More on Colin Sallow again

Colin Sallow is a character I created sometime ago but he also came from a dream, he could be seen as the Dio Brando of the story (yellow clothing and knife-throwing antagonist who stops time), even right down to an apparent affinity with birds (Dio has his in Pet Shop Boy). But the rest of his depiction is a grab bag of other influences, including those you’d never expect to be combined in a particular manner. I said many times before that he resembles a younger Liam Howlett, the keyboardist and mastermind of the Essex band The Prodigy. He also exhibits his piano-playing skills, though there’s something else about him that you’d never expect. There’s actually a bit of Ace of Base in him, as in that Gothenburg-based act behind ‘Beautiful Life’ and ‘All That She Wants’, he actually went to the University of Gothenburg himself to study biology (he actually wants to study birds). His classmate there is named Pernilla Berggren, who’s named after the Berggren siblings and one woman that one of the AOB members dated (Ulf Ekberg), who likes cats and slapped him in the face over a remark about cat predation.

All of the Berggren siblings have (had) cats as pets, given Jonas Berggren has a fear of dogs due to a negative childhood experience. Colin Sallow doesn’t seem fond of dogs himself, just like Dio Brando, though it’s explicitly got to do with one dog killing his chickens before. Again there’s a bit of Ace of Base in him, because one AOB member explicitly admitting to not being fond of dogs himself. I remember saying this before that K-Pop musicians and bands never seemed to influence me when it comes to doing fictional characters at all, the way bands like The Prodigy, Ace of Base and Massive Attack do, or increasingly Aqua in some of my poems that’s kind of telling. I did listen to K-Pop bands and musicians before, but weirdly enough I never became really interested in any of them enough to bother archiving any extensive mention of them at all. I even have a habit of archiving old fansites pertaining to bands like Massive Attack, Aqua and Ace of Base, but K-Pop bands and musicians never really strongly interested me much. Not so much out of contempt, as catchy as the music is but they seem contrived and weirdly boring.

I did kind of get into Wonho though not for long and not quite as intense as I would with Aqua to bother archiving any mirrored website mentioning the latter at all, well I could make a character based on an Aqua member and this goes to show you that Wonho doesn’t have much of an influence on me in creating fictions. Let’s say his name is Rene Savard and he’s a raccoon kemonomimi who’s of both Metis and Mikmaq descent, he comes from somewhere in Quebec and had a falling out with his father over his beliefs (he’s a Christian and an aspiring marine biologist to boot), so he goes onboard with a ship to learn marine biology elsewhere and study marine animals wherever he went when he was younger. Mind you he’s based on Rene Dif, the deep-voiced bald member who also had a falling out with his own father enough to leave him for a long time. It doesn’t seem obvious because Mr Savard is a Canadian man of Metis and Mikmaq descent, but it’s there in some other way if you know something about Aqua yourself. Aqua isn’t really that obscure and so is Ace of Base.

But both bands are mentioned far less often on Fanlore and related media, that finding surviving websites in any form would be a massive endeavour in and of itself. There’s a good deal of Ace of Base in Colin himself, he got educated in Sweden for a time being. More specifically in Gothenburg, where Ace of Base came from. Okay I’m pretty much repeating myself but getting influenced by Ace of Base enough to do fictions of some sort, whether if this involves studying Indonesian only to mention AOB members there every now and then, does say something about the state of transformational fandom. One that seems strangely more biased towards men than to women that even when you have a band that’s usually not this demeaning to women whenever women members are frequently present at all (the Berggren sisters anybody?), Ace of Base never inspired this much fanfiction relative to the Backstreet Boys that it seems to lean towards an odd sort of feminism.

Though it’s true neither Aqua nor the Prodigy are any better with their own blunders (Barbie Girl and Smack My B Up), it’s still very odd. A sort of feminism that both rejects misogyny yet reinforces it in some way by excluding any band with a female member (and sometimes more than one female member) around, that feels kind of confusing for a community that calls itself highly feminist. Especially if these bands in question aren’t usually demeaning to or objectify women in any way, let alone if they have multiple female members around, that it kind of reinforces music industry misogyny in a different manner. Creating characters based on actual Ace of Base members in some way or another isn’t really hard, just as it’s not hard to create characters based on their Aqua or even Prodigy counterparts. If Liam Howlett is the basis for Colin Sallow, then Maxim Reality is the basis for Fabrice Tientcheu. Yep, another cat lover but one who is a Cameroonian forensic scientist to boot.

Then both Ulf Ekberg’s girlfriend and the Berggren siblings are the basis for Pernilla Berggren, that’s why she’s a biologist who specialises in cats (both housecats and their relatives) who studied at the University of Gothenburg with Colin before. It’s far from impossible and although Ace of Base fanworks do exist, they’re surprisingly rather rare compared to what happens to Backstreet Boys that lends itself to a kind of Schrodinger’s misogyny. It’s not that hard to put a bit of Ace of Base in him, despite being ostensibly based on a Prodigy member, that goes to you show it’s really not that hard to be influenced by Ace of Base, the Prodigy and Aqua enough to create fictional characters based on them in some way or another. Actually it’s also not that hard to be influenced by Massive Attack either and enough to create fictional characters based on their members just the same, since the economist Gaetano Saturni’s based on Robert del Naja and the lawyer Babatunde Osofisan’s based on Grant Marshall.

It’s not that hard really, even Araki Hirohiko’s no stranger to naming some of his characters after Sananda Maitreya/Terrence Trent D’Arby, Enya, Mariah Carey, Lisa Velez, Ronnie James Dio, Michel Polnareff, Paula Abdul, Vanilla Ice and Chaka Khan, so in a sense he did base his own characters after some of the musicians he listens to or listened to at some point in his life. So logically it wouldn’t be hard basing characters after members from the Prodigy, Ace of Base, Aqua and Massive Attack, just as one would with say the Backstreet Boys, One Direction and Nsync. But I feel a good number of professional writers alive today have cut their teeth on doing Backstreet Boys, One Direction and Nsync fanfic that their own professionally published stories contain some holdovers from their authors’ fanfiction pasts, fanworks based on the Prodigy and Ace of Base certainly do exist as I’ve seen some about the former and a little bit about the latter. They’re definitely not nonexistent, but transformational fandom remains heavily biased towards boy bands.

Not even generally non-misogynistic mixed-gender bands like Ace of Base figure that much in transformational fandom, which makes for a really odd exclusion in the annals of transformational fandom history. Like of all the bands they go after given transformational fandom’s pro-woman stance, they ignore bands like Ace of Base who usually don’t do this to their own female members often and don’t demean women much in their own body of work either, unlike Aqua and the Prodigy even by accident in their cases. One could use bands like The Prodigy and Ace of Base as inspiration for their own fictional characters, but at times it seems transformational fandom’s scope is much more limited than it cares to realise. The sky should be the limit but in transformational fandom, when it comes to real world musicians, it’s usually all about all-male rock bands or boy bands. So again transformational fandom’s scope is more limited in this regard, where bands that don’t degrade women whenever female members are often around are strangely sidelined.

It’s not hard basing characters after members of Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam if Jojo’s Lisa Lisa is any indication, or for another matter basing characters off of Enya and Mariah Carey that goes to show you something about finding inspiration in these people and bands. Even if something like Jojo is not above reproach at times, basing non-misogynistic female characters after actual female musicians isn’t hard. If you could name one’s mother and mentor after Lisa Velez, then basing a character after Ace of Base members isn’t a stretch either. Basing characters after members of The Prodigy, Massive Attack and Aqua isn’t entirely impossible either, one could make another character based on Ace of Base called Birgitta Ekberg who’s an ecologist specialising in feral rabbits and it’s not that hard either. Mind you feral rabbits are very much a thing in Sweden as well, that there’s always the potential to base such characters after phenomena happening in these situations.

Actually even stray dog predation’s a thing in Sweden as well, something Birgitta Ekberg’s keen on from time to time and Colin himself’s well-aware of in his Gothenburg stay as a foreign exchange student. He said that he’s seen dogs hunt roe deer whenever their own owners aren’t looking, so using this subject matter as inspiration for stories or even discussions said by the characters themselves isn’t hard either. But it does say something about transformational fandom in its approach to storytelling when some of its own members graduate to doing professional fiction at all, that it’s easier to carry over common tics and obsessions found in transformational fandom, than to venture into rarely explored territories like the Prodigy, Ace of Base and even dog predation in Sweden to make new characters, stories and dialogues with those in mind. It’s even suspected that transformational fandom isn’t really that progressive.

So logically transformational fandom isn’t really that transformative, let alone wholly and consistently so, where it’s easier to stick to celebrities that can be easily pigeonholed into common fanfiction stereotypes than to use rather unexpected sources of inspiration to create very different, albeit fictitious, people instead. This is like using Maxim’s likeness (and to some extent his own mannerisms) for a character who’s unmistakably very African, very much into reading books himself, works in a STEM job, enjoys some stargazing and plays some football too, though it could be argued this has been done with some Duran Duran members before when it comes to a book series by Jemiah Jefferson. She had a website that’s billed as Duran Duran for bad kids, but then again Duran Duran is a fairly common obsession in transformational fandom. So something like Ace of Base would be a much unlikelier source of inspiration, given they don’t appear this much in transformational fandom to start with.

Or the Prodigy for another matter, that transformational fandom is usually rather limited in scope. Possibly more limited in scope than it cares to admit and realise, where it’s easier to stick to heartthrob music groups whose members can be easily stereotyped in fanfiction, than to go for such unusual sources of inspiration only to create characters that aren’t or seemingly not that tangentially a lot like the people they’re technically based on. It doesn’t just stop at creating a character that’s essentially a more glamourous version of Liam Howlett, it also means naming two female scientists after Ace of Base members where it shouldn’t be tricky doing something like these. Michel Polnareff doesn’t necessarily have such an elaborate hairstyle for most of the part, but Jean-Pierre Polnareff’s evidently named after him. Ronnie James Dio isn’t blond, but Dio Brando’s based on him anyways.

Both Chaka and Khan are two men named after Chaka Khan, using black musicians as inspiration for characters isn’t impossible either. But I still feel the usual nature of transformational fandom is to gravitate more towards male heartthrob type musicians, which boy bands (both western and Korean) have in spades, instead of even bands that don’t degrade or sexualise women in their body of work much whenever female members are frequently present at all (Ace of Base for instance). That it’s kind of suspected among some folks that transformational fandom isn’t really this progressive, nor is it this open-minded where it would be quite rare to encounter fanworks based around bands like The Damned, Ace of Base again or Aqua. Fanworks based on the Prodigy do exist but it usually manifests as either fanmade remixes or fanart, that it would be kind of odd basing two fictional characters after two members of the same band.

If because for those who were doing fanfictions based on bands like Nsync, Backstreet Boys and One Direction, some of who get professionally published kind of subliminally base these characters after their favourite musicians on some level. Fanart of bands like Love and Rockets and The Damned do exist, though I feel transformational fandom tends to gravitate towards male heartthrob types at most. Not just Duran Duran but also the true boy bands like New Kids On The Block, Backstreet Boys, Nsync, One Direction, BTS, Exo, Monsta X, Stray Kids and TXT, that basing fictional characters after any one of them is far likelier once some fanfiction writers begin writing for a living. Even if Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is any indication, basing fictional characters off of the likes of Enya, Mariah Carey, Lisa Velez, Sanandra Maitreya and Chaka Khan are already possible, or that Gundam’s Char Aznable is named after Armenian-French singer Charles Aznavour suggests it shouldn’t stop at heartthrob types when seeking musicians as inspiration at all.

Mind you, Ilmar Tuglas is just as based on Kakyoin Noriaki as he is after both Friedebert Tuglas (his namesake) and French songstress Sylvie Vartan (especially in terms of facial features but masculinised), and he works as a financial adviser to people like Graham Knightley (based on Kira Yoshikage) that it shouldn’t really end at heartthrob type musicians when seeking inspiration in music, it could be something like 1960s singers like Sylvie Vartan again. That’s not to say all transformational fandom participants are this narrow-minded, but many of them don’t seem to be the types of people who’d actually gravitate to these kinds of musicians. You’re much likelier to find transformational fan participants going after boy bands than those who listen to Aqua, Ace of Base, The Prodigy, Massive Attack and The Damned, much less the likes of Sylvie Vartan and Charles Aznavour, even though the latter yielded Char Aznable.

Modern Marvels indeed

There’s a game that took the world by storm and it’s called Marvel Rivals, it should be noted that earlier Marvel games did exist before. There was something like a Marvel game on Facebook before and another that had Tigra on it, but these disappeared without a trace. There are still Marvel games getting released after Marvel Rivals, but it’s been suspected elsewhere that one reason why Marvel Rivals gained a lot of support and not something like Concord is that the female characters in the former are rather sexualised. Considering that historically the video game playerbase is historically male-majority, well not always when it comes to educational CD-Roms at that which had unisex audiences even, and this is also usually the same audience that’s more supportive of highly sexualised depictions of women that it kind of found this audience. So much so this led to a lot of porn involving them at all, not that this isn’t unique to Marvel Rivals at all but that Marvel Rivals seems palatable to a certain audience.

Given the growing desexualisation of familiar video game heroines like Cammy White from Street Fighter, as well as Kitana and Sonya Blade from Mortal Kombat, Marvel Rivals feels like a weird throwback but one that found its audience. Even if not all early adopters of the Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter games are male, the way these female characters were depicted in at least a number of the earlier games kind of influenced at least some gamers’ expectations for women. As if to compensate for the rather possibly masculine characterisations is to give them very sexualised presentations, but even then this phenomenon exists outside of video games. It’s even like this in the print side of things where such characters like Kitty Pryde arguably get masculinised over time, particularly when it comes to her characterisation. That’s not to say butch women and girls don’t exist at all in the real world, but it’s kind of hard thinking of Kitty Pryde as an everywoman when her interests and hobbies increasingly diverge from this over time even under Chris Claremont’s pen.

It’s like whenever he’s around at all though she had an interest in ballet before, this got overshadowed by longer lasting interests in or experiences with baseball and combat sports, it’s not that women and girls can’t get into sports at all. It’s not that women and girls can’t have tempers either, be mean to one another and stuff, but that Kitty Pryde came to be written as if she were a male character. Let’s not forget that Chris Claremont (who’s born in the late 1950s) came of age during both the rise of second wave feminism and the sexual revolution that it seems if Kitty Pryde were to be depicted as being into fashion and ballet either much longer or more frequently, there’s the possibility that she’ll be seen as utterly vapid and quite sexist in characterisation. So it seems there’s a tendency for subsequent writers to equate masculinisation with empowerment, not that it’s absent when it comes to fighting sexism, but it does pose new challenges of having to retain the characters’ femininity in another way. So sexualisation is in order to keep them distinct from their male counterparts.

It also risks communicating the message that to be feminised is to be sexualised, whilst other inherently feminine sensibilities like floral garments are disdained or ignored altogether. As if there’s a kind of palatable femininity that feels more reassuring if it were tarted up, well to certain people in the days after the sexual revolution, than if it were domestic and truly dedicated to the family (traditionally feminine vocations). Maybe not necessarily always the case but it does risk feeling this way when it comes to a version of femininity that’s palatable to pornsick people, which likely contributes to Marvel Rivals’ popularity when it comes to the way the womenfolk are depicted at all. If things like Super Mario are any indication, it’s possible to have a long-running and immensely popular video game franchise that doesn’t put girl characters in sexualised garments and give them ridiculous proportions for long, mind you Princess Peach has often worn a ballgown since her inception. It seems games like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Tomb Raider were well-intentioned attempts to avoid the damsel in distress meme that plagued a good number of the earlier Super Mario games.

But this also went with sexualising the female characters a lot that even to this day, a nonsexualised strong female character continues to polarise gaming audiences. It’s like this in the other parts of the ACG canon where it seems a number of authors and cartoonists pass off their sexual fantasies as empowerment materials, especially Wonder Woman, that this kind of sexualisation’s painfully inescapable once these charaters become deeply entrenched for years. Even authors who don’t seem to actually put out porn themselves like Takeuchi Naoko find themselves affected by the environment they’re in, it’s the whole bad company corrupts good character thing in the Bible, it’s kind of hard to avoid being in this environment if you’re surrounded by things that would tempt you to do something or even if it doesn’t, it still influences you unconsciously. In the case with video games habitually sexualising female characters a lot that it’s going to desensitise somebody or anybody to it, that it becomes normal to view women as sex objects this way. To the extent a sexualised male character stands out more.

Marvel Rivals might be one of the more recent video games to perpetuate it, now that both Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat actively strive to desexualise their own female cast as much as possible, that it seems its own popularity stems from having sexualised girl characters a lot. Concord is an interesting counterpoint in which it doesn’t just have diverse characters (in both senses of the word), but also where a number of its female characters are this desexualised, that it seems to deeply anger certain male gamers like almost no other. Marvel Rivals might not be the only, first or last video game to reintroduce and repopularise this sort of sexualisation that appeases to sexist male gamers a lot, it is the main one (that I can think of) that’s brought this to the forefront. But coupled with America’s decline (which has been prophesised by some) that it’s possible both Marvel Rivals and Mortal Kombat hinge on a nostalgic sentiment, the latter is especially about time travel to the past of sorts as of late.

It might not be evident with the former but it’s clear Marvel still strives to keep itself relevant in the present day, even when other countries’ games like China’s Genshin Impact are gaining people’s affections, it’s clear it still wants to be competitive in today’s market. But it’s still telling that even when a person does try their hardest not to give into peer pressure for most of the part, they’d still be affected by the environment they’re in. To the point where we get sexualised designs anyways, even when the character designer themself is not a pervert.

Boomtown Rat

When it comes to somebody like Handmaid Of The Most High saying that Walt Disney was involved in an occult society enough to inculcate occultism in his productions, with Hell’s Bells being a surefire indicator that he did make a deal with the Devil at some point, along with Analia Campbell saying something similar years before then expounding it with that the Disney theme parks have demons in them. Which makes one wonder why the Disney parks have a high number of casualties in them, even if other theme parks may not be any better and not everybody who goes there necessarily go on having bad experiences themselves, but the Disney parks do have a kind of Club 33 (which also an occult allusion) that gives them a lot more unnecessary spiritual baggage than other parks do.

Then Solitary Man goes on saying that there are paedophiles and sodomites in the Disney parks, which turned out to be true that the Disney company does have a sad track record of harbouring both of them at various points. Before Bolhem Bouchiba got outed for using child porn, there was director Victor Salva who molested boys in his care. Then there are people alleging that Disney executives would even molest actresses just the same, which Celestial kind of insinuated when it came to Britney Spears and likely Christina Aguilera as they were part of a Disney programme together before. As for the gay people onboard, the best known example would be animator Andreas Deja. There could be more of them lurking around like Josh Gad, as well as another Disney actor getting outed for using child porn and abusing people. As for Spears and Aguilera, their transformations into raunchy singers seemed shocking.

Especially at the start and height of their careers for those who watched them on Disney before that makes one wonder why would they end up doing this along the way, or for a more recent example look no further than Sabrina Carpenter (no stranger to repeat blasphemy herself, though I’ve done this before so). Early on in her career one would assume Sabrina Carpenter to remain wholesome and pure, or at least not end up too offensive for parents the way Aguilera and Spears did years before her. Unfortunately nothing new’s under the sun, as Carpenter ended up being just as unwholesome as they are. This may not be true for her colleagues and contemporaries at Disney, but it does make one wonder if there’s a weird interplay between wholesomeness and corruption there. It’s not so much a trade-off but more of a weird mutual symbiosis.

Where it seems light walks with darkness; for every Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, there’s a Gravity Falls. For every Duffy the Disney Bear, there’s a Daredevil somewhere. For every Snow White, there’s a Satana. For every Sleeping Beauty, there’s an Illyana Rasputina. It’s as if Disney is its own evil doppelganger at times, likely the United States as a whole being Mystery Babylon, where Disney can be considered as a microcosm of America’s spiritual character. Although Disney was famous for wholesome movies for a long time, somewhere down the road it wanted to do other than that. Eventually this led to the instigation of the Touchstone studio, doing un-Disneylike things (though if all secrets are known to God, it will be found out immediately). These included rather sexually explicit and even blasphemous movies, that makes one wonder if this is what Disney’s like behind the mask. Something more evil underneath.

If you can tell a tree by its fruits in light of Walt Disney having made a deal with the Devil, maybe it’s not a surprise that it feels more comfortable doing evil than doing good. There’s something like Twisted Wonderland where the characters in question are actually based on Disney villains, along with Disney merchandise lines specifically dedicated to them. There’s not much of a dedicated merchandise line to the heroes (perhaps other than Mickey and gang, Marvel characters, Star Wars characters and the Disney princesses), where it seems to find evildoers of both genders more interesting than heroic men.

And even with the Marvel characters, they’re a mixed bag where you have a number of really spiritually offensive characters. Not just those who do magic, but also resemble the Devil themselves like Daredevil, Damian Hellstrom, Satana, Nightcrawler and Illyana Rasputina, alongside blasphemous gestures at Jesus Christ with Nate Grey and mocking the Book of Revelation with Apocalypse (which is also the French word for this book) and his horsemen. Marvel did have a Christian comics imprint but it didn’t last too long, nor was it particularly prolific even in that period. Perhaps Marvel too is more comfortable doing evil than doing good, so Disney kind of sees itself in it in a way it doesn’t with Narnia.

Oddly enough CS Lewis didn’t particularly and wholeheartedly like Disney’s take on Snow White, wondering what would happen if Walt Disney had been raised right. He wasn’t alone in these objections as there were others in his lifetime who also found the Disney productions too ghoulish for their tastes, and a rather questionable take on Tinker Bell. Tinker Bell did kind of exist in the Peter Pan book but her Disney permutation strongly resembles Hollywood pinups like Betty Grable, then comes Jessica Rabbit as presented in her Disney permutation as an overly sultry redhead with a serious bustline and cleavage. It’s kind of odd why for a company that came to be associated with family entertainment, there’s nary a character who could’ve been patterned after Mary Pickford.

The original American sweetheart, despite being a Canadian herself. Though folkloric incarnations of the Disney princesses existed long before Walt Disney came around, their Disney counterparts seem to be strongly informed by Hollywood actresses. One would be tempted to compare Snow White to Louise Brooks, a silent movie actress renowned for her bob and playing sultry characters onscreen. If so this is a very odd choice on part of Disney character designers to base their version of Snow White after such an actress, instead of a more wholesome brunette actress of their day or their parents’ day. Certainly this isn’t true for subsequent Disney princesses in Walt Disney’s lifetime, but it kind of does feel this way if you have some familiarity with older live action Hollywood productions yourself.

It gets stranger still to think that Disney actually has a radio network in Latin America called Radio Disney and it’s no stranger to playing songs like ‘Devil Inside’ by INXS, any song by AC/DC provided they too enjoy homaging the Devil a lot, Red Hot Chili Peppers’s ‘Dani California’ (and this band consecrated themselves to the Devil by not wearing much in public), ‘Karma’ by Taylor Swift (where she wears a devil mask in the accompanying music video) and what else. At some point it even aired ‘We Be Burnin’ by Sean Paul which was originally about pot-smoking, but then again relentless partying still isn’t any better. So Disney still seems oddly more comfortable with evil than good, loving darkness over light.

Perhaps being a do-gooder isn’t in Disney’s best interests, given its allegiance to the Devil that might explain why it has a Disney villains merchandise line to begin with. As what Mae West said: ‘when I’m good, I’m good but when I’m bad, I’m better’. Being evil seems like Disney’s real modus operandi, although it’s not inherently wrong to like Disney products and media. But with Walt having made a deal with the Devil feels like a case of poisoning the well forever for the Disney company, to the point where it might not be above killing Christians one day, only to be dissolved by the Russians and have some of its assets (the core Disney characters and the entire Radio Disney network) get sold off to Brazil’s Globo. A befitting end for an evil rat and when you have Disney employees basing such stories after what secretly goes on in the parks, that means Disney was never really a friend to Christianity to begin with.

Apparently the House of Mouse is truly bad to the bone.

What would it be like without America?

It’s still possible for a degree of American influence in ACG media to remain, though that’s only to the extent if/when American influence gets undone the world over, that it seems existential regarding what will replace American influence when this happens. Actually China might be a good contender here, given a number of its games like Black Myth Wukong and Genshin Impact have seen international success before, and its very own Tencent owns America’s Riot Games. But I suspect if one were to make a game at a time when America’s in decline, considering international markets would become much more important. This is something even US film studios have been doing for some time, but this means China’s truly a rival to America at this point.

It’s telling that YouTube rolled out YouTube Shorts because of China’s Tiktok, Elon Musk turned Twitter into a superapp because superapps are popular in China. There’s actually a saying in Mandarin that says that the blue dye comes from indigo, but it’s bluer than indigo indicating that the pupil has surpassed the teacher or is surpassing the teacher, which can be applied to China turning out to be technologically ahead of America in this regard. It’s even popularising the very thing that first originated in America: short form videos were first pioneered in Vine, but TikTok pretty much popularised and refined this. Now YouTube and Facebook are catching up with their own versions of these things, this means China is well-ahead of America technologically speaking.

But given China has a much longer history as a unified nation-state, it’s also ahead of the west sartorially speaking when it comes to women’s trousers. As early as the 18th century, Chinese women were already wearing an outfit composed of a blouse and a pair of trousers, sometime before western women got to it (actually they started wearing this more often towards the 21st century). And Chinese women were already playing ball games without question before western women got to it, so it could be said that nonwestern countries like China and India might be less sexist in some regards. Or Russia, Iran and the Arab states just the same but when it comes to STEM, or Japan and South Korea when it comes to female readers of comics being well-established there.

Even then it does speak volumes about the way western countries evaluate sexism and misogyny, and it’s often on their terms, not those of other people even if sexism and misogyny remain issues in other places as well. What I’m saying is that countries like China, India, Russia, Japan and Iran are ahead of the west in other regards, whether if it’s fashion (women were already wearing trousers in India and China long before western women got to it), comics (there’s already a well-established comics industry specific to female readers in Japan) or STEM (Russia and Iran). It shouldn’t be surprising that given the west’s declining stature that the global east (if it does deserve to be called as such) would also be ahead of the west technologically speaking, especially when it comes to superapps.

A more vexing concern is the area of the arts regarding things like animation, comics/cartooning and gaming (ACG) that once American influence gets mostly and deeply revoked that’s going to lead some shoes to be filled and worn, however awkward the substitution may be (this is how I feel about sermons on bad times). If because we want the real thing real badly, even if the substitute’s just as good, but the real thing is what we want deep down inside. It’s also logistically awkward because of America’s outsized influence on matters like animation and comics/cartooning that if we’re talking about Canada, given Canada shares a border with America that substituting American influence with foreign influences would be pretty tough. The US comics industry is far bigger than its Nigerian counterpart will ever be, or for another matter the Estonian comics industry just the same.

To make it up for a loss of US influence on the Canadian comics industry is to fill it up with a lot of substitutes, given how big US influence is in Canada and much bigger than most would realise. The substitutes might come from countries with smaller comics industries that you’d have to get like a big industry of translated comics from 23 countries to make up for losing a big industry of imported comics from just one country, although Denmark does have a bigger comics industry than in Jamaica it’s still smaller than that of America. Armenia’s comics industry is comparable to Jamaica becaues it’s largely focused on social commentary, and also newspaper orientated in order to make it big in any way. Considering that Canada’s also Francophone that the loss of US influence would result in a Canadian comics industry that’s closer to Europe and even Russia. So translating European comics would be the norm there from then on.

The Canadian comics industry is unmistakably largely influenced by America just by sharing borders with it, to the point of following the same trends there like entertaining cartoon strips, novel-length comics aimed at children in mind and also superhero comics. The loss of US influence in Canada, especially once it gets heavily influenced by both Russia and Europe, would have the entire Canadian comics industry more closely follow European trends more from then on. The Philippine comics industry would find itself in a similar situation, but where American influence gets substituted with a stronger East Asian influence because the Philippines is in East Asia itself. It’s also logistically just as awkward, well at first, because you need to have a big industry of translated substitutes from several countries to make up for a loss of imported comics from just one nation.

Like supposing if it becomes the norm for Philippine publishers to personally translate Japanese comics as well as Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Korean, Burmese, Thai and Cambodian comics that the Philippine comics industry would end up closely following the general trend in East Asian comics as well, given the strong US influence here that manifests as entertaining daily strips, graphic novels aimed for children and superheroes. Or Nigeria just the same given it’s more sympathetic to China than the Philippines is at present, so the Nigerian comics industry will follow Chinese trends from then on. It’s kind of telling who they’re affiliated with that’s going influence trends in their comics industries, that in the case with both Canada and the Philippines that given their close ties to America at present that they’ll inevitably follow American trends more.

The loss of US influence in both countries, should each one of them fall to either China or Russia in some way, would have each country follow their neighbours’ trends more. A post-American Philippines would follow wider East Asian trends more, a post-American Canada would follow European trends more. This would go hand in hand with their publishers actually translating their new allies’ and neighbours’ comics more, like if Canada continues to cut ties with America by choosing to join Russia as one of its protectorates, its comics industry would actually become this heavily influenced by Europe than today. It might have done something similar before, but it would become the norm if American influence were to be irreversibly declined further.

This would be the one situation where European comics become really popular in Canada, but to make it up for a loss of American influence in the Canadian comics industry, that relying on European substitutes would be one of many doable resources from then on. Loss of American influence would be where Philippine publishers actively and personally publish Japanese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Malaysian, Cambodian, Thai, Korean and Burmese comics more, which might even be a good thing because I think the Philippines is far too westernised for its own influence. Whatever Korean influence that exists in the Philippines is rather minimal compared to its American counterpart, like this only involves food, music and audiovisual media.

But not books and comics, even when there are other people who have not much interest in watching stuff, mind you I spend much of my time listening to something while reading like listening to sermons for instance. The argument doesn’t hold water when the Philippines actually gets a lot of books and comics directly imported from the United States that Korean influence at present will be a distant second to the US influence here, it’s even weirder to think the Philippines could’ve easily done the same with Malaysia and Malaysia’s much closer to us than we are to both South Korea and the US. Which should make it logistically easier to import and even translate Malaysian comics and books, or for another matter Philippine television channels dubbing and airing Malaysian audiovisual media.

I still don’t think there’s much cultural exchange between the Philippines and Malaysia, even when they’re much closer to one another than the Philippines is to both South Korea and America. There’s very little, if any, cultural exchanges between the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia, as Indonesian and Thai music don’t get played much on Philippine radio (most likely never at all at present). Considering that the US entertainment industry has an outsized influence over the world for years, that even with South Korea’s ascendance it’s hard to beat America in here without the aid of other countries to the cause. It might change when WWIII starts kicking in for real, though it would take time for American influence to be undone elsewhere, but it might be undone sooner than expected.

And there are even people who say that the US is Mystery Babylon, a prophesised nation-state in the Bible said to corrupt the entire world with its abominations. Some of these things didn’t originate in America per say but America popularises them in a way no other country ever got to it, despite originating it until recently with China’s re-emergence and popularising the very thing America pioneered: short-form videos were there on something like Vine but it’s China’s TikTok that popularised and refined it like no other. A case of throwing the baby with the bathwater, where the good goes with the deplorable. Even if some Americna influence were to remain, that will be all that there is to it. So it seems any nation closely allied with America will also suffer from God’s wrath as well, then American influence will be undone the world over.

Even if the spiritual angle were to be ignored in favour of the naturalistic one, there’s no mistaking that American influence is currently in decline. The spiritual angle is just as credible as the naturalistic one, regarding how and why America was prophesised to decline and then fall into obscurity, or perhaps more credible than the naturalistic one that if God is honest and doesn’t lie, then the spiritual angle’s better at deconstructing America’s downfall than the naturalistic one. America, despite calling itself a Christian nation, seems obsessed with undermining Christian values like no other to the same degree. It has promoted and popularised anti-Christian entertainment like X-Men where the preacher is a villain and the demons are heroes, it’s shocking why it’s hardly ever scrutinised much like others do with Harry Poter, and it’s kind of more than coincidental that a number of X-Men fans are also anti-Christians themselves.

It’s even alarming that X-Men stories haven’t been scrutinised much by Christians over other things like why vindictive, promiscuous characters are portrayed as heroic and do things without lasting consequences, why would somebody like Kitty Pryde be considered a good character when she’s not above murdering people out of anger, lashing out often out of anger, being promiscuous herself and stuff? In real life if she did these two things in real life, she’d actually be a villain. And there are two people who’ve done the same things as she did: Audrey Hale and Axel Rudakubana, they’re also rightfully seen as criminals despite being members of oppressed demographics themselves. Just like what Kitty Pryde is in Marvel Comics, which makes you wonder how morally nihilistic the X-Men canon is.

Perhaps taking out America would ease things, or at least keep it from getting worse than it already is. But it’s also a matter of seeking out the most viable alternatives, as to make up for such a painful loss even when it’s not something people would’ve actually wanted themselves (that’s how I feel about sermons online or on the radio). Not to mention World War III is coming closer than one realises, with Russia out to get Poland before it gets to the rest of Europe, whilst America burns real badly. Britain might not remain a monarchy for long, and even if it were to remain a monarchy in some capacity the current House of Windsor would get replaced by some other royal house altogether. And Britain will also get conquered by Russia just the same, resulting in a new version of the Soviet Union.

Or a new version of the Russian Empire but one where nearly all of Europe and half of North America are included in it, one where Britain, Ireland and Canada are back together but as Russian protectorates or commonwealths of sorts. Australia might go to China as one of its Lesser China satellites as the Philippines will be part of Greater China, along with Vietnam, a reunited Korea, Indonesia, Japan and then China itself. A new global order will emerge from both the ashes of WWIII and the end of America, where we have a Russified Europe (and a Russified Canada to go with it) and a highly sinicised Philippines. Like I said before that once US influence gets revoked in the world, that the Canadian comics industry will strongly follow European trends and the Philippine comics industry will follow East Asian trends more. And even if Britain were to remain, it would not be united any longer.

As a result we’d have England, Wales and Scotland all living as separate countries not seen in centuries, Northern Ireland will be reunited with the rest of Ireland and the latter three’s native languages will get popularised big time. Even if Britain were to remain united in any way, Jamaica will not remain as a British commonwealth for long. Same with Canada but not in a way it likes as it will get conquered by America, before it gets conquered by Russia once the US gets nuked. The United States will be so utterly destroyed, both from the outside and inside out, that it ceases to be a country anymore. Britain too to some extent, supposing if it were possible for it to remain a united kingdom of England, Scotland and Wales, but it’s going to lose Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland. Jamaica will secede for real and so will the rest.

Canada might try to secede, only to get conquered twice in a rapid go. And if Britain is just as bad as America is, then British influence might also be revoked to varying degrees as well. Ghana, Nigeria. Uganda, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Kenya might use their native languages more, same goes for Ireland and Malaysia that perhaps this is how Britain might also get snuffed out in another way. If dissolving the British monarchy isn’t enough, we might see the United Kingdom as an institution dissolve when Northern Ireland reunites with the rest of Ireland. And we have prophecies of whatever dark secrets lie in the House of Lords, so this is a sign that even if a United Kingdom were to remain in some fashion, both the aristocracy and the monarchy will be abolished.

And even if it were possible for at least some of the countries to reunite, it’s only by joining Russia’s Commonwealth that this will happen. Meanwhile to counteract or rival this, China might create Greater China including all of its neighbours in East Asia, it would be practically half way between the European Union and the Soviet Union of yore. The Lesser China states (both nearly all the African countries and those in Oceania) would function similarly to the Soviet satellites, which means there might be a reemergence of a bipolar world. But one that’s not a repeat of the original Cold War, where Russia unseats America as the face of western civilisation for years to come.

And even then it’s not going to be a continuation of the days when America was still a superpower, rather it’s the final nail to the hyperpower that was and will never be again.

Tearing Up My Heart

Alison Pound said that civil war’s already on its way in America, though it’s not called as such, it’s not called for what it actually is or what it will turn into soon. Add to that God’s so angry at America and the whole world to an extent that he’s going to send in more natural disasters to discipline these countries, not to mention Japan’s going to get hit by a really bad tsunami that’ll kill half of its population. Japan might seem likable and interesting, especially to those who grew up watching Japanese animations, but it’s also a nation that rejects the Lord a lot. Somebody else said that Japan is a missionary’s graveyard, where despite attempts to convert the Japanese population, Christianity remained small and kind of stagnant there. Compare this to China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and the like where they’ve grown quite considerably, despite their own failings every now and then.

The one thing that could be pretty horrifying to a number of people is that Japan’s own ACG industry will collapse real badly, not helped by that considerable portions of it are uncomfortably too sexualised for other people’s tastes and so on. Even Japanese women don’t like a number of anime for this reason, a good number of anime character designs are disturbingly very sexualised and may’ve made some people (including myself, though I hate to admit this) into creeps of sorts. Even those supposedly aimed at children are weirdly sexualised, like why would a minor like Sailor Moon go about in a really short skirt? It’s even more horrifying to think it’s far more rampant than one realises, when not only do a good number of animators there have dipped their toes (and pens) into more dubious territory, but that somebody like Miyazaki Hayao might be inappropriately attracted to underaged girls himself.

According to some people, he had a habit of studying schoolgirls’ skirts whenever they moved about and then the police would be alerted of this, that and calling girls eligible enough to be his granddaughters ‘girlfriends’. Which makes for a really awkward situation where you have somebody like Shuto whose mistress could easily be his granddaughter, whereas his own son’s already an adult around the time this happened. This would be really controversial if this got revealed, but even then there has been cases where this got immediately suspected concerning one of his earlier films. The heroine of this film is called Nausicaa and under certain situations, she might have been half-naked from the waist below. One animator named Anno Hideaki, the future mastermind behind Evangelion, seemed to be enthusiastic about her assets for less feminist reasons.

On the subject of another US civil war in years, I said before that America is a double-minded country on the verge of civil instability. Even when the first US civil war is technically over, America seemed to be very prone to culture wars. Two competiting political parties vying for dominance across US soil, not unlike what the Guelphs and the Ghibellines were to medieval Italy. Celestial talked about the possibility of a racially-motivated civil war, which Alison Pound also noted, that it seems inevitable it’s really more of a painful escalation between a long-standing divide between white Americans and black Americans. Though there are instances where some of them live peacefully with one another, other times we get things like black Americans getting disproportionately jailed whilst their white counterparts get away with the things they get arrested for. Or the lingering mutual resentment they have for one another.

Particularly certain matters that would seem trivial or baffling in other contexts like the Nigerian context where dreadlocks are seen as more of a women’s hairstyle there, whilst cultural theft is problematic but in the American context where African Americans are often marginalised despite being really influential, it becomes really painful that their white counterparts popularise the things they originated or pioneered in some way like rock music. Even jazz music was considered black music before, hip hop is already on its way out in this regard. Especially in some countries that didn’t have a longstanding black population like Italy where the earliest rappers there were white (i.e. the likes of Jovanotti), so this was going to be inevitable in these cases. Or in the case with the Philippines, South Korea and Japan, the earliest rappers there are East Asians themselves.

Rock music being black music has been brought up before. It’s telling that some of the earliest rockers like Chuck Berry and Jimi Hendrix date back to the 1950s and 1960s, much like how some of the earliest techno musicians like Juan Atkins are black themselves. This doesn’t seem to be this way before at this point, but there’s no mistaking that African Americans occupy a strange role in American culture. On one hand they’re very influential and prominent, whether if it’s creating peanut butter like with George Washington Carver or Don Cornellius’s Soul Train for certain generations of African Americans. On the other hand, they’re very stigmatised and despised. They get jailed disproportionate to their actual numbers, they’re often very stigmatised for whatever little thing they do and so on. A very vexing conundrum that alternates between hatred and admiration.

This isn’t unique to them as other minorities are subjected to this, but in different ways respective to their own experiences and circumstances. Asian descendants, despite excelling a lot in STEM (assumed to be male), are often highly feminised for some reason. Native Americans have a better claim to being the earliest inhabitants of the Americas, but they’re often marginalised and very much demeaned. Latin Americans seem to be the neighbours white Americans fetishise but also don’t want to live with for long, it seems whatever pre-existing and longstanding ethnic tensions that exist in America at present may escalate into something much worse in the near future, one that brings such problems to a painful head. Where it seems the melting pot is about to be dissolved into separate items, or perhaps they never really meshed well from the start at times.

How the American dream turned out to be a sham for many Americans, even white Americans at that where most poor people are unable to rise above their stations, despite their best efforts at doing so. There are African Americans and the like who do live peacefully with their white counterparts, but it’s harder to do so at times due to systemic racism. Maybe it’s not a surprise why some African Americans move to Ghana, it feels safer there because they can go undetected there longer. African Americans are mostly descended from enslaved West Africans, so they don’t look too different from the locals when they go there at all. For all their accomplishments, white America doesn’t seem to actually like them back. So they feel perpetually rejected, despite their best efforts.

Moving to any African country wouldn’t lead to an immediate panacea to such problems, but it does make one wonder if the American dream is more unattainable for any ethnicity. This is probably very vexing for recent African descendants and immigrants, since they look like those black people but aren’t just high-achieving. They’re also likelier to know where they exactly came from, something that escapes many African Americans. An Akan Ghanaian would know they’re Akan, an Igbo Nigerian would know they’re Igbo, a Bamileke Cameroonian would know they’re Bamileke and so on. With Donald Trump banning immigrants from countries like Senegal as well as Nigeria to an extent, that it seems the American dream will get even more elusive for nearly any nonwhite immigrant over time.

Coupled with serious attempts at deporting immigrants, regardless if they’re legal or not, that the American dream might really be the American lie. If Satan’s the father of lies and anybody who lies is related to him, perhaps the American dream might now present as one of the biggest lies around. Imagine heading over to America with the hopes of attaining a good life there, but the same country deports you for being a threat, despite all evidence to the contrary. This actually happened to one student who moved to the US as a kid, but for some cruel reason she got deported to the same country she moved away from. Celestial even had a prophecy wherein nearly all the descendants would have to move back to their homelands, should America get in the mood or rather frenzy for deporting them at any point.

I have prayed for my relatives to move back to the Philippines, if the situation were to worsen then it’s best that they stay here for long, coupled with a forthcoming earthquake that it’s for their good to move away from America this time. It would really hurt if you’re a celebrity and either you get deported for being an immigrant or your spouse does, which means the American dream has effectively betrayed either one of you in search of a better life elsewhere. Mind you Grant Gustin’s married to a Malaysian American and if ICE were to start deporting her, it would be wiser that he and his family would have to deport themselves to another country to avoid or preclude this altogether. The American dream is a lie America tells to nonwhite immigrants at this point, where despite promising them a fresh start there, it’s also the place that threatens to kick them out on a bad day.

There’s even some talk about the use of alien invasions occurring on US soil in the US fiction canon where it seems to parallel real-life xenophobia towards immigrants, that if they don’t move in legally they’ll be known as illegal aliens by then. Even if America is a nation of immigrants, there exists an unironic strain of hypocritical xenophobia towards Africans, East Asians and West Asians. Even if they do kind of assimilate, they’ll never be regarded as insiders. The American dream truly is one of the biggest lies to ever exist, especially if somebody’s a nonwhite immigrant or the descendant of one themself. Even then the American Dream has grown more unattainable over time, that perhaps America is a land of failed promises for those seeking a better life elsewhere. Quite shockingly, both Russia and China may challenge and even outperform America when it comes to welcoming immigrants at this point.

By then America has become a hollow shell of its former self, or rather what it meant to incoming immigrants. It’s no longer a place to reinvent oneself in hopes of a better life, it’s hell on earth where people will deport you at any time. Truly people must come out of Babylon/America, as to not partake in its sins anymore. There’s no point in remaining in America for long when it’s going to get destroyed, when ICE will deport any one of you at any time and where dreams don’t materialise into reality, if because the American dream has become the American lie by now. What’s becoming of America is unbecoming of it to some people, but it’s never a good guy in hindsight regarding Biblical prophecy.

Living without America by tomorrow

Given there are prophecies of forthcoming famines and economic collapses coming to the US as well as judgement of the western world, that makes one wonder if it were possible to truly survive without American influence at this point in time and also in the future. It’s one thing to live in a way where there was practically no American influence before, it’s another to live in a world where there is no more American influence that it’s kind of existentially frightening at times. Considering that America has both the world’s largest publishing industry and the world’s largest music industry, it would take really big shoes to fill to make up for a loss. A loss others never foresaw nor wanted, since this is how I feel about missing sermons at times. It would be painful living with a substitute when we want the real thing real badly, which is also how I feel about sermons at some point.

If American influence were to be truly revoked around the world, or even greatly minimised at that, it would be awkward scrambling for viable substitutes to make up for such a profound loss. It’s like what Canada’s doing at this point where it does a lot to seek local alternatives to American products, but since it’s not a superpower like America is that it would be wiser but more awkward to turn to substitutes from anywhere other than America. It would take products and influences from more than 26 countries (especially from both the former Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc, plus Scandinavia) to make up for a loss of American influence in Canada, though it would take time for Canadians to warm up to the likes of Sweden’s Bamse, Norway’s Pondus and Denmark’s Rasmus Klump.

It would take time for Canadians to learn some Russian, Ukrainian and the like to dub such programmes into their languages, it would take time for Canadians to warm up to things like the Russian version of Winnie the Pooh and so on. It remains to be seen if something like Nelvana will dub this version of Winnie the Pooh into indigenous languages like Cree and Ojibwe for instance, or even something like the Ukrainian version of Treasure Island just the same. There’s not much of a language barrier to getting bands like Denmark’s Aqua and Sweden’s Ace of Base getting popularised again in Canada, because they already tend to sing in English a lot. But when American influence is so highly minimised in Canada, that sticking to European and Russian substitutes would be one of a handful of viable alternatives to make up for such a strong loss.

I suspect if Canadian publishers were to develop a habit of translating Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian and Romanian comics a lot (well among many others), that predictably and consequently Canadian comics will follow European and Russian trends more. At present that due to greater geographical and cultural proximity to America that Canadian comics trends tend to follow or mirror those of their American counterparts a lot, but the loss of American influence could result in something. Maybe it might be a blessing in disguise that for Canada (and the rest of the Americas, sans America itself) that European comics would finally be popularised there, but because American influence has been so greatly revoked that European substitutes would have to take their place instead.

It would be really no different if the Philippines were to rely a lot more on its closest neighbours (Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, China and Laos), since the loss of American influence here would be just as colossal. It would take substitutes from other, similarly highly populous countries in East Asia to make up for this, though it would take time for us to warm up to Chinese and SEA products and influences more. It would be really awkward at first because we want America more deep down inside, so warming up to alternatives would be rather painful at first. Taking time getting used to say the popularisation of traditional Han Chinese clothing (hanfu) in the Philippines and the like would be just as jarring at first, even if or when such alternatives would inevitably be adopted to make up for a loss of US influence here.

For those seeking a less westernised Philippines, this might be the right time to do so given America’s waning influence. It remains to be seen if Philippine publishers are willing to translate the likes of Oriental Heroes and McDull into Tagalog, as well as personally translating something like Chi’s Sweet Adventure and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure as well. But the loss of American influence would necessitate the need for substitutes, however awkward and painful it may be since we crave America more deep down inside. I feel it would be tough for some Filipinos to warm up to something like not only Bumilangit, but also something like Ashita no Joe. It would be really awkward to think that American superheroes and their ilk might eventually decline a lot in popularity, that non-American substitutes would inevitably take their place from then on.

Since I brought up hanfu before that when it comes to the loss of or eventual decline of American influence in fashion that under their new owners (in a way) Canada and the Philippines would follow Russia and China respectively from then on, which means whatever that’s trending in Russia will follow suit in Canada. Whatever that’s trending in China will follow suit in the Philippines, even if these are rather far from ideal at first. But I feel the loss of American influence in both countries if these were to go with Canada going to Russia and the Philippines going to China, that accepting the substitutes would be a very painful process to go through. Because they still want America to remain in their hearts in some way, they still want the real thing real badly. Maybe some American influence will remain, as God preserves a remnant for years to come.

Some secular American influence will remain as well, particularly pertaining to technology that it will remain for as long as it services Christian ministries around the world. If America were to get revoked from the planet for its evils, that Canada might suffer from a form of survivor’s guilt. Being a stronghold of what was an Anglophone North American civilisation for years to come, it would be in a really awkward position of being both Russia’s sole North American protectorate/territory after America’s disappearance and a reminder that there was a country called the United States of America, culturally speaking. It remains to be seen if nearly all American influence will be revoked in Canada or if some American influence were to remain there for long, most especially in terms of faith/religion and technology.

Possibly sports, music and the like but these are tentative, who knows if Canada will develop a stronger liking for football/soccer once US influence gets revoked there big time. Or the Philippines just the same even though the argument would be stronger in our case, because Filipinos aren’t genetically predisposed towards tallness on average. But even if you have some countries that are predisposed towards it, football takes basketball’s place in terms of popularity there. The most popular sport in both Europe and Africa is football, whereas American sports like baseball and basketball are only really popular in a handful of countries that are also under US jurisdiction like Japan and the Philippines. American imperialism much. Though this might change in the future, whether if these will remain or not.

And even then it’s going to change a lot once American influence either gets revoked or highly minimised the world over.

The other side of the Disney adults

When it comes to Disney adults and consumerism, what’s less commonly talked about is social class. Whilst working class Disney adults do exist, given how pricey both Disney parks and a good number of Disney merchandise are, that the average Disney adult is far likelier to have this much disposable income to spend on these things to begin with. A good number of Disney adults might be upper-middle class themselves, with a minority being truly working class in any way. There are Disney adults who’re content with buying cheaper merchandise like stationery, pirating media and the like, though they do exist and possibly in greater numbers than one realises, but with other Disney adults being pressured into collecting rarer or more valuable merchandise, that it’s going to lock out working class people from these activities.

Even if not all Disney adults are this rich either, but some of these activities would definitely alienate working class people from being in such fan communities like these, especially if such merchandise some of them pursue is really rare or expensive. Then we get to realising that if one were to subscribe to Disney Plus for long, they’d have to pay for something that could get expensive on certain days. This would further alienate working class people from participating in Disney fandom, even if Disney films can be streamed for free online (which would help things in their case). If being a Disney fan means having to buy this much merchandise, I don’t think it’s something even most Disney adults may be able to keep up with consistently. Especially if they have other things to do, other priorities to attend to and so on, that it’s inconvenient.

It’s likely that Sanrio adults could be just as materialistic as their Disney counterparts get, but they’re less commonly talked about in the media. There’s no doubt that Sanrio media emerged more recently and there seems to be less quality Sanrio films and series getting put out, but even if some Sanrio adults might exceed Disney adults in consumerism, this is somewhat less common (or less commonly reported) as Sanrio’s not as deeply familiar as Disney is. So the average Sanrio adult, if they do exist, would be content with some Sanrio media and merchandise. They could be of any social class but it seems consumerism isn’t that deeply embedded in Sanrio fandom the way it is for Disney fandom, even if Sanrio characters were created to be mercantile from the get-go.

I said before that working class Disney adults do exist, but the fandom they’re part of aggressively pursues consumerism, especially towards more expensive merchandise that it’s not a lifestyle they can consistently keep up with. I even think most middle class Disney adults can’t keep up with this either, so it’s clearly a lifestyle meant for a certain Disney adult really. This might not be unique to Disney fandom as a good number of geek fandoms are very consumerist, even if some participants content themselves with piracy. If there’s ever a fandom that I can think of that rivals Disney adults in materialism, it would be Star Wars adults in some way. Much like Disney films, Star Wars films were also heavily merchandised. Though film merchandising did exist before, Disney either pioneered or more likely popularised this.

If it weren’t for Disney blazing a trail for this, Star Wars wouldn’t have taken off as it did in the late 1970s. Even if Star Wars as a brand isn’t hugely successful anymore, it’s clearly past its peak and is currently a well-established brand at this point. It’s got years of enduring unpopularity and then repopularisation, it can certainly endure these periods well. Similar things can be said of its current owner Disney and both of them are no strangers to extensive merchandising of their films for years, so they pretty much complement each other real well. Not unlike its current owner, Star Wars merchandise encompasses both the cheap and the expensive, the rare and the common, the low end and the high end. Much like Disney Star Wars is no stranger to print adaptations of its filmed world.

If the earliest Disney characters like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse both get to appear in comics/print cartoons, so do Star Wars starting with its current co-brand and sibling in arms Marvel. Marvel’s no stranger to merchandising but it’s clearly rooted in publishing, so it would have years of adjusting to changing trends in the wider publishing industry. Disney with its roots in filming, would need another brand that’s rooted in publishing from the get-go as well as having a rooster of characters viable for further merchandising and future animated aaptations, so it bought Marvel in the late 2000s. Though Marvel adults could be comparable to both Disney and Star Wars adults in consumerism, Star Wars adults are more comparable to Disney adults when it comes to both Disney and Star Wars being rooted in film.

Even if Marvel merchandise did exist before and was fairly extensive before it got bought by Marvel, but Star Wars is more comparable because its trajectory closely resembles that of Disney than Marvel did and still does. If you think Disney merchandising is ridiculous, Star Wars is no different at other times really. There were things like Ewoks soft toys, Star Wars annuals, Star Wars branded refridgerators, Star Wars themed musical instruments, Star Wars fishing rods, Star Wars rugs and waffle makers, so if Mickey Mouse themed caps aren’t annoying enough Star Wars could’ve done something similar before it got bought by Disney. Not to mention you have a substantial contigent of the Star Wars fandom that’s dedicated to collecting merchandise that makes them even more comparable to Disney adults in a way it’s not with Marvel adults really.

In this way working class Star Wars adults are also a painful rarity when consumerism’s baked into both Star Wars fandom and Star Wars itself, it’s possible to be a Star Wars fan and be content with not much else. But when other Star Wars fans feel compelled to get more Star Wars merchandise and even making a show of it online, then it does parallel Disney adults in some ways that it’s not with sports fans. Well sports events do get streamed for free online, they also get broadcasted on radio for free just the same. You could easily be a sports fan and be content with not much official sports team themed merchandise and also watching sports clips for free anywhere one goes (like TikTok for instance), but with both Star Wars and Disney you have to provide hard evidence to prove your fandom.

Maybe that’s my experience with something like football, but even then Star Wars fandom is a proper parallel to Disney in a way it’s not with sports fandom. Star Wars fandom is also majority male but it parallels Disney fandom when it comes to similarly high levels of consumerism that might as well be redundant with other fan communities, again this is speaking from my experience regarding my other interests. One could easily be an Ace of Base fan and be merely content with reading scanned, translated or transcribed magazine articles and streaming their music, or Massive Attack just the same whereas in Disney and Star Wars fandoms some fans feel the need to show their fandom through buying merchandise to prove this.

Even if one can buy Disney or Star Wars merchandise without being too strongly attached to either one or both of them. Or at least being a Disney/Star Wars adult who’s content both with some merchandise and having consumed some Star Wars/Disney media for free, though given how consumerism’s baked into these brands that it’s terrifying to realise how rare working class Disney and Star Wars fans are. Which means most Star Wars and Disney fans are more likely to have a lot of disposable income to spend money on such merchandise, and a good number of them are going to be richer than average even. Materialistic Ace of Base and Massive Attack fans do exist, but others are merely content with transcribed magazine articles and streaming each band’s music.

So it would be odd to think that it’s easier being a working class Ace of Base fan, especially in the age of online streaming and piracy at this point, than it is being a working class Disney adult. Not helped by that if you were to find a way to legally consume Disney media, you’d have to buy or subscribe Disney media which involves paying for it either way. Maybe not all Disney media, especially if it’s on YouTube, free websites like National Geographic or online radio when it comes to Radio Disney. But when Disney Plus is a thing, chances are you’d have to pay the House of Mouse to officially watch things like Twisted Wonderland or Andor. And you’d have to pay for it regularly if you were to continue using it in any way you like or wish, which will shut out working class people from Disney (or Star Wars) fandom even more.

So it can get hard being a Disney fan on the cheap, so the best case scenario without (or with minimal) piracy is to buy cheap merchandise, buy fewer merchandise and merely watch free official Disney short clips. From my personal experience being into Ace of Base at various points, especially in an age of free official streaming that it’s going to be this easy being an Ace of Base fan on the cheap. All you have to do is to stream Ace of Base music and filmed appearances on YouTube, Spotify and the like, if you’re going to go the extra mile you can either read free articles about Ace of Base or mirror articles about them (I’ve done this before earlier this year) and even pirate books mentioning them in any capacity. Or other bands like Massive Attack and the Prodigy for another matter just the same.

It’s not wrong to like Disney but it seems when consumerism/materialism is built onto it and also the fandom to an extent, that it’s going to be hard being a Disney fan on the cheap that if all else fails, then piracy would do. And even then it’s going to be hard trying to measure up to other Disney adults when you don’t earn this much, that your Disney fandom’s going to be restricted to whatever you can readily afford within your limits and also whatever that’s for free. Or any other fandom where materialism’s built into it just the same like with both Marvel and Star Wars, if you can’t afford it then it’s going to hinder your participation in the fandom at times, despite your best wishes to do so. Because of this that working class Disney adults are going to be a rarity, which would be the same for working class Star Wars fans really.

It would be horrifying to think that upper class Disney fans might be far better represented numerically and economically than working class Disney fans, that it’s going to influence the direction of things and something Disney chooses to consider. It makes sense that upper class Disney adults are the ones who can afford more expensive pieces of merchandising, whereas working class Disney adults would have to content themselves with what they can find for free and afford. Upper class Disney adults are the ones who can afford to hang out at Disney ships, constantly attend Disney parks and afford pricier Disney merchandise, so Disney will pay more mind to them than it would with their working class counterparts within the same fandom. They’re the ones who can afford a lot more official Disney merchandise, the more one thinks about it that’s going to alienate working class Disney adults by design and function.

This may not be unique to Disney fans either but it’s kind of telling that in any fandom that’s saturated with rampant consumerism that working class fans will be alienated by this in many cases, preventing them being fans of these things for long and so on. It’s even weirder to think the fandoms that needn’t much consumerism, especially at present, are more likely to be musically orientated (i.e. something like Massive Attack, Ace of Base and The Prodigy, speaking as a fan of all three bands) and therefore it’s easier to be a fan of these bands or musicians on the cheap. This may not always be the case for all bands and musicians, but when you can officially stream their music for free, even when you can’t be bothered to attend their concerts that it’s pretty economically satisfying in the long run. You may not pay much, but at least you can listen to their music for free legally.

Whereas with fandoms that are heavily orientated towards consumerism that it’s something only people of a certain socioeconomic class can get away with being this committed to these things, which is the majority of geek fandoms because they’re oftentimes fans of media brands like Dragon Ball and One Piece. Admittedly this may not always be the case with them either, but it can be hard being a Disney fan on the cheap when you’re tempted to buy more than what you need or really want…on a budget. Buying Disney themed fabric and turning them into clothing, whilst saving the rest of it for more important things, is a nice way of showing one’s interest in Disney without breaking the bank this badly. But when others can’t afford Disney Plus subscriptions and still want to legally consume Disney media, that they’re going to be left with merely watching officially free Disney clips instead.

Listening to Radio Disney online could count, but it’s got nothing on watching Disney series at times. There was a time when one can be a Disney fan or a Disney adult for free, but largely when cable television was widely used by people. It’s increasingly no longer the case due to online streaming that Disney and the like would have no other choice but to join the club instead, but when it comes to legally watching Disney films that they’re left with curated clips and select uploads instead. It’s a kind of tradeoff that in the days where cable television reigned supreme, that for awhile one’s chance of listening to a band or musician legally for free is to either play somebody else’s album copy or listen to them on the radio. Now it’s more likely to be the reverse where you can legally listen to the likes of Ace of Base and the Prodigy for free on Spotify, but you have to pay for a Disney Plus subscription to legally watch Pinocchio.

This may not always be the case where online ministries do stream their sermons for free (on good days, from my experience), but it seems when it comes to the likes of Disney they really want money so badly they’ll find ways of making people pay for it if they legally watch something like The Little Mermaid. Even then it speaks to a kind of consumerism that makes it harder for working class people to attain or acquire it in any way they like, without finding ways of climbing the ladder. And even then considering how consumerist a good number of geek fandoms are (including Disney fandom) that working class fans will often be alienated by this.

The Stars, Their Destination

Sometime ago I came up with Iosif Ionescu, who’s the Romanian counterpart to Joseph Joestar. His wife is a veterinarian named Irina, his son is a paralegic archer named Ioan and and his daughter is an ecologist named Ionela, all referencing the likes of Erina Pendleton, Johnny Joestar and Jolene Joestar. Iosif Ionesco is a Romanian biologist who encountered stray dogs resembling Danny and Iggy respectively, except that Danny is the father of Iggy and both of them are stray dogs hanging out in the Romanian wilds eating wisent together with some provisions from people. Ilmar Tuglas, who is based on Kakyoin Noriaki, is a good friend of his who met each other online talking about what life was like under communism. Joseph Joestar was first seen in the Battle Tendency storyline, before resurfacing as an old man in the subsequent ones (Stardust Crusaders and Diamond is Unbreakable). Kakyoin mostly shows up in Stardust Crusaders.

Ilmar comes from a family of fur farmers and socialists alike, even when he and his father (a Lutheran priest in the Ahja parish) sometimes work in animal care themselves despite Ilmar being a financial adviser for most of the part. If Iosif Ionescu is Joseph Joestar who works as a biologist studying Danny and Iggy in the wild hunting wisent and wild rodents in the Romanian steppes and forests, then Ilmar Tuglas is Kakyoin Noriaki who’s shown to look after the cats Tama and Dolce somewhere in Estonia where he owns an animal shelter (a former fur farm itself) with his father, even though he usually works as a financial adviser to Kira Yoshikage (Graham Knightley). Both Romania and Estonia used to be communist countries and moreso when Araki Hirohiko was a young, budding cartoonist, so there was a Cold War between the Soviet Union (which Romania was affiliated with and Estonia was a part of) and America.

America’s allies include South Korea (which was created to contain the spread of socialism to the rest of the Korean peninsula), Japan (where Araki comes from), United Kingdom (the namesakes of characters like Wham and Pet Shop Boy come from this country alone), West Germany (where Kraftwerk’s from), France (where Jean-Pierre Polnareff’s namesake, Michel Polnareff, comes from) and Italy (most of the Golden Wind characters reside there). There is a new Cold War but between China and America this time, also this is a cold war where America’s clearly in decline. So it would be befitting to aim a game like this with the accompanying characters (including the afformented Jojo analogues Ilmar Tuglas and Iosif Ionescu) at a more global (read non-American) audience, with America becoming increasingly irrelevant to the wider world. Maybe not necessarily entirely irrelevant, but nowhere as powerful as it was before.

There are prophecies of not only China getting more powerful, but also Russia resuming its superpower status that if these two were to defeat the United States together (which some say is Mystery Babylon, the end times country said to corrupt the entire planet), then this would further hasten America’s decline. It may not happen yet at this point, but it’s clear that America really is in decline and may not recover from a forthcoming economic crash at all this time. So it becomes even more crucial for this potential franchise to actually pander to more powerful markets in the future, with America declining at present, that America will no longer be a benchmark for how successful a media franchise would be overseas. Although there are ACG franchises that perform better in other, non-American markets before like Saint Seiya in Latin America for instance, with America in decline that it’ll no longer be the gold standard for international success these days.

It’s even telling that American studios aim their films at Chinese audiences, which goes to show you how powerful China has become. If this trend continues for other countries to begrudgingly follow, then it makes more sense to aim such a potential franchise like this at Chinese and generally nonwestern audiences more. Even if it comes at the expense of things like LGBT couples and the like, considering that China, Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya are rather censorious of what they allow. Which means the countries that are okay with LGBT matters and the like are increasingly in the minority and are much likelier to be allied with the US, complete with both declining birth rates and mature gaming markets as well. So this gaming franchise will not have LGBT characters because these do not appeal to more conservative markets like Nigeria and Ghana.

Additionally it seems stray dogs and the ecological problems they pose appear to show up less often in ACG media than they would in both journalism and academia, even if this is something of terra incognita for both gaming and comics in a way. With gaming, you can find a way to not just observe stray dogs attack wildlife but also find ways to not only stop them from doing this, but also prevent this from happening in the first place. With comics you can depict how and why dog predation occurs and what problems they pose to both people and the environment, considering that Iosif Ionescu is a scientist who studies stray dogs attacking wildlife a lot. Even Japanese journalism takes time to dwell on such a subject matter that’s mostly untouched in animation, cartooning and games, despite the latter three’s potential to take advantage of this to educate the public in a different way.

Ilmar Tuglas has observed similar things back in Estonia as well, having to rehome dogs attacking deer because he doesn’t want them to get killed. You might say it’s ironic because his own family are no strangers to farming foxes for their fur, even though they don’t do this anymore because of how unpopular fur farming’s gotten over there too. Ilmar and his family end up giving the food meant for foxes to cats and dogs instead, which is far from ideal in their case, but a matter of having to go with the changing times from then on. Fur farming was a thing in both Europe and North America, especially en masse, that it was as normal as pig farming is today. But it’s also kind of speciesist in this regard that the ire’s aimed at people using cute doglike animals for fur, though there’s still not much sympathy given to pigs, even when they’re useful for sniffing out certain fungi.

To further complicate matters, animals like pigs have a longer and more consistent domestication history than foxes do, so turning pigs into pets wouldn’t be that drastic because they’re more heavily tied to humans than foxes were and still are. And they’re still more widely domesticated anywhere else in the world, whereas foxes are largely restricted to paleoarctic regions with the exception of Australia. But it’s easier to throw fits over people skinning animals resembling Rover and Fido, than they would with animals like Babe just the same (since the Chinese word for fox fur clothing is really fox leather clothing). Which is still speciesist in a darkly ironic way, since pigs are far likelier to be domesticated in nearly all corners of the globe, but foxes largely reside in the paleoarctic like I said before. It wouldn’t be drastic making pigs find mushrooms anywhere else.

You might as well consider how this person feels about chickens as opposed to parrots, where since their point’s that chickens have been domesticated by people longer and earlier, so treating them like one would with cats and dogs shouldn’t be this drastic compared to say parrots. Considering that foxes don’t just have different care requirements, but have a more inconsistent domestication history compared to say cats and dogs, that Ilmar’s own relatives and possibly Ilmar himself at some point would’ve known that they are rather tricky to deal with. So transitioning to cats and dogs doesn’t seem drastic but these two are so familiar to humanity that it would be this easy to take them for granted at times, so even if it depends on the individual animal, Ilmar and his family would’ve found them much easier to raise than they would with foxes even for years.

And they’ve been breeding foxes for fur until recently, so they’d have experience in knowing a thing or two about fox behaviour. So both Ilmar Tuglas and Iosif Ionescu represent rather underrepresented character types and topics, in the sense that they don’t show up this often in ACG media for some reason. Ilmar Tuglas’s own family (if not Ilmar Tuglas himself) house pastors, socialists and fur farmers alike under one roof, I’m pretty much certain this isn’t even unique to them as similar arrangements might also be found anywhere else in the world to varying degrees. But most especially post-Communist Europe once they went from socialism to capitalism and when freedom of religion has resumed in these places, coupled with the decline of fur farming, that such characters can also be found in places like Poland and Slovakia, like one would with Estonia in his case.

Given how demonised Protestantism is in X-Men (which for some reason never gets remarked upon much by Evangelicals), it would be nice to turn such a portrayal on its head by having a lot more sympathetic Protestants in the forms of Ilmar Tuglas, his mother Margit, his late cousin Priit Mihkelson and his father Tanel, who’s even a local pastor in Ahja. Gail Simone actually had a good point about the way Christians are portrayed in both the DC and Marvel canons, but most especially X-Men where they’re often kind of demeaned if they’re Protestants in question. It’s really strange to think that an atheist like her took offence to such a depiction but most Evangelicals are ironically indifferent to this, even though ideally it should have been the other way around. But a Redditor said that a lot of Christians are worldly, so it didn’t turn out the way it should’ve.

Ilmar’s Christianity represents a different sort of Christianity from the one North Americans are used to, which involves awareness of global warming and sympathy to immigrants, the latter’s also there in the Bible. He’s also somewhat sympathetic to socialism, which would surely surprise North Americans. But his family has socialists in them, so this would’ve rubbed off on him, however inappropriate it maybe either for his religion or his occupation as a financial adviser. Estonians are weirdly underrepresented in American ACG media, despite Estonia being a capitalist country as of late. They continue to be underrepresented, because there are no Estonian superheroes, supporting characters and villains to this day, even when both DC and Marvel writers could have at this point.

Ilmar and his family might not be the only Estonians in American and American ally ACG media, but when Estonians are generally so underrepresented in those media that it’s going to be hard naming a prominent Estonian character from either DC or Marvel, if because there’s really none at all and still none to this day. Or in Iosif Ionescu’s case, Romanians who aren’t vampires. It does bring up a certain possibility that many in America and American-allied media aren’t that exposed to both Estonian and Romanian cultures (media included), even when both Estonia and Romania are just as interesting as South Korea and Japan are. The one thing more underrepresented than a mere Romanian is a Romanian scientist, one who specifically studies stray dogs to boot. Which dovetails with the lack of ACG media that’s about dog predation in any way.

It’s not necessarily entirely unheard of in the media but usually canine predation is mentioned in either journalism or academia, not so much more escapist fare like video games even when video games provide an opportunity to not only stop dogs from killing wildlife, but also preventing them from doing this altogether even when it’s done virtually. Video games have been used to educate people about things like wild animals and ecosystems, that it shouldn’t be a stretch to make and use a video game to educate people about the perils of dog predation really. If you could make a video game that’s about caring for dogs, you could also make a video game about stopping dogs from killing wild animals just the same.

Not to mention there are people who make a living from studying dog predation and stray dogs in general such as Andrey Poyarkov, who originally set out to study wolves but ended up studying feral dogs instead. Iosif Ionescu’s no different because he also set out to study wolves but when stray dogs are far more abundant, that he ended up studying and even adopting some of the latter instead. The two dogs he studied and then adopted are Danny and Iggy cast in the roles of father and son respectively, which was something Ilmar suggested to him since he doesn’t want them to get killed. Well they’re part of a pack of stray dogs so he could’ve adopted more of them with his other relatives and also Irina too, Ionela is the one who owns a dog looking like the one killed by Tonio.

Ioan owns dogs that look like the ones killed by an arrow or something, a kind of inversion of what goes on in Jojo where the characters actually keep dogs from getting killed themselves. I kind of speculated before that Araki Hirohiko does or did this because he wasn’t in a good mood, but this involves realising he did this unconsciously, especially whenever he didn’t feel right himself. He admitted that he didn’t let Pannacotta Fugo betray the team because he wasn’t feeling right at the time, so it’s plausible Araki did this to dogs in a way because admittedly I used to obsess over dead dogs whenever I wasn’t feeling right before. But this kind of humanises Araki in the sense he does things whenever he wasn’t feeling right at any point in time, which might explain why some characters like Johnny Joestar and even Ghiaccio appear to have symptoms of depression.

Or why some characters have stands or powers relating to guilt in some way, as guilt’s also a component of depression. Which means Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure might also be more cathartic than one realises, along with a profound air of foreboding regarding what will happen next, that it does differ from something like most superhero comics in this regard. Like I feel a lot of superhero comics from both DC and Marvel have a rollicking air where the hero’s expected to save the day largely mentally unscathed, not to mention these two have a rotating rooster of differing writers with equally clashing views and approaches to familiar characters and storylines. JJBA for most of the part can easily be traced back to one author, albeit with some helpers to the side, so what goes on in JJBA is clearly from one mind.

If this includes characters who appear to be depressed in many ways more than one and the like, then it does point out to a cathartic mindset at any point. But I’m getting off-topic here and even then it’s kind of telling that there’s really not a lot of characters of any ethnicity and nationality who bother studying stray dogs in any capacity in most ACG media, even when these could’ve picqued one’s interest in such a subject matter. I remember the essay ‘Education Of A Cartoonist’ pointing out why comics stories are repetitive is because their own authors don’t read or learn much, don’t bother doing anything else that would lead to less repetitive characters and storylines. This also involves doing a different take on something familiar, like what if both Danny and Iggy aren’t just stray dogs but also related to one another and have the fortune of being cared for and adopted by Joseph Joestar.

What if Kakyoin Noriaki lived long enough to become a financial adviser who also cares for stray animals to the side, well in the form of their analogues Iosif Ionescu and Ilmar Tuglas that does speak volumes about certain directions not taken or done often. Even less commonly done is using such abilities for quotidian and forensic means, like imagine if Trish Una grew up to be a forensic scientist herself who softens things to make it easier to solve cases this way. Imagine if Kakyoin Noriaki used his ability to not only pick up items, close doors and the like (though he could’ve done that before in canon), but also help out detectives when it comes to solving criminal cases. It seems more common to find characters using preternatural skills in combat, but not so often when it comes to more practical situations that demand you to not only save lives, but also do things like preparing food and solving criminal cases.

This goes back to the point posed in Education Of A Cartoonist where it seems it’s easier to write glorified fistfights because such writers don’t really bother doing anything else, learning anything else and knowing somebody/anybody else who does this to write something else altogether. Whether if this even includes the vexing subject of fur farming is up to anybody’s guess, but it does beg the question over which character with such an ability would gravitate to this controversial practise. Ilmar Tuglas comes from a family of fur farmers who were in the habit of raising foxes, mink and the like for fur clothing, they don’t do this anymore due to animal rights activists getting in the way. Instead they make a living from veterinary pet care instead, as his own father and mother are veterinarians (even if one of them’s a parish pastor in Ahja), though it could be argued that what they do is speciesist since they care for cats and dogs a lot.

It would be particularly controversial to even humanise fur farmers this way, given how politically correct both the United States and its allies tend to be and are. From both the Russian and Chinese perspectives, these countries tend to be very politically correct. These countries are more in-tune with things like anti-racism, intersectionality, feminism, LGBT rights and animal rights a lot more than these two are, not that China’s particularly inclined towards animal cruelty. Mind you even in China there are people who make their dogs hunt rodents, guard premises and hunt boar, a lot like what their western counterparts do or for another matter, their Vietnamee and Indonesian counterparts just the same. But I feel it’s more like America and its allies tend to be really self-righteous from being very politically correct on many matters, that anybody else who aren’t in their orbit seem much worse by comparison.

Even when it’s not always exactly nor precisely the case, but it does feel this way at times due to political correctness being more normalised in the west. This might also include animal rights activism in a way, given the antipathy towards fur farming in Russia isn’t as pronounced as it would be in Canada, despite sharing similar ranges of climates, latitudes and biomes together. Unless if Russia succeeds in conquering Canada and then incorporating it into one of its many territories which would be the one situation where such practises would even be mainstreamed. And even then it would still take time for it to become socially acceptable again, with indigenous North Americans being far likelier to take up this cause. Even if not all Native North Americans do this, they’re still likelier to do this than their white counterparts would. And fur farming would be pretty niche in the interval at the very least.

But it does make one wonder if it were possible to portray fur farmers and even ex-fur farmers in a more sympathetic light, especially when it comes to how politically correct the west is relative to both Russia and China. In the sense that some people turn to fur farming as a way to earn money this way, even actually caring for the animals they’ll farm for their fur. It’s even telling that both Russia and Canada were on equal terms when it comes to fur farming, or for another matter former Soviet republic Estonia in this regard. Estonia banned fur farming sometime around four years ago, so it would’ve been fairly recent that Ilmar’s family stopped fur farming due to such presssures. The Tuglas fur farms have been converted into shelters for stray cats and dogs, given they’re not only more abundant but also easier to manage due to their longer histories of being domesticated, relative to foxes.

As for the farm foxes, well although the activists succeeded in freeing them, there was the issue of rehoming them. Foxes aren’t particularly popular as pets, not that they’re entirely useless, but they’re not the animals one would often use for things like pest control the way one would with cats and dogs (even in China, this is also the case there too). They could’ve gone stray, plausibly interbreeding with wild foxes. But this also left some Tuglas relatives in a financial quagmire, especially if others continued fur farming (especially with Priit’s side of the family), that they ended up farming vegetable and fruit crops instead. With Priit’s passing (at the explosive hands of Graham Knightley, one of Ilmar’s clients), Ilmar now amasses a large collection of fur coats. They can’t be sold to people anymore, lest Ilmar be pelted with stones when he comes close to doing it.

And even then he gets questioned why would he continue hoarding fox coats when he cares for dogs, who are their relatives and doppelgangers. I feel this is a depiction of fur farming that goes unheard of and unseen in such media, wherein the fur farmers in question are really ordinary people like me and you. It’s like in an effort to humanise foxes, fur farmers get seriously dehumanised and demonised. If fur farming were to have a human face in video games and the like, it would go to Ilmar Tuglas and his family instead. But it would say a lot about the sort of environment westerners are raised in, where furbearers are humanised but fur farmers aren’t. And why a counter-narrative would be interesting to explore really.

Underrepresented

I said before that Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians and the like as well as actual African nationalities are painfully underrepresented in American ACG media until recently, but even then it’s kind of hard naming an Estonian character in either DC or Marvel who’s not a background extra. If because there’s really none at all, and there still isn’t one to this day. Senegalese characters are in short supply in DC and Marvel, but they might as well be similarly nonexistent. The same can be said of Latvians, Georgians (as in those coming from Georgia the country), Lithuanians, Armenians, Kazakhs, Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Turkmens, Tajiks, Krygyz, Ghanaians, Zimbabweans, Ugandans, Liberians, Angolans, Gabonese, Congolese (and Kinois), Mozambicans, Ivorians, Rwandans and so on.

It’s kind of hard naming any prominent Czech, Hungarian or Slovak DC or Marvel character because there’s really none at all, none to begin with and still none today, like if you want real Czech, Hungarian or Slovak representation you might as well persue and peruse Czech, Hungarian and Slovak media instead. Romanians might as well be vampires and not ordinary people like everybody else, Estonians could easily be mistaken for Russians, and many Americans would think of Georgia as a US state, not a separate country somewhere in the Caucasus. So whatever Georgian mutant that shows up in the X-Men canon will mostly probably come from Atlanta, not somewhere like Tbilisi for instance. Who cares about Moldovans, they might as well be Romanians all along.

Ditto Croatians, Serbians, Bulgarians, Bosnians and Slovenes unless if they appear in Joe Sacco’s comics, and unfortunately Joe Sacco seems to be one of the few US cartoonists who do bother putting Yugoslavs in his comics. It’s even odder still to think that despite DC rebooting its canon every now and then, Slovaks and Latvians have yet to show up there even when it’s now possible to do so, or for another matter making existing characters like Terra and Vixen belong to actual nationalities this time. Terra being a Slovak woman and Vixen a Zimbabwean woman, DC writers could be free to grandfather a Congolese nationality onto Bwana Beast. Marvel’s no different to some extent, yet not a single Marvel writer bothered to retcon both Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver into being Romani Slovenes.

Making Victor von Doom Croatian would be nice but it destroys the illusion of plausible deniability if he actually came from somewhere in Croatia himself, who knows what would happen if somebody like Shuri were to be retconned into being a Bamileke Cameroonian herself. It’s even wilder to think there are practically no Namibians, Botswanans and Nigeriens in Marvel, there is some Botswanan representation in DC but he’s just a bitplayer. Just a character to be saved by Superman and nothing more, Superman being the resident All-American hero at DC Comics. There are really no Botswanan superheroes in either the DC or Marvel canon, not even a recurring Botswanan supporting character like what Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen are to the Superman canon.

Botswanans are cannon fodder to DC and Marvel writers alike if they ever show up at all, Storm is pretty much alone in the entire US comics canon as the best known African character there. One would be hard-pressed to find any Kazakh characters in DC and Marvel, because they’re practically nonexistent there. You’d have to find Armenians in DC and Marvel in vain, even when Armenia’s no longer part of the Soviet Union at this point. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are all part of the European Union now, but there’s not a single Baltic superhero to this day at either DC or Marvel. Not even a Baltic supervillain at that. Supposing if someone made a story involving an Estonian man named Ilmar Tuglas. He doesn’t just generate and manipulate strings, but also emeralds.

He also works as a financial adviser, despite having harbouring pro-socialist sentiments every now and then, come from a family of communists and fur farmers and lives somewhere in Ahja, Estonia, with family somewhere in Saaremaa (an Estonian island). He’s based on Kakyoin Noriaki from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure right down to his fashion sense and personality to a large extent, JJBA being a Japanese comic involving superpowers by the way. Let’s say that his author isn’t from Estonia themselves, and this character shows up in a North American comic or video game, he may not be a Marvel or DC character. But it does speak volumes about how strangely underrepresented Estonians are, despite Estonia being an EU member at this point in time, but I guess US writers could rather pay more mind to America’s longer-standing allies instead.

Estonia might not be that poor either, compared to say Georgia for instance, but it’ll often be overlooked by DC and Marvel. Especially when it comes to having a particularly prominent superhero of its own or more, compared to long-standing US allies like South Korea, to the point where Estonia might essentially serve as cannon fodder to US superheroes instead. Estonia had been thoroughly influenced by Russia before, around the time South Korea was created to contain the spread of socialism throughout the Korean peninsula, Russian influence was already years deep in Estonian culture. South Korea kind of inherited the showbiz culture from America, both K-Pop and K-Rap are evidently derivative of American popular music. It’s not that a showbiz culture is nonexistent in Estonia, but that it would’ve resembled Russia’s own instead.

It’s kind of astonishing to think that Russia was at some point the only other major superpower in the Cold War, but it never got its own Hollywood even when it had all the other communist allies around, or at least nowhere near the scale Hollywood does for America. As South Korea is a longer-standing US ally than Estonia is, it would’ve inevitably inherited the American showbiz culture. To the extent that US publishers are more willing to represent South Koreans than Estonians, because of the residual feeling that South Korea is really on its side, despite Estonia being a western country itself and it was a US ally for quite a while in recent memory. You could also say that South Korea has K-Pop, but then again K-Pop is derivative of American popular music in many ways, so it’s going to be more palatable to US and US ally tastes.

That’s why Marvel has Luna Snow, a K-Pop musician who moonlights as a superheroine, even if Estonia’s currently capitalistic at this point but it’s still going to have the suspicion of being a Russian ally despite appearances to the contrary at this point. That’s why Netflix, a US streaming service, has KPop Demon Hunters. Even if Estonia was for a long time a Swedish colony, then a Russia colony and now a ceritified member of the European Union, South Korea is a US ally from the get-go and its exports are going to be more compatible with American and US ally tastes, than with their Estonian counterparts (if they exist at all). So Estonians as well as Latvians, Lithuanians, Georgians, Armenians and Moldovans are going to be this underrepresented in DC and Marvel, or for another matter Hungarians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Bulgarians.

A common thread with many of these countries is that they’re all former socialist countries, as to be conflated with Russia especially if they’re European countries at that. I suppose if somebody were to substitute Latveria, Transia/Trasnia and Sokovia for Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary, it could still run into problems but if they got represented in Cold War era stories, their characters would either serve as antagonistic foils to US heroes or join US teams if they’re heroic, which Natalia Romanova is both of these things and she’s Russian. From my personal experience reading US comic books and the like, the only times actual Yugoslavs get any representation at all in is Joe Sacco’s nonfiction works. But these highlight a strong disparity between Yugoslavs and their fictionalised proxies, because Joe Sacco’s a journalist who uses cartooning to talk about social issues in other countries.

Similar things can be said of the differences between the way actual African countries are portrayed in nonfiction as opposed to say the DC and Marvel canon, where in the former they actually show up and sometimes realistically so. But in the DC and Marvel stories, most actual African countries are nonexistent. There are practically no Angolans, Cameroonians, Ugandans, Namibians and Rwandans in either the DC or Marvel canon, which gets really weird because these two are no strangers to retcons and reboots that at any point where a writer could’ve grandfathered a Cameroonian nationality onto Black Panther and Shuri, this never came to pass. DC’s no stranger to reboots and the opportunity to make Vixen Zimbabwean never came to pass either, you might as well tell me to make my own characters so I did.

Fabrice Tientcheu is a Cameroonian forensic scientist who has the ability to soften things, is very high-culture himself (he likes reading books on sciences like astronomy and chemistry, as well as books by Jean Baudrillard, Umberto Eco, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus), owns cats because his father’s afraid of dogs (Cameroonian rapper Mink’s is afraid of dogs himself as well) and is actually based on another Jojo character, Trish Una who also has the same ability herself. He lives somewhere in Cameroon, whether if it’s Bamendjou or Bafang. But these are real places in Cameroon and also Africa, you could go there if you want to. He has a twin sister named Yvette, a seamstress who’s in love with his colleague and the resident detective Jean-Louis Lumiere.

Nigerians do get some representation in Marvel, via the character of Temper. But she’s not as well-known as Storm is, so Storm’s practically alone in the entire US comics canon as the best known fictional African to come from a real African country. If the adage the more, the merrier works; then it serves to have another Nigerian character around in the form of Tifeoluwa Babatunde Olatunji. He works as a lawyer and lives somewhere in Lagos, he sometimes gets into joking banter with Fabrice over rice and other foodstuffs. Even odder still over at DC is how and why there’ll never be an Elseworlds or Imaginary Story featuring an Icelandic Fire and a Chilean Ice, but I feel it kind of ties into stereotypes about Latin Americans and Scandinavians. Not just in terms of ability, but also personality.

From what I’ve read, Beatriz da Costa (Fire) is shown to be brash and flamboyant but Tora Olafsdotter (Ice) is more mild-mannered. That’s not to say there aren’t any Brazilians who act like Beatriz nor are there any Norwegians who act like Tora, but it still wouldn’t fit into the way they actually see themselves as. Supposing if there are characters with abilities similar to these two, but Fire is Scandinavian and Ice is Latin American this time. Sometime as early as 2010, I came up with an Icelandic male character who is Fire and manipulates volcanism himself, and Ice is a Japanese woman. This time both characters are female, thus further paralleling their DC counterparts. Linhildur Solveig Arnleifsdottir is analogised to Beatriz da Costa, though she has red hair and often at the receiving end of her husband’s affairs.

(She’s also a natural redhead to boot.) She comes from somewhere in Iceland, more specifically Reykjavik and she works as a government official. That’s not to say there aren’t any Scandinavian redheads out there in American ACG media, but it seems Age Of Mythology’s the rare instance of this unless if Jimmy Olsen counts (he’s obviously of Scandinavian descent himself). Dark-haired Scandinavians in DC do exist, but particularly in the form of Pieter Cross. Marvel’s Loki could also count in a way, because he’s based on Norse mythology. That’s not to say all Scandinavians are dark-haired (or red-haired or blond-haired either), but it still wouldn’t reflect the way they see themselves. Linhildur being a redhead reflects on the fact that Iceland does have a good number of redheads itself, then come Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

It seems within the Marvel canon, if foreign redheads do exist they’re usually more likely to come from either Scotland or Ireland. Not that redheads are nonexistent in both places, but it still wouldn’t be how they see themselves as. Quite frankly, I’m unable to name a famous Scottish or Irish redhead in music. People like Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh, Ronan Keating and Nicola Cloaghan are all Irish blonds, though with the last one you wouldn’t guess this until she stops dyeing her hair red for Bridgerton. The rest of Boyzone and Altan all have dark hair themselves, everybody in Clannad has natural dark hair (until lately as they’re getting older) and the same can be said of everybody in the band Capercaillie. Sinead O’Connor had natural dark hair. Nightcrawlers’ John Reid had natural blond hair when he was younger, Kevin McKidd’s also blond.

Karen Gillen are Moira Shearer are both the only natural Scottish redheads that I can think of, but since natural red hair’s rare so it’s to be expected that it would be easier naming blond and dark-haired Irish and Scottish celebrities instead, especially in my case. Moving over to England, I could name some natural redheads there. You have Mick Hucknall, Patricia Hodge when she was younger, Newton Faulkner, Ed Sheeran, arguably David J from Bauhaus when he was younger and Jess Glynne, even if red hair’s not stereotypically considered to be an English trait. Marvel’s Elsa Bloodstone could count, but in her earlier appearances she had blonde hair. Betsy Braddock’s also a natural blonde and so is her brother, though you could say that I’m very much wrong in here.

But it still reinforces a message that rufosity’s the domain of Irish and Scottish people, especially in the Marvel canon. Even if not all redheads are Scottish or Irish themselves within Marvel itself, it still reinforces a particular view about these people. A view that some Irish and Scottish people internalise themselves, not that they’re any less red-haired either. It’s likely why outside of Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic media, redheads are rarely ever Scandinavian in American media. I’m thinking in the lines of things like Age Of Mythology being the rare instances where you can find Scandinavian redheads in any way, the other one being God Of War when it comes to its own version of Thor. Ditto Latin American blonds, even when Cameron Diaz is a thing in real life.

Despite Cameron Diaz’s prominence and moreso when she was younger, given her father was Cuban himself, whenever Latin Americans show up in American media they usually tend to have dark hair. Beatriz da Costa might be the only instance that I can think of in American fiction who’s not dark-haired herself, one would wonder why there are so little to no natural Latin American blonds and redheads within DC and Marvel. They do show up in Latin American media, both nonfiction and fiction, but they’re very rare in DC and Marvel, if they show up at all. I do know that white Latinos exist and characters like Julio from X-Factor reflect on this in a way, even if natural blond and red hair aren’t necessarily common in Latin America either, but the fact that these two traits show up in Latin American comics among fictional characters acknowledges their existence.

The character I came up with is Piedad Franulic Kristof, a Chilean woman of Croatian and Hungarian descent. She’s analogised to Tora Olafsdotter in that both of them are light-haired women who manipulate the cold, but she’s also based on Nijimura Kei in that they’re resentful towards the people they serve (the Orvilles in Piedad’s case) and Kei also manipulates the cold herself. Piedad more specifically has mousy blonde hair which can also be regarded as light brown hair just the same, though it’s lighter than that of Colin Sallow. I feel it’s easier to think of Latin Americans as not only commonly dark-haired, but also somewhat darker than that of white Americans is the way the latter views the former and vice versa at times, when it comes to othering one another. Like if the prototypical American’s of either Western or Northern European descent, then the prototypical Latino’s of indigenous descent.

Blond hair’s more commonly found among countries like Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, even if not all Britons, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Norwegians and Danes are necessarily natural blonds, let alone for life. Like I said John Reid had blond hair when he was younger, Liam Howlett had blond hair when he was a young boy. But this is also where most white Americans come from, so to the prototypical white American resembles the prototypical Northern European. The prototypical Latin American is someone who’s either of indigenous or Spanish descent, and the Spanish are often assumed to be dark-haired themselves. Not that the Spanish are any less dark-haired in reality, but the way Americans conceptualise both Latinidad and Spanishness is different from how these people view it in themselves.

It should be noted that there are Latin Americans of Polish, German, Dutch, Croatian, Hungarian and Ukrainian descent, Piedad is a Chilean woman of both Croatian and Hungarian descent. So it reflects on this in a way but perhaps outside of Latin American fictions, this is very nearly nonexistent in US media. There’s a version of the Babysitters Club where one of the blonde characters got made into a dark-haired Latina, but I feel this is one of the few instances that kind of reflects on it in their own respective ways. But I feel when Latin Americans are in the US themselves, whether in real life or in fiction, they will be othered in a way they aren’t back in Latin America. Even if not all Latinos are practising Catholics or even Catholics in general, if being American means being Protestant, then the othering’s bound to happen anyways.

It wouldn’t be the case in countries like Ireland, Poland, Croatia, Austria, Slovakia, Czech Republic and France, where Catholicism’s part of the cultural mainstream there. Not so much in countries like America, Britain, Canada and Finland where Protestantism’s part of the cultural mainstream there instead, so even white Latin Americans would be really othered in those places. It may not always be the case within DC and Marvel, but being American institutions, it’s going to play a role in some way. It’s not hard to see how and why Latin Americans, real or not, are going to be othered in American culture. It’s not that the Baptist church, Methodism, Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism are nonexistent in Britain, Finland, Latvia, Canada, Sweden and Norway, but America has been the hotbed of world Protestantism until recently.

If because due to Christianisation, the African countries are catching up real quickly here. Especially places like Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya, though they’re not without considerable Catholic populations to boot. But even if denominations don’t always get factored into the equation, Latin Americans are still going to be othered in America in other ways. So that’s why Latin American superheroes like Beatriz and others are portrayed the way they are in American ACG media, the portrayal’s not always racist but there’s a kind of implicit othering in some cases. Central Asians are weirdly very underrepresented in US fictional media in any capacity, given they don’t neatly fit into American boxes regarding not only both East Asia and West Asia, but also Eastern Europe.

This becomes particularly the case with both Kazakhs and Krygyz, because although many of them look East Asian, they also aren’t from somewhere further east like in both Indonesia and Malaysia, speak Turkic languages and actually have a degree of Western Eurasian DNA themselves, so they don’t neatly fit American prototypes for what Muslims ought to be. Both Uzbeks, Tajiks and Turkmens may fit American conceptions of Islam in many regards, but sadly they remain underrepresented in the American imaginary. Instead of actually representing Uzbeks, Tajiks and Turkmens this time around in both DC and Marvel, DC creatives like James Gunn and Greg Weisman would rather use proxies like Jarhunpurians and those from Qurac instead. Ditto Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians and even Palestinians to my knowledge.

There are Marvel writers who do kind of represent those coming from Lebanon in a way as it is with Sina Grace, but then again a good number of Marvel writers like Chris Claremont are Zionist, to the point of portraying even the worst Jewish character like Magneto more sympathetically than he would with an Arab like the Shadow King. David Haller, when he initially appeared, was the illegitimate teenage son of Charles Xavier and an Israeli national, who got possessed by the Shadow King. So with the combined efforts of Xavier and somebody else, David Haller finally got exorcised. But I don’t read comics that often, much less the DC and Marvel variety at this point, so I’m going by what I recall reading. But it kind of insinuates a message that Arabs are ought to corrupt minors like David Haller, well at the time so.

And more recently in Absolute Superman, West Asians Ra’s Al-Ghul and his daughter Talia have invaded the US. Even as a Christian it’s kind of telling that it plays into a kind of xenophobic sentiment, but aimed specifically at West Asians regarding their supposed ability to ruin and undermine western civilisation (as represented by DC’s quintessentially Midwestern town Smallville). Palestinians are very underrepresented in US fictional media, especially when the US itself has a strong Zionist streak, that it’s this easy to demonise them. Even weirder still is that Palestine actually houses the world’s oldest Christian community, coupled with that there are some Israelis like Paul Wexler suspecting them to be the actual direct descendants of the ancient Israelities in a way Ashkenazi Jews aren’t.

Arthur Koestler, a Jew, was one of the earliest to point out that Ashkenazis aren’t related to the ancient Israelites as much as they are to the Khazars, a long-lost Turkic people. Even studies pointing out that Ashkenazis are the descendants of Judaised Caucasians, Slavs, Greeks, Turks, Iranians and East Asians (who may be Mongols, the folks who were close to the Turkic tribes) would still bring up the Khazar ghost in some way, given the Zionist insistence on the idea that Ashkenazis are the direct descendants of the Israelites. Actually Ashkenazis being more closely related to Slavs seems more plausible, not only because their folkways are more Slavic than West Asian, but also because they lived in Slavic lands far longer than they do in West Asia, as to be Slavicised over time. Mr Wexler even said that Yiddish really is a Slavic language with a heavy Germanic influence.

Not helped by that Ashkenazi Jews lived in Slavic countries like Slovakia, Poland, Belarus and Russia for so long, that they’d inevitably be fluent in Russian, Polish, Slovak and Belarusian which would’ve further Slavicised Yiddish despite having Germanic influence too. And Yiddish sounds like a Polish speaker trying to speak German themselves, or sing in my case since I listened to a duo singing the song ‘Tumbalalaika’ which seems like a German song with a Polish accent. (This is what you get for finally listening to something in Polish.) The profound Zionist streak that a number of DC and Marvel writers exhibit is likely why there are practically no Palestinian superheroes in both the DC and Marvel canons, why somebody like Kitty Pryde gets away with the very thing that got a Native American like John Proudstar into trouble and so on.

It’s as if being Jewish is enough to automatically absolve somebody of their wrongdoings, which reflects in the way the western world continues to support Zionist Israel at any time. It’s kind of also like this in something like Power Mark, where a number of characters who aren’t Biblical characters who get to be flawed are a Russian boy, a Chinese woman (Power Mark’s sister) and a Latin American girl, but the Jewish boy’s portrayed as rather flawless. I feel as if western countries readily support Zionism is partly because Jews are a kind of model minority’s model minority, if you know what I mean, as opposed to the way the Chinese, Indians and others are regarded as such, especially if they’re not only Gentile but also significantly more numerous and oppose western values themselves in some manner.

This might explain the orientalist othering these people often get in western fictions, where a westernised East Asian like Jubilee is considered a good guy but not the Mandarin. Or for another matter, characters coming from former European colonies like Vietnam (Karma) and the Philippines (Galura, Wave), which kind of insinuates the message that western countries are the gold standard for what’s good and progressive. Even when both China and India were far ahead of the west when it comes to women wearing trousers, West Asian countries and Russia having more women in STEM, China having had women play ball games in ancient history, Japan continuing to have a solid tradition of and industry for female readers of comics and so on.

Or even the odd fact that Japan’s ahead of the west when it comes to publishing professional M/M fiction out in the open, Patalliro being an old anime that features a sympathetic gay couple at the front. I’m getting off-topic but when it comes to media like DC and Marvel as well as their writers, being westerners they often promote western worldviews, sympathies and preferences, sometimes deliberately but more often than not unconsciously because of what they’re socialised and exposed to for years. The underrepresentation of other former communist western nationalities like Estonians and Latvians has to do with conflating them with Russians proper, even when at this point Estonia and Latvia are currently capitalist, that it shouldn’t be a stretch to actually introduce Estonian and Latvian superheroes right now.

Maybe not as America ended up alienating these two, them being staunch European Union members at this point, but I feel it’s possible to create an international media franchise that features actually Estonian and Latvian characters at the front and centre this time. It’s kind of obvious that as a lot of DC and Marvel writers are Americans, they’ll inevitably and usually have pro-US sympathies, sentiments, mindsets and sensibilities that get reflected in the stories they write about. Whether if it’s the othering of nonwesterners like Africans, West Asians and East Asians, the continued underrepresentation of certain nationalities and ethnicities (Latvians, Estonians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Slovaks, etc), or the propagation of western values and sensibilities, it’s there with many DC and Marvel writers for years.

Although the character of Linhildur might play into the redhead with fire powers stereotype in a way, she also represents a kind of Scandinavian character not commonly represented in US fiction stories. So far the only Scandinavian character with a fire ability is Karl Hansen from the Wildcats stories, whereas Norwegians like Sigrid Nansen and Tora Olafsdotter both have ice-based abilities. And even if Norway has glaciers, so does Chile and Chile’s close to Antarctica. It’s not a coincidence that both DC and Marvel writers habitually give fire-based abilities to Latin Americans, as if they’re so hot-tempered they’ll burst into flames anyways, when it comes to characters like Dante Pertuz, Firebird, that tattooed guy and Beatriz da Costa, even if it’s not true for all of them. Magma could also count in a way, as she has power over volcanism herself.

And she’s also a Brazilian citizen by the way, though similar things can be said of Iceland too. But it still plays into a kind of American conceptualisation of Latin American nationalities and countries, regardless if countries like Argentina and Chile both beg to differ as they’re closer to the South Pole as to get cold and dark around June and July, that Chile has glaciers says a lot about the missed opportunity to have a Chilean version of Ice this time. Sunspot being able to manipulate solar energy himself plays into the American belief of countries like Brazil having nearly constant unlimited daylight hours, but even if it were true and the same can be said of a certain Peruvian Overwatch character (I think), one would wonder why there’s no Argentinian character at either DC or Marvel who manipulates darkness themselves because it gets dark in Argentina every June and July.

It’s kind of depressing to think that in 2025 there are still no Namibian, Uzbek, Tajik, Kazakh, Armenian and Georgian superheroes and even supervillains at either DC or Marvel, when it comes to Georgians these characters come from somewhere in Batumi, Tbilisi or Gori. Not somewhere in Savannah, Atlanta or Douglasville, Georgia here is a country in the Caucasus. Latveria is real but not Slovakia, Transia is real but not Slovenia. So logically Wakanda is real, but not Cameroon. Qurac is real, but not Syria. What I’m saying is that Latveria, Transia, Qurac and Wakanda are treated as if they’re real countries in Marvel and DC, but for some reason their real-life doppelgangers are nonexistent in their place. You could actually travel to Ljubljana and even stay there for long after acquiring EU citizenship, but Transia will take its place in Marvel stories instead.

Singapore is so nonexistent in the Marvel canon that Madripoor takes its place instead, even when you could actually go there to Singapore yourself. Some of my relatives have done this more than a decade ago, you can even access to Singaporean websites too. Singaporeans speak English like Americans, but Madripoor is used in its place in Marvel. You should get an idea of how underrepresented Singaporeans are in Marvel, or for another matter Malaysians and Burmese since I can’t name a single character from either Malaysia or Myanmar in both DC and Marvel. Ditto Laotians, Cambodians get some representation in the forms of Rose Wilson and Sweet Lili. But I suppose no such equivalent exists for those from Kazakhstan, even to this day that Kazakhstan might as well belong in the world of Elseworlds and What If.

But countries like Qurac are serious business, despite being technically nonexistent in the real world.

Can’t Fight This Feeling

I feel it’s kind of unpopular and controversial to say this out loud, but I feel one possible reason why Japan has such difficulty fighting the sexualisation of minors on its own soil, especially when it comes to its own ACG media, is that it relies a lot on its own strength whilst rejecting God a lot, leading to problems it wants to solve but can’t truly defeat. The thing with self-control is that it’s a lot harder than it looks, especially when it comes to solving your own problems, like it’s going to be real hard not to be proud only to commit another sin and so on, as it is with me many times over. The struggle to control oneself is much harder than one assumes it to be because you’re practically fighting against yourself that trying to do right is a lot more agonising than it should be, not to mention forcing yourself to do what’s right is going to be harder than it appears to be.

I have difficulties paying attention in school, learning Tagalog and doing maths that what comes easily to others is harder for me to achieve and succeed, to the point of stressing myself out a lot in school when doing these alone (I had tutors by my side before). Struggling to control sin is going to be harder than it appears to be, but I feel more people like the results more than the efforts put into work. Like they expect it to be nearly effortless but don’t understand struggling to do what’s right because sin is inherent in humanity due to the fall, even Paul himself said this that the good he wants to do doesn’t always go as expected. Sometimes it’s hard for others to understand, especially if it’s a sin they don’t personally struggle with themselves. But it’s still agonising to try to do right, whilst relying on God as well, given the struggle will always be there with us until death.

It’s probably no different with Japan in a collective sense given its people are aware of such problems going on, to the point of making a strong effort into combating those when possible or plausible. But to make matters worse some of those in the Japanese ACG scene are weirdly and inappropriately defensive of what they do and enjoy, particularly if it’s rather sexualised at that, even if it puts off other people and especially Japanese women to their cause. The moe style is really the familiar anime style, since the word anime in Japan is used to describe any kind of animation. The difference between geek pandering art and ordinary art in Japan’s much more pronounced if you look at the sort of illustrations produced by people outside of the ACG subculture, it’s very different in looks and scope. It would be more shocking if the Japanese ACG industry were to collapse at any moment.

But I feel even if not all Japanese animators, game developers and cartoonists necessarily condone or enjoy these things themselves, the Japanese ACG industry would really be judged for condoning and enjoying such vices for so long that inevitably a downfall will happen. Admittedly its US counterpart will face the same thing but for being a part of Mystery Babylon itself, Mystery Babylon being assumed to be the same as the United States by other people. A good number of anime risk appearing kind of perverted to some people, even when the authors themselves may not have intended to. But it does risk leaving a bad taste in someone else’s mouth, coupled with a lack of awareness of those problems (media illiteracy if you will) that makes it harder to confront this problem not only openly, but also early on.

It can’t be a mistake if some animators and cartoonists deliberately set out to sexualise cartoon characters, it’s even long suspected with a number of US cartoon superheroines like Wonder Woman before. There are people who say that the sexualisation of young girls in Japanese ACG media may go back earlier than one realises, it may even be more rampant than one realises if Miyazaki Hayao’s guilty of this just the same. But I feel this has to be said because of how off-putting a good number of anime unfortunately are, they tend to sexualise things that aren’t needed or weren’t there before. Or if it’s there in the source material, then the well’s been poisoned before. Which makes it harder to cut the hand without injuring the wrist, even when it’s needed to do so.

It doesn’t help when Japan has had a recurring porn animation industry for years, in some regards more consistently than that of America until recently, many of them also working on less sexualised productions at that, then it’s going to be hard separating the wheat from the weeds. It’s bad enough that the things that historically appeared in porn also show up in kids’ programmes and stories, it’s bad enough that perverts get to work on kids’ shows and films without repercussion until now, it’s shockingly prevalent that many anime fans are desensitised to it. To the point where finding genuinely clean anime becomes a game of finding a needle in the haystack, it shouldn’t be the case especially for those seeking to go against the grain to introduce something to others, but there’s something wrong about the Japanese ACG industry and why Japan will also be judged for this.

The Japanese ACG industry could collapse for many reasons, including this first and foremost, that it might be no more in the future. Or at least it might still be around but as a shadow of its former self, even if other East Asian countries might not be any better either, they could rise to the challenge to make up for a profound loss. However awkward it may be given some people are so attached to Japanese productions that it’s going to take time getting used to it, seeing how they want the real thing real badly. But even then it’s going to be shocking to realise that the Japanese ACG scene will collapse in the future, alongside Japan’s own comeuppance by the Lord that it’s terrifying to behold.