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 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.

Emeralds

Considering that this game’s kind of influenced by Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, despite being an ostensibly superhero-detective story, it seems logical to have a Kakyoin Noriaki analogue here. He’s pretty much an Estonian financial adviser going by the name of Illmar Tuglas and has some of the same abilities as Kakyoin’s stand Hierophant Green does, to further the similarities between the two Illmar often wears green (though Kakyoin himself doesn’t always wear green depending on the colour illustration). Interestingly he’s actually based on a colour illustration of Kakyoin with blond hair, but then again Araki Hirohiko isn’t always this consistent with his characters’ hair and clothing colours. Giorno’s sometimes shown as having white hair, Trish Una’s often shown with blonde hair and there are instances where Hirose Yasuho has blonde hair as well.

He could give Kakyoin blue hair and it might have happened before, but he’s also from an earlier school of thought where it wouldn’t matter what hair colour the character showed up with, readers were expected to identify them by other traits and not by hair colour. The way the Jojo characters are portrayed in both the direct to video animations and the subsequent television productions proves this point right, where it seemed with Kakyoin’s first animated appearance he actually had brown hair then. The Clamp fanfiction kind of follows this portrayal, as with a blond Jean-Pierre Polnareff. Or Abdul in yellow clothing for another matter, but it’s still telling that they’re still recognisable going by other traits. Identifying Japanese ACG characters by hair colour is actually a more recent innovation, given characters like Kakyoin do show up with contrary hair colours from time to time.

And even if some characters are designed with contrary hair colours in mind, they’re not necessarily intended to be western, especially characters like Naruto may have their Japaneseness reflected in other ways (particularly sensibility and Japanese perception of phenomena and people). Even if Uzumaki Naruto was designed with blond hair in mind, he’s not necessarily the westerner’s idea of a blond as he’s portrayed as something of a delinquent possessed by a fox spirit. In the sense that he’s very much an outsider’s outsider, whereas in American media blond characters will almost always be portrayed as one of the cool kids. Which tells you about how the Japanese see blond hair as: not necessarily unattractive, but always strange and can be kind of preternatural. In real life, this would be informed by those with albinism, white foreigners, fashionable people and delinquents.

It’s not necessarily unappealing but it is strange to the Japanese, however I’m getting really off-topic here regarding the way blond characters are portrayed in Japanese ACG media. Illmar Tuglas also represents another underrepresented character type in western ACG media: that of Baltic peoples, countries and cultures, as it is with its Japanese counterpart Estonian characters do exist. But in the case with western ACG media, this is often overshadowed by Russia which was America’s de facto rival during the Cold War, to the point where there’s a preponderance of Russians in the Marvel and DC canons. But not much attention’s paid to those coming from Georgia (the country, not the state), Armenia, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, mostly because they’d be subsumed by their Russian counterparts by then.

Ditto Romanians, Czech, Poles, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats and Serbians, which would explain why there are Transia, Sokovia and Latveria in the Marvel canon, but no Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia. Maybe I’m wrong here but it does explain why it’s kind of hard for me to name an Estonian character from either DC or Marvel when there’s practically none at all, whereas there’s no shortage of Russians coming from either publisher. Maybe I’m still wrong but there’s really no prominent Estonian character at all from either DC or Marvel, given America had bigger fish to try when contending with Russia over being one of the dominant superpowers during the Cold War. And even then an Estonian character would have to join an American team to prove that they are a good person, especially for as long as they don’t subscribe to Soviet style socialism. Otherwise they’ll be immediately suspect, given Colossus and Natalia Romanova both emerged at the height of the original Cold War.

But since we live in a world where America’s in steep decline so it’s now feasible to make a video game where the American market has grown irrelevant, if it weren’t for Donald Trump angrily issuing taxes over Chinese, European, Canadian and Russian products. This means having to target these markets more aggressively and deliberately, given America’s increasingly no longer viable as a marker of international success. So you’d have to design characters in a way that even appeases these markets from now on, sort of like how Hollywood movies have come to pander to the Chinese a lot. Now that America’s increasingly less powerful, we might as well target the game more to those international audiences instead. Not to mention with US influence being undone, stronger foreign influence is the needed alternative.

As for Illmar Tuglas himself, he’s pretty much a financial advisor to Graham Knightley’s father. Yes, the guy who’s related to the murderous salesman with the preternatural ability to explode people by touch. He’s kind of the opposite of Graham Knightley in some regards, because one of them is blond and quiet. The other is dark-haired and more talkative, Illmar’s not a particularly flamboyant man. Not that he doesn’t enjoy fun at all, but his idea of fun’s pretty much fishing, reading up on finances and business, playing football and looking after pet pigs. Despite his rather flamboyant dressing (that is green and purple), even if he’s not necessarily a man’s man, he’s still pretty much closer to the average man in some regards. Graham Knightley seems more playful and kind of childlike, even childish in some regards. As in he loves going to theme parks, partying and seems unmanly, despite not dressing in jewel tones.

Given that Graham Knightley’s based on Kira Yoshikage and his connection to cats is largely implicated, especially when it comes to his middle name being Leopold (play on leopard, he even has a leopard patch on his suit) and his mother’s maiden surname being Pussmaid (it’s a real surname), so Illmar Tuglar’s connection to Kakyoin Noriaki’s also implicated in another way because he wears a pearl and emerald choker, dresses in green (though sometimes Kakyoin himself’s shown to wear blue and black in other illustrations) and in another occasion, wear emerald-encrusted bracelets. Maybe I could change it into merely an emerald-encrusted choker because a row of pearls would be too hard to illustrate for some people, but it still keeps the connection to Kakyoin Noriaki intact. As I said before, Illmar bears a similarity to an illustration of Kakyoin with blond hair.

But given there’s a preponderance of blond-haired, blue-eyed characters in ACG media that perhaps giving him green eyes makes for a good change of pace, though it’s possible DC’s Oliver Queen has also been depicted as having green eyes before. But then again both characters tend to be blonds who wear green, so having green eyes would be a logical extension of this in a way. It’s even odder still to think that characters who’re supposed to be blond-haired and green-eyed (well at some point) end up with blue eyes eventually, as it is with DC’s Stephanie Brown before made odder by the fact that magenta and purple are the actual opposites of green, not red because if you take out green between red and blue, you get something purplish instead.

Because green is the actual middle ground between red and blue, thus making purple white minus green which is an odd scientific fact. The actual opposite of red is really closer to light blues than to greens, that if you take out red from blue and green, you get a light blue colour in its place. If something absorbs a lot of light blue light, you get something reddish instead and if something absorbs a lot of red light, you get something light bluish instead as well. It makes for a weird scientific fact that the actual opposite of red is a light blue colour, to the point that they play off each other better than red would with green. Well there’s a blond character in green from the Jojo canon and his name is Pannacotta Fugo, even if he’s not always depicted as such whenever Araki Hirohiko himself depicts him in his own illustrations. So he’s really in good company here and arguably DC’s Guy Gardner at this point just the same, especially when portrayed by Nathan Fillion in the latest Superman movie by Marvel alumnus James Gunn. Yep, two more blond guys in green.

This is also possibly why there’s not a lot of prominent dark-haired characters in green from either DC or Marvel, over at Marvel there are just Electro, Rogue and possibly a few more. DC has well Green Lanterns Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Boodika and Kyle Rayner, and then Shrinking Violet from time to time. But both publishers have no shortage of redheads in green since on the DC side, you have Jimmy Olsen (in his earlier days), Poison Ivy, Maxima (who’s a kind of DC Jean Grey), Kinetix, Cyclone, Guy Gardner as usually portrayed, Barbara Gordon (sometimes), Knockout and Micro Lad. Then on the Marvel side, you have Sean Cassidy and his daughter Theresa, Jean Grey and her daughter Rachel from time to time, Medusa in fleeting moments, Rahne Sinclair (sometimes) and possibly a few more that I may not know of.

There are some blonds in green from the Marvel side of things like its version of the Enchantress, Meggan and maybe a few more, but that’s just it and DC also has a paucity of blonds in green. The most notable one to date is Oliver Queen, maybe a few more as well but that’s all there is to them. Illmar Tuglas being a blond man who dresses in green might not change things much, whether on his own or with other characters around, but I suppose the more the merrier when it comes to seeing both green-eyed blonds and blonds in green. Also facially speaking, he’s a masculinised version of the French singer Sylvie Vartan. A blonde-haired French singer at that, just as Mylene Farmer is like a French Chappell Roan, despite predating her by decades.

Kind of like how and why Tommy Heikkinen is based on Nina Hagen, mind you Finnish is also a Finno-Ugric language like Estonian. Both of them were former Russian territories, just as close to Russia as they are to Scandinavia proper. So far only one of them’s based on a woman who came from a place that was allied with Russia in the past during the height of the original Cold War, well as far as I know about it, but it’s kind of interesting that Tommy’s a suspect and a criminal whereas Illmar is merely a civilian who gets caught in the crossfire.

The Mezzanine

I pretty much said that Colin Sallow’s based on Liam Howlett and Fabrice Tientcheu’s based on Maxim Reality, even if they themselves aren’t outright nor consistent facsimiles of them in other regards. Not to mention these two are based on Dio Brando and Trish Una from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure respectively, that’s if the latter’s reimagined as a Cameroonian man working in forensic science and has actual cats to boot as Trish’s stand Spice Girl’s actually based on a cat, though it’s not obvious at first until it scratches something. (This is something Killer Queen, another cat-based stand, has never really done to my knowledge.) One would wonder what could be said of their Massive Attack counterparts, seeing as Massive Attack’s not only a contemporary of the Prodigy but also best friends together in a way.

It doesn’t seem obvious because Massive Attack sounds very different from the Prodigy, coming from the Southwest than Southeast and rap more often early on. This is particularly obvious when it comes to the earliest Massive Attack album, Blue Lines, where you could hear a fair bit of rapping in some songs like Daydreaming, Safe From Harm and stuff. Let’s not also forget that the Massive Attack members are very outspoken about their support for Palestine, the country that became Political Israel and may even be the real Israel, assuming if Palestinians are the direct descendants of the ancient Israelites (something even some Israeli Jews like Paul Wexler have admitted). They’re also striving to be as environmentally conscious as possible, having released a show with little CO2 emissions as possible.

If their Massive Attack counterparts were to show up in this game at all, they’ll show up as Gaetano Saturni (Robert Del Naja) and Tifeoluwa Babatunde (Daddy G). Gaetano Saturni is a Florentine economist whose ability is practically the same as that of Vanilla Ice, only that he uses it to make a quick escape from people who’re out to kill him and to take out rubbish. Being from Florence, he has a particular way of speaking Italian. But it would be more obvious if the game ever gets translated in Italian as he’d actually get to speak in an obviously Tuscan way, not just by implying that he talks like this but also colloquialisms and idiosyncrasies particular to Tuscan dialects. Case in point that if he’s referring to ice, he’d say diaccio instead of ghiaccio. (Wait until Ghiaccio gets mad about people misusing Tuscanisms.)

If he’s talking about a fox, he’d say golpe instead of volpe. Sort of like how in French, the earliest word for fox is goupil, but being taboo it got eclipsed by renard instead (as in Renart the fox). Actually goupil’s still in use in some French dialects by the way, but renard’s much more commonly used. Similar things happened in the Spanish language where the original word for fox there is vulpeja, before getting displaced by the more commonly used zorro. Of all the major Romance languages, only both Romanian and Italian use the original Latin word for fox (the Romanian version is vulpe). Even then this gives you an idea that he’s specifically from Florence, Tuscany and not from any other place in Italy, moreso if the game ever gets translated into Italian at all.

Moving onto Tifeoluwa Babatunde, he’s a Nigerian just as Fabrice Tientcheu’s Cameroonian. Appropriately enough, Cameroon shares a border with Nigeria. Logically, Ivory Coast shares a border with Ghana. There’s already some Nigerian representation in video games, but the most notable one to date is Overwatch’s Doomfist. It wouldn’t hurt to add more though in Tifeoluwa’s case, he’s pretty much a lawyer and though black lawyers do exist in fiction, both international and Nigerian, it does make one wonder why such character types aren’t commonly encountered outside of African media. Much like having a black scientist around, black lawyers aren’t nonexistent in fiction. But it’s kind of hard coming up with a well-known black lawyer, let alone in ACG media and much less video games (to my knowledge).

Maybe they do exist but very rarely at that, even if they help break stereotypes. As for his own supernatural ability, if he has any at all, would be to manipulate mirrors or something. Except that he uses this to make criminals and the like confront their own misdeeds, though it’s kind of odd how and why in the ACG world, whenever you have superpowered lawyers there ought to be superpowered ways of charging people of something, instead of beating up people for no discernable reason. It kind of goes back to one of my issues with superhero stories, it’s not so much the outfits that are bothersome but rather why supernatural abilities are often funnelled into combat, instead of something that’s conducive to actual occupations.

Regardless if the character even has any real talent for fighting or the urge to fight that it becomes nonsensical real easily, since a character like Cindy Moon could’ve eventually made a living from weaving textiles. Spider-Man himself’s been shown to sew his own clothes, but I suppose a what if story featuring Peter Parker truly using such an ability for tailoring for good (whether they’re organic or mechanical) isn’t going to happen because it would bore certain people. Even if this is exactly what he did before and he could’ve actually focused on tailoring as a side-job if journalism doesn’t pay much or vice versa, though part of the other problem’s that it seems many superhero writers aren’t well-versed in other things. Something like sewing for a living would mean Peter Parker could’ve easily done that really.

Even then it’s still baffling why superpowered characters feel compelled to fight, instead of using their abilities more constructively more often. Coupled with that actual African characters are already pretty rare in non-African ACG media, that it would be really remarkable witnessing a Cameroonian scientist use his ability to soften things to do forensics with, or a Nigerian lawyer use mirrors to make people confront their own wrongdoing. Actual African characters are unfortunately rather rare in international ACG media, even if they could provide representation for Africans. Storm practically stands alone in the US comics canon, since Tempest is also from another real African country (Nigeria) but is nowhere as famous as she is, most other African ACG characters tend to come from imaginary nations instead.

It’s even weirder still to think that given DC and Marvel’s habit of changing their characters’ backstories (in other words, retconning things), nobody bothered to grandfather a Zimbabwean nationality onto Mari Jiwe or a Cameroonian nationality onto T’Challa, which further reinforces the view that Africans are exotic black people. By exotic, they’re not African American, not helped by that both DC and Marvel are specifically American publishing houses at that, and will inculcate American views of people onto others. Or Southern Europeans like Wonder Woman for another matter, where in the American mind Greece might as well be a place forever stuck in mythologised antiquity. Ditto the presence of hip hop as exemplified by Yung Light and Taki Tsan.

Similar things can be said about Italians to an extent that you’ll never encounter an Italian rapper in American fictions, even if they certainly exist if the likes of Nesli, Fabri Fibra and Vacca are any indication, pale Italians aren’t nonexistent in American fictions. But they’re still expected to fit the mold in some regards, that a character like Wildstorm’s Diva is all the more exceptional just by having blonde hair and really pale skin, presumably to flip Italian stereotypes on its head. That doesn’t mean all Italians are this pasty either but that the Italian character in American fiction has to follow the script, that’s by adhering to American ideas about Italianness. Somebody like Ragnell pointed out that Helena Bertinelli’s kind of stereotypical, if it weren’t for her mob ties that presumably Italy’s more Mario Puzo than Dante Alighieri.

Aligning more with American perceptions of Italy and Italians than how Italians actually see themselves as, not just in appearance but also in demeanour. That’s not to say issues with the Mafia are nonexistent in Italy itself, but I brought up Dante Alighieri because the way Americans perceive Italy isn’t how Italians know themselves as. Mario Puzo in the sense of playing into American ideas about Italianness, how unlike Italians are from Northern European norms and so on. Ditto Francesco Petrarca, ditto Mina Mazzini, ditto Adriano Celentano, ditto Milva, ditto Jovanotti, ditto Pupi Avati and ditto Pino Daniele. It’s not so much that Italians are necessarily pasty blonds and redheads, but the American conception of Italianness differs from the way Italians conceive it to be.

Mind you, Robert Del Naja isn’t that olive-skinned and likely had brown hair when he was younger, as he’s older now. He’s also of Italian descent and well so is Richard Barbieri from the band Japan, the latter’s also kind of pale and he himself doesn’t exactly fit Italian stereotypes in other regards. Not that all Italians are pallid either, but that the Northern European and North American conception of Italianness differs from the Italians’ own understanding and perception of themselves. As Gaetano Saturni is based on Robert Del Naja, so he’s just as pale as he is. Well, it should be noted that when Helena Bertinelli first appeared in comics, she was as fair-skinned as every girl in the DC canon. When she showed up again for real, she was given darker skin. I remember somebody on Tumblr saying that it still played into Italian sterotypes.

For the record, they have red hair. The blog no longer exists, but I kind of remember some of the wording. Not to mention they’re kind of pasty but even if not all Italians are necessarily pasty themselves, both Northern European and North American ideas of Italianness are different from how Italians conceive it to be. It seems when it comes to the way both Italians and Nigerians are portrayed in North American ACG stories like those from the DC canon, they often play into American and Northern European ideas of them in some manner. Not like how they see themselves as, that perhaps with America’s decline comes a more honest portrayal of themselves this time.

Some major renaming and musings on the character who inspired him

Davit Partzankian is the same character as Anatoly Sidorov/Smirnov, but with his nationality changed to Armenian and he serves the Armenian brotherhood instead. Mostly to avoid suspicion of an anti-Russian sentiment coupled with Canada disliking the United States nowadays, though it should be noted that Armenia was also part of the Soviet Union too. Considering that Jemima Szara’s based on Jemima Shore, Davit Partzankian is also based on her captor though he was Syrian in that story (this story appeared in A Woman’s Eye). Well to an extent when it comes to being put into the same role as he did, though at this point this story could be read as kind of anti-West Asian because there’s only one West Asian in the Jemima Shore canon and he’s a bad guy.

But then again Jemima Szara herself is also based on Nancy Drew and the latter was in a kind of relationship with a Russian, which could be seen as anti-Russian in a way because that story was written during the Cold War. I don’t think writers could get away with writing such a story without getting scrutinised by Russians these days, now that Russians could always vent out those feelings online if you head over to Russophone websites a lot. Admittedly it could be said that having an Armenian villain around could be seen as contributing to anti-Armenian sentiment in a sense, but I suppose if we were to find a way to make a video game like this endear to Russian audiences, you better not step on their toes lest they start protesting a lot. So making him Armenian works around this.

The original version of this character had an Armenian relative so it’s kind of there, but making him actually Armenian is another step. Albeit in not making him offend Russian audiences, if we’re aiming this game at a global audience. Given how problematic anti-Arab sentiment is, making him Armenian also skirts around it just the same. Just like the earlier incarnation, Davit Partzankian is based on Kitty Pryde. It’s there in his surname being derived from one of a handful of Armenian words meaning pride, he’s got a pet snake named Mikoyan, knows kendo, has a temper and is no stranger to killing people in a rage. Although earlier writers like Chris Claremont don’t seem to harbour an anti-Russian sentiment, I don’t think Colossus’s inclusion in his team speaks to a pro-Russian or pro-Soviet sentiment in any way.

Colossus being the resident Russian of the team, among others like his own sister. One is that if he was introduced today, he’d be portrayed as a villain right away. Two, writers like Chris Claremont seem to insinuate that a Soviet character like Colossus is only good if they join an American team like X-Men, in the sense that America wants to be seen as the hero of the world so badly it’ll do anything and everything to intervene in world affairs, even if it risks looking villainous in other places to some peoples. So much so that America’s got quite successful at continually publishing the adventures of nationalistic superheroes like Captain America and Superman, the latter who fights for truth, justice and the American way. There was also an animated programme called Liberty’s Kids, which is about the American Revolution.

It’s not that Britain hasn’t done any nationalistic stories before, but not so often at this point compared to the United States. And even then America is something of a declining superpower by now, which means that American influence could either be undone or minimised, which already is happening in some places to an extent. But it’s kind of telling that America is so jingoistic that its closest neighbour to the north Canada can’t even popularise its own nationalistic superheroes for long until now like with Captain Canuck, since its better known cartooning exports have little to do with superheroes if you factor in the likes of For Better Or For Worse, Cerebus, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World and Binky The Space Cat. Though one of their respective authors is a superhero fan, doing recurring superhero comics isn’t Canada’s strong forte.

So is Russia in some regards and this has to do with superheroes not meshing up well with both cultures’ ethics and values, the former wants to be seen as a major peacekeeper and the latter considers the use of violence to do what’s good to be kind of anti-Soviet, given how America habitually uses brute force to reinforce justice around the world so what superheroes do is really no different in some regards. Assuming if this video game this character will appear in is Canadian and knowing native-grown superheroes may not be a consistently strong suit for Canada, maybe pitching it as a superpowered detective story would help matters. It has enough of a superhero vibe to be kind of comforting to superhero fans, but different enough to be its own entity.

A world where this character, Davit Partzankian, plays a part in as one of the criminals there. A character who bears similarities to Kitty Pryde in most regards (short temper, swordsmanship, intangibility, hacking skills, being both out for blood on a really bad day, defiant and stuff), save for that Davit isn’t just male but also an Armenian criminal on the run at that. He’s also got black hair and dark eyes to boot, though there have been instances where Kitty Pryde’s portrayed just like that. An interesting counterpoint to Jemima Szara who’s more levelheaded and even-tempered, blonde-haired and blue-eyed and a worthy ally to the real detective of the story, Jean-Louis Lumiere who’s really a natural blond himself (he got a red David Bowie mullet lately).

Even the way Davit Partzankian wears is reminiscent of Kitty Pryde, albeit mediated by the influence of the late Australian singer Michael Hutchence from the band INXS. Kitty Pryde’s often shown in black and yellow clothing (the X-Men trainee colours, though at this point she’s a grown woman and it’s like seeing a 30-something woman wear a schoolgirl uniform to work, mind you I see her as being in her thirties by now*), sometimes all-black clothing and sometimes black and blue clothing (by now), the latter kind of befits her personality because she’s really eager to give somebody the black eye when enraged (she did this to somebody in God Loves, Man Kills) and she really does have a habit of throwing fits every now and then.

Perhaps outside of civilian clothing, she rarely wears anything brighter and cheerier than that. Davit Partzankian also doesn’t wear brightly coloured clothing much either, whereas somebody like Jean-Louis is not adverse to wearing red, white, light blue, yellow and peach. It’s not hard to see how and why Kitty Pryde’s deeply contrasted with Emma Frost, not just in powers and personality, but also in the way they dress as if they represent two opposing poles of femininity in X-Men comics, in some regards far moreso than it is with Jean Grey, Rogue and Dazzler with the possible exception of Betsy Braddock, who went from one pole of femininity to another. In honour of this tradition, let’s say that Davit and Jean-Louis represent two opposing poles of masculinity.

One tend to be criminal and malevolent, the other towards law enforcement and forensics. One stabs people with swords, the other kills by blowing up with lasers in hand. As it is with Kitty Pryde and Emma Frost, one is dark-haired and the other is blond (Jean-Louis is a natural blond). Even if Emma may not be a natural blonde herself, she still stands in opposition to Kitty in many regards. In some regards it’s much more drastic than it would be between her and Betsy Braddock, especially in her Psylocke days. The fact that Pryde became a ninja herself twice or thrice gives me the feeling that she could actually out-Psylocke Betsy Braddock, if not Kwannon but this would mean she’ll make both versions kind of redundant. No really, with the focused totality of her phasing skills and her willingness to kill, she could’ve replaced Psylocke as the de-facto ninja woman instead.

Just makes one wonder what’s holding writers back from having her be the resident female ninja for long instead, given she’s got the ruthlessness to go with her rather mercurial mood swings and ninja skills, she’s shown to kill people in anger and attack others in anger just the same. Making her the ninja woman permanently wouldn’t be a big stretch, though it’s shocking why writers couldn’t commit to long when she could easily fulfil the role both Psylockes did for years. It’s really puzzling, if not that some like Chris Claremont see her as a kind of authorial surrogate, even when she could be the character Betsy Braddock ended up as for long. Another is how underrepresented other ethnicities and nationalities are in both DC and Marvel canons, sort of like how and why there are practically no Yugoslavs in the Marvel canon.

At any point where both Pietro and Wanda Maximoff could’ve come from Slovenia and be Romani Slovenes, or Victor von Doom being a Croatian himself these never came to pass. They never happened, despite DC and Marvel writers’ willingness to change the characters’ backstories every now and then, same goes for how and why Tchalla never got outed as a Cameroonian Bamileke. This is also true for the DC canon where at any point where Tara Markov could’ve been Slovak herself, this never occurred and despite Marv Wolfman’s willingness to retcon Rose Wilson into being part-Vietnamese, he never bothered to retcon Tara Markov into being a Slovak herself. Flawed representation, surely. But no representation kind of means people like Wolfman would rather not get into the messy reality of the Communist Bloc.

So he and his cohorts invent proxies in their place, no need to learn about Slovakia when he could make up Markovia instead. Also it’s as if Eastern Europeans are practically exotic white people that they could make up details with, a step removed from both white North Americans and western Europeans (i.e. they’re not NATO allies, so why bother?). As of 2025, there’s still no Yugoslav representation in any way, even if there are likely some Yugoslav readers who want to see themselves represented in DC and Marvel stories, however flawed it may be. Also no Caucasian representation whatsoever, as in those coming from the Caucasus like Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. But this would mean that as a lot of DC and Marvel writers are Americans, Georgia might as well be the name of a US state and not a country and former Soviet Republic.

Armenia’s also underrepresented and despite some people’s sympathies for this country and its people, Armenian characters have yet to show up in either DC or Marvel. Actually they never show up at all, so this is how and why Armenia’s this underrepresented. At any point where Chris Claremont could’ve introduced an Armenian character himself, I’m afraid if they did show up in Marvel they’d either be the Soviet enemy (Natalia Romanova early on) or somebody who’s only good if they join an American team (Natalia Romanova later on, Colossus). Even if having Armenian villians like Davit Partzankian isn’t any better, there’s really no Armenian representation in both the DC and Marvel canons at all.

Maybe I could invent some Armenian good guys and the like to even things out, but it’s still telling that Armenia and its people are practically nonexistent in both DC and Marvel. Armenian characters have certainly shown up before, though mostly in Soviet fictions at most since Armenia was part of the Soviet Union before. Even if Armenia’s no longer part of the Soviet Union anymore, it seems American comics continue to ignore it. Better to have Sokovia in its place, than to have an Armenian show up in DC. Maybe they already did, but it’s very rare at all. As for Georgia, most Americans (including most DC and Marvel writers) would think of it as an American state, ditto Georgia the European country. Which says a lot about how American most DC and Marvel writers are.

No wonder why Russian characters are kind of commonplace in both the DC and Marvel canons, but not a single Armenian has ever showed up in either one of them. Not a single Georgian mutant ever joined X-Men, as in they come from Tbilisi and not from Savannah. An Avenger from Baku, Azerbaijan would be nice, but they never happened because no Marvel writer’s interested in Azerbaijan to begin with. It might as well be nonexistent to them, ditto mutants from Yerevan, Armenia or Astana, Kazakhstan. Despite cries for representation, characters from the Caucasus have yet to show up in DC and Marvel. But I suppose America’s declining stature and possible disappearance would shake things up for the better, moreso now that Canada doesn’t want to have anything to do with it at all.

Maybe allying more with Europe and if possible, Russia would be the viable, though more controversial alternatives given how unlikable America has gotten to the world over the years; it’s kind of astonishing that if Canada does ally more with Russia to the point of joining it, it would upend its longstanding relationship with its neighbour America all the more. But this results in a more Europeanised Canada, instead of the America-lite version we currently have. Perhaps an actually Russianised Canada this time and since Russia’s kind of politically incorrect, then Canada too will become a bit more politically incorrect over time due to Russian influence. Maybe not immediately but one less amenable to other strains of PC thinking, particularly when it comes to LGBT matters and the like.

Not to mention the DC and Marvel canons have a very strong America-centric worldview to the extent that otherwise European characters like Tara Markov and John Constantine gravitate to it for some reason, if because America likes to be at the centre of the planet’s attention and wants to be seen as such. Apparently it’s a country that doesn’t tolerate its rivals to the point of wanting to undermine them anytime they come close to outshining it, whether if it’s Japan or the Soviet Union in the late 20th century. It doesn’t want competition at all. Though with a growing multipolar world, it might as well learn to accept this. It would be all the more shocking if China gets all its Asia-Pacific allies or if Russia succeeds in getting all of Europe and part of North America, that America as a superpower is truly undone.

It wouldn’t be any better if both Russia and China became the new prevailing superpowers of the day, it will be a bipolar world again but where America’s totally out of the picture this time.

On Fabrice Tientcheu

When it comes to who he’s patterned after, his likeness is based on the musician Maxim Reality. He’s from the band The Prodigy but he’s not a direct facsimile of him at times since Fabrice is a scientist and typical for a respectable African man, he often has short hair (and literally for the job). There’s a bit of David J in him as well, David J being a member of the band Bauhaus. That’s one of the bands I was into before I got into the Prodigy growing up, much like David J Fabrice is a bibliophile whose favourite authors are JG Ballard, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Much like David J, Fabrice wanted to be a footballer but an injury had him reconsider science as a career instead (in J’s case, it’s music). And as for black people owning and loving cats themselves, it’s actually not that strange if you’re either into this or knowing black people being into this as well.

Maxim Reality himself has made statues of cats, though it’s not certain if he owns cats himself, but is generally kind of sympathetic to them on some level. Considering that Fabrice Tientcheu is Cameroonian, I’ve read academic literature where Cameroonians do own cats themselves. Within Anglophone Cameroon, there are Cameroonians who do raise both cats and dogs together. And then there’s Mink’s, a Cameroonian rapper who’s deathly afraid of dogs. I patterned Fabrice’s father after him in that he’s also afraid of dogs and passed down that mistrust onto his son, with his daughter Yvette being really clueless around them. So Fabrice never grew up with dogs in his house, if it weren’t for that cynophobic father of his. Instead he often had cats as pets and companions, good for keeping him happy and for getting rid of snakes that come to his house.

There’s a blog post about a Ghanaian farmer who has (or perhaps had) a cat that hunted a snake, so that’s what Fabrice’s dad did with his cats. And then there are academic studies about Kenyan farmers having cats too, so Fabrice Tientcheu’s really in good company here. Let’s not forget that Fabrice himself is based on a female character named Trish Una, her own power Spice Girl is actually based on a cat even if it’s not obvious at first. But it did leave claw marks, so this is one instance of it making itself obvious. So one of his cats is named after one of the Spice Girls, most especially Victoria Beckham. He shares Trish’s snobbishness and Spice Girl’s dual traits of politeness and cruelty towards enemies, since he even tried to gauge out Colin Sallow’s eyes after finding out that he murdered Jemima Szara’s boyfriend.

I said before that Colin Sallow’s based on Maxim’s bandmate Liam Howlett and he likes birds a lot, so Colin could be seen as a kind of inversion of Fabrice in some regards (black-white, short hair-long hair, science-politics, etc). To go further with this if Colin owns domesticated fowl and shows an interest in wild birds, then Fabrice owns and cares for cats and shows an interest in wild felids. Jean-Louis Lumiere could also be seen as an inversion of Fabrice Tientcheu in some regards, having dogs instead of cats and longer hair than he does, even if it’s a David Bowie mullet. Jean-Louis prefers to hunt mice with dogs, but Fabrice does the same with cats. Believe or not, cats can be trained and some Cameroonians do have a way of making cats hunt mice, though this involves starving them to get them to do it, even if not all Cameroonians are like this to theirs.

If Maxim Reality has dreadlocks but Fabrice Tientcheu doesn’t, it’s obvious that Fabrice isn’t exactly like him in other regards. But it should also be noted that Fabrice is an African first and foremost. It’s not that there aren’t any dreadlocked African men at all, but they’re not common due to dreadlocks being stigmatised among men there. It’s a hairstyle that’s usually associated with criminals, musicians, occultists and more often than not, women and whilst there are dreadlocked African men who don’t fit into the former three stereotypes, it’s much more common to encounter short-haired African men instead. Similar reason why you don’t find many African men getting their hair straightened, as this would be kind of emasculating because it’s usually African women who go through this. So Fabrice being born and raised in Africa would have typically African mannerisms through and through.

If Maxim Reality had been born and raised in say Nigeria or Ghana, though he could still have dreadlocks he’d also have very African mannerisms and an African mindset as well by then. It should be noted that Maxim is a British man born to Barbadian immigrants, so he’d have very British mannerisms and a British mindset. Skin from the band Skunk Anansie thought that she’s very Jamaican but in comparison to her mother who left Jamaica in adulthood, she’s actually very British which goes to show you how the acculturation gap occurs in real life. In the sense that the scions of immigrants readily adapt to the host culture than their parents do, because they get exposed to it at a rather formative age. What Skin admitted she had gone through could easily be applied to Maxim just the same.

By contrast Fabrice Tientcheu came to Canada as an adult so he’d still have very Cameroonian mannerisms, because he spent much of his life in Cameroon. That’s not to say Jamaica and Barbados are entirely devoid of African influences, since many of the people forcibly brought there come from Africa themselves, but being so faraway from the African empires and kingdoms that they ended up creating their own cultures instead. But since these two aren’t just in close proximity to the rest of the Caribbean, but also continental Latin America so they’re bound to not only influence each other, but also share certain things together like the love of Carnival before Lent. So this is why Nottingham Carnival exists for African Caribbeans in the UK, although a Carnival tradition likely exists for some Africans, but then again African Caribbeans aren’t like Africans in other regards.

Not necessarily any less black but it’s like how a Chinese Canadian would be substantially more westernised than a Chinese person who barely left China for this long, or how a Briton of Barbadian descent like Maxim would be noticeably very British compared to his relatives who never left Barbados for long. Although Fabrice does bear some similarities to Maxim Reality, he also has some similarities to Freddie Mercury who also owned cats himself. Like Fabrice with Yvette, he has one sister though I forgot her name. Maxim Reality could have sisters, but they’re not known to the public. Fabrice even dresses like Freddie Mercury, even his lab coat is a homage to Freddie’s yellow jacket in design.

When it comes to African characters in fiction, outside of African fictions, they often fall under certain stereotypes and memes. More often than not there’s a kind of Orientalism aimed at black Africans in the sense of them being seen as the opposite of white people, one is uncivilised and the other is civilised. In the case with superhero stories, a Kenyan superheroine like Storm seems to subscribe to a particular heathenism. But it’s something that not only has little in common with actual Kenyan folk beliefs, but also how and why Kenya’s a deeply Christian country at this point. Kenya even has a number of Christian radio stations like Hope FM and Radio Maria Kenya by now, meanwhile a country like Britain has become quite secular.

Since I have a habit of listening to livestreamed church sermons from Catholic ministries in Ghana, it figures that both Yvette and Fabrice are Catholic though one of them’s a practising Catholic. At this point in time, it’s Africans who’re wont to start online ministries anywhere and everywhere. This becomes obvious if you’re exposed to this sort of media a lot, but this is also a side to African countries that a number of westerners don’t seem particularly aware of. Even if not all Africans are practising Christians either, it’s still an interesting makeover compared to the start of the previous century. But at other times some people are still hung up on their perceptions of African cultures, a sort of Orientalism aimed at them where they’re still tethered to what they no longer are or what they ought to be.

Not helped by that they’re not particularly constantly exposed to African media in any way that this explains why even in the present day characters like Storm are still written the way they are, and if you’re still very highly exposed to western media that it still shapes your perception of them even if it’s a nonfiction piece, but one written by westerners instead of Africans themselves. So the sort of media one uses and is exposed to informs their perspective of something or someone, like if you’re constantly exposed to say Ghanaian media, then it’s bound to influence how you see things and especially Ghana as. Like you wouldn’t know that Mexicans are into comics until you use Spanish keywords pertaining to this subject matter, albeit deliberately, to know this eventually.

Logically you wouldn’t know that Africans do care for and own cats themselves until you stumble upon not only anecdotes and news reports about this, but also academia as well that it becomes less surprising once you encounter them in real life. It’s telling that if your exposure to a foreign country or culture is very limited, whether if it’s a brief stay or barely frequenting its media a lot, then your view and understanding of such a country or culture is going to be really limited too. So it’s no surprise that Chris Claremont never stayed in Kenya for long, never displayed a habit of frequenting Kenyan media a lot in the Internet age and finds black people so unrelatable as to have rather skewered portrayals of them, which explains why Storm’s written the way she is.

It’s possible to learn from his mistakes but as it stands with America being a reigning superpower towards its allies, it would take awhile to break away from its grip to actually substantially expose themselves to nonwestern media a lot (let alone outside of Japan and South Korea) en masse. Then we can get a sense of how Africans actually know and see themselves as whenever we frequently consume African media a lot, let alone something particular to Cameroonians since Fabrice’s one himself. If Africans are already pretty underrepresented and misrepresented in most media outside of Africa itself, it would be even more depressing for specific African nationalities like Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria. It’s getting better at this point but as it stands, Storm is a massive outlier in the entire US comics canon to be both fairly famous and come from a real life African country.

Similarly in video games though this is improving at this point, it’s one thing to have a well-known Nigerian video game character like Overwatch’s Doomfist, one would have to look in vain for any well-known Cameroonian video game character. I guess for now we have to wait for one to happen, let alone outside of Cameroon, since there is a Cameroonian video game publisher doing something in the lines of this one. But when it comes to Fabrice Tientchieu, supposing if making such a game featuring him comes to pass, then he could become the best known Cameroonian character in non-Cameroonian video games. Even then I kind of feel other African nationalities are pretty underrepresented outside of their respective countries’ media, despite the Internet making it easier and more convenient to find those at all.

Even then it’s kind of telling that representation really does matter, though what Cameroonians face is underrepresentation outside of their own media. Whatever representation that does exist outside of their shores is going to be paltry or limited, most likely usually confined to Francophone media as much of Cameroon was a French protectorate or colony (I think). So Cameroonians are going to be really underrepresented outside of not only their own media but also in Anglophone media outside of some nonfiction pieces and the like, I really can’t name any fictional Cameroonian occuring in the Marvel or DC Comics canon. Fictional Nigerians like Temper maybe, but not a single Cameroonian.

Fictional Cameroonians do exist in the media but this is confined to either Cameroonian media itself or Francophone media in general, though the latter’s highly speculative at best given Cameroon’s colonial relationship with France. So having more Cameroonians outside of these media would be nice, but even then actual Africans are already pretty underrepresented in western fiction in general. Storm stands alone as the best known fictional Kenyan in the world, with Doomfist being the best known fictional Nigerian in video games. It would take a while for the world to witness the first internationally reknowned fictional Cameroonian, but it’s something one could actually do if they’re willing to create one and then see it get famous by chance.

The biggest elephant in the superhero room

I said before that superhero stories and their ilk operate on a rather strange logic wherein characters with extraordinary abilities are often compelled to fight one another, even when they could’ve pooled their abilities into something useful for everyday life. Why do they even have to fight to begin with? If you have a character who secretes silk, they could just work in textile making instead. That’s even the case with silk making for centuries where people would set up silkworm farms to harvest silk cocoons from those caterpillars, but sometimes they spare those critters’ lives and use their cocoon afterwards. Silk secretion has been found in a number of animals before like spiders, silk moths and even crickets, so it’s really not much of a stretch to even come up with a human being who does this.

But the fact that people turn silk threads into fabric says a lot about the road that’s rarely, if ever, taken by many writers of this school, which means they likely barely had either any experience in this activity or no interest in it to begin with. Even if it’s far more plausible for a silk-secreting character to weave for a living than it is for them to fight bad guys with this ability, or sew for a living with this power since some people do sew with silk threads. It goes back to my suspicion that these writers neither weaved and sewed, nor do they have an interest in textiles enough to do something like this. One would only wonder if it might be possible to pull off a light manipulating detective who hunts in his spare time, which means such an ability would be really useful outside of combat. This is very much the case with one of my creations, Jean-Louis Lumiere.

He’s been shown to manipulate light as to uncover criminal clues and activities, whether in the form of strobes, lasers or making something invisible, though he’s also shown to make himself invisible as well as casting holographic illusions to sneak upon somebody and also to go undetected by criminals. The one thing he can’t do with this ability is to fly, since it seems for a number of light-manipulating characters they have to fly for some reason. This may not be true for all of them like Dazzler and Dagger, who are also both blonde and wear white, or more rarely the Ray who’s a redhead, but it’s like this with Dr Light and Orion’s brother (I forgot his name). Even if my knowledge of physics is meagre, it doesn’t make sense to me why would a light-manipulating character have to fly.

Though I suppose it’s there to make it showier than it should be, even if manipulating light could easily lend itself to investigation and even hunting. It’s even odder still why does a light-making character have to make solid light constructs, that unless if they’re actually plasma (which also radiates light), it’s something that most likely started with the Green Lantern stories over at Marvel’s rival. But a light-manipulating detective-cum-hunter would be kind of interesting to depict and portray, since it’s something that could easily lend itself to such activities and in ways that are far more creative than is usually shown in Marvel and DC Comics.

Speaking of hunting, Jean-Louis could make himself mostly invisible to sneakily hunt game animals with, it’s not that hard if you have some knowledge of hunting in some way or another. He could also blind game animals just the same, practically taking the bull by its horns. He could even cut meat with lasers, or kill an animal with a laser. He could literally shed light on areas to find game animals with, which makes the activity more convenient without weaponry. It still plays into the love of feats thing you find in some threads pertaining to DC and Marvel stories, but in a very novel way because these are actually used outside of combat and used for something as unexpected as hunting and investigating. Since he also reads books, he could always glow when brownouts happen.

Unless if somebody like Cyril Rabeholm disables him by absorbing his light, since he transduces energy into darkness, which means he has to resort to other means to undermine him. But even then this goes to show you how useful such abilities are when taken outside of combat, though this is far more succinct with Jemima Szara, who’s an investigative journalist with an uncanny sense of direction. As such she’s often the one who reports criminal cases for news media, though this means she’d run into people like Jean-Louis who even relies on her for finding criminals and criminal activity at all. She’s also good at finding victims, which Jean-Louis also also relies on. Unless if it’s presented as a familiar ala the stands in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (since she’s based on Yasuho Hirose, as she also has the same ability), it may not be convenient for combat but it’s convenient for finding criminals and criminal cases wherever they may be.

This goes to show you that supposedly useless abilities may actually turn out to be useful in some other way, like if you have an uncanny radar sense of direction you could be good at investigating cases. Or at least assisting others find out where the criminals are up to, if you’re an investigative reporter reporting on criminal cases. But I kind of think a number of superhero writers are pretty creatively bankrupt, in that they often think of depicting such abilities mostly in combat situations. Not so much on making characters do something truly useful, like investigating criminal cases, hunting game animals, cooking food, weaving and sewing, among other things. Such depictions already do exist, but very rarely. Even if you could have characters who have no inclination to fight, that it’s only fair for a superpowered character to just be a useful civilian as we already have many nonpowered fighters.

I still have this feeling that a lot of these writers aren’t that well-read in a lot of stuff, or don’t have experiences in other things, that for them it’s easier to write stories where characters find ways to beat up somebody, instead of having them parlay these abilities into something truly useful for everyday life. If you could manipulate fire, you could make a living from cooking. This was the cases for years when it comes to oven fires and gas stoves, this could’ve been attempted before but not very often. There’s a character called Fahrenheit who did use this power to rescue people and even heal them, but these activities were the exceptions to what she usually does: fight bad guys. So it still speaks to how creatively bankrupt a number of superhero stories are, especially when they’re often predicated on fighting whoever causes a ruckus, but not making themselves actually useful for everyday work.

Photokinesis could be really useful for hunting animals and criminals alike, just as a radar sense is good for investigative journalism. It’s really a matter of being interested in and doing other things to pull these off, otherwise we’d get another superpowered fist fight all over again.

Colin

A character I created last year though he first showed up in a dream, oddly enough as inspired by Dio Brando from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, along with another character who’s a clairvoyant gunman. He has some similarities to Dio Brando, namely his clothing, habit of knife throwing and ability to stop time, though in his case he can only do so in a localised area so he really doesn’t stop time all the way. But enough for him to do whatever he wants to do, which helps that he’s also an excellent escapologist himself. He kind of looks like a younger Liam Howlett himself, he’s one of the members of the band The Prodigy. Two of his bandmates left early and one of them died, so both he and Maxim Reality are currently the band’s oldest surviving and longest serving members at this point, assuming others joined in eventually.

The one character who looks like Maxim Reality is Fabrice Tientcheu, but it’s kind of awkward that Fabrice is one of the good guys, whereas Colin Sallow’s the one who murdered Jemima Szara’s boyfriend out of spite. Even more awkward is that Fabrice Tientcheu likes cats and Colin Sallow likes birds more, Colin even studied biology before as a foreign exchange student in Gothenburg, Sweden. Wait a minute, one of my other favourite bands (Ace of Base), came from this city. Colin really does a lot of birdwatching and actually owns some birds himself, though these are chickens, parrots and ducks. He also frequently feeds pigeons and ravens, though he used one raven to give him something to get out of somewhere soon enough.

Due to his time in Sweden, he’s able to whip out some Swedish food himself. Though from what’s shown in-story is that he makes pickled beetroots, which is a popular Swedish food by the way. He’s also a close friend of Richard Sorm, much to Jean-Louis Lumiere’s anger and disgust, even though he’s closer to Jean-Louis in age. Also Colin’s an aspiring politician and his own father’s a politician too, though his own politics have yet to be determined as this is a draft. As to where he actually comes from, we do know that he spent time in Sweden as a foreign exchange student. But I suppose he comes from somewhere in the cities, or maybe in the suburbs of a city because he’s got a garden to grow beetroots with. But for all we know, he’s not American, he’s neither British too.

A Canadian though he could come from somewhere in Windsor, maybe a suburb within that city so far and his own father’s a diplomat. So this is another reason why he spent time, in fact much of his late adolescence, in Sweden. He didn’t become a foreign exchange student by choice, but that’s what he ended up doing there. Not to mention, both Fabrice and Colin dressed up as sailors (that alludes to the way Tadzio’s portrayed in the film Death In Venice), but the former did this to keep track of him. He may not be one of the heroes of the story, rather the villain instead, but this gives you an idea of who he is.

Nootaikok et la colère froide

One Inuk character I made a year before and he’s very much based on Jojo’s Ghiaccio, oddly enough both of them embody or personify the peculiarly French idiom ‘colère froide’ well. If because both of them manipulate ice and have very hot tempers, colère froide is a Francophone idiom that refers to a type of anger that’s either self-controlled, bitter or implicit. Nootaikok’s anger is also partly coloured by the fact that he doesn’t like it whenever people criticise his culture, lifestyle and stuff as well as him raging at people who mispronounce Inuk words, especially Jemima Szara, whom he often insults and berates. Also his way of manipulating ice involves him getting literally warmed up, whilst freezing something or anything at the same time.

Much like Ghiaccio, he also ice-skates. But that’s got to do with him freezing his surroundings, that he really needs something to get around without hurting himself. In the case with superhero stories proper as done by both the DC and Marvel schools, it’s surprising why cryokinetic characters’ way of getting around things is to just slide on icy platforms, without regarding for them falling off because they never seem to wear ice skates at all. Well most of them do, with the exception of Golden Glider at some point. Actually a cryokinetic character that ice skates is the more realistic case because if you’re walking on ice, you could slip and hurt yourself so you need to wear something to get around it. So Ghiaccio’s stand White Album (which is really a suit that gives him cryokinesis) is well-thought out.

Golden Glider was originally an ice skater gone bad whose backstory is like the inversion of the infamous women in refrigerators meme where it’s a man’s death who motivated her, women in refrigerators wherein female characters are victimised to motivate the male characters. Since her ice skates made ice, it’s pretty natural for her to continue doing like this, up until the early 2010s reboot. Ghiaccio ice-skating whilst manipulating ice at the same time is really a more realistic way of going around cryokinesis, since it would be impractical if a cryokinetic wore shoes that’ll endanger them whenever they walk on ice at all. Though I wonder if it’s easier to push for something that looks/seems great, instead of something that’s actually more plausible but less amazing.

A cryokinetic who skates on frozen ground doesn’t seem amazing compared to a character who effortlessly walks on an icy platform they made whilst getting across something, even though the former is a more realistic outcome really. Perhaps this is possibly why Golden Glider was drastically reimagined in the later stories, going from a criminal ex-athlete whose ice-skates generated ice for her to skate on to someone more ethereal. Regardless if the former portrayal seems far more plausible when it comes to moving on ice at all, than becoming an ethereal being due to being comatose. There is a difference between Phantom Girl and Golden Glider, the former moves through surfaces whilst the latter’s powers take on an disembodied form due to being comatose.

Like as if she can’t be that interesting when she actually moves around in her own body, attacking people whereas most stand users have the excuse of having their stands (powers/battle familiars really) do the fighting for them whilst still being conscious. Not to mention that if you hurt the stand, you also hurt the stand user too. So there’s really a corporeality to most stands in a way it’s not with Golden Glider at this point (I don’t read comics much so bear with me), in that they actually function as a proper extensions of their users. Whether as superpowered doppelgangers of sort doing the dirty jobs for them, or in Ghiaccio’s case where his superpower is also his costume. This may not be true for all stand users, but they still feel like they’re organic extensions of their users.

Especially whenever they’re presented as arguably separate from their users, but still inseparable when both of them get injured. Whereas Golden Glider’s powers and consciousness seem weirdly disembodied from her body, in that the body gets injured but her soul goes largely unscathed for some reason. Jojo, for all its faults, does a better job at portraying disembodied powers better in that even if stands appear to be separate from their users, they’re still inseparable on some level because both of them get injured or harmed together. Wherein their disembodiment still feels like proper extensions of their users, instead of functioning very differently from them as it is with Golden Glider at this point.