Patronuses

[katleept]

The following meta is for a gameofcards land comm challenge where we pair characters up with totem animals, patronuses, spirit animals, or just, basically, the animals we feel they're most like.

(As always, if you join, be sure to tell them Kat Lee of Team Hearts sent you!)




As anybody who knows the Batman fandom can tell you, Selina Kyle's animal is the cat. It's hard to place exactly which cat that is more than all the other feline varieties, but tonight, I'm going with a mother tiger. Selina's strength and durability is far more than that of a normal house, or even alley, cat. She's also not the pride type, so lions are out, and doesn't prefer the cold temperatures a snow leopard does.

As I write this, I'm almost tempted to change my mind and say a black panther instead (which, BTW, is also one of my top animals, the other being the "normal" housecat) for their shared power, strength, and love of/blending in with the darkness, but a mother tiger I'm still going with. :-) Selina's a loner by nature except for her cats, but she's adopted some other young ones along the way as well. Arizona always comes readily to mind when I think of that aspect of her character.

Selina has the strength, agility, ferociousness, and power of a tiger, but she also has the love and protective nature of a mother tiger. Let anything hurt one of her babies, or her Bat, for that matter, and she'll swiftly rip the sucker to shreds! You don't want to mess with a tiger, and you don't want to mess with Catwoman and those few, lucky ones she considers to be hers!

(Kinda like another woman I know. ;-) )






Sophie Deveraux is sleek, sensual, and graceful with a hidden power and cunning to her; these are all attributes she shares with a cat. Like a cat, too, she has the uncanny ability to wrap just about any man around her finger. Dogs lay at their masters' feet; cats use humans to get exactly what they want. All we cat lovers know this. It's an old adage, but always true. They mesmerize with their eyes, their purrs, and their love while Sophie always grabs her prey with her curves, her womanly attributes, and her pure sexiness. Both always get what they want -- It may take them a little while, as it took Sophie with Nate, but they'll get it. :-)






Wolverine's animal, as any X-Fan worth their salt can tell you, is the wolf, but just like the mysterious wolf, he, too, is a multi-layered being. We all know the phrase "lone wolf", and Logan's certainly been that in the past. He still is at times, often going out on his own adventures/missions without even bothering to tell any one where he's going. He hates to ask for help and relies on his own fighting and survival skills, nose, and other instincts to pull not only his bacon out of the proverbial fire but also those for whom he cares.

That's one of the main places where you hit on the multiple layers of both wolf and man: Despite the phrase "lone wolf", wolves are actually very social animals, living, and often hunting, in packs. Parents care for their young; wolves often mate for life. Whereas Logan certainly doesn't mate for life (at least, not yet), he does have his pack, even if he's not settled down, and rather his pack is the team of X-Men he's with or the children he's guiding into what he hopes will be a better future, his pack is extremely important to him. Even a lone wolf needs a family, as Logan's finally learned with Charles Xavier's guidance and the many friends he met through him and through being an X-Man.




Jimmy Proudstar's animal is the mustang. Both have strong heritage in the roots of America, he as an Apache Indian and the mustang as one of the first wild animals that man forced into working for them. Both have incredibly wild and free spirits, and both love to run. They'll fight any cage into which they're forced, any rope that tries to hold them down, and they buck fiercely.

Horses are also an animal with a long memory. The mustang never forgets the man who finally forced him into submission. Likewise, Jimmy never forgot his brother or the people he blamed for his death. He may have finally forgiven Charles for his part in leading his big brother away from his people, but he still holds a grudge against Emma Frost for Thunderbird's death to this day. Let's also not forget that he actually took on his brother's name, instead of his own Warparth codename, not too long ago as a further way to honor his brother's memory. The ghosts of the past stay with many of us, human and animal, for a long time to come, and that's surely another thing that Jimmy and mustangs have in common.





Victor Creed's animal, as one would expect from both his code name and uniform, is the sabertooth tiger. They're both extremely powerful and vicious predators who move easily through snow and other rough terrain. They're deadly with their claws and teeth. But most of all, they are animals of survival.

Many people don't know how Vic got his start. They don't realize that he's not just a bad guy because he chooses to be, that he doesn't just want to kill everybody who gets in his way for some sick joy of killing. He does enjoy killing now, of course, but it all started when he was only a lad. Extremely few people could have survived what he did: his father locking him away in his basement and throwing live rabbits down there on occasion as his only means of food. Needless to say, when Creed escaped, he killed the bastard, but who wouldn't?

And of course, things were never the same for Victor after that. He didn't get the good opportunities Logan got, or the people who cared about him. He didn't get the help Wolverine did when he needed it. But he survived. He always survives. The cold tundra, the coldness of people, the chilling facts of reality, he survives it all, and also like the tiger, if you're one of those rare individuals who can earn his trust and keep his love, he'll stop at nothing to protect you, as well.