Honestly I think War might have some confidence issues. Because he jumps about as well as a dead hippo. Which is odd because whenever I’m trying to make a very slight move, he moves more like a hummingbird on cocaine. So it’s hard to fathom why this horseman who can swing a sword longer than he is, who can form an indentation in the earth when he falls from a great, but not too great, height, and who rides a horse that breathes fire, can’t manage to jump a five foot gap without falling at least twice. And I don’t mean that he tries to jump and just misses the edge of the other side. I mean he full on just runs off the cliff without even so much as a hop. Much like my mother used to do whenever we badgered her into playing Super Mario Brothers.
Oh and did I mention that War has wings? At least momentary wings.
Occasionally I think perhaps I merely haven’t pressed the jump button hard enough. That the movement didn’t register on the controller. And then I remember that what I’m really trying to do is engage War’s double jump, which means I’ve actually pressed the jump button twice. And still I can’t even get a hop.
Maybe War just isn’t the hopping type. Well I’m not picky. I would take a manly leap. Or a chasm-clearing danger roll. But no. War seems hell bent on simply stepping off into oblivion. And it’s this passive, limp, simply “giving up” on jumping that has me perplexed.
I mean, the guy seems pretty driven in his quest to unravel the mystery of the Apocalypse. He’s ready to drive his sword into the forehead of the biggest of the baddies. But when confronted by the necessity to lift his feet from the ground?
He cowers. Curious.
My theory? I have concluded that War obviously has some body image issues that lead to a severe lack of self-confidence.
Specifically, I think War’s head is entirely too small for his body. In figure drawing we learn that the human body is approximately eight heads tall with those split between the upper body and the lower body. And we’re about two heads wide in regards to our shoulders.
Contrast that with War. War is about fifty heads wide and more than fifty heads tall. I mean War’s head is like the Moon and his body is like Jupiter. So when we look at his jumping ability (or lack thereof) it’s rather easy to see why the horseman fails so often. He inspects the crevice, analyzes its size, and thinks “There is no fucking way my enormous body is going to be able to generate enough lift to make it over this gap.”
War’s ill proportioned head also makes him unbalanced so that inevitably, were he able to actually bring himself to jump, he would probably find himself flailing at some point, his body either pulling him backwards and pushing him forward. What could be more embarrassing to a horseman than doing a face plant in front of a horde of snarling, psychotic demons? Imagine the Facebook pictures.
I’m interested to know how War’s head got to its present size. Because most people generally have the opposite infliction, which is an enormous head on a tiny body. You see this in children all the time. And also egomaniacs. The only other person I’ve seen with such a tiny head is Beetlejuice when he pisses off the headshrinker at the end of the movie. Which leads me to my next question:
What did War do to piss off the headshrinker?
And as a follow up:
Where did War even meet this headshrinker? I don’t imagine the horsemen get out very much. It seems like an awful waste of time to go around pissing off headshrinkers if you only get out every hundred years or so. And a hundred years might be generous. The Darksiders incarnation of war seems more likely to be let loose every thousand years or more. In fact, he probably doesn’t even know that people can post pictures of him on Facebook.
Clearly though, we can see that War is incredibly self-conscious about the size of his head judging by the way he needs to cover it up with a tiny red hood and the fact that he needs to carry around a sword nearly as long as his body. Wouldn’t a nuclear device be far more effective and a better use of space?
Well, I suppose to each his own. One could argue that a sword is far classier than a nuclear weapon but looking at War’s sword one can see that it’s more much akin to a snow shovel than say a rapier.
The point of the matter is that until War can overcome his paralyzing self-loathing he, and by proxy I, is going to be spending an awful lot of time dying.
Posted on August 2, 2010
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