The Character Corner: Blitz, Part 2

"Mirror mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest one of all?" 

(You are king, you are. 😆)

(There was a person named Loo who'd come through every now and then to comment on posts both here early on and at the old blog. Loo, if you happen to be reading this, you seem to be a Blitz fan like myself, so I hope you've been enjoying my write-up on the character!)

INSPIRATION

Primarily me, myself, and I. 😋 To be frank I find most Blitz fans' headcanons about him (which are pretty rare to see anyways; people don't really bother trying to dig into his character any) to not be my cup of tea, to politely put it. Not interested in giving him an abusive dad; for some reason for this type of character, people love giving them an abusive parent(s). At this point I just find it tired and trite. Fans never do this to the popular characters. I will say Evil Writer had a couple of ideas for his backstory that I really like but ended up putting my own particular twist on because I don't have all the details for how a certain event would actually go down in his setting, and deciding that I really don't want to be restrained by another person's headcanon. Lilikoi, another former Road Rovers crossover fan writer, also had a few ideas that I like and borrowed for my interpretation of Blitz.

He's yet another Rover who's just one big question mark. Aside from a couple of very surface-level minor things in the show (that are more jokes than anything else), we learn absolutely nothing about him either. He used to be a guard dog at a junkyard (?) in Berlin, Germany. That's literally all we were shown. That mysteriousness gets me a lot more interested in exploring what his past could've been like before he became a Road Rover, and how that past still could affect him in the present day.

I've seen a tiny handful of people create relatives for him, but have never really liked any of them due to their being given really stupid names, or, like I said above, it was just the played out abusive daddy trope or something in that vein. Most of them were incidental characters as well I believe. Either that, or I just don't know anything about them beyond them having names I dislike. So I just made up my own family members for him. Evil Writer also created an OC who was an adopted brother for Blitz, but I'm trying to decide if he should debut in the first generation stories or show up in the next gen stuff that I have planned.

FUTURE PLANS

Oh, so, so many.

After having written the first half of this character write-up, I feel confident in stating that I have finalized what I'll be doing with Blitz's love life. It'll be controversial, and for now I'm keeping mum about it.

I find it kind of interesting how in "Gold And Retrievers" Blitz was pretty dismissive towards the idea of Luca saying that he sees the future. And it's like "But you've seen werewolves before my guy." I think this is an interesting idea for his character: just being very cynical towards the idea of the supernatural (in general however I just feel he's someone of a pretty cynical nature). In my setting, the STARS-verse, there are other, very blatantly supernatural elements, in addition to werewolves and prophetic dreams like what Luca has, and I do intend to have Blitz have his worldview be challenged by the existence of these things. Which ties into my next point (sort of):

So what's going to be the catalyst for Blitz's beginning to turn over a new leaf and start becoming a more mature, reflective person here? Well, let's just say he gets by with a little help from from a (new) friend. Again, I'm not going to go into detail about this until I actually start working on the fic featuring this plot development as well as said new character, which'll be after my current on-going story New Dogs, New Tricks. It's working title is Straying Stars.

This new connection will give Blitz's character the opportunity to go to entirely new places and do amazing stuff that he'd never get to do in canon. Again, not just the self-improvement stuff, but other things that I'm going to hold off on discussing for now.

But I believe introducing OCs who could have interactions with Blitz that aren't constantly antagonistic in nature is something that could be used to further expand upon his character.

All of the following ideas are ones EW told me he had in mind, but were never actually written up and posted anywhere or anything. I think they're really awesome, so my intent is to take them and put my own spin on them for the STARS-verse. Now, let me state this upfront due to the dA branch of the Road Rovers fandom's lack of knowledge and awareness concerning anything outside their own echo chambers -- this is a very common practice within fandoms outside of Road Rovers. It is fine and dandy just as long as you credit the originator of the ideas. I am not "plagiarizing" anybody because all I was ever told about was a blurb about these ideas. 

Anyways, speaking of antagonism, there are going to be at least two stories focusing on his and Colleen's relationship. Will they ever quash their beef? Well, just stick around and see. One of these fics will be about Blitz just suddenly up and vanishing one day after walking into HQ looking as well as acting strangely. It'll have a noire-ish tone to it. 

In another story, after ending up in a scrape and getting a little knock on the head, Blitz develops amnesia and runs afoul of a villain who convinces him that the Rovers are really bad guys -- and it's Blitz's job to stop them.

He's also going to be encountering somebody who gradually becomes an archenemy of his -- somebody he's actually met before. Though since I don't want to make this situation a retread of what happened with Exile and his own personal nemesis Hacker (who I mentioned all the way back in Exile's Character Corner write-up), it's going to be handled differently.

HEADCANON 

Before we start, I need to lay out yet more important info for Road Rover fans who might be wondering what a headcanon is. This is taken from Merriam-Webster's dictionary: "headcanon is something that a fan imagines to be true about a character, even though no information supporting that belief is spelled out in the text." 

So basically it's just theorizing for fun.

1.) Firstly, I do not perceive him to be some sort of brutish monster who doesn't care about the welfare or wellbeing of other creatures. Yeah, he may not automatically consider everybody else's feelings from the word go, but he has swallowed his pride and apologized for being wrong in the show twice ("Storm On The Pacific", and I wanna say another episode IIRC...). Again, if he was all these awful things, then why was he chosen to be a Rover in the first place, and why would he keep on doing it? Wouldn't he just quit? Or just go join the villains?

Make it make sense, haters.

2.) At the start of my storyverse, Blitz is a ripe old nineteen in human years. Initially he was a year older then Hunter was just because I was using the ages that EW gave them in his setting, but then I thought "Let's have the both of them swap ages." Then "Let's drop Blitz's age!", just because nineteen-year olds tend to be pretty stupid and dickish. That's all Blitz's issue is. He's not the Antichrist or Hitler reincarnated like people would have you believe. In universe, a lot of people are surprised that he's actually as young as he is. 

"Really?" I can hear you say incredulously. "He's pretty big for a nineteen year old!"

Brother/sister, have you seen some of these high school-age kids out here? Some of them look like they work 9 to 5s and own their own houses. 

So most of his immaturity I simply chalk up to his youth. Larger dog breeds also take longer to fully mature compared to smaller ones. The older he gets, the more he calms down. Viewing his behavior in the show through the lens of a young dog trying to push boundaries and test his limits and the older dogs getting irritated with him as a result is not only interesting, but lines up with actual dog behavior. My making him the youngest of the canon Rovers also factors into his feelings towards Hunter, who I have as being a whole six years older than Blitz. This mutt from Burgerland sitting up here and bossing him around like he's his dad or something would definitely stick in Blitz's craw. XD

3.) I think a lot of the guys in this fandom maybe either don't or aren't familiar with the types of friendships that average guys (read: not, well, super-nerdy or solitary types) have with one another. Men love to give other men shit. I've seen numerous posts and comments from men saying that that's how they show affection towards each other, believe it or not. I've witnessed this in real life. So that's why I don't think Exile hates Blitz or vice versa. He just likes busting his balls. In my ficverse I have Blitz busting his balls right back, because again, if he's also engaging in this, then it feels less one-sided.

"Well, that's actually called bullying, you know!"

Listen, I'm not a guy. All I'm doing is just pointing out that this is something men actually do. I am not saying it's right or wrong either way. It's just is a thing. It felt right for my approach to Blitz and Exile's dynamic, so I use it.

Hmm... you're looking a little flushed there, dear reader. Maybe you should go get yourself a cool glass of water?

4.) I will emphasize this again: Blitz is not sexist or hates women. There’s absolutely nothing in the show pointing to that. It’s just stupid fanon. It's hella weird when people turn him into Frollo from the Disney Hunchback Of Notre Dame movie and have him be sexually obsessed with Colleen. I feel like if stuff ever got to that extreme with him, then he'd just either go to the Master and talk to him about it, or just take it upon himself to find a girlfriend back home or something. It just seems like a bunch of people project their strange issues and fantasies onto these characters (then shamelessly advertise it to you because they see you're also into the show. Stop it, please 😒).

5.) Yeah, so Blitz is not a bully. When I think of bullies in fiction, I think of characters like Jimbo Jones from The Simpsons, or Katsuki Bakugo in My Hero Academia before his character undergoes development, or Regina George (Mean Girls). I don't believe the couple of times that Blitz calls Shag "Mop Boy" or says Muzzle is crazy ("Storm On The Pacific") he's doing it to be malicious and make them feel bad. I think Blitz just says whatever pops into Blitz's mind. He has no filter. Now, if he was continually harassing or humiliating Shag or whoever, then yeah, I would say he was a bully then. 

If anything, I feel like Blitz is the one who gets bullied at times by certain other characters. 😐

6.) He detests being seen crying.

7.) Aside from plain ol' immaturity, a major component of Blitz's issues stem from from what's known as toxic shame. A YouTube channel I follow has a great video here discussing what toxic shame is. It's best summed up there like this: it's the pervasive belief that you are not enough and will never be enough, so you must work endlessly to keep that terrible truth a secret from everybody else. Now I personally don't believe Blitz is a full-on narcissist, but he could very easily turn into one if he doesn't learn how to accept his flaws and address his toxic shame directly.

8.) One of the things he's ashamed about is not having proper dobie markings. If you'll look at his design, he lacks the "socks" black and tan dobermans usually have.

9.) This is an idea of Lilikoi's: "I don’t think Blitz would be someone who likes pranks, if I can be honest. Like no matter who was behind it, I think they’d just annoy him."

10.) At the start of my fics he’ll have dialed back his antagonizing of Hunter as well as his bragging (somewhat), but is at a loss as to how to go about improving his relationship with him and the other Alphas.

11.) His official team position at the start of my series is Close Combat and Infiltration.

12.) I've kept his love of mint as a character trait. I never understood the whole "Eew peppermint milkshakes lol!" joke in the show. I love minty desserts myself -- and often get the same reaction Blitz does, lol. Blitz also likes frankfurters and liverwurst.

13.) Blitz is one of the odd domestic animals who's actually kind of into naturism and doesn't care about or is bothered by nudity (Europeans aren't bothered by nudity like many Americans tend to be anyways). Don't worry, I'm not going to get weird with this. [Again for the deviantART branch of the fandom -- DON'T COME AT ME BEING GROSS AND HORNY ABOUT THIS. Leave me the hell alone, I do not share in your creepy-ass fetishes.]

14.) Most of the OFCs in the STARS-verse either like Blitz or just have a normal person's reaction to his antics and such. They'll roll their eyes or laugh at him, but it's not the over-the-top homicidal rage and severe bullying that a majority of other fans love to have their OFCs exhibit towards him. Again, I feel like if things ever got to that point, other characters and even the Master would step in and restore order. There are certain characters who just outright dislike him, but that's to be expected.

15.) Blitz is touch starved, although this is something he would never admit to.

16.) I've chanced across several online sources describing European dobermans as being of a more nervous and neurotic nature then their American counterparts, though this seem to ultimately vary from individual to individual. Here's one such link discussing it. Maybe this could partly explain why Blitz is the way he is. But I've also heard American dobies be described as shy, timid, and not that great at physical activities like schutzhund. I wouldn't doubt if bias for or against a particular type plays a part in the inconsistencies of these accounts. One consistency I kept coming across though is that European dobies are supposed to be working dogs as opposed to show dogs, so they are bigger and more muscular then the American type is.

17.) I've (mostly) given his family Christmas-related names. Blitz's parents are Vixen and Dasher, and his littermates are Dancer (male), Prancer (female), Cupid (male), Star (male), Rudy (Rudolph; male), Nutmeg (female), and Nicky (male; a reference to St. Nicholas). Dancer and Prancer are from a prior litter, so they are the eldest sibs. "Wait, what about Comet and Donner?" Ah, I'm keeping those two names in reserve for now. ;)

Now, the following is Evil Writer's headcanon: Blitz is actually the runt. Due to this, his brothers, with the exception of Prancer, who was more mature then they were and doted on all of his younger bros (his sister Dancer was the same way) often picked on Blitz. No, their parents didn't allow this to just happen. If they were present and spotted Blitz's littermates starting in on him they would step in and stop it, but they were busy parents and couldn't be everywhere all the time. So, sick and tired of being the underdog (hurr hurr), Blitz started training himself to become tough enough to fight back. As he grew he got bigger and stronger, though his brothers are still bigger dogs than he is.

18.) I noticed Blitz was sorely lacking in buddies in my setting, and really wanted to fix that for STARS. I feel that in many fandoms platonic friendship is neglected (often in favor of shipping), especially Road Rovers. While I do have him and Exile as being friends, I also wanted to expand his circle and give him some more pals closer to him in age. Aside from the aforementioned mystery OC mentioned earlier, I decided to throw my trio of OCs Storm, Shiwa, and Venoli (yes, we will be learning more about them later) into the mix as well. The three of them are misfits as well, so they know what it's like to get looked down on. There'll be a fifth OC as well, though I'm not sure if I should give away her identity right now or not. She is making her debut in New Dogs, I can say that much.

19.) Out of all the Alpha Rovers he is the most health conscious. He tries his best to eat right (although being a dog there are times where he slips up and indulges in junk food), and if possible, will exercise on a daily basis for at least two hours. Even at his master's home he tries to adhere to this.

20.) Because of his past as a watchdog, he has a tendency to be more active at night and sleep during the day. 

21.) I admit to not being a fan of Greywolf Lupous' take on Blitz even though she gave him a love interest (Huntress). Blitz was an out, loud, and proud chauvinist in her stories, and I just don't think that's in his nature (nor do I understand why Hunter would be okay with his sister's being with somebody like that in the first place). Further ruminating on it, I don't really even get the Blitz/Huntress pairing. I don't remember reading any fic that featured them being romantic, getting to know one another better, or even making any offhand mention of them being an item. The whole thing just seemed to be an afterthought. I remember seeing one story that revealed Huntress as having a kid named Duke in the conclusion, who I assume was Blitz's son, but Blitz was entirely absent from the scene. So I don't know was it even actually his kid or not. 

So I'd rather just do my own take on Blitz's love life, because at least then I can come up with the how and the why and then show them actually interacting together. For STARS, I treat Blitz and Huntress' relationship as "lust at first sight", and in Huntress' case, a way to show Hunter that he doesn't have a say in who she dates. Dating a dude he has beef with is just an extra bonus point. Personally, I've always found Hunter's behavior towards Huntress in Greywolf's stories to be pretty overbearing and controlling, and want to tackle that here.

Going back to Huntress and Blitz, they like and have fun with each other, but in the long run, both came to realization that there really wasn't a whole lot of substance to their relationship. 

"How dare you disrespect Greywolf like this, OLU!" 

I'm not disrespecting her. I don't have any beef with her and have never met her before (everything I saw from her back when I'd just joined the fandom suggests that she'd grown fed up with it and the entitled behavior of a number of other fans. A very understandable sentiment). All I'm saying is that I don't get the point of the Huntress/Blitz coupling because it didn't seem to affect the characters or anything else (unless there was some fic somewhere that I never saw), and it won't be a permanent thing here here. My fics occur in a totally separate setting from her's anyways.

22.) I noticed a few writers have Blitz swear more than the other Rovers do. I have complicated feelings on swearing within stories in general, but I personally don't believe he'd swear any more than anybody else would. 

23.) I devised some hobbies for him in order to punch him out as a character: weightlifting, staying fit in general, "tushie biting" (his words), European auto racing, soccer, watching TV and movies, hanging out with his buddies, and swimming. He's also a gearhead, being into flashy sports and muscle cars. This next interest was actually inspired by EW -- like many a male dog, he has the tendency to wander. Also, I really wanna give him a skill that he's too embarrassed to show off  -- nothing gross or inappropriate, but just something not commonly associated with masculinity. 

PERSONAL

Let me just say that while I do really like Blitz as a character, I don't believe that I'd actually put him on a formal list of favorite fictional characters of mine's. Like, he would not be up there with Caesar from the new Planet Of The Apes movies, or the Android from the series Dark Matters, or Prowl from Transformers Animated (hey, another Jeff Bennett character!), and that's sadly because he was pretty underdeveloped in the show. It's the same thing with Antoine from Sonic The Hedgehog. There's just not enough there to feel a connection to. I do like Blitz because I think a ton of people out there are extremely unfair to him, he has a few cool moments under his belt, and what he could have been with better writing though. He's a literal underdog, and I've always had a soft spot for those types.

I am planning on giving Road Rovers a rewatch at some point however...

Even with the scant few attempts in fanfics at giving him a more sympathetic and nuanced portrayal that I've seen, it's a two steps forward, two steps back deal. Or it's the kind of stuff I discussed in the last post, where the character is named Blitz but really isn't him, and the writer just tosses all the lore and everything else having to do with the show out the window. Or it just plays up the show's goofiness and blandness (while adding in fetish material). I saw one story that looked potentially interesting, but then it threw in a particular OC that I can't stand, so I dipped. 

I've also seen one or two things where the writer wanted to develop him, but still had the stance of "Well, he just needs to learn how to tolerate and accept the quirks of the other characters (basically, what was the bad/or extremely unpleasant behavior of these characters, though the writer didn't seem to realize they'd fallen into this trap)", or how he just needs to learn the true meaning of being a Road Rover. 

Um, what does he need to learn exactly? What is that true meaning then? Because I don't think Hunter knows what it is... Again, go watch the show. He does help out the team. It's just that barely anybody wants to acknowledge when he does actually do so, but then blow up all of his mistakes. As you can tell, I've really grown to not care at all for "Blitz dislikes X but changes his mind after learning to tolerate X" type plotlines and try to avoid them. Instead, I would rather have both him and his BFF/or love interest learn and grow together as individuals, instead of just putting the impetus solely on Blitz's shoulders.

In short, I want to have my boy earn his happy ending and have him be around people who give him respect and kindness. I know I can't control people's feelings regarding Blitz. I can only hope that my fics help paint him in a different light, in the way myself and the one other person out there who likes him as a character (and not just fetish fuel*) view him. 

*While I loathe the whole "you're not a real fan of this or that if you don't act this way or do this specific thing I want you to do!"mentality that certain kinds of fans have, there is one exception I have to this. If you say you like a character, but that like seems to wholly boil down to how they give you a funny feeling in your pants, or you make them completely unrecognizable in your fan works or whatever, without showing exactly why and how they changed in the first place, then no, I don't think you're really a fan of the character. *shrugs*

"Tch, you're so arrogant/hypocrital, OLU!"

Same warning from my last post still stands: this is all just for fun/airing out my thoughts. I'm not going to put up with any RR fans' bs. I'm just going to block you if you come on here trying to come for me.