Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory!
Author: Amata le Fay
Title: Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory
Story: Ether Lands (RP)
Flavor(s): Summer Challenge Trope Bunnies 20 (everyone is Jesus in purgatory)
Toppings/Extras: Cherry (academia! yeah!)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 250
Notes: An over-analysis of a certain scholar-spy and his adorable kitten...
“Asher Lang's real name is Josu Gaman. Josu is a variant of Jesus in the Basque language; gaman is a Japanese word meaning “enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity”-obviously a reference to Christ's last days and His death on the cross. Josu can therefore be likened to the Messiah's suffering, and Jesus suffered because of a corrupt government and harsh, punitive social structure, of which Josu is both trying to subvert and yet drawing his power from that very same corrupt structure. Josu's alias, Asher, by which he is called nearly all the time, evokes not only “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” an expression of human mortality, but also the literary character of Asher Lev, one torn between his faith as a Hasidic Jew and his fascination with painting crucifixions-not unlike Asher/Josu's quandary between supporting and decrying the social status quo. Lang, his alias's surname, is Germanic for “long,” but also speaks to the idea of language. The creation of different languages was God's way of separating the different peoples of the world to keep them from aspiring to become like God. Asher uses his knowledge of different languages in order to fool the Ocenianans into circulating his untranslated spy coins. However, after Jesus's ascension, God bestowed the gift of universal linguistic understanding upon the disciples at Pentecost, a sign of unity between nations that Asher will perhaps bring to the three continents in the Ether Lands.”
“Yeah... I totally meant that when I created his character...”