#that every character has to revolve entirely around their identity as it relates to society. because that's not fair for marginalized peopl

[kithj]

agree with all of your points here, but in response to anon... why does genderlocking a character mean that character's story then has to be about their gender? why does every female character have to have her story revolve around the oppression and misogyny she's faced within society? why do genderlocked trans characters only get to exist if we get to dissect their relationship with gender rather than just letting them... exist?

obviously, if you've read my work then you know i enjoy writing and reading about these things myself, but i really raise my eyebrow at anon's implication that certain people can only be in a story so long as it directly relates to their identity, or else it's "gender-neutral." men and women and nonbinary people are allowed to be included in any story in any genre, and their inclusion in that story shouldn't be limited to just their identity, and their identity also shouldn't be discarded when it's not. this goes doubly so for characters of color-- there are a lot of bipoc authors that voice this exact concern due to publishing limiting their work and only allowing them to tell stories that revolve entirely around their identity and the struggles they face because of it, versus white authors who have free reign to write about whatever they want.

limiting ourselves to only depicting certain people in this way is the opposite of what we should be advocating for. yes, everyone should always do research when it comes to writing a character outside of their own experience & you as the author should be aware of the way that character's identity may impact their relationship to the narrative you want to write, but reducing them to nothing more than that in the text can be just as harmful as ignoring it completely.

sometimes you do choose a character to be a certain way because you want to explore something in the narrative with them-- i did this with all of my characters in Blood Choke. but other times genderlocking happens just because it's what feels right! while there are some moments where gender is touched on in The Northern Passage, that is not the focus of the story (or the characters) at all. but i can't imagine depicting Clem, Merry, or Noel any other way. and sure, allowing gender selection may expand your audience, but for me, personally, i don't write solely to appease the largest audience. i write the things i want to write, and i like genderlocking for all of the reasons Harris listed and more. and to be clear, i also like the gender-selection mechanic! that's why Lea is still selectable; just like with the others, i can't imagine depicting them any other way. and Lea has just as much of a complex relationship with their gender as the other 3 characters-- they are not "gender-neutral."

i just really push back against the idea that player choice hinges entirely on whether or not a player can choose the genders of the other characters. like Harris said that is not the only thing of value in these kinds of stories, and there are so many other ways to approach interactive fiction than just romance/romance options, and i think it's a shame more people don't give certain IFs a chance because of something as silly as genderlocking.

Look, about the gender-locked thing, it's a nice idea. If you do something with it.

If you lock a certain character to a given gender, you can tell a story that relates to that gender. You can talk about and explore what gender is and how it affects the lives of people in your universe, what social roles are expected of them, how they relate to their bodies, how other people see them and how it affects the way they feel.

But, being honest, that's not your wheelhouse. You write gender-neutral stories, in which it might be acknowledged, but it doesn't influence the lives of your characters at all. You can write a gender-neutral story with gender-locked characters, certainly, the fact that not every single character of your previous games was gender-selectable is proof of that, but why would you? What there is to be gained, in narrative terms, with such a decision? It's more trouble than it's worth, given the climate of our community overall, where choice is valued immensely.

Now, if you want to try something new, if you want to write something completely different, then go ahead. Seize the opportunity. Just beware it's more complex than it first appears.

Mm, I don't think I agree that it's "more trouble than it's worth", or that NPC-gender choices are the main/only aspect of the value of player choice, but I think I understand what you're saying.

I'm not sure if "what is there to be gained" is rhetorical but if not here are some examples:

-it's easier to write specificity about characters' genders (whether it's solely acknowledging, or also influencing characters' lives) if it's not branched three ways

-eg it's easier to write two people of the same gender talking about some shared/differing experiences when it's set rather than it being a single section of a much wider set of branches

-I'd enjoy including romanceable characters who are canonically nonbinary rather than them being only that way under some circumstances (the last time I did this - or having all non-selectable romances - was in Blood Money, which was a long time ago now)

-it's easier to subvert or lean into various gender expectations and such when there's a single thread to write

-a lot of players have said they feel a fixed character is clearer in their mind; I don't always find this myself (and can find fixed characters also feel unclear, depending how they're written) but I've seen it said a lot

I am pleased with some of the specificity I put into Honor Bound (mostly for trans and nonbinary PCs and NPCs) so I do feel confident that I can do that side of things with selectable characters.

In general I think there are pros to both approaches, so it's interesting to think about.

(this ask is referring to these posts!)

[pochapal]

about rendering oneself in a most symbolic manner (immediately): do you think it's significant that Shannon and Eva's golden eagles go without comment, as contrasted with Natsuhi's notable absence of one on her clothes? Or in the other direction, that Beatrice's blonde hair and western appearance are pointed out by the Ushiromiyas, as is the westernisation of their own names (at great length) while Jessica's blonde hair isn't brought up? Do you think this is a case of dissonance to suggest selective normalisation - the Kinzopium not having been fully inhaled, if you will, however internalised among the adults and George's mask - or is it possible that character design elements may be extradiagetic, EG, Jessica's blonde hair as symbol of her arranged headship-to-come? Or is there no functional difference between these, from a reader experiential point of view?

the visual presentation of umineko is something i've been thinking about on and off without much of a solid conclusion yet other than "I think something is happening here". i have been told that there's sometimes a discrepancy in intent/meaning between the actual text of the story and the sprites/cgs but i also don't necessarily trust that the people that told me that have been entirely reliable with their information.

i think there are a few options with the presentation of characters here depending on whether or not what's happening is literal or symbolic. in the case of eva she is the only person to directly mention the "honor of wearing the one winged eagle" which can be taken to mean that for eva this status symbol holds more weight than it would necessarily the other members of the family - having it tattooed on her skin is a useful visual shorthand for this level of devotion, but it also is something that eva as a person could believably do (aside: if eva does have a literal eagle tattooed on her there's a lot of interesting questions re: gender politics. the image of a tattooed women in 1980s higher society japan runs counter to common misogynist convention of how women in that sphere were expected to be presented which could relate to eva's troubled relationship with the ushiromiya heir/beatrice identity dichotomy i was thinking about earlier).

similarly it's interesting that in shannon's case the tattoo is only "revealed" to the reader via extradiegetic means - we only see her thigh insignia through the full body sprites in the character index and nowhere else, and the only mentions of servants wearing the eagle are contained within the unreliable narration and never outright discussed by anyone iirc. there's something to this i think to do with the nature of shame and secrecy - whatever the thigh imprint means to shannon is something concealed from all other material individuals in her vicinity and the scrutiny of such is to unveil something possibly indecent (the inner thigh behind a slit in the skirt is an incredibly conspicuous placement choice).

i think in both cases whether or not the eagles are literally there possibly comes secondary to the fact that the symbolic associations of these eagle placements (eva's counter-patriarchal desire and shannon's concealed veiled shame of being a possession of the ushiromiya cycle of violence) are readily apparent enough in other expressions of these characters. eva fights with every breath to become as valued as a first son and shannon's every move revolves around whatever elephant in the room has kept her chained in servitude to kinzo since infancy - for shannon in particular there are numerous concerning connotations surrounding the notion of sexual agency. it's all very much a map vs territory question here i think.

switching tracks to think about jessica, her appearance likely follows a similar logic to the previous two examples. jessica's role in the family is not that of the ushiromiya successor, but actually that of being the sexual incubator for the ushiromiya successor, as hinted by jessica herself and as outlined in kumasawa's regaling of natsuhi's own abuses and suffering. under this framework jessica's blonde hair then becomes a signifier of her destined transformation into the next generation's beatrice. this would also track with krauss himself having lighter hair than the rest of the family - position to blondeness = position to inherited power. however, if you go more down the track that there's just a blonde gene in the ushiromiya family then i think this discussion becomes more explicitly racialized: jessica despite having the hair and the social position is still explicity japanese and thus will always be an incongruent mirror to beatrice's manifestation of whiteness.

i guess then this could be used as a wedge reading into kinzo's own fascism and his hatred towards his family coming from the fact that the one thing they can never emulate no matter what they do to themselves and others is whiteness - they can affect the western "style" but they cannot be western. there's deeper stuff here as well with the conflation of beatrice's violence with whiteness and the inherent wealth/power she represents (could there be concealed political metaphors in the beatrice myth internalized by those on rokkenjima? something to think about more some other time) as a deliberate surrender into western dominion, and under this reading jessica (and krauss to an extent) represent that proximity to western/whiteness is no substitution for actually being western/white when push comes to shove. in this case jessica can be as blonde as she likes, but this visual signifer is ultimately worthless in the eyes of those who surround her compared to that which beatrice represents.

to the reader all this stuff is on an equal footing as everything in umineko is consciously crafted with conscious meanings you are meant to figure out and understand be that material or symbolic content, but in the case of some of these visual signifiers i do think there's merit to the possibility that they literally exist within the text too. that said, if there is a dissonance between the two despite the thematic congruity, it's worth asking whether or not this is for the benefit of the literal audience of the visual novel or the hypothetical audience of the metafiction - this is something i can't answer in any meaningful or useful capacity until whatever is happening with umineko in this department comes into better focus.

[applestorms]

questions of pacing aside, i actually think the progression from one set of kids to the next in homestuck is quite good, and also at least in part explains why the comic shifts so heavily into the more blood-based relationship/character dynamic focus in Act 6 and onward, as opposed to the more breath-based plot emphasis that was more present in the first half.

the most basic way you can see this is in how the characters age over the course of the story, actually. you start off with the beta kids--13 years old, four humans, related by blood even if not explicitly stated from the start--who generally stick to the plot and keep away from the relationship drama. john doesn't seem particularly interested in romance other than through celebrity crushes and as a plot point in his movies, rose is (presumably) confident in her lesbianism and doesn't converse w/ jade enough in-canon to push much of a dynamic there. dave is the main one that very obviously (and, imo, cutely. d'aww) has a crush on all of his friends, but his latent internalized homophobia (and the uncomfortably Freudian implications of the Other One) means that jade is the only real candidate he can pursue. jade herself ends up being into the idea too, so there ends up not being much of a struggle anyways, at least at the beginning.

the trolls are also 13 years/6 sweeps old, but notably they're coming from an entirely different social context, one that pushes the necessity of relationships much more strongly (note the underlying "fuck or die" implications of the imperial drones). there's also 12 of them, meaning a lot more potential options for romance, not to mention the 4 quadrants for pursuing it in the first place. fitting, then, that the introduction of the leader-ly blood player adds more romantic drama to the story.

karkat bitches about his fears of troll/human sloppy makeouts enough that the story was destined to devolve into some degree of that at some point, but the rapidly rising number of troll/human interactions in A5A2 in general was bound to add to the already present interpersonal drama that drove a lot of A5A1. even looking past the burgeoning powerhouse that is rosemary at this point in the story, terezi, dave, & karkat have enough drama amongst themselves to power a fucking rocket, and that's before you add people like vriska, jade, & john into the mix.

so by the time you get to the alphas it really doesn't surprise me that so much of the plot of their early pages revolves around The Jakestakes and it's corresponding drama. the kids are also 15 going on 16 and a lot more explicitly horny by this point (bound to happen w/ the smuppets & blue women, roxy's overwhelming Thirst aside), pushed to new levels by the similarly new levels of isolation almost every character is surrounded by. the kids want interpersonal connection, and it seems natural to me considering the (human) Society they're coming from that they would default to romance at this age, REGARDLESS of whether or not they are actually interested in it. (i see you, aromantic jake headcanons.)

the same thing happens with the dancestors, actually, who are probably the most explicitly horny set of characters in the comic iirc? or at the very least, the ones who have the most canon basis for that kind of relationship history, even considering how little they show up in general. i see this as a combination of both being around 19 years/9 sweeps old and being stuck in the dream bubbles, honestly. what else is there to do but delve into a bunch of nuanced relationship drama and awkward post-death situationships, really? (unless you're cronus, of course.)

but anyways, alongside the age difference resulting in more relationship drama, there's another thing the progression lends itself to: identity crises!

this is maybe less clear in the dancestors, but it's definitely clear for the first three groups. where the beta kids all have fairly distinct, natural identities revolving around their interests (maybe more strongly stated in the case of dave & rose, fitting considering their level of maturity in comparison to the prospit kids), a lot more of the trolls are concerned with the Image they project out into the world. take rose's pre-grimdark interest in the occult & psychoanalysis, fairly genuine interests i think that do shape her identity into something fairly distinct, in comparison to the fucking Lifestyle Choices of vriska & terezi with their respective mindfang & redglare roleplay. not all the trolls are that level of dedicated so they make for a smoother transition from the betas, but there's definitely a lot stronger of a theme of personal reflection & identity within the trolls, especially in how they view/treat their ancestors.

the alpha kids take this to another level, which again i think is fitting considering their age. the alphas are a bunch of fucking liars, yes, but the key thing to note here is that when they lie to themselves, it's probably just cause they don't really know who they are yet? like, dirk is certainly Aware of some core, unchangeable parts of himself, yes-- but none of these kids have really gotten the chance to figure out who they are yet. when roxy talks about being a sick haxxor bitch, or dirk about being a multitasking, hyper-competent puppet master, or jake about being A Goddamn Adventurer-- they're playing with costumes. they're rp-ing, and trying to figure out who they actually are in the process, what parts they're willing to show the world and what parts they're more inclined to hide. even jane (or perhaps especially jane?) is just fitting herself into the role she's been placed under since childhood.

this is one idea i think the epilogues/post-canon content really missed in its interpretation of the alphas. these kids aren't uniquely terrible, their relationship drama is not world ending (despite how it may feel. looking at you A6A5A1x2), they are not harboring some exclusive seed of evil deep within them. i honestly think that if you had chucked the john/vriska/terezi/karkat/dave/jade love hexagon from hell into a different context it would look no different to the alphas' English Sweepstakes.

which kinda leads to my final point, actually: the third thread. miscommunication.

communication gets more and more obtuse the further along in the story you go. i feel like i've mentioned this before, but hussie really starts taking advantage of the medium of pesterlogs the further in you get w/ the whole concept of Biased Narrators (also see: doc scratch, homosuck), which is part of the reason why i think the story gets more and more misread the further into it you get as people skim more and pay the price even harder.

prospit/derse differences about directly vs. indirectly saying what you mean aside, the kids get more and more cagey as the story progresses. this development is actually the clearest imo when you look at how it goes from the beta kids (friends talking to friends) -> trolls (online strangers, ready to fuck w/ you but ultimately sympathetic in their own right) -> doc scratch (literally just an internet predator). as who you're talking to online increases in potential danger, so too must the required level of Fuckery.

caliborn might be a little shit w/ some violent tendencies & questionable taste in art when he's talking to the alphas (in particular, dirk & jake), but he's also the future (V)illain of The Comic and shouldn't be taken too lightly. at the very least, the power that he and calliope both have over the story as a whole is nothing to scoff at.

as much as it doesn't feel like it at first, the alphas take a lot of the themes previously established surrounding the more personal/emotional/relationship-oriented aspects of the beta kids & trolls and crank it up to 11. everything just feels so much more intense, even if the game mechanics and plot shit is dialed down significantly in turn. it's no wonder A6A5A2 (the tricksters) and A6A5A1x2 (the conversation on the quest beds) play out the way they do-- i mean, those two acts alone basically sum up the Entire dynamic of the alphas & all of their interpersonal problems in one big dramatic swoop. more lonely, more longing, more confused about who they are and who they love and who they want to be. the alphas got it all.

[readitreviewit]

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[sevens-evan]

☕ + bleach

oh my god. ohhhh my god. i have so much to say and while i will not be copy pasting my unhinged rant from google docs about this. here are some bullet points

1. the narrative post soul society arc is utterly meaningless. totally devoid of weight or themes. the first 60 episodes of the show are a really interesting dissection of ideas of honor and justice and responsibility, mostly through ichigo and rukia as vehicles and their relationship to each other, i.e. the self-perception they both have going into the beginning of the story and how they force each other to change their minds, identities, worldviews, but this theme also comes out in other characters. all of the protagonists except orihime as far as i can tell and most of the antagonists have very clear senses of justice that are tied to their personal sense of honor. sado is a pacifist (ish) and has a strong sense of pride and honor relating to his heritage and his skin. ishida has the quincy legacy. ichigo has his self-perception as the protector of his family (this grows and changes) and rukia has her belief in soul society's righteousness which is tied to her guilt and also changes by the end of the soul society arc. and of course basically every shinigami we see has some weird fucked up ideas about identity and emotion and justice. the entire show revolves around these ideas for 60 really good episodes and then the rest of the show features the same characters, no longer developing in any internal way, getting stronger on a mostly meaningless power scale and hitting things. it's so fucking sad. it drives me insane.

okay that wasn't a bullet point. oops.

my other big thing would be orihime. i really do not want to hate orihime, because she doesn't actually do anything wrong, she's fine, but she's just. a terribly written character. she isn't given any depth or an internal life of her own. her personality traits are like 1) quirky 2) nice 3) orphan and 4) loves ichigo. it's why the hueco mundo arc drives me insane. soul society arc worked because yeah, it was A Guy Saves A Girl which is often a terrible and misogynistic storyline, but rukia was given so much care and depth before we ever got to that point that it works. rukia feeling like she needs to submit to her own execution is a complex and interesting thing that gets developed, explained. the storyline isn't "guy is strong, girl is weak and lacking autonomy and needs to be saved" (which is generally why plotlines like this don't work), it's a story about why rukia feels like she has to give up that autonomy and how ichigo changes her mind and helps her reclaim it. hueco mundo has none of that. orihime has none of the development or depth that sets rukia apart. the storyline really is just "weak woman needs man to save her". it's garbage.

it's hard because knowing that the reason orihime irritates me is because the writing is misogynistic doesn't actually make me less irritated. i'd honestly be really interested to read fic from someone who likes her and gives her a real character arc of her own; i want to be able to appreciate her as a character, it's just never going to happen in the canon version of the story because she's barely a character to begin with. she only exists to give ichigo a love interest and someone to save.

[oquinn53]

BNHA THEORY RAMBLING WITH SPOILERS

Okay so second bnha rambling with theories because I can’t think straight so I think of bnha! Specifically Deku.

Specifically, Deku’s endgame. There are so many theories out there and I just.... think about Deku specifically a lot. I mean he’s the protagonist and everything and I love him and a common theory that I actually do kinda think about a lot is Deku losing OFA. But I don’t think he’ll end quirkless. I think a lot of things need to happen but let’s start with me rambling about Deku’s characterization, how it can all be wrapped up in this:

Deku has PTSD. (This part is LONG and talks about masochism and mentions suicide and all that. Other points are shorter!) And I don’t mean post war arc or even post Bakugo’s kidnapping, if we want to go that far back. Deku has PTSD from the VERY start. This kid is a walking mental illness. Sources? Hi, I’m a Civilian With PTSD and I saw Deku at the beginning and I watched Deku’s horrible mental health deteriorate EVEN MORE than it started off as. This is really important to me, to state that he has it from the beginning, because I believe in the character growth and development. I might be talking out my ass but it’s fun so. Why do I say he starts out from it? Let’s look at symptoms.

A) hyperfixation, my old friend. Deku fixated hardcore on All Might and Heros in general. But he fixated specifically on All Might and he gets EMBARRASSED about it a lot. (Funny enough, the embarrassment of it is also a symptom of ADHD but I’m not as well versed in that). Hyperfixation is a very very common coping method.

B) His anxiety. Kinda self explanatory here. He’s a bully victim. He also has been literally classified as LESS. Quirkless. But also defenseless. Useless. We’ve heard that, his anxiety is there but it’s because of what DEFINES him. His self identity was born from what everyone else tells him. He’s a determined boy, but his sense of self is only wrapped up in what other people think—or specifically, what All Might thinks. Which blends a bit with...

C) A loss sense of identity. I talked about this a little bit he last part but Deku’s goal to become a hero is so tied to All Might that even when he gains the quirk, he has to have it beaten into him with warning of losing the use f his arms for him to realize he’s NOT All Might. But that’s still what he sees, even when he switches to using his legs more. He has no idea who he is. He just copies. He copies Bakugo’s moves again and again. And while it’s cool to see all the parallels and growth of Deku learning from others, there is a message of “making it his own” when Deku copies others again and again because he has no idea who HE is. He analyses like crazy because figuring out how other people do things is the only way he can figure out how HE can do things. Also, the whole language change because his image of victory is Bakugo? Literally his speech pattern isn’t his own, his every day one matching his mother’s.

D) repressed and heavily released emotion. He’s 0 or 100, both when he gets OFA and with his emotions. I mean. Feral!Deku. Do I need to say more? Yes, because I was to drive home how not okay Deku is from the very beginning. Boy cleans the beach and screams bloody murder. He has no idea what emotion to have and needs to let it out. Doesn’t matter he just did a shit ton of physical release, he has so much emotions that he doesn’t know what to do with. Just like Bakugo’s anger, Deku’s emotion usually comes out as his tears. Boy cries a lot but sometimes tears aren’t enough and Deku screams a LOT. Even his own excitement bursts out in bigger ways, with his mumbling and fact dropping (god, also slightly autistic coded maybe? Blurred lines with ADHD there, it again, not my area of expertise)

E) black and white thinking. He’s young, so that explains some of this but just like I mentioned above with the 0 or 100, he represents the mindset of civilians. He literally blinds himself at the very start to even what’s happening to HIMSELF. He sees hero and he sees villian and those are his two categories. Bakugo literally tells him to kill himself and Deku thinks about how that would negatively affect Bakugo. He doesn’t and never does see Bakugo as a villian for this. He sees “wow that wouldn’t be good for his Hero image” and because Deku sees Bakugo as a hero, everything has to fit into that. And while Deku has huge growth with this next part, he also originally viewed villains as just villains. He learned a LOT and while the society’s image becomes less black and white for him (because the whole manga revolves around the gray morality of it all) he still doesn’t see much gray area. It’s win or lose. With the sports festival, he literally won the race without his quirk. He got through the Calvary battle despite being a giant ass target. He placed in the top 8 (which he probably would have gotten higher on if his goal didn’t change) and despite accomplishing his goal with Todoroki, he broke down about not doing what All Might asked him despite gaining permanent scarring and a hell of a warning re his arms. But to point back at the beginning, this is reinforced with his entrance exam. Passing the written exam meant NOTHING because he did “””nothing””” in the practical.

F) last point, Deku’s a masochist. Obviously with the broken bones and things but I’m not even just talking about the physical damage he does to himself—which is, what, 95% of the time what he gets most of his wounds from? Anyway—I’m talking about his mindset. Masochism isn’t just the physical act of causing pain. It’s that mindset of deserving pain. The reasoning doesn’t matter. Deku only “betters” himself for the sake of giving more to others. He trains so hard, not for himself, but for others. On the outside it might seems like his goal of becoming a hero is his own but he sacrifices his body and dives into situations where he’s literally been warned he’s going to die and he just does it anyway. Eri’s Arc and him “changing the future” is what I’m referring to here and you could say “well he DID say he would change that future!” And okay, sure, but he was told Sir is never wrong. But he would rather rush into that future where he dies than take even a moment to think through his actions. But anyway, my point is him at the beginning so I specifically mean the training montage. Where he was ALREADY on a tough schedule that he knew would be difficult and he literally adjusted it and added MORE. Because, to circle back to other points because mental illness always overlaps points, he can only think of himself as 0 or 100, black and white, Able To Save or Failure. If he can’t be at 100 then he believes he deserves pain and causes it to himself. The only time he regrets his injuries is when it prevents him from giving MORE of himself to others. He learns his shoot style not because he doesn’t want to hurt himself but because he doesn’t want to become useless to others. He trains and loses sleep and puts his body through hell because he thinks of himself only as something for others. (I think wanting to save Shigaraki is a powerful moment not because it’s Pure Boy Deku but because it’a his own thinking, his OWN want, but.... it’s still not for him and will still cause him pain). And a last point on this, Heros Rising showed us that Deku is willing to give up his quirk and his dream to win and it showed us that while he believed he didn’t have any other choice, he was deeply disappointed in himself. Winning wasn’t enough. Hurting himself THAT MUCH wasn’t enough. He let All Migjt down and giving up his dreams, almost dying, becoming quirkless, all wasn’t enough to counteract the shame he held. Like god. Baby.

Other small observations or relevant commentary:

1) The doctor who told Deku he was quirkless is the same doctor who worked on Shigaraki. Same doctor who can perseve dead bodies. Same doctor who worked with AFO and all that. (See? Short! Will be relevant soon)

2) One for All is tied to All for One. OFA was literally created the moment a hand reached out to help. Can one even exist without the other?

3) Bakugo needs to apologize. Horikoshi has literally said in an interview post Heros Rising that Bakugo needs to apologize. Sacrificing his life to save Deku is NOT how you apologize to Deku. Deku will ask for a receipt on this type of apology. Return to sender. Unacceptable. So. Bakugo needs to apologize.

4) Deku’s dad isn’t in the picture yet. Hasn’t even been spoken of except for the fact we know his quirk is fire breathing and his name is Hisashi. Oh and he’s abroad. Oh and Horikoshi said he’ll be in the picture at some point. Given we’re in the final arc......... this might not be relevant at all to my theory because I have mixed thoughts on AFO being Deku’s dad but it would connect a few things in the theory.

SO. Finally, all of this together had me thinking about Deku’s characterization and what this (now with COMBAT related ptsd and not just civilian ptsd) means for his ending.

Like I said, I think he’s going to lose OFA. And I originally didn’t think so because Heros Rising showed his losing it and why would they do that again? The movie is canon. Horikoshi himself said so and was a huge part of the production of it. So they did that and wouldn’t do it again. Except.... Deku GAVE OFA away. Which is significant because it was his choice. And he had shame and we witnessed how much that hurt him, but we haven’t seen what’s now been tried TWICE: OFA being forcibly taken from him. Maybe by Shigaraki, since that is building up big time. But maybe by saving Shigaraki.

Either way, what’s more significant to me than how he has it taken is what that means for him, based on everything else above: he would lose his entire self identity. He would literally have no idea who he is anymore except for the only reference he’s ever had, which his from when he was quirkless. He gained friends only after he had a quirk. Every bond he has is tied to him being a hero and he was told it was impossible for him to be a hero without a quirk. Even All Might’s adjusted answer to him at the beginning involved giving him a quirk as the answer for him being able to become a hero.

I think this is the absolute perfect chance for Bakugo to say “since when did you need a quirk to be a hero”. And it doesn’t matter much what the context is, what causes Deku to still need to be a hero (whether a Situation or just an identity crisis) and I think about Quirkless Deku as a hero a lot, since that’s how he was originally written in the one shot before he was revamped for bnha.

But I don’t think Deku will end quirkless either because of who his doctor was. I think Deku had a quirk. I think the doctor stole it. Whether that’s because AFO is Deku’s dad and saw his quirk and knew he had to take it for some reason or whether it was independent and the doctor saw it and took it. The whole toe thing can be written off so easily that Deku could easily have had a quirk at some point.

And maybe, if AFO and OFA are cancelled out, the quirks that were stolen go back to their original owners. Meaning Deku gets his ORIGINAL quirk back.

As in, Deku gets his own identity.

And what would that quirk be? Hm. I don’t know. But. His mom can move small objects. His dad can breath fire. A mutation, maybe? I’ll leave that one up in the air.

And there are a lot of implications here that this could mean for him, as far as healing. And I just want him to be happy.

[oumakokichi]

Welcome back!!! I’m not sure if you’re taking any requests regarding analyses/meta, but if you’re looking for any ideas/when you have the time, do you mind doing a character analysis on Shuichi Saihara? I understand that he’s the main character but there is a lack of analyses about him. Although there are few, most explore his role as a protagonist/relationships with the others rather than digging deep into his character/personality. I just feel like there is more to him.

Hi anon, thank you so much! I’d be happy to write a character analysis for Saihara. I’m pretty sure I wrote some pieces specifically about his character back in the day, but those are all pretty old by now, and there’s definitely so much to talk about with his character.

Obviously discussing Saihara in-depth will cover spoilers for the entire game, so be careful when reading!

It’s interesting that you bring up the fact that Saihara tends to lack more character analyses, because I feel like this is kind of the result of a few different factors. First of all, there’s the fact that he was never originally advertised as the game’s protagonist. I know that the bait-and-switch with Kaede left many people conflicted; even years later, I see a lot of people saying that while they like Saihara a lot, they would’ve preferred for Kaede to live, or that they still don’t know quite how to feel about his role as a protagonist as a result.

Combine that with the fact that Saihara is simply so different in his role in the game than either Naegi or Hinata were, and I think this leaves a lot of people either uninterested in analyzing him as an individual character or unclear of where to start. Ndrv3’s themes as a whole are such a drastic departure from the Hope’s Peak arc of the first two games that Saihara himself sometimes tends to get overlooked, despite the fact that I firmly believe no one would have worked better as the protagonist of the game precisely because of these very different themes.

This itself is an interesting proposal, because at the same time, I also believe that ndrv3’s cast had the biggest potential for every single character to be the “protagonist” of their own narrative. Not only is this just straight-up alluded to with the reveal that Kiibo was actually the audience proxy, and therefore the “protagonist” through which most of the audience were experiencing the killing game in chapter 6, but we even get brief playable moments with both Maki and Himiko, further driving home the narrative that these characters all had the potential to be the main character. You could even argue that the abundance of ahoges in the ndrv3 cast is a tongue-in-cheek joke about how many people must have had “protagonist syndrome” when auditioning for the show.

But having a cast full of potential main characters still doesn’t negate the fact that Saihara was simply the best choice possible for the protagonist of ndrv3 specifically. I don’t believe we would’ve had nearly the same experience without viewing most of the events through the lens of his inner narration and character growth, and that his specific role in the story as the detective was the perfect way to encapsulate the game’s themes of truth and lies.

Let’s begin by discussing Saihara’s actual personality: he’s timid, riddled with anxiety, and incredibly prone to doubting himself and his own abilities. These traits are at the core of his arc of character development throughout the story, as he constantly struggles with his own feelings of inadequacy and lack of self-worth despite being the most vital contributor to everyone’s survival in the class trials.

Even before he’s revealed to be the true protagonist of the game, these traits are incredibly easy to see from an outside lens. By playing as Kaede, however briefly, we nonetheless get a good look at what Saihara is like even in chapter 1; his lack of self-esteem and debilitating issues with anxiety and doubt are, if anything, even more noticeable when put into such stark contrast with Kaede’s optimism, self-confidence, and attempts to bolster the group into working together and believing in one another.

In fact, it’s through Kaede that we first get a glimpse of Saihara’s backstory, and slowly come to understand that his timidity and anxiety are largely shaped by his past trauma. Saihara feels personally responsible for ruining a man’s life after accidentally uncovering the truth of the man’s crimes, then later learning that he was attempting to get revenge on the person who murdered his entire family. The knowledge that he not only ruined this man’s attempts at revenge, but that this person actively hates him with a passion, has left Saihara emotionally scarred and deeply afraid of even maintaining eye contact with others.

As simple as this little bit of backstory is, I really love it in all of its presentation, because even in chapter 1, it begins to paint a much clearer picture of what Saihara is like. His inability to say no to people and attempts to please everyone begin to make a lot more sense knowing that he is incredibly afraid of being hated or blamed by other people. His reluctance to come into his own as a detective or acknowledge his obvious talent makes perfect sense knowing that he can never fully “bring justice” to a number of crimes, and that his job is by definition one that sometimes makes other people miserable by shedding a light on the truth—even when, sometimes, it might be better to leave the truth covered up.

This established backstory also immediately sets Saihara apart from previous protagonists like Naegi and Hinata, by first shaping him into a separate character who we get to know in chapter 1, and only later re-introducing him as the actual protagonist of the game. This isn’t to say that Naegi and Hinata don’t have established character flaws, or that we don’t know anything about their life prior to the killing game. But these two are very clearly set up to be more of the “everyman” protagonist than Saihara ever was: characters who the reader can insert themselves into by some degree, and whose primary traits tend to revolve around feeling “average” or “mundane” in a way that your typical reader will usually relate to much more quickly.

This makes sense for the Hope’s Peak arc shared by both dr1 and sdr2. These games in particular are centered around the narrative of a “talent-driven society” where only the most talented, elite in their field are rewarded with entry into the “best school in the country”—a narrative that is no doubt supposed to be commentary on Japan’s extremely competitive academic system and society in real life.

With Naegi, we see perhaps the best example of a truly average, normal person thrust into a group of these whacky elites. We trust Naegi almost instantly as a protagonist, specifically because his lack of any particular superpower-like talent makes him more relatable to the reader. And his contributions to the trials and eventual friendships with the other students are meaningful precisely because they prove that you don’t need these incredible talents or make outstanding contributions to society in order to be a fundamentally good person who helps others and forges real, genuine bonds with people.

Hinata’s narrative takes this idea of averageness among “the elite” and takes it a step further in terms of narrative complexity: not only does Hinata lack any sort of talent or trait that would make him stand out, but specifically because of this, he desperately craves a talent of his own. Hinata is incredibly easy for readers to relate to as someone who, in a competitive society where talent is everything, feels useless and meaningless without an elite-level talent of his own. This struggle with identity and self-worth in a talent-driven society is something that most readers will also have experienced on some level, and so makes Hinata instantly relatable and likable for most people.

Which takes us back to Saihara—again, I want to stress how different the setup for his backstory and even his personality are from our previous two protagonists. Saihara isn’t meant to be a self-insert for the reader, or instantly identified with the same way Naegi and Hinata were.

Even other bits and pieces of his backstory and home life, which we learn from his FTEs with Kaede in chapter 1, as well as portions of their salmon mode together, show how incredibly eccentric Saihara is compared to the other two. Saihara doesn’t come from what one might call a “typical home life.” He’s estranged from his wealthy, celebrity parents, and lives with his uncle, who is also a detective. His FTEs reveal that he’s spent his time wrestling alligators and, to put it nicely, being a huge weirdo for most of his life. He’s not our “everyman protagonist” by any means; he’s yet another whacky Danganronpa character who happened to be thrust into the protagonist spotlight through his role as a detective.

In short, Saihara is not what most people would expect from a protagonist in any story, let alone a DR game. He’s certainly not the “everyman,” between his established backstory and somewhat eccentric home life. And he doesn’t have the usual set of traits most people would expect from a protagonist, either. Unlike Naegi and Kaede, who are by and large optimistic, cooperative, and somewhat confident in themselves, or Hinata, who is assertive and forward-thinking, Saihara is… extremely pessimistic, anxious, and lacks any confidence in himself whatsoever.

And yet, in spite of all this, I think many people can and do relate to Saihara. I know I certainly do. Having a character who explicitly struggles with issues like anxiety and depression, not only as the result of the killing game itself (which would understandably fuck anyone’s mental health up irreparably), but even before entering the game, is something I absolutely love about ndrv3. Saihara is hardly the only character to struggle with these issues within the DR franchise, or hell, even just within ndrv3 itself, but it’s hard to ignore how textually canon his depression is when he spends multiple scenes in chapter 5 lying in bed and thinking, “there’s no reason to live, there’s no reason to live” over and over again.

Saihara’s specific set of character traits may set him apart from the “average” reader, but for people who struggle themselves with mental health and self-worth, I think his character hits close to home in a very different way. Over and over again, throughout the narrative, Saihara is called “weak”—by the people around him and even by himself. This “weakness” is a fundamental part of his character that simply wasn’t there with Naegi or Hinata; while the two of them were certainly considered “average” in one way or another, they were never described as “weak” or “lacking what it takes to survive” the way Saihara consistently is.

And it’s true, on some level, that Saihara is what most people might consider “weak.” At the very least, he’s dependent: quick to latch on to anyone who shows him even the slightest sign of affirmation or support, reluctant to admit to his own talent or take credit for his own accomplishments, and unsure of whether he can actually meet other people’s expectations without some kind of helping hand or support.

We see him immediately grow attached first to Kaede, then later to Momota, constantly seeking out a larger, more charismatic personality to hide behind. He’s so unsure of himself that he would rather let other people who he sees as “more likable” or “more crucial” to the group get all the attention and the spotlight; we see this lampshaded somewhat in chapter 4, when everyone nonetheless begins to single him out as the main reason they’re still alive, and he’s clearly baffled and uncertain as to how to reply to the praise and recognition.

Even what little we see of his pregame self from his audition video fits within this framework. Despite a lot of fan portrayals of pregame Saihara (often called “Inchara” or “Kagehara” in a lot of Japanese fanworks) as someone undeniably “evil” or “irredeemable” for actively wanting to participate in a killing game… in the end, all we really know about him is that he is desperate to die. He talks about wanting to kill people, yes, but the emphasis is placed on how much thought and effort he put into his own execution. Even before entering the killing game at all, we can clearly see that Saihara went in with the specific intention of dying.

He wants to play a detective if at all possible, but it’s clear that he’s desperate, nearly feverish, at the idea of “being a part of the world of Danganronpa” at all, in any capacity. This obsession itself feels like a form of unhealthy attachment, and is a clear sign that he (and most of the participants, if we’re reading between the lines) is so damaged and downright suicidal that he views getting 15 minutes of fame on his favorite TV show as the absolute best way to go out. In a word, he’s still “weak,” long before becoming the fictional character version of “Shuuichi Saihara,” and it’s this weakness that Tsumugi herself says she wanted to encapsulate in the show, by making him “weaker than anyone else.”

It’s this “weakness” that I honestly love best about Saihara’s entire character. Because while a large part of his character arc is certainly about becoming stronger and more confident in himself, it’s also a fact that his “weakness” never explicitly goes away. His depression isn’t just magically cured by the end of the story, and he doesn’t wake up one day deciding that his struggle with suicidal thoughts or feelings of worthlessness are over. If anything, chapter 6 ends with a huge subversion of this “magically cured” trope in most fiction, by having Saihara embrace his own weakness as something that actually helps him arrive at a third option when presented with the seemingly black-or-white choice of “hope vs. despair.”

Saihara is, as he admits himself, “weak.” He’s unable to choose the forward-facing optimism that “hope” represents in the killing game—moreso if that “hope” only contributes to the cycle of the killing game itself, enticing people into wanting to see more and more of it. But he doesn’t pick “despair” either, exactly. His inability to choose between this forced dilemma is specifically because he realizes how sick and cruel it really is, and empathizes all the more deeply with the suffering he and his classmates went through. It’s this “weakness” of his that allows him to really put into words how much pain they all went through, and how their pain matters, regardless of whether they’re fictional or not.

It’s an incredible moment in the game, and probably the point at which he became my favorite protagonist in the DR franchise, as well as one of my favorite characters in the series overall. Saihara’s character arc, unlike Naegi and Hinata, was never about “moving forward” or “choosing hope.” He says himself that he’s not the kind of person who can simply make a choice like that. Rather, his arc is about toeing the grey line between “truth” and “lies.”

As we mentioned earlier, Saihara is a detective. In any mystery novel, a detective’s role is to seek out the truth and expose it, no matter how tragic or upsetting the outcome might be. So it’s interesting, then, that by the end of the game, Saihara ultimately comes to understand and even value the concept of “lies.” For someone who knows exactly how painful the truth can be, and who is unable to simply live life optimistically in spite of that truth, the recognition of “gentle lies” told for the sake of helping someone cope, of finding meaning in an otherwise meaningless or cruel life, is incredibly important.

Unlike the Hope’s Peak arc, which sort of placed “hope vs. despair” as some very black-or-white battle with a clear winner (even when some aspects of the series, like dr3, also sort of suggest the idea that it’s an ongoing cycle that keeps repeating itself), there is no real battle or winner between the concept of “truth and lies.” In the end, both are equally important. Saihara both embraces his role as a detective and acknowledges the power that the truth has on people, while simultaneously acknowledging that lies (and therefore fiction) also has power and can be used to influence people and even inspire the world.

This character development is just absolutely fantastic to see, after watching Saihara struggle with so much pain and grief over the course of the game. Seeing a character actually acknowledge the importance of “lies” and “fiction” precisely because of how important of a motivator it can be to depressed, broken people is incredibly satisfying, and not something we often get in most stories. The fact that Saihara is so undeniably “weak,” that he isn’t the type of character you would usually expect to live to the end given how suicidal and deeply traumatized he is, makes his survival at the very end all the more of an uplifting message.

You don’t need to be “cured” to find a reason to live. You don’t have to magically wake up with the most positive, forward-facing outlook in life. You can be “weak” and depressed and hurting inside, and in the end, you still deserve to live, and have the opportunity to find meaning in your own life, whether it’s through truth or fiction.

This has gotten pretty long by now, but I hope I could make it clear exactly why I love Saihara so much. I understand people’s dissatisfaction with the protagonist-swap, and while I perfectly understand that he isn’t for everyone, he’s still a fantastically written character in my opinion, with a wonderful and meaningful arc of development that really resonated with me, as someone who also has struggled with similar mental health issues. I think the decision to do something extremely different from Naegi and Hinata was an excellent decision, and while I still love both of them as characters in their own right, Saihara is just so compelling both as an individual character and the protagonist of ndrv3.

Thank you for the question anon, and thank you to those of you who read to the end! I hope I could offer a decent character analysis!

[catherdrashepard]

Red Rising/Persona

I’m a huge fan of the Persona series and pretty much anything Atlus has done. I am ALSO a huge fan of Red Rising (blame that on @hyena-frog) So, the natural conclusion is that I should determine which Persona the main RR POV characters would have. As well as a couple extras. Pictures will be included with credit to the artist when applicable. Please let me know if I forget to credit someone. (https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Persona_5_Royal_Personas) Here is the website I’m using. Spoilers for the first three books and probably a little of Iron Gold. Also a spoiler for the Faith Confidante in Persona 5: Royal. Avoid the Lysander paragraph if you want none of that. Disclaimer: I have not finished Dark Age yet so some of my thoughts might be lacking complete information.

Darrow: The main characters of the Persona series always start with a Persona from the Fool arcana. It doesn’t necessarily stay that way depending on the players personal preference. That being said, Darrow does fit the Fool arcana very well. It’s considered to be the beginning arcana or one without a number. It represents innocence, divine inspiration, madness, freedom, spontaneity, inexperience, chaos and creativity. These traits I think describe Darrow pretty accurately, especially in the first two books. Considering the story revolves around his journey, it makes sense to label him as a character of beginnings. Persona-wise, I think the one that fits Red Rising and Golden Son Darrow would be Satanael. This Persona is basically the equivalent to Lucifer, the angel who led a rebellion against God. But also that isn’t all that Darrow is. I also think the Death arcana is fitting for him, from Morning Star and beyond. Death is an arcana roughly in the middle of the tarot deck and it’s one that represents metamorphosis and change. Literal interpretation aside, Darrow experiences a change in himself after his capture at the end of Golden Son and his rescue in Morning Star. Not to mention, his entire purpose for becoming a Gold in the first place was to provoke a change in the current system of government. For his Death Persona, I would give him Thanatos. Because he’s my favourite, but also he’s considered the harbinger of death. Perfect for the Reaper. I don’t think Darrow completely loses Satanael in favour of Thanatos; I could definitely see him using both depending on the circumstance.

Virginia/Mustang: By Persona standards, because Mustang is Darrow’s main love interest, she would be the Lovers arcana. However, and this was incredibly difficult because she could really fit more acana, I think she could be both the Judgement and the Empress arcana. The Judgement arcana, I feel, fits her Sovereign persona (ha). It’s associated with a deep understanding of life, a balance of light and darkness, and characters who are well-aware, and intelligent. Not that this doesn’t fit her in her private life as well, but it seems more prevalent in her dealings as the Sovereign. The second arcana is the Empress. This one is more associated with mothers and women of authority. As we saw in the first trilogy, she went to great lengths to protect her family, i.e., working for Octavia, being with Cassius, the whole incident in Lykos. Choosing her Persona is tricky, mostly because Personas can shift arcana depending which game they are pulled from. I think the one to go with is Astarte. This is more of a feeling rather than definitive “proof”. She is identified as the goddess of war, hunting, love, sex, horses and possibly the morning star; her symbols are thought to be the lion, panther, and an eight pointed star. This is also the ultimate Persona of Haru in Persona 5, who awakens her initial Persona in defiance of her father and his corruption, which also feels apt. That being said, Astarte is from the Empress arcana and I could not find a Judgement arcana Persona that I felt fit her well enough.

Credit for the picture of Astarte to: Machia McMadlass on Amino

Sevro: Sevro was very easy to choose a Persona for. One in particular stood out to me. I think Sevro could fit both the Fool arcana and the Devil arcana. I think the aspects of the Fool that Sevro embodies are the madness, freedom, spontaneity, and creativity. The Devil arcana represents the urge to do selfish, impulsive, violent things. However, it also can represent a healthy bond and commitment.  Sevro is a wild card from the beginning, killing Priam in the first book being a prime example. Both he and Darrow were very unexpected successes in the Institute. This is something that also describes the protagonists in the Persona games as well. They all just kind of show up out of nowhere and completely shift the paradigm, especially in Personas 3&5. As for the Devil arcana, Sevro reminds me of the Devil confidante in Persona 5. Their goals are not the same, but both characters are very focused on what they want and make every effort to push through despite any obstacles in the way. As for the Persona, the one I chose was sort of picked for superficial reasons; Bugbear. Its name comes from the Celtic word bugs which means evil spirit or goblin. It’s also considered to be something of a boogeyman, a creature that lurked in the woods to scare children. Also, it’s essentially a stuffed bear filled with skulls, which seems to fit Sevro’s weird tastes.

Victra: With Victra, one arcana stuck out in my mind immediately, the Chariot. This arcana represents victory, conquest, self-assertion, self-confidence, control, war, and command. When first introduced to Victra, she does seem very sure of herself and what she wants. She strikes me as a shoot first and ask questions later type, which is something she has in common with the video game characters who share this arcana. Like Sevro, she could also fit the Devil arcana, especially during certain events in Dark Age that she pursues very single-mindedly. Although, I would say Victra is more Devil leaning than Sevro. As for the Persona, I think Pazuzu would fit her style pretty well. What really struck me as fitting Victra was the description of Pazuzu as an evil spirit that drives away other evil spirits, and protects humans from plagues and misfortunes. Also, despite trying to stick with the arcana placements of Persona 5 Royal, I think it’s worth noting that Pazuzu was summoned by a character in Devil Survivor who seeks revenge for death of a loved one.

Cassius: While perusing the arcana descriptions, the one for the Lovers immediately reminded me of Cassius. The Lovers is usually reserved for the “canon” love interest in the games, barring player preferences. However, Dassius jokes aside, what really made me think Cassius is that this arcana symbolises two paths a life could lead to and, standing at a crossroad and needing to make a decision. I think this describes Cassius’ personal journey throughout the books to a T, especially in the climax of Morning Star where he makes the decision to join Darrow in taking out Aja and Octavia. The other arcana that Cassius would be is the Star. This arcana is said to represent hope, self-confidence, faith, altruism, luck, generosity, peace and joy. I feel like self-confidence, faith, and altruism fit pre-end of Morning Star Cassius very well. He was considered the pinnacle of Golds and I think, at least until he learned what was actually going on, that’s all he wanted to be. The game characters with this arcana are teachers or mentors to the protagonist. Characters that are very good at what they do and offer some form of training. A sort of outlier to this is Teddie, from Persona 4. While he does have more experience than the main character dealing with the enemy (both Cassius and Teddie are part of the group the protagonist fights against), Teddie doesn’t take a combative role until later in the game. This is only possible because Rise, who replaces him as support, makes him question his identity or the “real” him. This is very similar to what happens to Cassius in the first three books. Darrow becomes what Cassius thought himself to be and it causes Cassius to question who he really is. Although, unlike Teddie, I think Cassius chose to heavily lean into being the perfect Gold specimen until the end of Morning Star, where he makes a choice to be the “real” Cassius. As for the Persona, I could easily see him with Sraosha, who represents the highest virtue of humanity, obedience to and submission to Divine Law. I think his motivations for using this Persona would change, however. I imagine at first, he would use it to keep the Society functioning how it always does. But, after Morning Star, I bet it would shift to be more about protecting his own ideals and the submission aspect would relate to Cassius’ personal morals and sense of justice.

Lysander: I really wanted to avoid using the arcana that are not present in a standard deck, and added for a specific game. However, one of the arcana that stood out to me for Lysander is the Faith arcana. This arcana symbolises, in the positive, belief in others and in oneself. Negatively, it represents blind faith misplaced in something that does not deserve trust. From what I understand of Lysander’s story, his personal journey seems to mirror that of the game character who shares his arcana. It is revealed later that she is a fake, and her memories were overwritten by another character. I have not finished Dark Age as of writing this but, I am under the strong impression that Lysander has been brainwashed and that some of his memories have been replaced or erased entirely. And while he does have some misgivings about the Society, I believe he is blind to how fucked up it really is. But it also holds potential for Lysander to overcome this indoctrination. I had a bit of trouble with what the second arcana would be but, I think the Moon fits Lysander pretty well. You could say he’s a….Moonie. But in all seriousness, the description that struck me as Lysander-esque was "They often tend to have trouble accepting themselves for who they are and, because of that fear, try to correspond to an ideal person. And like the arcana, there is a hidden depth as to why they act in their behaviours." Lysander was definitely sheltered and isolated, by both Octavia and Cassius (he tried his best). And perhaps by Atalantia to some degree. He is a fed a narrative and doesn’t really get a chance to analyse his own perceptions and why they may be incorrect. The characters of the Moon arcana in the game often struggle internally with themselves which, to be honest, is a trait most of the POV characters have. But what I think Lysander lacks in that case, is self-awareness. As for the Persona, I ended up going with Cendrillon. This Persona is based on Cinderella, which is a little different from some of the other ones. As much as I like to make fun of Lysander for his poor choices, it’s hard not to see him as a victim. I don’t necessarily think he’s a hero or that he’s entitled to the kind of happy ending Cinderella gets. However, I do feel that, like the fairy tale princess, some of his circumstances were as a result of situations that were out of his control. Also, a line really stuck with me from the initial awakening for the Persona that really made me think Lysander; “Well, if those really are the shoes you've chosen... Then we'll dance to the end.”

Ephraim: Ephraim suffers a lot throughout the books, and I feel like that reflects heavily on what arcana he is. I think the first one that fits him well is the Tower arcana, which is associated with a fall from grace. His story reminds me a lot of the Tower social link character in Persona 3. Both Ephraim and the game character lose their family and turn to substance abuse to numb the pain. People of the Tower arcana seems to suffer a lot of internal pain which they fail to cope with healthily and thus turn to less savoury means until and outside force steps in to help steer them in a better direction. The other arcana I believe fits him well is the Hanged Man. What makes me think Ehpraim is that the appearance of the Hanged Man can be seen as advice to take the time to reflect over one's upcoming actions, which is something I think he needs to learn how to do. They can also be self-sacrificial and are often notable for being stuck between two different stages of life. Also, much like the Tower arcana characters, their journey seems to revolve around some kind of loss that they are failing to cope with. As for the Persona….this was a bit tricky. I have a few I like but one comes with a bit reluctance because of how it plays into the plot of Persona 4 and how it would reflect on Ephraim’s character. But, my gut is telling me that Magatsu-Izanagi is the way to go. What is making me think of Ephraim when I see it is the symbolism behind this Persona. It represents emptiness, impulsiveness, poor judgement, obsession and frivolity. There are also some similarities between Ephraim and the character who wields this Persona in Persona 4. They both exhibit little tact and seem to be playing some sort of game with the other characters. However, Adachi (Persona 4 character) seems to do this because he’s a psychopath whereas I think Ephraim is this way as a terrible coping mechanism. In Persona 4, the arcana where this Persona fits in is meant to be the reversed Fool. And while I’m trying to stick with the Persona 5 Royal placements (which for Magatsu-Izanagi is the Tower arcana), I think the implication here is that Ephraim has a lot of potential to be something so great if he can just reverse the path he is going down.

Lyria: I love Lyria. I think she’s a wonderful and interesting character. I love that she highlights the ramifications of undoing a toxic form of government. She gets so much development that it was easy to see what arcana she fit into. The first one I thought of was the Hermit. It represents wisdom, introspection, solitude, retreat and philosophical searches. In the beginning, she has very strong opinions about Darrow and the rest of the Rising. Which is entirely understandable considering her entire way of life was stripped from her without a way to cope with the changes. But, unlike Lysander, she’s willing to re-examine herself and her perceptions as she is presented with new information. She also tends to try and keep under the radar if she can, which is another trait of the Hermit. What’s interesting to me is that other characters of the Hermit arcana are victims of circumstances out of their control, but they see their own victimization as a result of a flaw in their character. The other arcana is very tricky for me, as there are parts of Lyria’s character that I don’t know yet. After much discussion and deliberation with my resident expert, the second arcana for Lyria is the Priestess. This arcana is a symbol of hidden knowledge or other untapped power, wisdom, female mystery and patience. The characters of this arcana also take more time to open up to the protagonist than others. Which also fits Lyria as she needed time and introspection to really understand Darrow and Mustang. As for the Persona, I’m actually going to cheat a little with my choice. I try to keep the arcana placements from Persona 5 Royal but for Lyria, I’m choosing Hariti whose arcana is Priestess in Persona 4 and Persona Q. Hariti is a protector of children and childbirth after going through a significant change in perspective which, from what I understand and have been told, is also something that Lyria does.

[sareesonscreen]

S1 E4: Saucy Deep Dives: Third Person SIngular Number

After spending the last two months watching and examining Bollywood hits, it’s been very exciting for us to introduce our audience to hits from all across South Asia. In this episode, we are thrilled to be watching a Bangladeshi favorite made by one of the most famous contemporary directors there.

Mostofa Sarwar Farooki came into the scene in the early 2000s, at a time when mainstream television and cinema largely existed either in the form of family entertainment or copy-pasted “hero’s journey” scripts made for quick consumption. 

This is where Farooki came in with his more casual and approachable filmmaking. His stories revolved around the relatable everyday struggles of ordinary people. This also meant utilizing colloquial language in his cinema (which was rare, given that the media at the time would only depict formal Bangla or a standard dialectical Bangla [for rural stories]). 

Third Person Singular Number (2009) was Farooki’s third movie, which solidified his position as one of the most notable contemporary directors in Bangladesh.

Third Person Singular Number is conceptualized as a fairytale-like story of Ruba (played brilliantly by Nusrat Imroz Tisha, Farooki’s partner, and long-time muse), who is confronted by the challenges of being a single woman in South Asia, after her partner (note, not husband lol) is sent to jail. Ruba struggles with constant harassment as she attempts to find housing and employment. The Prince Charming character of this movie comes to us in the form of Ruba’s childhood friend - Topu (a successful musician in Bangladesh, both in the movie and IRL), whose support helps in making Ruba feel safe. Her feelings for Topu force Ruba to engage with her conflicted relationship with her mother (who left her father for her lover) as well as her fidelity to her jailed partner.

One of the most remarkable things about the film is its deliberate focus on Ruba and how it centers her perspective - this is extremely apparent in the cinematography and Farooki being able to employ the feminine gaze aptly. The first half of the movie depicts at length the various ways in which women become victims of sexual assault - be it at home, in public, or in professional spaces.

There's this one scene in particular, where Ruba becomes hesitant to go to the police station as she recalls a news story from a couple of weeks ago where a woman was r*ped at one. A male gaze retelling of this would tell the audience through action - a flashback where the woman is facing violence, or perhaps when Ruba was reading the paper, or conversing about it with someone. But in this story, Farooki chose to make this woman materialize in front of Ruba and tell the story herself. Not only giving voice to an unnamed woman who had met a horrible fate, but also creating a moment of emotional connection between the two women. It humanized what is often just reduced to news headlines, statistics, or water filter conversations. There are hints throughout that she is an unreliable narrator. Resulting in the (spoiler alert!) the fairytale-esque second half of the movie. Fairytales, historical romances, and fan-fictions often serve as great mediums for social commentary, particularly on the dynamics of power (esp. geared towards women). The fact that the only escape available to Ruba from her bleak reality is an absurd Prince Charming figure speaks heavily to the harsh reality of the real Rubas of the world. For them, her ending would not be a possibility.

The use of space in the visuals of the film was also noteworthy, with Ruba being shown to feel trapped or caged in the company of predatory men (even including her own partner, whom she feels stifled by later in the film). This is often done through the use of close and medium shots, along with physical obstructions in the shot. Meanwhile, her relationship with Topu is shown to be much more affectionate and easy-going; this is depicted with a wide shot of the beautiful kashbons of Bashundhara. Not only was this technique used to remark on the state of Ruba’s mind (which is rare given that male directors rarely highlight women’s perspectives), it also commentated on the wider issue of South Asian women and how they are often made to feel small and struggle to find space (be it physically or metaphorically).

This beautiful work with space is further used to remark on the silence of the other women in the film (notably, Ruba’s cousin, friend, and mother). Unlike Ruba, the only woman with a voice (and the narrator, of course), these women are often seen in the confines of layered cage-like homes (with distinct obstructions like columns, furniture, etc. present in every layer). These characters, like their real-life counterparts, often exist in the crevices of their own homes and are stifled by the domineering presence of the patriarchal structures and insecurities around them.

The two noteworthy women characters (aside from Ruba) are her cousin and her mother. Both of whom we know very little about. However, in their fleeting moments on the screen, some of them make attempts to defy patriarchal structures around them in small but significant ways – Ruba’s mother by being courageous enough to follow her heart and leave a marriage and her cousin by helping Ruba despite her mother-in-law’s objections.

Another interesting thing is that despite Topu being Prince Charming, his character was given depth by not making him entirely selfless and sacrificial. Topu’s expectations were conveyed to the audience in a subtle but effective manner, using scenes like his outrage in the forest after Ruba backs out of having sex with him (though sex was never mentioned, only alluded to), as well as the ever-awkward buying condoms at a chemist shop (an entirely silent and secretive transaction, btw).

Ruba’s character in the film is shown to be determined, independent and tenacious even while she struggles with the oppressive realities of being a woman under patriarchy. One of the focal points of the movie is her strained relationship with her mother (who passes away, leaving no possibility of redemption or reconciliation ). The film uses an interesting technique of showing Ruba’s internal demons manifesting as younger versions of herself, hypothesized to be metaphors for her id (6-year-old Ruba), ego (present Ruba), and superego (13-year-old Ruba) as she battles over her feelings for Topu and consequently her feelings of resentment for her mother. Though her relationship with her mother is significant to Ruba’s evolution as a character, very little is shown of her mother and her motivations. Despite trying to give Ruba some semblance of closure with her mother at the end, the film falls short in creating multiple well-written women to enhance the story and the emotional connection to the characters.

We’ve also had the pleasure of having Raidah of Raidahcal on this episode. She does wonderful work addressing contemporary feminist issues in Dhaka, Bangladesh. While we all had different takes on the movie, it was wonderful to have Raidah’s unique insights and perspectives. Be sure to check her out. We’ve also had the pleasure of collaborating with her on her podcast Raidahcal in an episode exploring feminist economics – we would love for you to check it out as well!

She also asked us a question that made us pause a bit: Why are men given passes for not portraying women's realities accurately just because they are creating sophisticated art?

And this made us realize that there is a very thin line between centering a woman's perspective in a film, versus presenting an intrusively voyeuristic gaze to watch her struggle. Ultimately if the author of the art is not able to distinguish the two for everyone watching the movie, is all that nuance pointless? This ambiguity within the film became more clear to us as we left our own echo chambers and were faced with a wonderfully challenging guest and the realization that the film is sometimes as good as the viewer wants it to be.

Even on our Sauce Meter, this film fared better than some of our previous takes. Here’s a breakdown of our scores.

1. Is there at least one character who adds a nuanced representation of a diverse South Asian identity, without stereotyping and tokenization?  

Ruba, the protagonist of the film is a complex, well-rounded character and a woman – the film also uses an unfamiliar perspective by centering the story around the experiences of a woman vs a man (which is considered the default) – but she is one of the few non-male characters that get significant screen time, so not full points.

0.5

2. Are the primary characters (especially women and marginalized characters) portrayed with agency, individuality, and motivation?

Despite Ruba being limited by the sexist nature of the social structures around her – notably her struggle to find housing and employment as a single woman, she is shown to have agency and individual motivation – she is also shown to want autonomy and finds ways to assert herself despite inhibiting circumstances.

0.75

3. Are women and marginalized characters shown to be cognizant of their identities and how they exist within the social context?

Taking half a point off because there are limited representations of women and other marginalized characters, but the glimpses we get into other women apart from Ruba all seem to be painfully aware of how their choices and abilities are limited by oppressive patriarchal structures. Notably, her cousin despite having limited control over her life and household still tries to help Ruba, and Ruba herself has several moments where she points to the tribulations of being a woman in society.

0.5

4. Do the women and marginalized characters have meaningful relationships with each other?

While the women’s relationships with each other are not given a lot of screen time, they remain focal plot points. In particular, Ruba’s relationship with her mother is instrumental in the evolution of Ruba’s character and arguably even her liberation, however, the movie does not do these relationships complete justice and dedicates very little time to other women or marginalized characters in the movie.

0.25

5. Does it challenge any flawed notions upheld by capitalism, patriarchy, and the caste system?

The movie successfully subverts stereotypical representations of women and even defies traditional ideas of marriage and power dynamics between men and women and for that, it gets a full point!

1

TOTAL SCORE ON THE SAUCE METER: 3/5

What did you think of our rating of Third Person Singular Number? Did we reach too hard? Let us know!

- Usha and Rekha

Listen Now

[postmodern-metafiction]

Postmodernism in Relation to Modernism and Patricia Waugh’s Metafiction

           Modernism emerged in Europe and America as a series of movements in the years between 1910 and 1930. Some of the prominent figures in the Modernist movement are Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, Bertolt Brecht, Pablo Picasso and William Faulkner (Habib 194). Modernist writers often produce literary works that perceive the world in a whole new light all while discrediting various old ideologies such as science, progress, rationality, civilization and imperialism (Habib 195).

           Postmodernism, on the other hand, as said by Lethen, “the postmodern situation created the possibility to see modernism as a closed and rather rigid entity.” (Connor 113). Postmodernism refers to the idea of using new ways of thinking about thought. The process of transformation from modernism to postmodernism happened as the former idea no longer fits the society condition. Postmodernism has brought forth a variety of political changes and effects due to its unorthodox ideologies and some of the issues that arise in postmodernism are associated with certain movements and groups such as the feminist movement, gay rights movement, anti-globalization movement and more. In a way, postmodernism is attempting a paradigm shift of writing, progressing from the Modernists’ rigid notions of science and reason towards a more flexible and abstract way of thinking (Connor 115).

THE CONCEPT OF METAFICTION

         The term ‘Metafiction’ was mentioned by Gass in his book ‘Fiction and the Figures of Life’. He further elaborated that the term is widely used as time passes as more authors has come to an understanding with the term (24). Later, Robert Scholes develops more on Gass’s theory and lists four forms of criticism that metafiction can integrate these viewpoints into the fictional process.

          Metafiction revolves around the self-consciousness of fiction work on the fact that it is fiction and highlights how there is actually a very thin line between the two worlds of fiction and reality (Waugh 2). It is recognized as a method of narration which is used by authors in their literary works. This concept has been going around for quite some time despite only been given the term ‘metafiction’ not too long ago. It was primarily found to be coined in William H. Gass’s essay. The prefix meta actually connotes ‘about’, thus the term metafiction brings the literal meaning of ‘about fiction’. Waugh further defines metafiction as below:

“Metafiction is a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality.” (2)

        From the given definition by Patricia Waugh, metafiction is a literary technique purposely used by authors as an attention grabber and it too serve the purpose to make the readers think more about the indistinct line which exists between fiction and reality.

         Waugh explained in her book that the circumstance of literary works being construed by the use of language could help us in understanding the real world. This is due to the reason that the dissemination of knowledge is facilitated through the use of language (3). In other words, language is a large part of the reality world thus literary fiction which obviously uses language in content construction has enabled people to comprehend the structure of reality world. Hence, that could be why metafiction questions the relationship between the two worlds made separated by most people; reality and fiction. Arguably, metafictionists shared a point of view that both fiction and reality are interconnected with one another.

        As a metafictionist, Waugh believed that every novel has the tendency to contain metafiction literary device. She added that whoever learns about metafiction will be able to figure out the novels’ identity as they will ultimately be able to notice the shared nature in fiction works. Novels has no exact standard form and there is no one definite way to define novels. In a way, it thus is unstable. The unstable elements in novels are then highlighted through metafiction literary device and next aid in uncovering that novels are a jumble of things put into one. For instance, everyday historical forms of communication (which utilizes different forms of language) as such memoirs, journals, histories, journal records, etc. can be found in novels (5).

PAIRS OF CRITICS IN METAFICTION

          Werner Wolf, in his books states that metafiction can be further broken down into four pairs of critics that can later be combined with each other (37). The first point is the explicit and implicit metafiction. This pair comments on “its own artificiality and is easily quotable”. Explicit metafiction can be described as a “mode of telling”. This concept can be observed through the way a narrator explains the story as the story is ongoing.

           Implicit metafiction on the other hand foregrounds the topic through various techniques such as metalepsis. Metalepsis is the usage of a figure of speech in which the word or phrase is used in a new context. Implicit metafiction relies on the reader’s abilities to be able to recognize these techniques in order to conjure a metafictional analysis. Explicit metafiction is described as a “mode of telling” whereas implicit metafiction can be described as “mode of showing” (Wolf 37).

          The second pair of the form is the direct and indirect metafiction. Direct metafiction creates a reference within the text that one is reading. Opposite to this, indirect metafiction uses metareferences externally to the text that one is reading. Such an example would be parody. One cannot make a parody, either a genre in literature or in movies, without an external reference to another book or another movie. Since there is an established relationship between the current book one is reading and the other book that was referred to in the book indirectly, indirect metafiction does influence the copy that one is reading.

          The third pair is called as the critical and non-critical metafiction. This pair is originated regularly in postmodernist fiction which targets to find the inauthenticity or the fictionality of a text critically. Non-critical metafiction, on the other hand, does not criticize or undermine the fictionality of a text, and it claims that it can be used to “suggest that the story one is reading is authentic” (Wolf 38).

           Last but not least, the final pair in metafiction is the generally media-centered and the truth-fiction-centered metafiction. Generally, media-centered circles around the metafiction that deals with the media quality of fiction or in the form of narrative. However, in some cases, there are additional focus on the reliability or the ingenuity of a text. The idea of a story being authentic would be an example of truth-centered metafiction.

WORKS OF METAFICTION

           Despite only being used in the late 20th century, and is commonly interconnected to post-modernism literature, there have been multiple works of literature in the past centuries that intentionally reference the fictional nature of their texts that distinguishes the line between fiction and reality.

           An example of metafiction used in earlier works of literature is the 16th century play, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. In Act I, the prologue of the play, Shakespeare intentionally reveals to the then-audience, and current readers of the classic story, that the whole play is fictional (27). Even going as far as spoiling the ending of the play in the prologue, it was then understood that the reason why Shakespeare dissolved the line between fiction and reality was because the playwright believed that most people who came to see the play were uneducated and uncivilized. Presuming that if the audience had not been informed beforehand that the play was fictional and if the audience truly did think that the actors who portrayed the characters were dead in real life, it was feared that a ruckus and a riot would break out during the ending, therefore causing a state of panic. Thus, the prologue was written so that the readers, or the audience of Shakespeare’s time, will be able to distinguish that the play is fictional and not real.

         Although it fits the concept of metafiction, Romeo and Juliet fails to portray metafiction in the context of postmodernism, as it was written and referenced in the late 16th century. However, the concept of metafiction can be seen in Shakespeare’s writing of the story’s prologue, where he intentionally reveals that the story is a work of fiction and should not be taken literally.

         Since metafiction has been a key instrument in experimental fiction, there has been a surge in works of metafiction in recent postmodern literature. Works that are considered postmodern are usually comprised of those that rely on narrative techniques such as having an unreliable narrator, engaging in multiple critical theories such as the reader-response theory, deconstruction approach and metafiction.

          An example of a literary work that can be considered postmodern metafiction is the novel Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis. The book is a mock memoir that was published in 2005 and it is considered a postmodern horror literary work that displays Ellis’ personal early life in the beginning of the book and continues on with fictionalized aspects of his life, therefore making the story neither entirely fictional nor entirely real. The novel is also written in a way that the ‘I’ is ambiguous and that it can refer to either the author and the narrator or both. Baelo-Allué comments on the inclusion of metafictional devices, citing that most of the aspects of the novel were taken from Ellis’s previous works, and that the author also includes sources that are both high and low, referencing songs, TV shows, Barrie’s Peter Pan, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Stephen King in the novel (111).

           CRITICISM AND LIMITATIONS OF METAFICTION

         Even though the term ‘metafiction’ is new, the concept of metafiction is as old as time. The work that contains metafiction elements can be traced back to as early as the 14th century, such as “Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer (1387) up until recent fiction works such as “The Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adam (1979). The term has been widely argued by parties that are either against it or support it as a genre that is supposedly a rebirth to a novel’s genre. Some of the anti-postmodernists claim that metafiction signifies the “death or exhaustion of the novel as a genre” (Gass 5).

        Other theorists also often face the problem of differentiating the definition which either refers to modern metafiction or if it covers all works that contain self-reflexivity. One of the theorists, John Barth, briefly explains metafiction as a “novel that imitates a novel rather than the real world” (161). Authors and writers who use metafiction in their writing attempts to blur the line between fiction and reality for the reader. However, Barth firmly states that by using metafiction in the writing, it only emphasizes to the reader that what they are reading is a fiction and nothing more (161).

CONCLUSION

       Metafiction is a literary device that draws the line between reality and fantasy, as well as dissolving the line and leaving the readers in a state of limbo with the ambiguity of the aspect of fiction and non-fiction of the literary work. It is apparent that metafiction has played a huge part in postmodern literature, whereby authors of many literary works have been experimenting on their writing using this concept and its various techniques to create a fresh and distinctive work of literature.

 ENGL 4620 - Literary Criticism

Sem. 1, 2019/2020

Section 2

Name of Lecturer: Miss Nurul Fateha

Group 6

Khairun Nuha Binti Khairul Bazli (1528896)

Sarah Afifah Binti Abdul Basir (1529504)

Siti Mariam Ahmad Jamil (1525996)

Jarzreen Binti Jaffri (1529040)

Works Cited

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory - an Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory: Fourth. Manchester University Press, 2017.

Connor, Steven. Postmodernist Culture: an Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary. Blackwell, 2006.

Gass, William H. Fiction and the Figures of Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970.

Habib, Rafey. Literary Criticism from Plato to the Present: an Introduction. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

Scholes, Robert. Fabulation and Metafiction. Chicago: University of Illinois Press., 1979.

Shakespeare, William, and Sidney Lamb. Romeo & Juliet: Commentary, Complete Text, Glossary. Cliffs Notes, 1999.

Torrijos, María del Mar Ramón. "Bret Easton Ellis’s Controversial Fiction: Writing between High and Low Culture." (2012).

Waugh, Patricia. Metafiction – The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. London, New York: Routledge, 1984.

Wolf, Werner, ed. The Metareferential Turn in Contemporary Arts and Media: Forms, Functions, Attempts at Explanation. Studies in Intermediality, 2011.

Wolf, Werner. "Metareference across Media: The Concept, its Transmedial Potentials and Problems, Main Forms and Functions". Metareference across Media: Theory and Case Studies. Studies in Intermediality 4, eds. Werner Wolf, Katharina Bantleon, and Jeff Thoss. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009.

[daresplaining]

Iron Fist Countdown: 2 Days

Mary Walker/Typhoid Mary/Bloody Mary

    One of the neat aspects of any adaptation is the chance to experiment with new stories, character interpretations, and relationships. The Marvel Netflix shows have brought together many characters who don’t have any particular connection in the source material. Comics Jessica Jones and Patsy Walker aren’t much more than acquaintances. Comics Karen Page never met Frank Castle. But the shows have used this undeveloped territory to craft some fascinating new character dynamics. Thus, we’re extra excited that Typhoid Mary (and her various other personalities), while typically a Daredevil and Deadpool comics mainstay, will be making her MCU debut in Iron Fist Season 2!

    Mary first appeared in 1988, in Daredevil vol. 1 #254. Ann Nocenti, who created the character, intended for her to be a revolutionary amalgam of tropes. 

“As for where Typhoid came from, you'll have to ask the shrink I've as yet never gone to. I think I wanted to shatter the female stereotypes-- virgin, whore, bitch, ditz, feminist, girl scout, all-suffering mother, et al.-- into tiny fragments and yet keep all the pieces in the same little female bundle.”

    Mary is quite literally a character built of layers. She suffers from an exaggerated, comic book science version of multiple personality disorder, resulting in an unpleasant childhood of psychiatric testing. 

“Code name Typhoid Mary. One of the most fascinating cases in psychiatric history. Subject spent most of her life institutionalized, undergoing every known test-- yet she continues to baffle the entire scientific community. The child’s dual personality was first discovered in infancy. In the Mary persona, she is fragile, sickly, prone to epilepsy and other disorders. As Typhoid, she is utterly unapproachable, uncontrollable, a murderous little girl. Pure poison.”

Daredevil vol. 1 #254 by Ann Nocenti, John Romita Jr., and Christie Scheele

    This original version of the continuity suggests that she was born with at least two of her personalities. But later, J.M. Dematteis pulled a snippet from Frank Miller’s Man Without Fear origin retelling into the main continuity: an episode during Matt’s first vigilante outing in which he accidentally kills a sex worker. Joe Kelly then took that tidbit now made canon, and decided that the woman in question was Mary, and that this final act of violence committed against her by a man was what fractured her personality. (We’re not big fans of this change, but it is what it is.) 

    Either way, Mary is literally a multifaceted person, with each personality battling for control. As Mary Walker she is a sweet, naive, gentle person, who is horrified by any kind of violence. As Typhoid Mary she is gleefully violent, power-hungry, and wields her sexuality as a weapon to control the men around her. These two personalities hate each other, and they turn her body itself into a battleground. 

Mary: “Feels good to fluff out my hair, get that makeup off... Hot in here. Sweating... Do I have a fever...? Feel sick, do I look sick--? Oh! My hair... my face...!! I don’t look like myself... I look wild... It’s you! It’s that woman...! Oh, god, no-- have to warn myself...”

Typhoid: “Shut up you sniveling twit! Get back in there and shut up! Typhoid’s back on top!”

Daredevil vol. 1 #256 by Ann Nocenti, John Romita Jr., and Christie Scheele

    As if that weren’t enough, Typhoid also possesses an array of psychic powers, including telepathy, telekinesis, and-- most famously-- pyrokinesis. Mary doesn’t get any of these fun tricks.  

Typhoid: “Matthew, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for quite some time... Burn...”

Daredevil vol. 2 #46 by Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev, and Matt Hollingsworth

    Mary’s mental state evolves and fluctuates over time. For a while she has three identities: Mary Walker, Typhoid Mary, and an avenging angel named Bloody Mary, who hunts down and kills men who abuse women. 

Bloody Mary: “You beat two of them to their deaths! Did they ask for that? Did they beg you to kill them? For your crimes you will die!”

The Spectacular Spider-Man (1976) #214 by Ann Nocenti, James Fry, et al. 

    This arc even results in a short-lived, “healthy” all-encompassing identity who just calls herself Walker. But that is a rare occurrence, and in most modern comics Typhoid pretty much stays in control, opposing all attempts at recovery. Mental health is at the core of many of Mary’s stories, and she has been placed in therapy at various points, sometimes of her own free will but usually not. 

Matt: “I heard what you said. You’re not wrong about Mary. [...] Mary’s trapped in a revolving door of crime, jail, and misery. Her crimes are addressed-- but never her sickness.”

Wade: “What if... what if we had another option?”

Deadpool (2015) #13.1 by Gerry Duggan, Paco Diaz, and Israel Silva

    But she’s such a compelling character as she is that it’s unlikely any treatment will last long. It would be like permanently restoring Matt’s eyesight. Nobody wants that. 

    Given the trend toward groundedness in all of by these shows, we’re expecting Netflix Mary’s personalities to be taken down a notch, with more of an emphasis placed on the mental health angle. Alice Eve has had really evocative things to say about playing Mary, and about the degree to which she immersed herself in the chaos and violence and pain inherent in the character: 

“I’m not sure any of us are lucky enough to be completely mentally sane. Mental sanity is society’s construct so that we can all function together, but, you know, we all go to bed with our minds and we all know what they do to us. [...] So I just kind of swam in that deep ocean for a while and really let myself think the thoughts that mindfulness and meditation and all those things tell you not to, and embraced all the disorder in my mind, and enjoyed that, and felt that pain and lived that. [...] I like Marvel for being able to hinge these issues on this construct they have of exploded powers and exploded weaknesses, and make them big, like they feel to us inside.”

    But the multiple personalities will still be there, splitting Mary between gentleness and violence. The Iron Fist Twitter account has posted several images that seem to be messages Mary has left for herself: 

    Our big question is whether she’ll still have her psychic powers. We really, really hope so.

    As for how she will play into the events of the season, it’s still anyone’s guess. It seems that she encounters Danny and Colleen as Mary, while also running rampant as Typhoid. In the comics, her introductory arc follows her time as Wilson Fisk’s assassin/girlfriend. He instructs her to break Matt Murdock’s heart and then kill him, but she ends up falling in love with him along the way. This seems like an odd plotline to adapt to Iron Fist, so we’re expecting/hoping for something new. It’s also worth nothing that she bears a strong resemblance to Trish... and we’re wondering if they might end up being related in this universe. That would be a neat twist. 

    In any case, we can’t wait to see how she is involved in this story, and to watch her kick maximum butt. ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT!

[spryfilm]

“And Then There Were None” (2015)

Thriller

Three Episodes

Written by: Sarah Phelps

Directed by: Craig Viveiros

Featuring:   Douglas Booth, Charles Dance, Maeve Dermody, Burn Gorman, Anna Maxwell Martin, Sam Neill, Miranda Richardson, Toby Stephens, Noah Taylor, Aidan Turner

“Ten little Indian boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little Indian boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little Indian boys travelling in Devon; One said he’d stay there and then there were seven. Seven little Indian boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in halves and then there were six. Six little Indian boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little Indian boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little Indian boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little Indian boys walking in the Zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little Indian boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one. One little Indian boy left all alone; He went and hanged himself and then there were none.”  ― Agatha Christie, “And Then There Were None”

The last few years has seen a resurgence in the adaptations of Agatha Christie novels into television shows/movies as well as cinematic movies, this could be the spin-off of so many mystery shows being developed internationally that there really is no story like an old story. In fact, what is unique is that many of these adaptations are not being updated but produced in the time period in which they were written, or at least very close to them. To fully encapsulate some of the minutiae of Christies stories it falls to the format of a miniseries to explore these properly so in 2015 the BBC produced one of the better as well as more faithful versions of what has to be the greatest Christie story of all, ‘And Then There Were None, first published in 1939. Over the years since its first publication there have been a myriad of adaptations for almost every media, not only that the general plot has been used time and again in other genres as it easily fits almost any other genre, providing a framework for others to fill in with their own characters, situations and geographic areas.

Agatha Christie, as well as her work, remain to this very day, a strong part of popular culture, in fact it has been for almost a hundred years. In a writing career lasting more than 55 years, she wrote 72 novels and 15 short story collections, to be sure a massive accomplishment, which will no doubt stand the test of time. What made her stories stand out were, of course, the characters. She created memorable and dignified characters which any class of readers could relate to. Her most memorable and popular characters, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, are great examples of her skill to develop “high society” characters with mainstream appeal.

Agatha regularly looked for “creative inspiration” by studying the people around her; however, her chosen genre, the murder mystery, stunted her writing process because it was difficult at times to put reality into fictional environments; for example, she sometimes had trouble using attributes of acquaintances to do things she couldn’t imagine them doing, like murder, and this often caused writer’s block. To overcome this obstacle, she would develop many characters from scratch. She would note physical appearances of strangers whom she saw and met in public and then would use their likeness and subtle mannerisms to develop relatable characters for her mysteries.

This new adaptation has been directed by Craig Viveiro, written by Sarah Phelps who are both very experienced in the medium of television, in particular for the UK audience that this has primarily been made for. The challenge that faces both of them are numerous, this is the latest in a long line of adaptations that people know very well, the location is essentially the same for the run of the story, there needs to be tension as well as heightened emotions as this is a ‘who done it’, there is a large cast so characters need to be fleshed out as well as given their own space to shine and this needs to be visually as well as narratively original so as to engage audiences and keep them for the entire series. The good news is that they have executed in almost every way so that this seems like a fresh story as well as something that must be seen, in fact this had some extremely strong viewing numbers when it aired in the UK which is not surprising as it is as fresh as any Christie adaptions that has ever been including some of the classic versions from previous years.

The story takes place in late August 1939, eight people, all strangers to each other, are invited to a small, isolated island off the coast of Devon, England, by a “Mr and Mrs Owen”. The guests settle in at a mansion tended by two newly hired servants, Thomas and Ethel Rogers, but their hosts are absent. When the guests sit down to dinner, they notice the centerpiece, ten figurines of soldiers arranged in a circle. Afterward, Thomas Rogers puts on a gramophone record, from which a voice accuses everyone present of murder. Shortly after this, one of the party dies from poisoning, and then more and more people are murdered, all in methods synonymous with a nursery rhyme the island is named after, and the murderer removes a figurine from the dining table each time someone is killed. The remaining people decide to work together. They must discover who the murderer is before they run out of time and nobody remains.

As with many of Christie’s greatest stories that have been transferred to other mediums there are always great actors that see the timeless quality of her writing as well as challenge that is present when one her novels is adapted. The other element that seems to be more and more prevalent are the extremely large casts that are assembled to bring these adaptations to life, here “And Then There Were None” is no different. In terms of great casts this one is right up there featuring not only some excellent actors but actors that are relevant appearing in some of the biggest hits and best received films and television shows of the past decade. Some of the highlights for me in this series are some talented character actors in Burn Gorman, Noah Taylor and Toby Stephens who have proven themselves time and again with their interpretations of some very original and interesting characters that prove why they are in demand as well as why they are so memorable in almost everything they appear in. What is refreshing was that some of the best parts are portrayed by veterans including the great Charles Dance, Sam Neill, Miranda Richardson as well as the incredibly talented Aidan Turner who seems to be on a high career wise in terms of television roles. All of these actors are excellent in their own ways, which speaks to the great casting and is one of the reasons why this miniseries is so compelling.

What is interesting with Agatha Christie adaptions are the changes that are made and while this is a mostly faithful adaption there are some changes and in my mind the most important ones are as follows:

Edward Seton, the man Justice Wargrave is accused of having hanged for crimes he did not commit (but was in fact guilty), was, in the original novel, executed for the murder of his landlady to get her money. Here, he is said by Wargrave to have killed multiple people, believing he was doing the world a favour by getting rid of them.

In the book, Detective Sergeant William Blore is accused of having committed perjury, with the result that an innocent man was wrongly sent to jail for life, where he died. In this series, Blore is accused of beating a homosexual man to death. In the book, he is killed by a clock in the shape of a bear being dropped on his head, whereas in this production he is killed by being stabbed and draped with a bear rug.

In the book, Philip Lombard is a soldier of fortune responsible for the deaths of 21 men in East Africa by abandoning them in the desert and taking the food and supplies with him, which he does not deny. In this series, he kills the men to get diamonds.

In the book, there is no explicit romance between Vera and Lombard and they never become physically intimate with one another.

In the book, Vera hangs herself in a post-hypnotic trance after shooting Lombard dead, and never discovers the true identity of “U.N. Owen”, and the reader only finds out in the postscript that Owen was Wargrave. In this production, Wargrave walks into the room while Vera is about to hang herself, explains his actions and motivations, and informs her that he intends to shoot himself and create an unsolvable mystery. She tries to bargain with him but he suddenly yanks the chair from under her feet, causing her seemingly self-inflicted death.

Wargrave’s death is very different from the novel. In the book, he sets up his death in his bedroom to reflect how he was last found, by shooting himself in the forehead, with a cord tied to the revolver and door knob, allowing the gun to be pulled away after firing. Here, after killing Vera, he goes to the dining room, where he sets up two place settings, presumably for himself and “U.N. Owen”. He fires the bullet just under his chin, and the revolver’s recoil propels the gun away, landing at the empty place setting.

In the novel, after the deaths and the arrival of help from the mainland, two policemen sit to discuss the case and ultimately are unable to solve the mystery. Later, a note from the murderer in a bottle is caught in a fishing trawler’s net and the mystery is solved. Neither occurs in this version.

Back in 2015 when this miniseries was first broadcast it heralded the arrival of new productions of Christies work, in fact since this was produced there have been multiple adaption’s produced of her work including “Chorabali” (2016), “Locked Doors”(2016), “The Witness for the Prosecution” (2016), “Crooked House” and “The Murder of the Orient Express” (2017) which have all been met with various amounts of success. This has not stopped and over the next few years we will see the following being produced and being brought to the large and small screen, “Ordeal by Innocence” (2018), “The ABC Murders” (2018), “Death on the Nile” (2019) and “Death Comes as the End”(2019), so we can see that the Estate for Agatha Christie is still making money as well as being verty successful.

What I love about this adaptation and the many others is that is an invitation into not only Christie’s world but her mind as well as the period in which she lived. It is also the feminine as aspect that I enjoy as it is certainly wanting in many oher parts of our lives, Christie was yearning to break free of her time period and in a way she has done just that being as relevant now as she was in her lifetime now over a hundred years ago, here is to more of her work being produced as my feeling is it will never get old.

“And Then There Were None” is available now on DVD.

WARNING: Embargoed for publication until 00:00:01 on 03/12/2015 – Programme Name: And Then There Were None – TX: n/a – Episode: n/a (No. 1) – Picture Shows: Ethel Rogers (ANNA MAXWELL MARTIN) – (C) Mammoth Screen – Photographer: Robert Viglasky

  DVD review: “And Then There Were None” (2015) "And Then There Were None" (2015) Thriller Three Episodes Written by: Sarah Phelps Directed by: Craig Viveiros…

[readitreviewit]

Looking for a thrilling new page-turner to add to your summer reading list? Look no further than The Perfect Revenge by Lutishia Lovely! This twisty psychological thriller will keep you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end. The novel revolves around Ivy Hill, a troubled young woman whose life was destroyed by the wealthy and respected socialite Lola Maxwell. After discovering Lola's identity, Ivy decides to take revenge by infiltrating her inner circle and taking everything she holds dear. But as Ivy gets closer to Lola, she finds herself drawn to Lola's husband and caught up in a dangerous web of secrets and deception. From the very first page, The Perfect Revenge grabs readers with its fast-paced narrative and sharp twists. Author Lutishia Lovely has crafted a tale that keeps readers guessing until the very end, with unexpected plot twists and reveals at every turn. But even more impressive than the novel's clever plot is its complex and engaging characters. Ivy Hill is a flawed and damaged protagonist, and yet she's also empathetic and relatable. Readers will find themselves rooting for her even as she makes questionable choices and takes morally questionable actions. Meanwhile, Lola Maxwell is a fascinating study in contrasts - on the surface, she's the picture of perfection, but beneath the surface lies a much more complicated and flawed individual. Of course, no psychological thriller is complete without a healthy dose of tension and suspense, and The Perfect Revenge delivers on that front as well. Readers will be kept guessing until the very end, with surprises and twists that will keep them guessing and second-guessing throughout the entire novel. But don't let the book's intense subject matter fool you - there's plenty of fun to be had in The Perfect Revenge as well. The Miami setting provides a glamorous and glitzy backdrop, and there's a certain guilty pleasure in following Ivy's twisted revenge plot. From the drama and intrigue of high society circles to the steamy romance between Ivy and Lola's husband, there's plenty to keep readers engaged and entertained. Overall, The Perfect Revenge is the perfect summer read for thriller fans. It's a page-turner that will keep readers up late into the night, with compelling characters, tense suspense, and plenty of twists and turns. So grab your sun hat, your beach towel, and a copy of The Perfect Revenge, and get ready for an unforgettable summer reading experience. "Don't miss out on the opportunity to transform your reading experience! Order your copy now or start your 30-day free trial on Audible and discover the magic of this book in a whole new way. Click the button and start your journey today!" Price: [price_with_discount] (as of [price_update_date] - Details)

[morkaischosen]

Lily September, the Holy Fool

Not so very long ago - last September, of course it was - a leviathan breached the waters of the Big Lake and on the shoreline died.

Only very slightly before that - before the dying, I mean, not the breaching - it spat up the unconscious body of a girl with long ash-blonde hair, clutching a bunch of lilies in her hands, and a crowd gathered around the presence of her.

Rushed to a hospital bed with gentle sunlight shining through the windows, those same lilies among the flowers in a vase by her side, she opened eyes of night and falling stars.

The doctor and the nurse asked if she could hear them, and she responded in fluent sign language. A brief delay to fetch an interpreter, and she was asked who she was, where she came from.

Stillness, for a long moment.

“I gave voice to words/lies that must not be spoken,” she replied with clear, formal gestures. “The water of the sea was salt.”

They asked her name, and again she thought for a moment and responded - quicker, now - “Seven horned stones,” but when her words were repeated aloud, she frowned. “Looks right, sounds wrong.”

Thus she asked them to name her Lily; Lily September, she was named.

Not so very much later, she was out of the hospital and finding her way around Fortitude; a little before that, lying in her hospital bed chafing to be about her business while the doctors insisted she wait to regain her full strength.

She had lost something, you see. Of it she says this: “It drowned in dreams and mysteries. We many came to share it and we few stayed to keep it, but it drowned with the thing that hid it. It must not be forgotten. I cannot remember it.”

“What has she lost?” people ask. “What are you looking for?”

Truth.

Since not so very long ago, Lily September has walked in and out of the lives of the people of Fortitude and of Town. Things revolve around the presence of her, when she lets them - birds follow in her footsteps, people come to see her, to learn from her and about her, though she spares barely a moment’s attention for most of them; an argument starts, and she slips away unseen.

Those who persist in efforts to come to her notice, or who look enough like they might have whatever it is she seeks, so that she turns her attention upon them - I would say they regret it, but I am not so sure that’s true.

Certainly they are changed by that experience. More sure of themselves, or less; become no more or less than they thought themselves to be, or doubting everything they thought they were, or with their flaws writ large in their flesh; but always looking more within than without, to their heart more than to the words of Lily September.

Perhaps a care for their improvement is why she takes the time to scrutinise them; but from the way she loses interest I think not. She talks often, and sincerely, of the stories people tell themselves about who we are; and when asked who she is, she tells tall tales of walking the world in its infancy, or of casting herself into the salt abyss even as the world was drowned beneath the Outside. The bitter smile she wears might seem to mock those who believe her. I say rather that it mocks herself, whether because she believes herself or because she does not.

Very rarely, when she is moved not to preach or teach or break but to share her heart of hearts, she may talk of a time before, and what came before time. Before there could be before, she says, when nothing moved in nothing, when chaos moved in the waters, all that was knew the certainty of emptiness. And to those she trusts with this her burden it is clearer than clear, truer than true, that she misses it, and that she wants for a clarity as pure as she once held.

I think she is looking for someone with a knowledge of their world that clear, that pure; but what will happen when she finds them I do not know.

Name: Lily September (but her sign name is much more like ‘seven horned stones’)

Academics skill: Average Sports skill: Good Favourite foods: Lentil and barley stew, goat’s-milk cheese. Blood type: O- Animal: Eel, huge. Age: The young end of your PC-appropriate age range.

Superior Holiness 4 (with Strange Rules; you’ll likely lean fairly heavily on the showing or displaying Truth angle here; on the other hand, your ability to inspire is more unsettling, more challenging, than most versions of this skill) Superior Hunter 1 (Perk, from Creature of Fable)

Signing, sai combat, and other things relating to the sound ‘sai’ 2 Surprising familiarity with pop culture 2

Perks

Bond (tied to an appropriate Issue???): “I must reject impurity and deception.” (Construe impurity as you prefer, but this is better treated as a spiritual, rather than a physical, thing - I see this Bond helping you sleep in a muddy ditch if the alternative is owing a favour to someone corrupt.)

Affliction 2 (tied to Allegory?): “I cannot speak.” (This is the symptom of a deeper problem - you used to speak your Lies, but you’ve lost sight of the True Thing, so at best you could manage Misunderstandings or Equivocations. You should only replace this Perk with another after some fairly significant character development addressing that void.)

Miraculous Powers

Allegory 2

You are a Holy Fool, an ascetic who transgresses the norms of society in pursuit of the sacred. Your Failing is Truth, or perhaps Self-Knowledge: you remember a time when you were certain of yourself and your place in the cosmos, but you have lost it; you test those around you, looking for a sure and certain soul to give you clarity of purpose. And, many years ago, you spoke the Lies of Iolithae Septimian, and the waters of the sea were salt.

Somebody Else’s Problem - Most of the time you are happy to let people notice you, but when you wish to slip away unnoticed you have the trick of turning their thoughts to deeper things, so they don’t notice you leaving. Attempts to describe you focus on the weight of your presence or the profundity of your signing, and miss such important details as what you were wearing or your long ash-blonde plait.

Stone-Shattering Gestures - Your Legendary Weapon is your knowledge of seven long-lost gestures of surpassing power, which can shatter walls and dynasties.

Wonder-Worker - When you scorn the rules of society, reveal truths and shatter deceptions, you can infuse your actions with miraculous weight.

A Tangled History - You walked the world speaking your Lies for countless aeons before it was drowned in dreams and ambiguity, but more than that - your words are in every drop of brine, in every fish - in almost every meal in Fortitude. You can declare you were involved historical events in the old world, or reveal that your spiritual presence in things of the deep involved you in any event in Town’s past.

Mechanisms of Transport - You can walk straight paths through the Outside, cloaking yourself in an older order; and when all else fails and your destination has a shoreline, consider throwing yourself into Big Lake to be swallowed by an appropriate fish.

Awaken - You alone have not forgotten the little spirits that are inside all things, and can remind them of themselves enough that they awake, for a time.

Bring to Fruition - You can transform someone into the essence of what they believe themselves to be, or conversely make manifest the shadowed corners of their soul in a form they can no longer ignore. This relies on mundane actions; since it involves displaying inner truths, Superior Holiness is likely to be suitable; have fun touching people on the forehead to open a third eye, or throwing water on people to wash away the mask from their true face!

Taboo may or may not be meant to be an Arc 2 trait. If it is, you have an additional Bond 2: “I must be treated with respect, for I am sacred.” You aren’t entirely sure why you must remain inviolate so, but it certainly used to be true; you can use this Bond to overcome obstacles that would prevent people respecting you, but as with all Bonds you need not let it spoil a scene where your identity struggles make it hard for you to accept your sacred nature.

Creature of Fable 1+

You are a story about what it means to be sacred, but it goes beyond that. You’re the legend of the statue with feet of clay. Your identity is that you don’t know who you are. You are the story that tells us that stories aren’t real.

This is causing some difficulties for your self-actualisation, but it does at least leave you well-placed to point out the flaws in the stories other people tell themselves.

Between the Boundaries - As your Something To Deal With rises, you find your acquaintances, passers-by and even the world around you responding to your needs as homage to the sacred thing you represent. People and animals bring you food, clothes and other things you need, or spread what you tell them. This can be very useful for ensuring a sign interpreter is around when you need one.

Strange Rules - You are, apparently, the last sacred vessel of the purity of the Not. Your Superior Holiness is protected by a Level 1 Auctoritas, and will improve as you pursue this Arc further.

Iconic - You have the raggedly striking look of a holy fool, which flirts with but maintains a little distance from the starkly elegant uniformed look of the Riders. Your clothes fray at the edges, and neatly-closed jackets rapidly lose buttons. You have a miraculous skill at losing shoes, but sandals are acceptable. You usually wear a simple unbleached linen dress belted with a long string of red jasper beads, black leggings that catch on something and tear in several places within about a minute of you putting them on, and a black jacket thrown haphazardly on top.

Superior Hunter - Little to say about this, other than that you remember when irrigation agriculture was new and exciting; you’re as much a creature of the wilderness before as the wilderness outside.

Cut the Soul - The holy emptiness of the Not allows you to catch a story someone tells the world and peel it away until the lie at its heart is revealed. If you are so inclined, you might like to treat this power as the last remaining memory of your old friend and debating partner Tairté ut-Napishtim. 

[pass-the-bechdel]

Orphan Black season four full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

100% (ten of ten).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

59%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

All ten have over 50% female casts.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero, obviously.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirty. Nineteen who appear in more than one episode, twelve who appear in at least half the episodes, and two who appear in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-three. Fourteen who appear in more than one episode, seven who appear in at least half the episodes, and zero who appear in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Nothing particularly awful for once, but nothing very exciting either (average rating of three).

General Season Quality:

An absolute chore to get through. This show has run out all its goodwill and the illusion that it is about anything more than overwrought plot drama just for the sake of it has been dispelled. The show has always given the impression of believing itself to be more intelligent and complex than it actually is, but it seems to have finally reached an insufferable fever pitch.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

I’ve said it before for various different shows and for various different reasons, but this, my friends, this is why we evaluate content instead of just writing up statistics. This season churned out not just female-led episodes, but a fully female-dominant piece from end to end, easily the most female-heavy season of tv we’ve had on this blog to date. But that does not fucking make it good television, not entertainment-wise, nor from a representation perspective. To clarify: I’m not suggesting that the increase in female presence is in any way responsible for the drop in entertainment quality, I believe the two are mutually exclusive. Representation-wise, the numbers are relevant insofar as I have definitely seen people try to claim feminist triumphs before on the grounds of ‘there’s a lot of women there’, and realistically we all know you’ve gotta ask for more than that. Being present at the table is only the beginning of the battle: if you are relegated to the end of the table, not given anything to eat (or not fed the same as the other dinner guests), not allowed to speak, or not listened to when you do speak, then your issues persist. Being expected to smile politely and just be glad you were invited at all is not how positive representation works. Orphan Black did not commit a litany of feminists sins this season, but neither did the abundance of women on deck achieve anything on a representational front, and I will not praise it for sheer numbers when it isn’t doing anything good with them. 

This seems a necessary time to talk about differing standards of expectation in media, and specifically the rigorous demands placed on female-led stories to be ‘perfect’ or otherwise be derided as ‘proof’ that female-led stories ‘don’t work’. Society likes to use individual films/books/tv shows as stand-ins for all the media of like type that could ever exist - think of the endless supply of recent male-led superhero films, some of them excellent, some of them garbage, some of them wildly successful, some of them total bombs, and yet the spectrum of different qualities and receptions never colours the way people perceive the genre as a whole. Enter Wonder Woman, the first female-led superhero film of the current era, and the colossal make-or-break expectations for it as a movie, and for its female director, Patty Jenkins. All eyes were on Jenkins to prove that women could direct big blockbuster action movies - not to prove that SHE could do it, but that WOMEN could - and by the same token, the fate of any future female-led superhero films hung on the success or failure of that one movie. Now, in tv terms, Orphan Black was certainly not standing alone as THE representative for female-led television series, but as part of a minority movement it was and is still subject to the rigours of expectation; that it be good enough, successful enough to bring about more female-led shows in the future, that it convinces the Powers That Be that they can bank on female-led stories. The irony of raising expectations in order to demand the best is that of course, it stacks the deck. Women having to achieve twice as much as men in order to be considered just equal is part of why feminism exists. I bring all of this up because I am very wary of falling into this trap myself, and I need you all to know that when I judge Orphan Black for its lacking quality, it’s with full awareness of the potential double-standard, and not actually motivated by a frustration with the show for ‘letting women down’. 

In last season’s review, I talked about jumping the shark, and I said then that I didn’t feel like Orphan Black had made that leap just yet. After this season, I’m reconsidering that assessment retroactively, and it’s because of Beth Childs. The premiere of this season was easily the strongest episode - arguably, the only strong episode - but it also kinda broke the show for me by revealing the fatal flaw: that they began the entire series by sailing over a rapid succession of Goddamn sharks. One ridiculously improbable event to kick off the whole narrative could easily be shrugged off and forgiven - many shows require such a conceit to get going - and Orphan Black got away with it at first by wrapping all its improbabilities into one package: Sarah Manning. The first and largest conceit is that Sarah just-so-happens to not only be present for Beth’s suicide, but that she has the opportunity to look Beth directly in the face and realise that they’re identical right before Beth face-plants a train. BUT THEN, Sarah takes Beth’s bag with all her ID, which Beth has conveniently set aside, allowing her to infiltrate Beth’s whole life. AND THEN it turns out that Sarah happens to be a gifted con artist of trained-spy proportions, both willing and capable enough to shrug on Beth’s identity based solely on the content of some home videos and a wardrobe change. Conveniently, Sarah is able to learn Beth’s mannerisms and accent well enough to approximate her successfully in front of her intimate partners and professional colleagues of multiple years, and she’s physically identical in weight and muscle distribution despite leading a distinctly less athletic lifestyle. I flagged all of these things back when they happened, but the show got away with them at the time because, after all, Sarah’s hustle is the entry-point into the series, so we go with the idea that we need to make that logical concession, just buy the bit, and we’ll get our entertainment in return. Problem is, season four goes and opens with a flashback episode to the time while Beth was still alive, and that busts the whole concession myth wide open. 

For starters, the plot is already in motion before Sarah shows up. We do realise that back in season one as Sarah negotiates her way around the mess she’s gotten into, but again, we run with the idea that we needed Sarah’s entry to make the whole thing work. The flashback episode shows us how completely false that is - Beth has an entire web of intrigue that we could have been watching instead, and if we’d started the show with her it would have been less jumbled and filled with needless drama than the premiere with Sarah. Imagine if the show started with, say, Beth being contacted by MK for the first time. She spends the premiere fielding tips from this new anonymous source, investigating something whack and presumably Neolution-related, and by episode’s end she forces a meeting with her source only to discover that they’re genetically identical. Cue show. It’s clearer and cleaner than all the futzing around with Sarah taking over someone’s life and faking her own death and having family drama and Vic drama and then having a German shot in her car and not getting around to the actual clone-reveal until three episodes in, and it allows the narrative to build from a logical entry-point instead of dropping into the middle and having to field all sorts of technically irrelevant detail in order to sell the whole idea. The flashback episode gives us a vision of what could have been a far better, more focused, more atmospheric, and more character-driven narrative, still full of drama, but LOGICAL drama, the drama of unfolding a conspiracy and trying to work out what’s real in the clones’ lives, the drama of all of them getting to know each other and adjusting to the revelation of their identity, etc, etc. 

I have railed often and increasingly at how Sarah creates outrageous and unnecessary drama and often complicates the story instead of helping to drive through it, and it’s such a big part of why the show is swallowing itself slowly: it’s so busy being melodramatic for the sake of it and revolving around a reactive character who generates more trouble than she solves, and that leaves us drowning in the middle of the whole thing when we should be headed for shore. The show doesn’t actually need Sarah, and revolving around her because she’s the one with the magical baby-making womb is kinda grotesque and harks back to the issue of representation, because if your show is about women not because they’re people but because they can (sometimes) birth babies, then you’re conforming to the age-old notion that while men can be anything and everything, women are only worth acknowledging if their biological functions are part of the story. I suspect I may have to discuss that particular issue in more detail once the series ends, so I won’t get into it further just now; the point is, Sarah is a needless complication who required extraordinary machinations in order to be part of the story in the first place, and that first act of shark-jumping set the stage for all the ridiculousness that has come since. The show stacked the deck against itself: it set a precedent of needless hyper-drama designed to make the plot look as twisty and crazy as possible, and it has focused primarily and increasingly on looping around itself with more and more excessive conspiracy and back-from-the-dead characters and medical marvels, as if the early narratives about what it means to be a clone (y’know, the stuff that was more centred on characters and their feelings and stuff? The good shit?) and how that situates you within the world and your sense of self was not good enough. I’m remembering with bitter fondness the season one finale, when it felt like the extravagances of the plot were brought together harmoniously into a thoughtful exploration of the clone situation. What a thing this show could have had if it cared more about having a heart than it does about ~shock twists~. Having had the bubble popped on just how pompously ludicrous it actually is, I don’t expect to ever return to those good times, but who knows? Maybe concluding the show will lead them to introspect and try to bring us home on something meaningful in season five. I have little faith in that, but I’m holding out a glimmer of hope, regardless.

[godssea7-blog]

The Holy Roman Empire in Prophecy

“The [European] Community is living largely by the heritage of the Holy Roman Empire, though the great majority of the people who live by it don’t know by what heritage they live.”—Otto von Habsburg

It is July 13, 2015. Last night, Europe’s leaders pulled another all-nighter trying to agree on a solution to prevent Greece from going bankrupt, leaving the eurozone and hurling the entire European Union into the abyss. As it stands right now they seem to have found a plan. But if recent history is any indicator, that solution will either fall through or precipitate another crisis within the next few days, or hours, or minutes.

This is 21st-century Europe: disordered, disunited and, increasingly, despondent.

Amid all the uncertainty, one reality seems absolutely certain, at least to most observers: The European Union is dying—slowly, painfully and publicly. The hope of European countries forming a united, stable, democratic, geopolitically consequential entity is vanishing. The goal of European integration, noble as it may be, is doomed. The future of global politics and power, many believe, belongs to the likes of China, Russia, Iran and the United States. The EU, assuming it can survive the current crisis, is destined to remain, at best, a secondary power.

This book forecasts a different future for the Continent.

Europe will unite and it will become a formidable global dynamo. The unity Europe attains will not be perfect; it will not come about easily or peacefully; and it certainly will not endure. But Europe is going to become a united superpower and a serious, daunting global power. The emergence of this new Europe will have far-reaching and dramatic consequences for us all.

This forecast is underpinned by two basic proofs. First, like the goal of European unity itself, it is supported by more than 1,500 years of European history. Second, it is supported by Bible prophecy.

Founded in 1951, initially as the European Coal and Steel Community, the European Union was created with the fundamental goal of reviving the ancient Holy Roman Empire. This might be hard to envision, considering what a debacle the EU is today. Nevertheless, the cherished and publicly stated goal of some Europeans, especially European leaders, is to resurrect the Holy Roman Empire.

What was the Holy Roman Empire? What would a resurrected Holy Roman Empire look like?

This empire—its composition and character, its behavior and accomplishments—was prophesied, repeatedly and in vivid detail, in the Bible. Where are these prophecies? Have they been fulfilled? What do they mean for the future of Europe, and for mankind?

Some of the answers are not pleasant, but we need to know.

Reviving the Holy Roman Empire

Brendan Simms is a historian and a professor of history at Cambridge University. In 2013, he wrote an article in the New York Times titled “The Ghosts of Europe’s Past.” “The cheerleaders of the European Union like to think of it as an entirely new phenomenon, born of the horrors of two world wars,” he wrote. “But in fact it closely resembles a formation that many Europeans thought they had long since left to the dustbin of history: the Holy Roman Empire ….”

Not all Europeans, however, confined the Holy Roman Empire to the dustbin of history. Here is how Otto von Habsburg, a descendant of that famous line of European royalty, put it in 1989: “The [European] Community is living largely by the heritage of the Holy Roman Empire, though the great majority of the people who live by it don’t know by what heritage they live.”

These are important words from an important man. Together with other leading figures such as Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, this man built the European Community, which today we call the European Union. Habsburg died in 2011. He was a descendant of the Habsburg line of European royalty and former crown prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was one of the leading architects of modern Europe—and his statement discloses the vision that underpins modern Europe.

To appreciate the significance of this truth, we need to understand the history and nature of the Holy Roman Empire—particularly the identity of the “holy” in its name.

Among historians, it is generally accepted that the Holy Roman Empire was the cyclical reincarnation of the ancient Roman Empire, presided over in each instance by the Catholic Church. Oxford Dictionary defines it as the “empire set up in Western Europe following the coronation of Charlemagne as emperor in the year 800. It was created by the medieval papacy in an attempt to unite Christendom under one rule.”

These descriptions are accurate, but are woefully incomplete.

Mr. Habsburg lived in Vienna, Austria, the heart of the ancient Holy Roman Empire, and he often spoke about an illustrious crown on display in Vienna’s Hofburg Palace. “We do possess a European symbol which belongs to all nations equally,” he once said. “This is the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, which embodies the tradition of Charlemagne.”

The founders of the EU, and many European leaders today, readily acknowledge that the supreme goal of the European Union is to live “by the heritage of the Holy Roman Empire.” European politicians regularly declare their admiration for Charlemagne and publicly admit that they seek to create a united Europe that “embodies the tradition of Charlemagne.”

What is the “heritage of the Holy Roman Empire”? Who was Charlemagne? What is the “tradition of Charlemagne”? We need the answers to these questions if we are to understand modern Europe and anticipate its future.

Modern Europe wants to resurrect the Holy Roman Empire. That means this history is also prophecy of the imminent future—and that makes this a subject of paramount importance.

Revealing God and the Gospel

The purpose for this book is twofold. First, it aims to provide a glimpse into the immediate future of both Europe and the world by examining the history that is informing the modern revival of this church-state combine.

The second purpose of this book is truly inspiring: It is to show how the history and prophecy of the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire reveal God and the gospel.

In order to grasp this wonderful truth, you must be willing to consider what the Bible says about this subject. Considering the topic of this book, referring to Scripture shouldn’t seem unusual; after all, the term “holy” in Holy Roman Empire implies religion, which implies (or at least should imply) the use of the Bible. Any attempt to discuss the Holy Roman Empire without employing the Bible is doing this subject injustice.

It is a sad fact that many people have little tolerance for the Bible. Invoking it, they believe, makes a person simpleminded, unreasonable, irrational or uneducated. But the Bible is Western civilization’s most important and defining piece of literature. It is also a widely recognized and valuable history book. Isn’t closing your mind to what this book says illiberal, unreasonable and simpleminded?

Note some statements in Scripture that begin to reveal the way God uses the Holy Roman Empire to declare His presence and supremacy.

In Isaiah 46:9-10, He says, “… I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand ….”

In Isaiah 40, He says, “To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things …. Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance …. All nationsbefore him are as nothing …” (verses 25-26, 15, 17).

The God of the Bible is the ultimate authority in the affairs of mankind. Few realize it today, but God sanctions the rise and fall of human empires and nations. He decides the borders of nations. He oversees all major developments in international relations. God reigns supreme in the affairs of men.

Another important truth that might surprise the reader is this: The Bible clearly shows that this is not God’s world. Most of the customs and traditions, cultures and societies, lifestyles, governments and economies of human civilization were not designed by God, and He does not endorse them. The Bible teaches that this world is under the control and influence of Satan the devil, a former archangel who rebelled against God (e.g. 2 Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 2:2; Revelation 12:9). This explains the presence of so much evil and unhappiness in our world.

But the profound influence of the devil on this world does not preclude God’s involvement in world events.

Psalm 33:10-15 say, “The Eternal wrecks the purposes of pagans, he brings to nothing what the nations plan; but the Eternal’s purpose stands for ever, and what he plans will last from age to age. … The Eternal looks from heaven, beholding all mankind; from where he sits, he scans all who inhabit the world; he who alone made their minds, he notes all they do” (Moffatt translation).

Any person who has the humility to meditate on that scripture will see that it is astonishingly hopeful and inspiring.

The tendency of human nature is to focus on the self, to behave as if the universe revolves around oneself. Thus blinded by vanity and self-absorption, individually and collectively, most people fail to see and accept that God is the ultimate authority in the affairs of humanity.

This is why God gives Bible prophecy: to prove that He exists and that He reigns supreme.

Though this world and human nature are under the influence of the devil, God steers world events to ensure that every word He has uttered is fulfilled exactly as He said. God monitors everything, and He sanctions every major and even many minor decisions and developments.

This is one of the most hopeful, reassuring truths a person can know. And the Catholic religion and the Holy Roman Empire are important because they provide quantifiable, living, irrefutable proof of this truth.

How?

How Relevant Is Prophecy?

In this world—even in much of Christianity—Bible prophecy is almost universally ignored and rejected. But did you realize that fully one third of the Bible is devoted to prophecy? To discard prophecy is to discard one third of the Bible.

Of all the prophecy in the Bible, it is easily provable that the great majority revolves around the time we are currently living in and the months and years ahead. Author and educator Herbert W. Armstrong taught that 90 percent of the Bible’s prophecy is for our time. This is an astounding truth when you consider that the final canon of the Bible was finished more than 1,900 years ago.

Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, which comprise the Pentateuch, roughly 1,400 years before the lifetime of Jesus Christ. The major and minor prophets, which are filled with so much prophecy, were written between 400 and 800 years before Christ. The Apostle John wrote his Gospel, his epistles and the book of Revelation in the final decade of the first century, and authorship of the Bible was completed by a.d. 100.

Now think on this.

If the Holy Roman Empire was discussed in the Bible long before it even existed—in some instances, more than a thousand years prior to it coming on the scene—then this would surely prove the existence of a higher power, a divine architect, a supreme being capable of intervening in human affairs and shaping world history.

If the Holy Roman Empire is indeed fulfilled prophecy, then it is dramatic, tangible, undeniable proof of God’s existence. And if the prophecy of the Holy Roman Empire is accurate, then other biblical prophecies and truths would surely also be accurate. This would make the Bible a valuable resource for forecasting world events—even for preparingfor them.

So, was the Holy Roman Empire prophesied in the Bible?

Holy Roman Empire Prophesied

The Holy Roman Empire is spoken of in multiple prophecies in both the Old and New Testaments. This book will explore many of these prophecies. Let’s review one specific chapter now. Written more than 400 years before the Holy Roman Empire came into existence, this chapter gives a detailed, thorough explanation of this empire’s nature and motives, its leadership, and its accomplishments.

The book of Revelation is about “things which shall be hereafter,” or events that would occur after John’s time (Revelation 1:19). Revelation contains prophecy of end-time events. Revelation 17 was written by the Apostle John around a.d. 90. The specific purpose of this pivotal chapter, as verse 1 plainly states, is to describe the “judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters.” This “great whore” symbolizes a specific institution. In this chapter, God gives John a vision, beginning in verse 3, in which He gives the apostle insight into the character and conduct of this institution, and a look at its final judgment and its end.

John’s vision contains three primary characters. The first two are revealed in verse 3: “So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.” The third is revealed in verse 6: “And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.”

The first character of Revelation 17 is the “whore” or “woman,” which in biblical language represents a religion, or church (e.g. Ephesians 5; 2 Corinthians 11:2). The second is the beast that has seven heads and 10 horns. The third is the “saints” or “martyrs,” a group of people the “woman” lives to persecute and destroy.

Revelation 17:4 says this “woman” is “arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls ….” She is conspicuously wealthy, overflowing with material splendor. She is a famous religion known and revered by people across the planet (see also verses 2 and 15 and Revelation 18:3).

The scene in Revelation 17:3 of the woman riding, or guiding, the beast depicts a religion brandishing political power. Verse 2 says the “kings of the earth have committed fornication” with her. Verse 18 says, “And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.” This religion enmeshes itself with the affairs of kings and empires. It is a power player in international relations.

Revelation 17 is clear. This religion is incredibly wealthy; it has a global presence and influence; it is a potent force in politics and international relations; and it uses the beast to pursue its grim ambitions.

Now look at the beast it rides. Verse 3 says this creature has seven heads and 10 horns. Verse 9 says that the “seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.” In biblical language, a mountain is a symbol for a nation or kingdom (e.g. Isaiah 2:2-3). Here, each “head” signifies a distinct kingdom, or empire.

Revelation 17:10 reveals that these seven heads are also “seven kings,” or seven individuals, each ruling a kingdom. The seven heads represent seven distinct empires, or kingdoms, each with its own king. Verse 10 shows that these empires, or kingdoms, are successive, not concurrent.

All of these kings, or kingdoms, are inspired and led by the woman. To Catholics, the Holy Roman Empire is secular history, with the Vatican trapped in the middle as a reluctant and unwilling participant. That is not true.

Finally, what do the 10 horns represent? Again, Scripture reveals the answer. Verses 12-14 show that the 10 horns represent 10 kings, or 10 nations, that coalesce around and submit themselves to the superior king ruling over the seventh kingdom. We will discuss these 10 horns in greater detail in the final chapter of this book, where we return to Revelation 17.

Now let’s summarize the prophetic message of Revelation 17. This vision is obviously about a towering church—a wealthy, imperialistic, ambitious religion—presiding over the rise of seven distinct empires, or kingdoms, each ruled by a specific king. And this woman uses her influence over each empire to try and destroy the true “saints” of God.

If you read to the end of this book, you will come to appreciate how perfect this description of the Holy Roman Empire is. The Holy Roman Empire that is recorded and discussed in countless history books. The Holy Roman Empire whose history is still plainly evident in the cathedrals and castles, the ruins and battlefields, the symbols and memorabilia, the customs and practices of Europe today.

Most significantly, you will see what an apt description it is of the Holy Roman Empire currently being resurrected in Europe.

And to think, Revelation 17 was written more than 400 years before the first manifestation in Europe of the Holy Roman Empire.

Fulfilled Prophecy

This book has barely begun and already it implies some pretty harsh truths: that the Catholic religion is the “woman” of Revelation 17; that the Holy Roman Empire is the seven-headed beast ridden by the woman; and that together these two seek to undermine, persecute and destroy the true religion of God.

The natural reaction, particularly if you are Catholic, European or an intellectual, will be disgust, perhaps even fury. Some might feel this is an unwarranted attack on the Catholic Church or the European Union. But it is important for the reader to set aside these emotions, even if only for a moment, and be willing to have his thinking and beliefs challenged.

Remember the twofold purpose of this book. First, we are exploring the history of the Holy Roman Empire in an effort to warn the reader about its imminent resurrection in Europe. The better we understand what this entity did in the past, the better we will recognize what it plans to do in the future.

The stakes are too high to make a mistake. Bible prophecy says the final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire will cause global devastation that will affect every person on Earth. The destruction and suffering will be exponentially worse than World War ii. Are you sure, totally convinced, 100 percent certain that the Bible is wrong, that the Holy Roman Empire was not prophesied, and therefore there is no need to consider the ramifications of it being revived today?

This is a life-or-death question.

The reader must not allow emotion, habit, family tradition or the crowd mentality to prevent him from at least considering this history and what the Bible has to say about the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire.

Let’s be honest. The contemporary Western mind has developed the destructive habit of preferring heartwarming platitudes over hard truth. Most people dislike hearing the truth about their flaws and weaknesses, about threats and dangers. Most ignore or reject truth they find distressing or unappealing.

Two weeks ago from the time of this writing, there was a horrific terrorist attack in Tunisia. Thirty-eight people were killed, and most of the victims were British. This is a great tragedy; one’s heart aches for the victims and their families. But was it surprising? Radical Islam has been devouring North Africa for half a decade. Islamist terrorists regularly threaten Western tourists, and multiple terrorist cells are known to operate in Tunisia. Just a couple of months ago, 21 people, mostly tourists, were killed and more than 50 were injured when terrorists attacked the Bardo National Museum, just a few miles from the beach where this latest attack occurred.

The facts strongly suggest Tunisia might not be the safest place for a vacation. Yet many Western tourists ignored this truth and took holidays in what is known to be an increasingly dangerous part of the planet for Westerners.

The lesson is: It’s best to face the truth, even if it makes one upset or uncomfortable. And even if it means one might have to change his habits or thinking.

Second, and most importantly, remember that the history of the Holy Roman Empire proves God’s existence and the veracity of His Word. This is a truth that every person on Earth will have to come to understand and that every reader would do well to think seriously about. Please, read this book all the way to the end. The message, if you really get it, is important, wonderful and life-changing.

Consider it. If God prophesied in the first century that a great false religion would preside over seven distinct empires, and subsequent history shows a great religion presiding over seven distinct empires, this is fulfilled prophecy. Surely there is no other rational explanation.

If a prophecy is obviously and quantifiably fulfilled, that proves that a supreme power capable of bringing that prophecy to fruition also must exist. No man could forecast something like the Holy Roman Empire, and certainly no man could influence world conditions over the course of two millennia to bring it to pass. If the Holy Roman Empire exists, and if it looks and behaves exactly as God prophesied it would, then God must exist.

Now think about the consequences of proving God’s existence.

If God really does exist—if He is alive and living, all-powerful and supreme—then you can now start answering life’s most perplexing, most fundamental questions: What is man? What is the purpose of man? What is man’s future? The answers come only after one has proved God’s existence.

If God exists, then mankind, despite the chaos and hopelessness that engulfs us, has a bright future. If God exists, and if what He teaches in the Bible is true, then there is reason to be optimistic. If God exists, then there is cause for hope.

Doesn’t the world right now—don’t you—need some hope?

Let’s see in stirring detail just how the Holy Roman Empire fulfills Bible prophecy—and is destined to do so again in your lifetime.