#dannygreen

HISTORY:

Danny was born in Newark, New Jersey to Claretta Pazzini. He has one younger sister, Martina "Teeny" Green. His father, Russell Green, abandons his mother when Danny is six. Though no one would be able to confirm that Martina's birth is what caused him to walk out. He grew up resenting Martina for driving their father away, and while he no longer says that, he still harbors that sentiment. Russell Green is not found dead or alive anywhere in the state of New Jersey. Danny does not remember his father leaving, just that he was no longer there after a certain point. He does not see much of his father in himself and does not think about him fondly, but the blame for his absence always seems to fall on his mother and sister rather than on the man himself.

Danny grew up extremely poor. He has consistently done poorly in school, he abhors team sports and extracurriculars, and maintained few positive relationships with people his age. He began smoking and drinking at age twelve, he has fostered a nicotine addiction and a tendency to binge drink his entire life. He was introduced to cocaine and morphine in highschool, and subsequently dropped out in his junior year. From then (age 17) for the next three years was intoxicated waking nightmare, he abused every single girlfriend he acquired, was repeatedly arrested for assault, theft, various forms of sexual misbehavior, possession, etc. At age 19 Danny has a near death experience in Chicago, overdosing in a park. He dips from the hospital and immediately returns home to his mother to start an outpatient rehab program that he leaves prematurely to join the army.

His mother remarries when he is 18. He does not care about his step father, has very little relationship with him. He has battered him into allowing Danny the final say as the "man of the house" just as he has battered everyone else in his family. Danny is frequent in resorting to violence to get his way, he has attacked and berated both his mother and his sister. while he has never severely injured either and has gotten less physical over time, he does not think violent resolution is wrong, just that it probably shouldn't be done to women. His relationship with his sister is particularly poor, as he exerts an obnoxious amount of control over her life, having positioned himself as the closest thing their family has to a father figure. He is cruel to her under the guise of "tough love", and while he would lay down his life for hers, he still literally throws bricks at her boyfriends and is constantly calling her a whore for having them. His mother is exceptionally tolerant of him, and will never not welcome him back into their home no matter how much he makes her cry. She has always and will always take his side, but he has not told her that he is facing discharge or jail time yet. She is under the impression his relocation to Amchitka is an honor

He is 20 by the time he is deployed overseas in the midst of the vietnam war. His primary involvement was with Operation Cedar Falls. Danny enjoys destruction and always has. He is a cruel and bloodthirsty soldier who enjoyed exerting military power over a civilian population. He spends almost all his free time and money on weed and prostitutes, and his ability to behave with impunity worsens his behavior tenfold. All this is acceptable until his aggression is turned onto his immediate superiors. He had been repeatedly reprimanded for initiating brawls with other privates when he snaps and assaults his supervisor, the younger, frailer man holding even a marginal amount of authority over him was intolerable. He had spent months variably bullying and sexually harassing him, all of which only came to light after he nearly killed him. Danny was immediately suspended, spending several months in court marshal limbo before his transfer to Amchitka.

ON SEX:

Danny has an addictive personality and this extends to his relationship with sex. He experiences zero pain or fear in pursuit of his sexual conquests, and they are conquests. The amount that he respects any given woman is inversely correlated with how attractive he finds them. In a relationship he is a terror, exerting undue control over his girlfriends while refusing to commit to them at all. He is unhappy with the idea of fatherhood and has repeatedly harassed women into abortions and out of their misconceptions about the future of their relationship. He is possessive but fickle, and often rejects intimacy and avoids responsibility because he feels it undermines his persona and masculinity.

Danny is pretty staunchly heterosexual. But he is also a fetishist and a sex addict, so he has little issue with having sex with men under certain conditions. He enjoys being solicited for sex by men only on the condition that he gets to dominate them. In that way it is another form of violence he can enact on men who subsequently cannot challenge his position in the social hierarchy (because he's fucked them, feminized them, and defused them). He doesn't prefer doing this to sleeping with women, but it doesn't keep him up at night.

He is, if not actively doing heroin, frequently horny and irritable about it. He fosters violent sexual fantasies about people he dislikes, and has a hard time delineating between erotic and disgusting. It is unclear at what point in his life those wires got crossed.

ON DRUGS:

Danny loves drugs, especially the ones that get to work immediately. His use of narcotics is, in his mind, exclusively practical. He relies on sedatives and painkillers to put him down and stimulants to get him moving. He has better access to amphetamines and painkillers in the army than he does in new jersey, but his usage is far more limited because of the constant threat of death. Danny will do any drug he can get his hands on, but his one true love is opioids. He does not care how sick they make him and he does not care that being high makes him inert. He just wants to be in that state as often as possible. His relationship with addiction is one of partial denial, he does acknowledge the problem but is convinced it is a problem that can be resolved "later". He does not particularly like alcohol.

ON WAR:

War terrifies Danny. In a way his violent behavior is overcompensation for his fear. The army allows him to be as violent as he wants to people he faces no repercussions for tormenting and killing. He does not understand why the barbarity of combat doesn't define the entire military hierarchy, and why people are promoted based on merit rather than brute strength. He understands war as a way to protect his way of life.

ON RELIGION:

Danny was raised catholic and is fully confirmed. His patron saint is christopher, the dog headed saint and patron of travelers. He does not attend mass and does not have a relationship with religion. He is unconcerned with the mythos of the bible and only wears a medal of saint christopher as a good luck charm, genuinely believing in its protection.

FUNCTION:

Danny operates as an antagonist, but also a close friend of the main character of OPNERO. his presence on the island is as an extension of the arm of the military, and he acts to preserve its interests. He is used by the US government and he knows it, he only wishes they wouldn't abuse him so much.

RELATIONSHIPS:

RAJIVA PATEL

Rajiva is one of few people on Amchitka that Danny asserts "treats him like a human being". He thinks, privately, that Raj is strange. Queer, eccentric, stuck-up racial other. He would never organically find himself interacting with someone like this in a friendly way, but because Rajiva is explicitly willing to empower Danny through their relationship, he sticks to him. He does sincerely like him, in a way. It helps that he is entirely non-threatening.

VSEVOLOD GORCHAKOV

Danny is extremely uneasy about Red. It is only via gossiping with Rajiva that he feels comfortable speaking to him. It is his desire to get red to traffic drugs to the island for him, as he has free access to the mainland and does not stay on Amchitka full time initially. However, because Danny is essentially prison labor he does not get paid for his work and cannot consistently offer red anything of monetary value in exchange for his drugs. (not that red would have any use for his money, nor would he be willing to risk his career for it). In an appeal to his homosexual nature Danny offers to trade sex for heroin. Which does work, just not in the way he wants it to. He does not like the sex he has with red most of the time and he does not like that he has to have sex with red to get heroin. Recognizing himself as a prostitute makes Danny extremely agitated. He wants to kill red, but if he didn't they'd probably get along fine.

AINSLEY DOHERTY

Danny is conflicted on how he feels about Ainsley. He has difficulty earnestly sexually harassing her because her gender presentation confuses him. He does not like that she has an issue with him, a bone to pick. He would probably really like her if she was a man because of their similar backgrounds, but her reaches for power just infuriate him. He sees her as acting above her station.

JAN KOSACKI

He does not know much about Jan. Just that he looks and acts like a woman. He shies away from Jan because something about him repels Danny, he finds him intimidating in a way he sees no value in challenging. Jan's authority exists outside of the framework that Danny lives in. Otherwise he feels very neutrally about Jan, only mildly jealous of his relationship with Raj, who he fears could be turned against him.

GERALD MASTERS

Gerald Masters is the second youngest son of a ranching family, previously his father worked in a steel mill. He is the only one of his five siblings to live past the age of 25, and watched his father go to his grave thinking he may die at any minute. Growing up surrounded by death seemingly destroyed his empathizing skills. as far as Gerard is aware, he has seen and felt the worst anyone can feel in the world, and if he survived that every other challenge is trivial. He left his childhood home and his father in Reno, and moved to Vegas at 15 to be a valet for The Flamingo. He traded in stolen cars and weed until he turned 18, returned to Reno to bury his father, and enlisted in the army so he would have somewhere to sleep. He fought in WW2 on the Italian front in the us army air corps. He is a viciously efficient member of a B-17 bomber crew. His plane was only downed once leading to his capture and torture as a POW. Gerald did not spend a lot of time in Nazi custody and when he returned from a brief leave he very quickly attained Colonel status following the surrender of the axis powers. He immediately retires to domestic duties, specifically administering basic training and bootcamps. Gerald elects to involve himself in US imperial espionage, leaving Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee to participate in the great war against communism. He has been in the Panama Canal zone for the past few years, but he is no real patriot, and simply enjoys torturing communists, and privates, and basically anyone he can get his hands on.

Gerald is psychosexually obsessed with pain and endurance. He gets sexual gratification from experiencing or administering discomfort. He has regularly volunteered to be tortured and abused in drills and expects the same from every US soldier. He seems completely unshakable, almost deranged in his apparent bravery. Most men under his long-term command are personally abused and humiliated by him, BUT HE KEEPS IT ABOVE BOARD! as above board as the army can be I suppose. Nothing matters to him more than American military supremacy and he doesn't really believe in war crimes as a rule. He's gay, also voluntarily celibate. He likes cruises.

Of course he has a particular bone to pick with Danny. Danny genuinely thinks Gerald wants to kill him, and while he wouldn't be opposed i think he whales on him so fucking hard because he reminds gerald of himself as a young man.

there is a visual similarity i suppose. Gerald is way taller though. and more moe.

Okay, so in order to break down this piece it helps to approach it as a companion piece to the previous one “body as weapon without teeth”, “fixing my itch (with teeth)” isn’t necessary chronologically succeeding it, because (without teeth) is more of a mood piece which (with teeth) is an actual scene abstracted.

The beast, as referenced in this post I JUST MADE!!!!! Is present in both these images, far less distinct in the second as it becomes less tangible and indistinguishable from the environment and characters.

Obviously the big difference is the teeth. It kind of looks like a big wildebeest with a huge soft bleeding mouth. Not necessarily a hackjob situation, ostensibly the beast could have undergone surgical extraction by a licensed oral surgeon. Point being, it’s missing its teeth.

The beast has no visible (or hypothetically useful) hands in this image, and danny’s hands are rendered at his sides and pretty indistinct. I meant for the noise around his head and blood from the beasts mouth to be reminiscent of falling water. Combined with Danny’s nudity its pretty safe to call this a “man seething in shower” piece.

Arguably its a more sophisticated/more corrupted version of “Puppy Dog Eyes”, where the beast is both belonging entirely to Danny (in previously characterized as something that oppresses on him) and now “neutralized” (the beast doesn’t distinguish between perceived slight and actual slight, because it isn’t conscious, point being, the mind of the nationalist cannot differentiate between faux pas and intentional, hateful language / assault.) (red being cruel to him is always considered hateful, even if that wasn’t his intention, all entities that deny Danny what he wants are persecuting him, etc.)

Hence the lack of teeth rather than a muzzle or something rendering the beast “helpless” (i mean, look at it. In the same way a lot of Danny’s helplessness is tied to his addiction, which is a real illness but not one he himself even considers truly insurmountable.) It’s generally about Danny feeling dominated in his engagement with red, and specifically referencing his rock and hard place, when he’s neck deep in addiction, fresh out of attacking red at the new years party, and still indebted to him BECAUSE red doesn’t retaliate. Red refusing to litigate against Danny or even publicly acknowledge he did anything to him at all makes Danny feel that he is defenseless even in the most basic of means. If attacking red doesn’t dispel him or destroy their deal or even put danny where he can’t find his way back to the object of his obsession, nothing will. Real low point for mister Danny, so (without teeth) is steeped in impotence, sexual vulnerability (i dont think i need to talk about the imagery of the mouth in that context.) and consumptive, almost feral rage.

SO! Continuing onwards to (with teeth) occurring literally (hence reds incredibly haggard appearance) somewhere in the final days of Armageddon. Ive lifted a lot of abstraction from red’s design in specific, he takes on a idol quality in a lot of art i make of him from danny’s perspective, who sees him as generally unfeeling and all powerful. In this piece he’s pretty smashed up, the scars on his nose and eyebrow are specifically from danny, and his general gauntness is the result of a combination of a few factors, point being he’s as humanized as he’s going to get in this image and danny still can’t conceptualize him in his current state as human. (Hence the emphasis on his eyes being kind of flat and on a different plane. I intended for a kind of animal wall eyed vibe, or like painted on. He looks like that i guess)

He certainly wants red to be human because he wants to hurt him, but i guess his reasoning for doing so is kind of cyclical. (I have to hurt him to see if hes human, i need him to be human so i can hurt him, he is human because i hurt him. That kind of thought process.)

The dialogue, which is hard to see because it isn’t necessarily spoken, and is equally implied as it is said. Reads;

“You don’t want to die?”

A kind of ridiculous question out of context, but given that this is Armageddon and most people on earth are now dead, and a short life of autonomous suffering is hard to find preferable to eternal suffering (hell) or absence of consciousness (no hell but no heaven either) or heaven (heaven), given that they don’t know what is true for either of them, what constitutes right and wrong according to god (its arguable that Danny killing anyone past the advent of Armageddon is hastening their journey to the afterlife and is a morally good action that could get him into heaven. It depends on how much you value obedience as a virtue. Danny is very obedient!) Red, in this context, doesn’t have much of a reason to fear death. He’s questioning why he doesn’t just give up, but the way he does so is inherently facetious. HOWEVER.

“You aren’t going to kill me.” Isn’t an appeal to Danny’s conscious or morals, or a plea/bluff or anything of that nature. He knows Danny’s intentions pretty well because he’s told him a hundred different times in a hundred different ways that his only desire is to hurt him. Via fear, injury, rape, torture and consumption. Red doesn’t think Danny will kill him, he thinks Danny will chew on him until he dies on his own. That’s a little more than the standard suffering left for him on earth and certainly more undesirable than the unknowable afterlife.

(With teeth) just illustrates what happens when Danny gets his hands and teeth back. The knife that merges with his silhouette at waist height is both obviously a violent phallic/sexual metaphor, but it’s also a tooth in a big mouth. Referring back to The Beast ultimately falling upon and devouring Babylon The Great. Hence, happy toothful beast that melts into the shadow and into Danny, making his personal intentions immiscible from those of a greater force of evil. I don’t think Danny is happy, nor will he be happy ever again, but he does have the opportunity to be satisfied.

Red doesn’t want to be eaten! It goes without saying that he knows he’s human and he doesn’t want to be tortured, burned, raped and devoured, just to ultimately go to hell (maybe heaven? He thinks he’s suffered enough, but he wouldn’t subject himself to any of that for the potential promise of a beautiful afterlife) a later part of this conversation questions why he wouldn’t just kill himself to dodge Danny. Aaaaand thats a great question! Haha! I can’t say for certain why someone wouldn’t kill themself when being threatened with further suffering and humiliation beyond what one experiences in the process of LIVING. I imagine he might be doing the same kind of thinking I'm currently doing, trying to work out pathways to heaven based on what choice is ultimately most christlike. Choice paralysis, lack of identity, whatever. At current moment in this illustration he is trying to find a way out of this room and back out into the light.