Quote:Well, this is a mix of factors, both story-level and meta-level.
Y'know, for such a fun character to read about, Sangnoir can be a pretty bad bigot. First, looking down his nose at the Knight Sabers, and now this crappy attitude about Belldandy. Never mind that he's a guest in their home and giving them attitude. He needs a good smacking.
Meta-level is simply, as has been noted many times elsewhere, I try not to let Doug fall into the standard insert behaviors. (Oh, he will do it from time to time, mainly because he's complex, and won't always react to different things the same way -- and that sometimes means acting like a "standard" SI. But most of the time he won't.) In any case, his base behavior on entering a universe will at least try to be an inversion of standard SI behavior -- and in this instance, that means hostility towards the goddesses and (heavens forbid!) being nasty to Belldandy. When was the last time you saw an insert do that? Besides, it's fun to write about a hero who has some pretty offensive traits and still tries to be and is a good guy despite them. (The problem is, some readers can't tell the difference between Doug's bigotry and a SI know-it-all. Which is pretty sad, when you think about it.)
Story-level, well, he's had a bad experience with the Three jerking him around in the BGC universe, and when you add that to his usual attitude about gods, he ends up carrying a bit of a grudge. (I may change that. I wrote this passage two or more years ago, and the plot of DW2 has diverged slightly from what I was planning at that point. The Three have not been quite as bad to him as I was originally planning, so I should probably reduce his anger level a bit.) I'll provide a bit of a spoiler and say that he does come around quickly enough. There are hints of that in his narration -- it should be pretty clear that he's recounting the events from some time much later, when he has a different point of view. For example:
Say what you will about her abrasive andoverbearing personality, Hexe is a woman first, and a deitysecond. And in my experience, that was *unique*. I had noreason to believe Verdandi's relationship with Keiichi Morisatowas anything but a sadistic and/or exploitative dalliance forher.
There is an implicit "But I know better now" there.
This probably isn't a spoiler to my perceptive readers, but Doug exits this Step having added the divine denizens of O!MG to the incredibly short list of gods he respects and admires. And his overall attitude towards Celestials changes more for the positive -- which you can actually see in the scene from DW-Eva when he discovers Rei is part-Celestial -- see the first Eva teaser thread over in "Future Steps." Also, it's not in the teaser material I've posted here, but in the dojo he establishes in the Eva world, the requisite scroll on the wall does not bear the standard characters "I-ro-ha", but instead five symbols: a lightning bolt, a hammer, a sword, a heart and a spindle.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.