide the course of their interaction. It’s infuriating, because it gives Israel no reason to bare his teeth.
He sprawls on the chair across from Germany, letting his splayed posture communicate casual contempt rather than honest exhaustion.
“They’re still arguing,” he mutters. Even outside the Knesset chamber, he carries the headache of it with him, the sick, low buzzing of accusations and loathing and vicious rejoinders, the acidic whispers of blood money, desecration, whoring on our people’s mass graves burning bile at the back of his throat. His media, what he has set up so far, is inundated with the proceedings, but at least he can get out of that room for a while. Shouts of protesters outside filter through the walls, and Israel feels his stomach twist, sharp and nauseous, rolling hard as the riots get underway.
He will not vomit. He will not vomit because if he does he knows there will be blood in it, and Israel has no intention of looking weak in front of Germany – in front of anyone but especially not him – ever again.
“I await your decision,” Germany murmurs, head bowed, hands clasped in his lap, all humility and concession, his wide, uniform-shaped shoulders hunched to fit into a business suit just as worn as Israel’s is.
“I’m going to take the fucking money,” Israel snaps, because it’s just a matter of waiting for the fights to grind their way to the inevitable conclusion. “My bosses just haven’t admitted it yet.”
“I – I know it must be hard for you t–”
Israel twists so fast it feels like a convulsion, glaring at Germany with the sharp, forward-focused lines of his whole stick-angles body. He hasn’t touched him, hasn’t lashed out to strike, but he vibrates with the potential of it, every muscle tense with restrained violence, like the coiled desert vipers he is learning not to startle.
“Don’t you dare,” he hisses, “presume to know what is difficult for me.”
Germany meets his eyes, seemingly just so that dropping his gaze back to the floor becomes a more weighted gesture.
“My apologies,” he whispers.
Germany isn’t going to pay him for the dead. Neither of them could bear it even if it could be done, which it can’t. But stolen property, slave labor, resettlement of refugees – Germany can pay him for the living. A half-fiction they both need. And the truth is, Israel needs the money. He closes his eyes and drums his fingers on the metal table between them. He is hungry and still healing and alone, and he has so many lost ones to take care of, and he can’t possibly help them all, even though he would kill himself trying.
And the 614th law is, survive.
When he thinks the words, they don’t sound like anyone’s voice but his own.
Plans: HAHAHA this app is long enough already I'm sure he'll find plenty to do.
Notes: IDK what is supposed to go here but I’ll just say that Daniel is a teeny tiny shorty, with a wiry body: muscled but not bulky at all. He stands at 4’11 in his stocking feet, though he usually wears custom boots that give him a few more inches.
DÆMON
Name: Havilah
Sex: Female
Form: A Ratel (more popularly known to the internet as the goddamn honey badger)
Additional notes: She has a nasty scar on back, perpendicular to her spine. It’s sort of hidden under her fur, but you can see it if you look. It’s from the holocaust, which really did break his soul – specifically, her spine. She’s recovered, sort of, and only has occasional twinges and problems with mobility, but it’s the kind of thing that leaves a mark on your soul that never really heals.
Additionally, I’d like Daniel and Havilah to be separated in the manner of witches. My thinking is this: I’ve always considered Hetalia nations to be a sort of combo platter, made up of their people, culture, and land. The governments are ‘bosses’ that control a lot of actions, but not the nation itself (obviously, as Daniel didn’t have one for ages). It makes sense to me that if you divvy up that metaphor, the people/culture would be the spirit and mind of the person, but while the land itself would be the deeper soul. Israel’s people were separated from their land for a long, long time, but never entirely cut off from it, maintaining a spiritual connection in their culture and rituals (think of Jews saying ‘next year in Jerusalem’ at every Passover feast, even when that was impossible). However, as their ability to separate is a remnant and reminder of the Exile, they would both really hate doing it unless it was very important.
Why this form: Ratels are small, solitary, stubborn, and fight way above their weight class. They live in harsh desert climates (including Israel) and can survive almost anything, just like him. They fight horribly dirty – when attacking larger animals they frequently go straight for biting the nuts, and fight savagely when cornered – and they really don’t give a fuck. On the other hand, they aren’t poisonous or major predators, just like Israel is only aggressive if he feels threatened. Mostly he just wants people to let him get on with his own business. I also like that ratels are fuzzy, armful-sized mammals, because Daniel is a huge cuddler and secret softy when he lets himself be. They’re also not thought of as pretty or classy – they’re rough, rugged creatures, and so is he. On the other hand, ratels are quite sharp, and one of the few non-primate species observed using tools in the wild, just like Israel is a keen and careful strategist, making the most of limited resources. Ultimately, ratels are one of the toughest survivors in the animal world, and that’s exactly what Israel is too.
Name: Isabelle or Vibishan
Are you 18 or over?: Yes.
Other characters played: N/a
CHARACTER
Name: Daniel Abramowitz aka the State of Israel (Note: I spell his last name a variety of ways, over the years and dialects and different places he's lived, but this one is the default.)
Canon: Axis Powers Hetalia
Age: ~350 years old, but he looks to be in his early twenties
History:
The Great Big Wiki Article. Probably only necessary as reference if you want more info on something I mention, since I’ll go over a lot of that more briefly here.
I’m going to do my best to apply the lens of Hetalia personifications to that. There are three main periods: Ancient Israel (tribes, the Unified Kingdom, the divided kingdoms of Northern Israel and Southern Judah, the first exile and the Hasmonean kingdom), the Exile (divided into Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Mizrahim geographic/cultural groups), and Modern Israel. Daniel is the last of these, but nations are more metaphor than anything, and Israel is a very slippery idea; he’ll have instincts and emotional resonances that go all the way back to the ancient Israelites (his grandfather David), and include elements of experience from Ashkenazim (his father, Jacob) and Sephardim and Mizrahim (his aunts), but his own personal memories start in the late Renaissance, when persecuted Jews began contemplating Return in response to the injustices they suffered under the Spanish Inquisition and elsewhere.
In Hetalia, nations don’t begin with the founding of the state. We first see baby America when England sails to the New World and finds him playing with bison; by the time of the revolution, he’s a young man coming of age. So nations don’t begin with governments or proclamations, but with people, doing something different, going somewhere different, thinking of themselves in new ways that will eventually grow, even if there are false starts and lulls and backward progress (like the disappearance of Roanoke). Israel begins not with patchwork borderlines drawn in the U.N., but long before that, with the first stirrings of Zionism. More than anything, Daniel was hope, the feeling of a pressing and urgent need to Return, not as a matter of preference or biblical prophecy, but for the safety and well-being of the Jewish people.
The boy who would become Israel has a few scattered memories of earlier outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence that spurred ideas of Return or actual emigrations (particularly the Khmelnytsky Uprising), but his life begins in a coherent way in 1665, when Sabbatai Zevi declared himself the messiah, leading a huge migration of Jews across Europe with the intent to re-establish the kingdom of Israel. Before (and for awhile after) that time, it was considered blasphemous for mortal men to strive towards a Return; it was God who had cast them out, and only God could decide to return them. After Zevi’s capture and forced conversion by Muslims, his movement was destroyed, but the hope of return had been indelibly inscribed in the people’s imagination; it was conceivable, within the realm of the possible in a way it hadn’t been before, so Daniel survived.
In Hetalia fandom (this is common headcanon, with maybe a few references in canon), the official territory of nation-states is sometimes interpreted or paralleled as their ‘Houses’. Daniel and Jacob, of course, have no house of their own, so they are constantly moving and crashing with other nations. They lived in basements, attics, and backyards across Europe, especially the Netherlands, France, the German states, Poland and Lithuania, and other Eastern European nations (Daniel sometimes kipped with his aunts in Ottoman or Indian territory as well).
Daniel is partly raised by Jacob, a quiet, unassuming, academic man who just wishes to be left in peace, just as Zionism was nurtured by the community of Jewish Exiles. But inevitably, the were often apart: Jacob, as the spirit of the Exile, tended to live in the places where Jews were closest to being welcome, where they could truly establish their own communities and conduct their lives. Daniel, in contrast, manifested not only where Jews were thriving and could contemplate return in a spirit of ambition, but wherever the danger and prosecution was greatest, and consequently the desire for safety and homeland most keenly felt. He spent a fair amount of time living under the eye of nations like Russia and Austria, who behaved as wardens and overseers rather than any kind of parental influence. They were frequently physically abusive, in tandem with periodic pogroms. Russia, something of a psychopath even in cutesy Hetalia, terrorized Daniel horribly, up to and including beatings with his pipe. Austria, shown to be a strict taskmaster in the chibitalia episodes, was less random and brutal but would still strike or cane Daniel if he was displeased with anything – whether it was Daniel’s fault or not, as Jews were often used as a scapegoat for other social ills.
The French Revolution was a major turning point for Daniel, as well as Europe as a whole. In the Declaration of the Rights of Man, France gave Jews full legal rights and citizenship, something no European nation had done before. They were no longer alien nationals without a state, but “Frenchmen of the Mosaic persuasion”, whose religion was a matter of private choice, not civil suspicion. In the following decades, more nations would emancipate their Jewish residents, but popular opinion did not follow public decree – in fact, it was often the opposite. Just as Jews were defined officially as followers of a religion, they came to be seen more as a race in the modern pseudo-biological sense, and therefore still an excluded other, no matter their technical political status. In France, the highly publicized Dreyfus affair – where a decorated French Jewish officer was executed for treason on essentially no evidence – showed that laws alone would never protect Jews from hatred. Daniel attended the trial, along with the man who would become known as the father of Zionism, then-foreign correspondent Theodor Herzl. As Herzl began publishing on the need for a Homeland and building up Zionist organizations, Daniel began to spend more time in Austria and Germany, which had a thriving Jewish population, full emancipation, and a deep involvement of Jews in arts and culture in the major cities.
Tension in the Jewish community lead to strong mixed feelings for Daniel; although he was growing and starting to make the first immigrations to Palestine (largely with Russian Jews, who were much worse off than their German counterparts at the time), Jews were also assimilating into and participating in mainstream, partly secularized continental culture, more than ever before. Reform Judaism was established with the desire to make Jews less alien, to encourage their acceptance as true citizens of the nations where they lived. All of this added up to Daniel falling a little bit in love with Germany. It was partly puppy love – Germany as a unified country is much younger than most of Europe, and it’s my headcanon that young, pre-Confederation Germany was childhood friends with Zion/Daniel. It was partly hero worship, as Germany was a much better place for Jews than most nations. But it was also a genuine, slightly creepy love, like Belarus’s obsession with ‘becoming one’ with Russia: Daniel didn’t care about himself, only his people, and he wanted Germany to truly accept them, and for them to consider themselves wholly German and be right in that identity, even if that meant Daniel’s own death absorbed into him. Sadly, the more Jews tried to be part of Germany, the more right-wing anti-Semitism grew in reaction - the more harshly Ludwig pushed him away.
Nevertheless, the Jewish community came out to fight in vast numbers for Germany during WWI, out of patriotism, a desire to prove themselves, and above all because Russia was hideously repressive; the czarist army slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Jews. Some Zionist organizations even urged America to join Germany’s side because of this – though others remained officially neutral. Jacob fought for Germany, and although Daniel was too young to conscript, he slipped in as a drummer boy. It was quickly realized that this was a different type of war. Rather than keeping march time, Daniel and other drummers helped carry stretchers of wounded out of No Man’s Land under fire. He was wounded, and has a shrapnel scar on his collarbone from his service. At the same time, however, the Jewish Legion was formed by Zionists to promote their ideas, and helped conquer Palestine from the Turks as part of the British army. Daniel spent a lot of time with the Legion, really learning to fight for the first time.
In 1917, the British Foreign Minister wrote a letter that became known as the Balfour Declaration, stating that Britain approved of the formation of “a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.” Daniel was ecstatic. Immigration to Palestine increased as Eastern European persecution continued to worsen, while America, the other popular escape destination, strictly limited immigrants. Histadrut, an organization of Israeli trade unions, and Haganah, a defensive militia, were founded. Haganah protected Jewish settlements during skirmishes with local Arabs, while Histadrut build schools, infrastructure, and provided the beginnings of a social safety net – essentially the building blocks of a country, even though they had no authority to pass laws. An evangelical Briton named Ord Wingate believed Israel must be established to prepare for the book of Revelation to come to pass, and he trained Haganah into a top-rate, disciplined fighting force on the British model. He was a bit of a nut, but Daniel loved him, and learned to fight alongside them, despite still being a child. Haganah also recruited smart young boys directly from their classrooms to serve as code-runners, i.e., to spread coded messages between actual Haganah fighters quickly and efficiently during emergencies. (There were too few people to use grown soldiers for this, and the kids usually knew their way around the city well and could avoid suspicion more easily.) Daniel was one of these boys, the leader of his cell. This was a great time for him, learning as much as he could, scrapping and stealing fruit and telling tall tales with other kids on the streets of Jerusalem.
However, all was not perfect: the more Jews moved to Palestine, the more hostile native Arabs became, and England resented having to moderate between them, particularly when he had to risk police or troops to break up violent riots. England began to restrict Jewish immigration to Palestine, which infuriated Daniel – with anti-Semitism increasing in Europe, many Jews sought to flee, and no other countries wished to accept them either. For the first time in his life, Daniel felt as though he could fight back against injustice. More aggressive splinter groups left Haganah: Irgun and Lehi were essentially terrorist organizations. Several British officials were assassinated, and despite attempts to find a solution, tensions continued to rise. Allowing more Jewish immigration caused outbreaks of Arab violence and Jewish retaliation, while allowing less caused Jewish attacks. Daniel fought with England more and more, no longer enamored of him as England continued to walk back his promises.
And then, of course, WWII happened. Daniel was everywhere in the holocaust. He was murdered over and over and over. Hunted down and shot by Einzatzgruppen in Eastern Europe, poisoned in the gas chambers, frozen and starved and worked to death.
After the war, the starving Jewish refugees were just barely more welcome in war-torn Europe than they had been in Germany. No one was actively trying to murder them all, but no one wanted them around, either – and that went for everyone from the Poles, who saw a massive Catholic anti-Jewish backlash after the war, to the allies administering the various territories. Many Jews were still in the camps months after VE-Day, because there was ‘nowhere else’ to send them. Russia, Britain, and France all forbade Zionist propaganda in the camps/territories they administered, so Zionists concentrated in the American zones, trying to improve conditions and encourage people to come to Israel, and Jewish organizations elsewhere in Europe steered ever more refugees into the American zones as well.
The only problem was that England was still restricting immigration, out of fear of another Arab uprising. He eventually handed the Palestinian territory off to the U.N. just to get rid of the problem. Under America’s leadership (and, ironically, with Russia’s support, thanks to how communal and pro-labor Zionist leadership was), the U.N. outlined a dual state division of the territory, and Israel became and independent nation on May 14, 1948. Between 1945 and 1948, Israel grew fast, from a movement with some social systems in someone else’s territorial holding, to a full-fledged nation. His puberty was totally compressed, shooting up from 12 to 18 in just those three years. And then this terrified, traumatized, violent, desperate young man was immediately attacked on three sides – and he won.
It’s impossible to underestimate the effect the holocaust had on him. He knows he will never be safe, that there is no limit on cruelty. He has nightmares and flashbacks for years afterward. Literally everyone, of the millions of Jews flooding into the new nation after the Law of Return, had lost someone, often everyone in their families, while almost everyone who had managed to immigrate to Israel before the war had left someone in Europe who had died. There was little comfort or cozening for grief, because grief was simply the default, the normal way of being. The entire nation was heartbroken, and the entire nation had to keep going, had to work and fight to survive in a hostile desert surrounded by enemies. But from then on, Daniel could fight back.
The anti-Jewish violence in Poland, often overlooked, was the real nail in the coffin for Daniel’s ability to really trust or rely on anyone else, ever, because in the middle ages, Poland was much more tolerant of Jews than almost anywhere else. It was called a paradise, and Daniel adored him, with the pure gratitude of a small child. At that moment was he was most hurt, most desperately in need, when they had just suffered through the Nazis' oppression side by side, Poland turned on him. On top of a long, long history of seesawing back and forth between welcome and hostility, this ultimately confirmed that no matter how good to him anyone was, eventually they would betray him. This hasn’t stopped Daniel from enjoying and exploiting times when people are disposed to him kindly – he just understands ahead of time that it can never, ever last.
In 1952, Germany offered to pay Israel reparations for stolen property and slave labor used. After bitter, protracted debate about blood money, Israel accepted. This was a major decision for Daniel: ultimately, he needed the money to settle and integrate the refugees, and survival came before pride, before decency, before everything. He’s a deeply pragmatic person, and though he’s profoundly bitter about everything he’s suffered, he’s able to divorce his pain from the people who caused it enough to work with them. It’s not that he’s capable of forgiveness, but simply that he doesn’t have the emotionally energy to hate everyone who has earned his hatred and still have anything left to live with, so he doesn’t.
It leaves him in a limbo between moving on and being stuck in the horror of his trauma; in many ways he does both at once. He keeps living because he must, but every line of him, everything he does, is still affected by what happened to him, and by his deep and unshakable fear that yes, it could very well happen again, if he let it. At the same time, as the years go on, people who are unaffected don’t want to keep hearing about it from someone who’s less downtrodden, so he underplays the hold it has on him as much as he can to keep from seeming ‘weak’ or ‘whiny’.
Israel’s life after the Holocaust is defined by different wars, and how each one affects him differently. In 1967, several neighboring states began mobilizing their forces. In response, Israel attacked first. Although condemned, this made strategic sense – Israel’s small population made it almost impossible for it to maintain mobilization during a long standoff. Essentially, this was the war in which Israel officially decided to ignore what the rest of the world considered civilized martial conduct in favor of being brutally effective, and it worked. The war lasted six days, with minimal Israeli casualties, and doubled Israel’s size. He was elated.
But the aftermath of ’67 is more complicated than a simple victory: Israel assumed that once he had proven his military superiority, proven that he could not simply be gotten rid of, that the Arab nations would negotiate. Israel planned to return most of the territory it had gained in exchange for peace agreements. But it didn’t happen: not a single Arab state would negotiate; they continued staunchly refuse to recognize the right of Israel to exist. This made Daniel more paranoid and emotionally stunted, rough and uncompromising and bitter. Why should he compromise, when no one would negotiate in good faith with him? What was the point, when his opponents were irrational in their unwillingness to deal with him? At the same time, Israel enjoyed a brief period of security and prosperity, and he could afford to tell everyone else to fuck off if he wanted. Which is more or less what he did.
That changed in the Yom Kippur war of 1973. Although Israel won, he took more casualties, in no small part because America deliberately waited a few weeks to resupply him with necessities, including ammunition, that Israel couldn’t produce when nearly his entire population was drawn up in reserves. The lesson was clear: unless Israel scored an immediate, decisive victory, he was at the mercy of his allies. Alfred put Daniel thoroughly in his place, and though Daniel resented the humiliation, he acquiesced. Daniel would cooperate with him – but more than ever he favored devastating, disproportional attacks in later wars, seeing this as the only tactic that could safeguard him without relying on perpetually unreliable others. Just a few years later, a hard-line security party finally won control of the government, after decades of rule by Labor parties.
The very same year, Egypt finally agreed to talk to him, and although Daniel no longer expected anything at all of his neighbors, he eagerly signed peace accords, returning the Sinai peninsula and agreeing to other concessions. Daniel was still willing to talk, as long as he actually thought he might get anything in return and from Egypt, for a while, he did. They were wary friends at best, but Daniel would take what he could get, and the quiet, calm nation could handle Daniel’s prickliness. Israel knew he cared about Egypt more than Egypt cared about him, because Daniel had so few friends and Egypt’s alliance with him imperiled Egypt’s position in the Arab world, but Israel tried not to let it sour what they had.
In the eighties, Israel had a more protracted war against Lebanon, and dealt with the first Intifada, a violent Palestinian uprising with Daniel met with disproportionate retaliation, earning him near-universal condemnation. For the most part he didn’t give a damn what the rest of the world thought – but it made life harder. More importantly, Israelis themselves weren’t entirely comfortable with the idea of shooting boys for throwing stones. This was the time when Daniel finally started to really be the bad guy, and he didn’t like it, but he also didn’t know what else to do. He was just tired of fighting all the time, and getting so little to show for it.
In the early nineties, Israel tried more compromise, more concessions, anything it could offer to win a scrap of peace. And for awhile, it worked: the PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist, Israel gave the PLA some governing authority, and Israel established a peace treaty with its closest neighbor, Jordan. But both sides had trouble committing: Arabs were infuriated by continued Israeli settlements, and Palestinian suicide attacks punctured Israel’s attempt at goodwill. When a far-right-wing Jew assassinated President Yitzhak Rabin, the architect and champion of pro-peace policy, Daniel became disheartened, but for the most part, he kept trying. Although Camp David talks fell apart, he withdrew from Gaza and Lebanon, still hoping for some reciprocation. In January of 2006, the PLO lost the Palestinian elections to the more radical Hamas. Daniel was simply at a loss. He didn’t know what to try next. Hope, idealism, and sacrifices had failed. Daniel's reaction wasn't truly despair – he could manage just fine – but he felt disillusioned and ultimately resigned. Perhaps he simply would always have to fight for right to live. If that was what how it had to be, he could live with that. As long as he could live.
He finds the window while brooding about this, and he’ll be delighted to have a new world to explore to distract him a little from the seemingly intractable problems of his own.
Point in canon: February 2006, after the election of Hamas but before the death of Ariel Sharon.
Window Location: In one of the restricted areas on Masada, a fortress on a flat mountaintop in Israel were his grandfather made his last suicidal stand against the Romans. Daniel goes up there to think a lot, and since parts of it are restricted for archeological reasons, the likelihood of anyone else finding the window is very slim.
Universe: The Hetalia universe is historically just like our own, only nations and similar entities have a walking, talking, physical person living as a metaphor for them.
Abilities: Daniel won’t die for good unless the country of Israel is destroyed, his culture erased, and all his people killed. Short of that, he’ll heal more quickly than most, though not immediately – minor injuries in a day, major ones in a few days or a week. If he’s bodily killed, he’ll still come back, but if his body is destroyed, it will reappear in Israel. If his PHD doesn’t come with him and his window has closed, that could be problematic.
Daniel is several times stronger than a man of his size ought to be, and capable of extremely fast, impossible movements. In Hetalia, America is the only one who has confirmed ‘super-strength’, though popular fanon holds that the USSR did as well. Daniel isn’t even close to their league – he can’t throw a car or punch through a safe – but he is one of the few countries with nuclear weapons, and his military and political strength as a linchpin country in the middle east are both much greater than his geographic/population size would indicate. I’d say he’s in the range of 5-10 times stronger than the normal human range. As for speed: Israel can mobilize faster than any other nation on the planet. Every TV and radio in the country broadcasts certain code words between programs. Almost everyone is in the reserves after serving their universal conscript time, and if your unit’s code comes up, you know where to report to form up. The whole point of the Yom Kippur war was that by attacking on a day when radio and TV would not be broadcasting, Israel’s enemies gained a whole twelve hours, almost no time at all on a historical/national scale, to surprise him without nigh-instantly raising the reserves. Israel can’t keep it going for long periods, so he isn’t a speedster proper, and he can’t run across the city in a few seconds; but if he’s fighting someone normal, they’ll never see the first punch coming.
As a desert, Daniel’s normal temperature runs a few degrees hotter than human average, and he has less trouble dealing with heat, especially dry heat. He won’t collapse faster in the cold, but he will be significantly more miserable.
As for the more mundane skills one picks up over the centuries, building his own society from the sand up, and/or in Mossad: He’s extremely experienced with hand-to-hand combat, especially Krav Maga, the martial art developed by the Israeli Defense Force. He’s a crack shot with all sizes of guns, good with knives, and has Special Forces training in all kinds of things – rappelling, interrogation, hostage negotiation, and so on. He’s trained in field medicine, some engineering, and agriculture, especially water management and irrigation. He has a small one-man sailboat and he’s a decent sailor, but not great. He’s a good cook, handy with carpentry, plumbing, and electric wiring, and he makes a mean cup of coffee.
Possessions: Daniel’s a paranoid bastard, he goes around well-armed as a matter of course. He’ll have two guns, a Browning Hi-Power in a shoulder holster (with a special reflective strip used by Mossad) under his jacket, and a smaller Beretta .22 at the small of his back. He has wrist sheathes for knives on both arms, a butterfly knife in one pocket, and a throwing knife in his left boot. He has an old-school cell phone, his keys and swiss army knife key chain attachment, a half-used pack of pocket tissues, his dog tags, his wallet with a few bills, his ID, a few different fake IDs, a small lockpick set, and various business cards. In his shirt pocket there’s a laser pointer and good, fancy pen America gave him. He’ll also be wearing a partly-full roll-up canteen on a strap around his neck, since Masada is out in the desert.
Personality:
Daniel is, in many ways, a person who seems deeply contradictory, even though all his facets fit together. If you try to talk to him about trust, he’s the most depressing pessimist you’ll ever meet. He’s not the guy that says most people are pricks but is dead loyal to his friends: he’s the guy who is absolutely, unshakably sure that one day, sooner or later, every one of his friends will stab him in the back, because it’s happened every single time before. But at the same time, he’s cheerful and affable with them most of the time, and it’s not an act; he doesn’t let the inevitable betrayal make him too bitter to enjoy the good times (mostly), because he also knows, just as fundamentally, that the good times are all he has, all he will ever have. So he throws himself into them and makes the most of them, even though he never stops sleeping with one eye open and a gun under the pillow, just in case today is the day it ends.
Daniel has been through more horrific cruelty than most people can imagine. It makes him understanding of what other victims go through, but not necessarily sympathetic. He’s willing to be cruel and abuse power of his own to keep himself safe, but it’s a far, far cry from anything as bad as continuing the cycle of abuse. In some ways, he’s a little in denial about the rights he denies Palestinians (and he refuses to admit the personification of the nascent Palestine is his brother); but in other ways, he knows exactly how bad it is, and he’s accepted it, not because he’s amoral or doesn’t care, but because he doesn’t know what else to do. He’s worn down and morally calloused enough to live with the culpability of it.
He’s incredibly gruff and cranky with people who dislike him, or who have more power than him, paranoid, reactionary, with a hot temper and a preference for deliberate and brutal overreaction; he’s prickly and defensive because he’s had to be, because people everyone around him has been arrayed against him for so long, because appealing in honest vulnerability only results in derision and ‘playing the victim’. He doesn’t want to be a victim ever again, and if that means other people have to be, so be it. On the other hand, give him a trauma victim, and he’ll be calm and gentle with them, knowing exactly how careful he needed people to be with him, and rarely got. With his own people, be they Israelis, Jews in general, or just people he’s taken in, he’s doting and incredibly protective. Hospitality is incredibly important to him culturally, and once he lets someone into his space, expect to be fed to bursting, given well-intentioned lectures, and generally doted on. More than that, being a haven is an incredibly strong part of his identity, so when people he considers his responsibility need aid or shelter, he’ll move heaven and earth to protect them. And whenever he finds someone he can relax around even a little, he’s incredibly affectionate, because he’s so starved for touch and affection.
Daniel has a wry sense of humor that swings from playful to painfully dark. He likes to push boundaries and see how far he can get away with things, and unless his survival is actually in the balance, he does not give a single fuck what the entire rest of the world thinks, making him very stubborn and sometimes difficult to deal with. Conversely, he’s very smart, and anyone willing to bargain with him will find a willing (albeit shrewd) listener. He’s as tough as nails in the face of difficulty, but he wants to be able to relax (a little, at least) and have fun, and as long as danger isn’t immanent, he’ll enthusiastically do just that. He lives life to the fullest and doesn’t take anything for granted, because tomorrow it could all be ripped away – but he’ll fight tooth and nail and be crazy prepared to prevent it.
He’s incredibly pragmatic even when it makes him miserable, and self-reliant to a fault because other people simply cannot ever truly be depended on. He’s a man of action, not philosophy, but he also values thought, education, and careful planning. He’s not prone to introspection but he’s also deeply self-aware. He’s lonely because he holds people at a distance, but as long as he has a place to build and keep himself safe, he can be content on his own, if not completely happy. Daniel remembers being an ephemeral, indefinable thing, the light of hope for people who needed it, and part of him misses that. He doesn’t want to be a fortress forever – but better strong, brittle, and alone than at anyone else’s mercy, ever again. More than anything or everything else, Israel is a survivor. He will do or become whatever it takes, not just for himself, but for his people. He doesn’t let it rule him most of the time, when his back is against the wall, he can be noble or completely shameless, stubbornly independent or begging on America’s doorstep, laughing or stoic or ruthless – whatever it takes to live.
Thread Sample: Note: The thread is set in a mash-up verse between Hetalia and Marvel comics 616 main continuity, but Daniel’s character is basically unchanged. General context: shortly after Magneto blasted the entire planet with an EMP after they backed him into a corner, he crash-lands in Israel. Since he used to be in Mossad, Daniel feels obligated to take care of him, even though he's dangerous. Also you don’t have to read the whole thing, since it goes on forever, but it’s fun so you can if you like. XD
http://memebells.livejournal.com/82505.html?thread=139697481#t139697481&format=light
Prose Sample: Note: This prose sample is set in 1952, during the debate over German reparations. It’s a while earlier than his canonpoint, but I think it exemplifies his personality, and it’s one of the moments that modern Israel’s mindset first really crystallizes.
Israel stares at himself in the mirror, shoving messy brown curls away from his face, the elbow patches of his secondhand suit pressed against the dusty, chipped, off-white tile of the bathroom sink. His collar is crooked and the shadows under his eyes make his sockets look even deeper than usual. He pokes one hollow cheek and scowls.
It’s been seven years, and he still looks like a fucking skeleton. Of course, his growth spurt hadn’t exactly helped him regain long-lost baby fat. Israel can’t ever remember seeing a nation grow as fast as he has recently, shooting up from a frail wraith of a lost little boy to full nationhood in less than a decade, his newly desert-weathered skin stretched taut over taller bones. He doesn’t regret it, not for a second, but it would be nice to look less dead, to look a little bit recovered when Israel has to face him.
Quit kvetching and play the hand you’re dealt. The voice sounds suspiciously like his father, voice tinny through the transatlantic cable from New York, and Israel sneers, then drops the expression, too tired to bother. He takes a breath, straitens his spine to stand at his full height of 150 centimeters with all the aplomb of Napoleon on parade, and sucks in his cheeks just a little to make his face gaunter before he strides out of the bathroom and down the hall to the spartan, unused office room where Germany is waiting.
Germany looks up, and Israel watches his eyes darken and dart away even though he doesn’t let himself flinch. Germany doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask questions or make demands of him. He simply waits for Israel to decide the course of their interaction. It’s infuriating, because it gives Israel no reason to bare his teeth.
He sprawls on the chair across from Germany, letting his splayed posture communicate casual contempt rather than honest exhaustion.
“They’re still arguing,” he mutters. Even outside the Knesset chamber, he carries the headache of it with him, the sick, low buzzing of accusations and loathing and vicious rejoinders, the acidic whispers of blood money, desecration, whoring on our people’s mass graves burning bile at the back of his throat. His media, what he has set up so far, is inundated with the proceedings, but at least he can get out of that room for a while. Shouts of protesters outside filter through the walls, and Israel feels his stomach twist, sharp and nauseous, rolling hard as the riots get underway.
He will not vomit. He will not vomit because if he does he knows there will be blood in it, and Israel has no intention of looking weak in front of Germany – in front of anyone but especially not him – ever again.
“I await your decision,” Germany murmurs, head bowed, hands clasped in his lap, all humility and concession, his wide, uniform-shaped shoulders hunched to fit into a business suit just as worn as Israel’s is.
“I’m going to take the fucking money,” Israel snaps, because it’s just a matter of waiting for the fights to grind their way to the inevitable conclusion. “My bosses just haven’t admitted it yet.”
“I – I know it must be hard for you t–”
Israel twists so fast it feels like a convulsion, glaring at Germany with the sharp, forward-focused lines of his whole stick-angles body. He hasn’t touched him, hasn’t lashed out to strike, but he vibrates with the potential of it, every muscle tense with restrained violence, like the coiled desert vipers he is learning not to startle.
“Don’t you dare,” he hisses, “presume to know what is difficult for me.”
Germany meets his eyes, seemingly just so that dropping his gaze back to the floor becomes a more weighted gesture.
“My apologies,” he whispers.
Germany isn’t going to pay him for the dead. Neither of them could bear it even if it could be done, which it can’t. But stolen property, slave labor, resettlement of refugees – Germany can pay him for the living. A half-fiction they both need. And the truth is, Israel needs the money. He closes his eyes and drums his fingers on the metal table between them. He is hungry and still healing and alone, and he has so many lost ones to take care of, and he can’t possibly help them all, even though he would kill himself trying.
And the 614th law is, survive.
When he thinks the words, they don’t sound like anyone’s voice but his own.
Plans: HAHAHA this app is long enough already I'm sure he'll find plenty to do.
Notes: IDK what is supposed to go here but I’ll just say that Daniel is a teeny tiny shorty, with a wiry body: muscled but not bulky at all. He stands at 4’11 in his stocking feet, though he usually wears custom boots that give him a few more inches.
DÆMON
Name: Havilah
Sex: Female
Form: A Ratel (more popularly known to the internet as the goddamn honey badger)
Additional notes: She has a nasty scar on back, perpendicular to her spine. It’s sort of hidden under her fur, but you can see it if you look. It’s from the holocaust, which really did break his soul – specifically, her spine. She’s recovered, sort of, and only has occasional twinges and problems with mobility, but it’s the kind of thing that leaves a mark on your soul that never really heals.
Additionally, I’d like Daniel and Havilah to be separated in the manner of witches. My thinking is this: I’ve always considered Hetalia nations to be a sort of combo platter, made up of their people, culture, and land. The governments are ‘bosses’ that control a lot of actions, but not the nation itself (obviously, as Daniel didn’t have one for ages). It makes sense to me that if you divvy up that metaphor, the people/culture would be the spirit and mind of the person, but while the land itself would be the deeper soul. Israel’s people were separated from their land for a long, long time, but never entirely cut off from it, maintaining a spiritual connection in their culture and rituals (think of Jews saying ‘next year in Jerusalem’ at every Passover feast, even when that was impossible). However, as their ability to separate is a remnant and reminder of the Exile, they would both really hate doing it unless it was very important.
Why this form: Ratels are small, solitary, stubborn, and fight way above their weight class. They live in harsh desert climates (including Israel) and can survive almost anything, just like him. They fight horribly dirty – when attacking larger animals they frequently go straight for biting the nuts, and fight savagely when cornered – and they really don’t give a fuck. On the other hand, they aren’t poisonous or major predators, just like Israel is only aggressive if he feels threatened. Mostly he just wants people to let him get on with his own business. I also like that ratels are fuzzy, armful-sized mammals, because Daniel is a huge cuddler and secret softy when he lets himself be. They’re also not thought of as pretty or classy – they’re rough, rugged creatures, and so is he. On the other hand, ratels are quite sharp, and one of the few non-primate species observed using tools in the wild, just like Israel is a keen and careful strategist, making the most of limited resources. Ultimately, ratels are one of the toughest survivors in the animal world, and that’s exactly what Israel is too.
