For the character meme - Erich!
(Just discovered your blog by the way and obsessed)
That's very nice of you! I definitely don't post enough to feed an obsession, sorry 😂 But it's lovely to meet you anyway <3 Okay, Erich, let's give it a go!
Favorite thing about them - God. How to pick one thing. He really is The Character. The hyper-competent doomed-by-the-narrative self-destructive tall-dark-and-handsome pathetic wet cat of them all. He looks really good on a horse. He can play the violin. He can fly a plane, allegedly. He may or may not have a limp depending on whether it's plot relevant, thematically desireable, or aesthetically pleasing. He's queer coded in a way that probably gave WEJ a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. Forty years of Best Enemies and frankly obnoxious levels of flirting. My favourite thing is that he's all these things and still falls over backwards into a fireplace because he was swinging on the back legs of his chair just like nanny told him never to do but he didn't listen because he never does. lol what a nerd (with barely concealed lust.) <3 <3 <3
Least favorite thing about them - I feel there's a fairly obvious answer to this, but thankfully all of us including WE Johns have elected to edit it out of his fictional biography as far as humanly possible! Lucky! Other than that, nothing whatsoever, he's perfect, he did all those things and he deserves everything that's coming to him <3
brOTP - there's an issue here whereby I'll pair Erich up with anyone who stands still next to him for too long, even though that's usually deeply inadviseable (extremely in character); so if I'm going for a brOTP it's probably going to be Bertie, even though we barely see them interact on page. But I bet it'd be GREAT. Sloop wrote us Bertie & Erich fic recently and it only left me wanting more.
OTP - tbh, I have less of an OTP and more a nebulous Entity composed of Erich, Biggles, Marie and Algy in any and all possible combinations. So far the only stumbling block to an OT4 is that I haven't yet worked out how to get Algy and Marie not to be weird about each other, but I'm certain I'll get a grip on it eventually.
nOTP - haven't found one yet! I mean, Erich/Zorotov is horrid, but, y'know. In a fun way.
Random headcanon - I'm not sure it's exactly a headcanon as much as a fixit to extract some sense from WEJ's slightly dodgy canon - but I headcanon that Erich got the leg wound that gave him his (genuine) limp in the late stages of WWII; he has a slight fixation with it being some sort of karmic revenge for *waves hand* all that. Oh, and also Erich has a framed photo of Admiral Canaris on his bathroom wall. If you want more fic-specific gratuitous headcanons, check out my massive Erich/Algy AU (unfinished) which is just stuffed full of them.
Song I associate with them - does 'the whole of Winterreise' count? I am obsessed with Winterreise, I have headcanoned Erich into having an obsession with Winterreise, it is the most Extra music for the most Extra person. Today, let's go with Die Krähe:
Favorite picture of them - like all Biggles characters, Erich does not have a great deal of good official artwork for me to pick from. I think this picture from 'Follows On' is unquestionably his best in canon, but he doesn't look nearly as pretty in it as Biggles does:
(nicked with thanks from biggles.info)
Beyond that, there are some stunning bits of fanart out there, like this one from agarthanlaboratory; and there's also my ongoing Basil Rathbone facecasting agenda:
(Borrowed with thanks from the wonderful razzlebathrobe). You see the Vision? But yeah, basically if Erich von Stalhein isn't one of the most ostentatiously hot people you've ever seen, then is he even Erich von Stalhein?
Thanks very much for the ask! <3 Come hang out with us on the WEJverse discord sometime for more von Stalhein slander!
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