Well, the Green Man isn't exactly German...

Subject: Well, the Green Man isn't exactly German...
Author: wobblestheclown
Posted on: 2014-03-02 00:46:00 UTC

So much as he is a major figure of pre-Christian worship throughout Europe that got picked up on by New Age-ism and the Wicca revival in the '70s. He's a sort of benevolent earth-spirit thing, kinda like if Captain Planet was mixed with a slightly nicer Odin. He also has a counterpart called Jack-in-the-Green, who's got more than a few similarities to Loki's traditional role as a trickster and general baddie.

But you wanted to talk about the plant. Well, bearing in mind that the word limb is used and it speaks out loud, I'm more inclined to think it's one of the more benevolent Firstborn, possibly one that revolves around sapient pearwood considering the Discworld connection. We know that Flowers don't necessarily have to be World One flowers - the Bonsai Mallorn's proof of that - and the more comic edge to the dialogue would support it further, given how funny Discworld is.

Then again, it could've just been something that slipped through the editing process (the word englassesed, and I use the term "word" quite wrongly, is used in the Original Series at one point, though it escapes me as to where) and we're massively overthinking it. Meh. Overthinking trivial details is sort of what we do. =]

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What is the Greenman? by Outhra on 2014-03-01 20:19:00 UTC Reply

I was rereading some of the Original Series recently to refresh myself on a few things, and discovered something odd in the Discworld crossover mission. The story begins with Jay picking Acacia up from the lightsaber training course mentioned at the end of the Star Wars crossover two stories earlier, and the instructor there is a character that to my knowledge has never been shown or referenced anywhere else, referred to as the Greenman. I thought it was a Flower at first, since it oversees a specific Department-mandated function, namely weapons training and/or distribution of instructional material(presumably within the DO) and is described as having "fronds". Greenman would be a bit of a silly name for a plant, but a bit of research dug up three possible candidates, the most likely being Greenman's Desert Parsley.
However, it speaks out loud, rather than telepathically, and even in the Original Series, the Flowers' telepathy is represented by speaking in italics without quotation marks. That could be written off as Jay or Acacia having forgotten about that quirk if not for the fact that later description shows that it has a face and at least one limb. I did a little more research to try and figure out if this was the name of some species that I didn't know about, but I couldn't come up with anything. The closest I could find was a Germanic mythological creature referred to as the Green Man. There's a space between "Green" and "man", so it's not a perfect match, but that's not too much of a concern. The PPC's Greenman had its name uncapitalized one of the times it was mentioned, so it's possible that there were just a few typographical errors. Or, perhaps the source that Jay or Acacia found out about the original folklore from didn't use the space. This interpretation has another problem, though: the Green Man is a disembodied head with several plants growing from its face and out of its nose and mouth. It doesn't have any limbs, yet the Greenman in the TOS mission is said to have "pointed with a shaking limb towards the Box". It could have been a tree branch, I suppose, since those are occasionally referred to as "limbs", but that's not indicated, and if it did have branches, why would the word "frond" have been used earlier?

So, does anyone know what's going on here? Does anyone remember authorial intent for this character, or have a good guess regarding what species it might be? There could easily be some obscure canonical creature that I was never aware of that Jay and Acacia could be referencing, but I can't determine anything one way or the other with the information that I have.

And if nobody else has any idea what to make of this, does anyone have some suggestions of what we can do regarding the Greenman? Since the "instructor" and the "Greenman" are never explicitly identified as being the same, I suppose that if pressed, it could be retroactively established that there were two instructors, one being a Flower and another being some green-skinned alien, but the original material doesn't say anything to support that there was a second instructor present. It doesn't say anything against it, true, but that option still strikes me as problematic.

Well, the Green Man isn't exactly German... by wobblestheclown on 2014-03-02 00:46:00 UTC Reply

So much as he is a major figure of pre-Christian worship throughout Europe that got picked up on by New Age-ism and the Wicca revival in the '70s. He's a sort of benevolent earth-spirit thing, kinda like if Captain Planet was mixed with a slightly nicer Odin. He also has a counterpart called Jack-in-the-Green, who's got more than a few similarities to Loki's traditional role as a trickster and general baddie.

But you wanted to talk about the plant. Well, bearing in mind that the word limb is used and it speaks out loud, I'm more inclined to think it's one of the more benevolent Firstborn, possibly one that revolves around sapient pearwood considering the Discworld connection. We know that Flowers don't necessarily have to be World One flowers - the Bonsai Mallorn's proof of that - and the more comic edge to the dialogue would support it further, given how funny Discworld is.

Then again, it could've just been something that slipped through the editing process (the word englassesed, and I use the term "word" quite wrongly, is used in the Original Series at one point, though it escapes me as to where) and we're massively overthinking it. Meh. Overthinking trivial details is sort of what we do. =]

Re: Well, the Green Man isn't exactly German... by Outhra on 2014-03-02 01:45:00 UTC Reply

I found a number of places that supposedly were the initial propagators of the Green Man's mythology. I just lumped them all together into "Germanic" because I didn't want to go into a list of all of the disparate European locations it popped up in. I probably should have just said "European", in retrospect, but that seems terribly generic.
I didn't know about that Jack-in-the-Green bit, though. Was he part of the original folklore, or was he created during that 70's New Age-ism you mentioned?

The Firstborn don't speak out loud, though. The Sunflower Official, the Marquis de Sod, and the Big Thorn are all Firstborn, and the only time any one of them has spoken non-telepathically was one time when the Big Thorn was under the sway of an Agent-Sue who was so desperate to hear that she'd done well that she forgot how the Flowers worked.
Did sapient pearwood have a face? The Greenman definitely had a face, and since said face was described as both "jolly" and "twitching", I don't know that it can be attributed to part of a bloom or something. Also, it wasn't really that the Greenman was connected to Discworld. The mission contained in the story just went to Discworld. If anything, the Greenman might be connected to Star Wars, since it was apparently the go-to entity for supervising inexperienced lightsaber-wielders.

Isn't it... by Huinesoron on 2014-03-02 09:03:00 UTC Reply

... by way of images like this, quite obvious that the Greenman is the Green Man? And that, like Little Otik in the mailroom, he's just another one of the plant-themed higher-ups in HQ? Remember, the whole idea of the Firstborn is a post-J&A creation. The closest we get to an explanation for the Flowers is a statement somewhere - it may not be TOS, I can't find it in there - that the Flowers 'replaced all the human directors years ago'. Heck, the capitalised Flowers isn't common in TOS - they're Upstairs.

So no, I think it's pretty clear the Greenman is just the Green Man. He talks because he's a man with a face. He's in HQ because he's plant-themed. And he's the lightsaber instructor because, well, someone has to be.

hS

I'm not sure how that image proves anything. by Outhra on 2014-03-02 19:53:00 UTC Reply

I know what a Green Man looks like; I researched it before making that post, in part to check the character's background and in part to see whether it was part of a species rather than an individual. It wasn't, but that's only tangentially related to the affairs here, since recruiting duplicates of mythological figures isn't out of the question. I remember that July recruited a version of Asclepius for the Medical Department one time, so there's precedent for it. Maybe Montgomery Osbert or one of the other first-generation Agents could have found a Green Man in the early days due to a particularly confusing typo or poorly phrased simile. (By the way, that version of the Green Man that you linked didn't have limbs or fronds, so it couldn't be the Greenman.)

I don't think that anything is "obvious" with this little to go off of, though. Anything can be construed as "obvious" if someone makes logical jumps in the right places. We don't have a lot of description to work with here, so plenty of potential identities for the currently mysterious Greenman could seem obvious to different people. To you, that bronze man-faced bloom form of the Green Man is the clearest interpretation. To me, the mythological identity is still unlikely, especially if the supposed point of clarity for that explanation is that the Greenman would have been created as an extension of the "plant theme". It seems strange to me that the officials of the PPC would follow the pattern of "sunflower, lichen, processed wood, daisy, mythological representation of the spirit of the earth". The last entry just doesn't seem to match the pattern set by the first few. I'm not saying it's impossible; if I thought that, I wouldn't have put it up for consideration at all, but it's not a clear-cut solution.
Also, since the Greenman was never mentioned or fully described anywhere else, he is only being defined now, using the understanding of PPC continuity that is currently in use. Whatever we decide here would need to be compatible with that. I'm not trying to go against the original writing here, and any authorial intent that someone manages to dig up will trump anything else we decide, but I sincerely doubt we'll find any.

I wasn't the one who suggested that the Greenman might have been a Firstborn. While applying the term to him would explain his unusual identifier, should he happen to be a Flower, I'm fully aware that the Firstborn concept was your creation, enacted years after the departure of Jay and Acacia to explain why some Flowers have names while others do not. It wouldn't have been mentioned within the Original Series itself.

Actually, now that I think about it, the Greenman might not be part of Upstairs at all. The plants Upstairs were usually obeyed and minded by the Agents, albeit in a chiefly mocking and sardonic manner, while the Greenman's only appearance seems to characterize him as a put-upon instructor who was never taken seriously by his students and mostly wanted them out of his sight as soon as possible, which doesn't fit with the rest of the PPC officials we see in Jay and Acacia's missions. He could easily just be some guy assigned by what we would now call the Department of Operations to supervise processes like an Agent's first lightsaber training because, as you said, someone's got to do it. He could easily just be some plant-based alien who was named Greenman upon recruitment or mockingly given that name by his students.

Some points. by Huinesoron on 2014-03-02 22:08:00 UTC Reply

-The image I linked was to highlight that many depictions of the Green Man are 'jolly'. Not all, but most. The face-in-isolation is a fairly common find in European gardens (my parents have one, actually); the full, costumed figure appears in numerous village festivals. The word 'Man' fairly clearly indicates that he has limbs, rather than just being a stylised face, neh?

-You describe Little Otik as 'processed wood' - that's a very new interpretation (Phobos', I think). Your list should actually read: 'sunflower, lichen, mythological character from Czech folklore, daisy drawn by one of Jay's friends, mythological character from German folklore'. See why he fits the list now?

Jay and Acacia weren't building a comprehensive mythology - they were putting in random references to whatever seemed funny. I think it's virtually undisputable that the 'Greenman' is the Green Man - possibly by way of cross-contamination with the jolly green giant.

What you feel like making him in the shared universe, since authorial intent is not more important than what actually gets written, is up to you - or whoever feels like using him.

hS

Otik by Phobos on 2014-03-03 15:43:00 UTC Reply

Not my interpretation, actually. I got my information from the wiki. Looking into it, this appears to be Rodtheanimegod4ever's interpretation from back in 2009. He created the wiki page with the description of Otik as a plank of wood.

Having looked it over in TOS, the description (cobbled together from various paragraphs) runs thusly: A seven-foot piece of wood with two wooded tentacles and three coats of industrial varnish. So, you can see where Robtheanimegod4ever might have gotten his view of the character.

-Phobos

Sort of, I guess. by Huinesoron on 2014-03-03 16:44:00 UTC Reply

Though the two tentacles are never said to be the only two tentacles - and I definitely read this section:

On further inspection, it was just a piece of wood. Only the egotistical and paranoid subconscious would turn it into a face.

As being more suggestive of a tree that looks like a face than a plank. It does 'huddle', which is not the act of a rigid plank.

Still, like I said, actual text trumps authorial intent. Maybe he went on a slimming program that was better than he bargained for.

hS

Trees don't exactly huddle either. (nm) by Outhra on 2014-03-03 19:10:00 UTC Reply

But they can look like it. by Huinesoron on 2014-03-04 15:46:00 UTC Reply

And Little Otik (I'm not going to link again, the pictures creep me out) is an animate tree-type creature. Given that Ents are able to be hunched over, I reckon that counts.

Or, to put it another way: trees are defined by their overall shape, their branches and leaves, their bark, etc etc. Planks are defined by being rigid cuboids significantly longer in one axis than the other two. A tree which bends in the wind is a charming sight (unless it's a eucalyptus too close to your house); a plank which bends in the wind is a construction disaster in progress.

hS

I see your points by Phobos on 2014-03-03 17:27:00 UTC Reply

I guess, to me, "piece of wood" suggests part of a tree, rather than the whole tree. But that may just be a reflection of my carpentry background.

-Phobos

Re: Some points. by Outhra on 2014-03-03 04:16:00 UTC Reply

Referring to something in folklore with a variant on "man" usually means more that the creature in question looks more human-like than beast-like, not necessarily that it has a fully humanoid body, but if there is a version of the Green Man that has actual arms and/or legs, I suppose it's a distinct possibility, since that would fill out all of the in-text requirements.
I'm looking at the original archived list of all of the Departments and Heads Jay and Acacia created, and while Otik is the only one who is a PPC official named after a mythological character instead of being named for and based on a plant species(or a plant/fungus composite in the Lichen's case), he's also the only one listed under "support staff", so that may start a different pattern, and the Greenman is definitely support staff far more then he is anything else. I'm grasping at straws here to find a connection, though, and that worries me a little.

You're right; written work would supersede authorial intent. I was just saying that authorial intent would supersede outside supposition, and even though this is a shared universe, anything we say on the Board is only educated guessing from a continuity standpoint until someone writes it down in a canonical context, in which case those transcribed ideas would become written work. I wasn't intending to imply otherwise.

Mostly, though, I was just wanting some new information and/or some fun suggestions for the Greenman's identity when I started this thread. I guess I'm just not satisfied with saying it's definitely the Green Man, because if I was, I'd have accepted that as the truth-until-proven-otherwise when I first found out what a Green Man was and moved on. I will if it's the best option, but it doesn't seem to be the most fun that way, and I think this thread's descent into the two of us growing attached to small points supporting or denying one side or the other might be driving away people who could otherwise offer ideas, and I don't want that. That's not what the PPC is about.

Occam's Razor suggests... by Neshomeh on 2014-03-03 17:01:00 UTC Reply

That if we see a man-shaped, leafy entity called a Greenman, it's probably a Greenman (or Green Man), not ~~a zebra~~ some other, more exotic thing. Jay and Acacia didn't appear to think it needed much of an explanation, so the obvious answer is most likely the correct one.

The closest I can come to an alternative explanation is the Greenwitch from the book by the same name in the Dark Is Rising series. The Greenwitch is... pretty much the same thing as a Green Man: a human-shaped construct of branches and leaves, in this case made to be thrown into the ocean in a ritual to ensure a bountiful harvest. Her name is even spelled as one word, like the Greenman in TOS, and I think she has a degree of sentience due to Wild Magic or something; I'm not really sure. It's been ages since I read those books.

I'm not personally interested in making the Greenman's identity more complicated than it needs to be, though. Not everything needs volumes of explanation, especially if it's only come up the once in over ten years. If someone wants to write about lightsaber instruction and bring the guy back, that's awesome, but otherwise I'm fine with him just being a guy Jay and Acacia met once and didn't really get along with. *shrug*

~Neshomeh

Did you see my post a few items down? (nm) by son_of_heaven176 on 2014-03-03 19:32:00 UTC Reply

Yup. by Neshomeh on 2014-03-03 21:06:00 UTC Reply

Sorry, I forgot about it because of Phobos' birthday. You may note that we were at a museum all day yesterday. {= )

~Neshomeh

... by Huinesoron on 2014-03-03 17:04:00 UTC Reply

...

...

...

... can...

...

... can I...

...

...

... can I please be the one to write a PPC AU where the Greenwitch and the singing Green Knight Man are agents and go on a mission together? Because that would be so cool.

And also probably unwritable. Sad face.

hS

What makes it unwritable? by Outhra on 2014-03-03 19:57:00 UTC Reply

That sounds like fun! I don't know anything about the Greenwitch, though, so I probably couldn't write it myself.

Hmm, but how AU would it be? Would it just be similar to the standard PPC, except more plant-people Agents are there, or an inversion in which the Agents are mostly plant-people and the Heads are meat creatures of some sort, or some third possibility, maybe involving robots? I like the second, but making the Heads just humans would be boring.
Ooh, maybe in that universe, instead of having plants coming to life and gaining psychic powers and sapience through radiation, it would be non-sapient sea creatures that became telepathic and intelligent! Then again, that may be a bit too silly, but my first thought of what the Head of the DMS could be in the plant-people AU was an amphibious giant squid(since, you know, plant-people being led by non-anthropomorphic plants would be a little too obvious), and I am about 60% sure that it is not a stupid idea. The other 40% is saying that it's so stupid that I shouldn't even click the Post Reply button and show it to the world, but too late! There it goes!

Several things: by Huinesoron on 2014-03-04 10:48:00 UTC Reply

-The Greenwitch, physically, is a bundle of twigs vaguely shaped like a woman. Rather tricky to bring her to HQ.

-The Greenwitch is arguably a canon character. I say arguably, because I think she's technically a new person each year. Still, recruiting a canon character is why it's probably AU.

-I don't have access to Greenwitch at the moment, which is why it would be very hard to write, even if I could solve problem 1 without just turning her into a generic character.

-It is, I think, implied that the Greenwitch gains both her sentience and power from Tethys, goddess of the ocean. If this is true, then removing her from the ocean might well revert her to a mess of sticks.

-Finally, the Wild Magic is... well, wild. Neither light nor dark. In D&D terms, the Greenwitch would be very much Chaotic Neutral. She almost brings ruin on the whole world because she doesn't want to give up her treasure. I'm not sure she could handle a standard PPC mission - particularly not if something catches her eye to steal.

-And the Green Knight Man sings all the time. Leaving aside the fact that songs have power in some worlds - do you know how annoying that might be?

(Possible solution to some of those: if the Green Man is part of the Wild Magic, he - and his song - might be enough to allow the Greenwitch to maintain herself. Provided he doesn't stop singing for too long, of course...)

(Also, this leads to a pair of Wild shapeshifters working together in the PPC. Like I said, it may be unwritable)

hS

A humorous aside. by Huinesoron on 2014-03-03 10:01:00 UTC Reply

Heather Dale has a song called 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', which takes the Arthurian legend (which is told in a poem once translated by J.R.R. Tolkien!) and turns the Green Knight into the Green Man - which means that (that version of) the Green Man was noted for his skills with the axe. Are we allowed to recruit people from songs? And if so, should we imagine that he usually sings his training? ;)

Hold your head up high
And stretch your arms out straight
I know the sword is heavy but
You must support the weight!
If you let your guard go down
The Sues will take your life
So swing that blade with gusto
Or I'll make--you--use... a butter knife!

hS