Fangs Of The Goddess! Ya'Wara Appreciation

[WonderScott]

I'd like to see her on a team up with Wonder Woman and Vixen.

[Powertool]

Anyone got any ideas for a Ya'Wara mini series?

As far as I'm concerned, if I had to write a Ya'wara miniseries I'd focus on two very important things: the need to explore in a proper way her feelings about humanity and the context of her adventures, not just the Amazon rainforest but Brazil as a whole. The only country in the world that is cursed with being a future superpower -- yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever. I'd go with something like this:


A very old woman is reading a book on a bench next to a road. She's the result of centuries of interbreeding between Indios and African slaves, like so many inhabitants of North-Eastern Brazil. A village can be seen on the horizon. We're in Pará or Amapá, very close to the point where the Amazon river flows into the Atlantic Ocean. The book she's reading is "Menino de Engenho" by José Lins do Rego, a milestone of Brazilian literature. An old oxcart passes by. The twelve year old boy who's driving it greets the old woman, throws a bookmark to her, telling her that she'll soon need it and leaves.

We go to Ya'wara. She's currently meditating somewhere in the North-Eastern part of her beloved jungle, not too far from the place we left in the previous scene, in communion with the soul of the forest and its infinite wisdom. Suddenly her adoration is disturbed by three very old ladies who somehow managed to make their way amid the jungle to reach her temporary sanctuary. Surprised and annoyed by that intrusion -- but mostly surprised -- she asks them why they came there. They answer that they were actually looking for her, since their friend -- random name -- Elisa, the old lady reading her book, has disappeared from their village and nobody knows where she might have gone. Since their homes are so close to the boundary of the rainforest, asking to the protector of the latter didn't look like a bad idea to them. Ya'wara replies that she may consider their request if they tell her how they managed to find her. They just produce the bookmark that had been given to Elisa, which is actually a map with the location of her sanctuary and the easiest path from the ladies' village to it.

Ya'wara and the three ladies enter the village the following night, the only time of the day when the Queen of the Amazon would ever dare to enter a populated area. They reach Elisa's house, a dilapidated apartment building that looks like it once was a warehouse. Elisa's apartment lacks almost any commodity except reading material. It's in fact full of books, of every author, genre and page count. Ya'wara, being completely illiterate, can only comment on the poor conditions of many of them, since the moist climate of the region, coupled with fungi and bugs, is hell for paper. The three ladies tell her that Elisa's life in the last thirty years, ever since she moved to that village from the South of the country (though she was originally a North-Easterner) revolved around those books. From sunrise to sunset, she did very little besides reading. In fact, that was what she was doing just before disappearing a hot afternoon just three days before. She was sitting on a bench in front of the café of the village with a book in her hands as usual, "Menino de Engenho", the story of Carlinhos, a young boy growing up in the harsh reality of early XX century plantations. A truck passing by hid her for a moment from the three ladies' view but when she should have reappeared, she just wasn't there anymore. The only thing left of her was her bookmark. Ya'wara asks them to show her that bench.

A few hours later, after doing her best with her tracking skills and heightened senses to find even a tiny trace of Elisa in the surrounding area but with no results, Ya'wara falls onto the bench, exhausted and seemingly defeated. Nothing about that story made sense. People don't just disappear into thin air unless they have an ancient Atlantean artifact granting teleprtation powers and there's no way that an object like that bookmark can even exist. The three ladies had gone back home. Perhaps she should just wait for the morning to meet them and admit that she doesn't know whcih way to turn.

But then something absolutely unexpected happens. A huge truck stops right in front of her and a familiar piece of canvas greets her from the cockpit: he's Prisoner of War! Or at least, somebody who sounds exactly like him. He says that he's already behind schedule, but he's going to do an exception for her and bring her to Elisa, though she'll have to settle for the semitrailer. Ya'wara can now add another thing that makes absolutely no sense to her list and goes to open the door of the cockpit to check if that's actually Prisoner of War -- but once she does that she finds herself inexplicably inside the semitrailer, while the truck starts moving. Her protestations are short-lived, since a sense of tiredness seizes her and she soon falls asleep, her last conscious thought being that perhaps she's just sleeping on that bench and dreaming.

Ya'wara then visits a series of places that look like the nightmares of an expressionist artist. People, both men and women, reduced to emotionless larvae forever dragging along the golden thrones of false gods made of paper, clay and dry blood, who spend their time either squashing their subjects or pricking one another -- while Elisa lies on the ground waiting for those colossal thrones to crush her. A city of glass and stone, its proportions too large for any human being but at the same time capable of crushing your soul for the way it ignores you, populated by strange creatures that shine like metal and sparkle like lightning busy in the neverending chase of a flagpole without a banner zooming from one place to another they keep calling "progress", utterly unconcerned by what they step on -- not even poor old Elisa. The semitrailer so similar to that of the truck driven by the man that looks like Prisoner of War, but full of corpses that are then dumped into a mass grave that is actually an abyss as deep as oblivion, a fate the Queen of the Jungle desperately tries avoiding -- just to see Elisa voluntarily throw herself into the gorge. A bar in a favela where all the clients are living skeletons that are kept sitting down on their chairs by a heavy net made of golden chains that leaves only Ya'wara free, until a fire starts burning everything down while the customers are relieved by the fact that finally someone remembered about their conditions -- the only one who doesn't look relieved is Elisa, who just walks sadly towards the place where the flames burn hotter.

During this nightmarish journey, Ya'wara actually tries reaching Elisa and pulling her out of danger, but she always turns down her offers to choose life over death because she has reached an age when looking forwards is impossible and looking backwards is just too painful. Her attempts to save Elisa in fact often expose her to the risk of ending up like the old woman, with the problem that there's no guarantee that she'll somehow survive to die another time. The only reason she survives each time is that the twelve year old boy from the beginning of the story is also an inhabitant of this horrible world and by following him while he runs away Ya'wara always manages to save her skin and lave every vision behind. The boy describes himself as a prisoner of that "horrible old woman" and that she's never going to let him go because she keeps confusing her sins for his own. He says that he had a name but he forgot it, since nobody calls him anymore, not even his jailer. In the end, Ya'wara understands and tells him that he shouldn't run anymore, because she knows that Elisa could never hurt Carlinhos before finishing his book.

The scenery suddenly changes. We're back to the lonely bench next to a road from the beginning of the story. Elisa lies on the street waiting for some vehicle to come and flatten her. For the first time, she's the first to speak rather than answering Ya'wara's pleas. She asks the Queen of the Jungle about "her" Carlinhos, wondering whether he had been a good boy to her and adding that she'll never achieve anything trying to save her each time. But this time Ya'wara doesn't try to pull her off the road. She just says that she doesn't know who Carlinhos was for her -- a friend? A lover? A husband? A son? -- but that she now understands how she reached the point where she thought she deserved this purgatory built from memories and imagination. She's the last person in the world who can school other people about the reasons this world gives us to keep living -- or about anything concering love, to be honest, but she knows that memories of what was should not make people afraid of what will be, since suffering for what was lost makes the love we felt for what was lost much more valuable than our pain.

A truck appears. It runs over Elisa. Only it didn't, because Elisa reappears, standing on the side of the road, as soon as the truck passes by. For the first time since the beginning of this story, she's seen smiling. The two women embrace. Elisa tells Ya'wara that she's right and she was wrong. Looking forwards is still possible, even if she deluded herself thinking that the only life experiences she could still live were the ones written on the pages of her books. They say good-bye to each other and Elisa walks towards the sunrise before melting into a river of tears that flows towards the sea until it mixes with the Amazon River in the point it joins the Atlantic.

[Powertool]

Prisoner of War reappears, telling Ya'wara that he could have never let her sneak inside a prison -- any kind of prison without him and that she can ride shotgun for the return trip. But again, as soon as she opens the door of the cockpit, the Queen of the Jungle finds herself in another place, this time the place of meditation she left behind at the beginning of the story. She approaches a nearby pond and looks at her mirrored image, surrounded by three familiar figures who, she can feel, are only in the water. She asks the three old ladies how long they'd been dead. A few years, they reply, but they owed it to Elisa and, besides, being way too much alive in her memories wasn't letting them either look forwards at new horizons. They start disappearing while Ya'wara asks where they're going. They answer that she should rather ask where they are.


I don't know if this makes sense to others besides me, but this is the kind of story I'd like to see Ya'wara featuring in.

[Agent Z]

That doesn't sound too bad. I might like it better in comic form but good job.

I'm trying to think of a writer I'd want attached to her. Maybe Marjorie Lui, Greg Weissman or G Willow Wilson

[WonderScott]

Based on her background, has it been explored whether Ya'Wara has a connection to the Red or the Green?

[Powertool]

That doesn't sound too bad. I might like it better in comic form but good job.

I'm trying to think of a writer I'd want attached to her. Maybe Marjorie Lui, Greg Weissman or G Willow Wilson

Thank you! Since Amazonian Indios have been practicing shamanism and animism (when they even bother to have any kind of religious belief!) for millennia, I think that Ya'wara fighting her important fights on the spiritual plane would be a great idea to characterize her in a unique way. And for the record, I'm totally in favour of her current attire. She was born as a tribute to the Jungle Girls of the Thirties and Forties. She's not a superheroine, she's something different. Her ancestors were the superheroes' competition. She's fine as she is.

I would personally like Christopher Priest at writing duties, since he has the cultural sensibility that a writer would need to make something worthwhile with the setting. Or maybe Jon Rivera, who has shown some amazing skills when it comes to characterizations. Or even Mark Russell, if the mini goes with the environmentalist angle (I really want to see Russell tackling that topic full-force).

Based on her background, has it been explored whether Ya'Wara has a connection to the Red or the Green?

Yes. Her animal affinity is "just" a jungle-based version of Aquaman's link with sea creatures and since the latter has nothing to do with either the Red or the Green, there's no reason to suspect Ya'wara's power is different.

[Agent Z]

Thank you! Since Amazonian Indios have been practicing shamanism and animism (when they even bother to have any kind of religious belief!) for millennia, I think that Ya'wara fighting her important fights on the spiritual plane would be a great idea to characterize her in a unique way. And for the record, I'm totally in favour of her current attire. She was born as a tribute to the Jungle Girls of the Thirties and Forties. She's not a superheroine, she's something different. Her ancestors were the superheroes' competition. She's fine as she is.

I would personally like Christopher Priest at writing duties, since he has the cultural sensibility that a writer would need to make something worthwhile with the setting. Or maybe Jon Rivera, who has shown some amazing skills when it comes to characterizations. Or even Mark Russell, if the mini goes with the environmentalist angle (I really want to see Russell tackling that topic full-force).



Yes. Her animal affinity is "just" a jungle-based version of Aquaman's link with sea creatures and since the latter has nothing to do with either the Red or the Green, there's no reason to suspect Ya'wara's power is different.

Are there any characters from Amazonian Indios folklore that could be used for her stories?

[WonderScott]

Yes. Her animal affinity is "just" a jungle-based version of Aquaman's link with sea creatures and since the latter has nothing to do with either the Red or the Green, there's no reason to suspect Ya'wara's power is different.

Ah, thank you. I was curious since sometimes Aquaman has had a connection to the Blue/Clear.

[Agent Z]

Who would you like to see Ya'Wara team up with?

For me it's either Wonder Woman or Garth

[Silvermoth]

Vixen would be amazing I reckon

[Agent Z]

Vixen would be amazing I reckon

Yes her too. Can't believe I forgot her

[Powertool]

Who would you like to see Ya'Wara team up with?

Rima the Jungle Girl and Abigail Holland. To form the League of the Queens of the Wilderness.

Barring that, I wouldn't mind her having an adventure with either 1) Black Orchid, 2) Green Arrow (but only if Mike Grell comes back to write that story) or 3) Black Canary and Huntress in mission for the Birds of Prey (Babsgirls need not apply).

[Agent Z]

Does anyone feel like a Tapirape member should be consulted for further stories dealing Ya'Wara? One of the things I liked about Thunder and Eagle the Nez Perce characters in Killer Instinct is that an actual member of the Nez Perce tribe was consulted for their depictions.

[Powertool]

Does anyone feel like a Tapirape member should be consulted for further stories dealing Ya'Wara? One of the things I liked about Thunder and Eagle the Nez Perce characters in Killer Instinct is that an actual member of the Nez Perce tribe was consulted for their depictions.

Why the Tapirapé of all the Tupi ethnicities in Brazil? They're just 700-odd people concentrated in two small areas of the Amazon forest. They're hardly representative of all the aboriginal cultures of that jungle. Unless, of course, you want a reason to see Ya'wara in the buff in almost every panel she features in (Tapirapé women do not wear any kind of clothes 99% of the time).

[Agent Z]

Why the Tapirapé of all the Tupi ethnicities in Brazil? They're just 700-odd people concentrated in two small areas of the Amazon forest. They're hardly representative of all the aboriginal cultures of that jungle. Unless, of course, you want a reason to see Ya'wara in the buff in almost every panel she features in (Tapirapé women do not wear any kind of clothes 99% of the time).

Well, Tapirapé is the tribe Ya'Wara belongs to.

What other tribes would you like to see her be part of instead?