Boomtown Rat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The other side of the Disney adults

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Once More on Jean-Louis

The person who inspired his fashion sense and character design is none other than the late David Bowie himself, especially in his Ziggy Stardust days, that to the extent he even shares a few of his hobbies (owning dogs, reading books, liking clothing/fashion) and some of his sartorial choices (the red Ziggy Stardust mullet, anybody?). But Jean-Louis isn’t really a facsimile of him given he actually enjoys hunting and fishing, something David Robert Jones never did. Not even close, also he doesn’t cook. Jean-Louis facially doesn’t look like him either, despite being also a natural blond himself. Inspired by David Bowie, yes but not a facsimile of him either. Similar enough where you can see the influence more clearly, but dissimilar enough to not be interchangeable with the man who fell down to earth.

Not to mention that Jean-Louis Lumiere is a detective, albeit one who manipulates light in multiple ways. In the same way that Colin Sallow bears an uncanny resemblance to a younger Liam Howlett (from the band The Prodigy), but is also in most regards his own man because he enjoys birdwatching a lot, throws knives, has a way around knives in general, is a budding politician himself, is something of an escapologist, box his way around his enemies, being into falconry and keeping birds (namely chickens, ducks, pigeons and geese) for pets. He’s also been educated in Sweden, more specifically Gothenborg where another favourite of mine, Ace of Base, come from so he was something of a foreign exchange student himself.

Or for another matter, Jean-Louis’s colleague Fabrice Tientcheu being based on a younger Maxim Reality and though he has some similarities with him like an apparent sympathy for cats, being into high culture and stuff, but also does things Maxim wouldn’t do like work as a forensic scientist, play football, read up on the likes of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, show an interest in existentialism in general and is somewhat of a cultural Catholic (he’s Cameroonian). Actually a few of them come from Queen’s Freddie Mercury, like actually owning cats himself and having a sister, though Maxim could have one himself. Even if they’re based on actual musicians, they’re still their own people. Jean-Louis is based on David Bowie but does a number of unBowie like things like hunting in his spare time, he’s also very much into biology and conservation.

Jean-Louis was at some point more like David Bowie…when it comes to certain things to put it politely, but to service the limited scope of a mobile game, he’s going to be a cuckold like his mentor and father figure Richard Sorm. Both their wives went on cheating on them with men other than themselves, both of them ended up becoming left to their own devices as a result (Richard getting drunk a lot, Jean-Louis both raising his son and hunting a lot more often), until Jean-Louis divorced his wife and inspired Richard to do the same with Emma Havisham. I actually wrote a story where PD James’s characters Adam Dalgliesh and Emma Lavenham (whom she’s named after) live apart, not that they’re divorced, but that Adam’s habit of leaving his wife for a long time just so he can drink and avoid getting drugged by her led to her cheating on him many times.

This story’s known as ‘Finding Adam‘ where they have a son together but neither of them do a good job at parenting, to the point where their son would rather hang out at his friends’ houses whenever Emma carried out her extramarital affairs but afterwards she’ll take him back much to his chagrin. Richard’s son Ian has done the same thing, but to keep problems from escalating he had Jean-Louis raise him instead. Predictably like her namesake, Emma Havisham would take him away from people whom she doesn’t want him to hang out with, despite her own tendency towards infidelity every now and then. Ian’s been recovering from being abused by his mum a lot that even when he could’ve lived with his now divorced father, he prefers to hang out with Jean-Louis more.

Unsurprisingly, he even got into hunting because of him, though this hobby puts him at loggerheads with some of his classmates. Jean-Louis is practically his father in a way his own biological father isn’t, because he’s the one who raised him even if it may’ve been intermittent at times if it weren’t for his mother demanding that he return to her, even if she often brings him people he dislikes (the very same people she dates). Upon realising that Ian has serious mental health problems that he has Iasonas Michaelides counsel him, especially whenever he himself cannot always be there for him or whatever. Now as for Jean-Louis’s shade of red hair, despite not being a natural redhead, it’s a deeper red.

The sort of dyed red hair that Chappell Roan has (or maybe had, as she could’ve changed it into some other colour by now), kind of close to how and why some cartoonists use bright reds to denote red hair, but without being bright red itself. Comes to think of it this way, this is the shade of red that characters like Jean Grey, Barbara Gordon and Rahne Sinclair could plausibly have, as they’ve been depicted with really bright red hair before. In the sense of being a dark but still naturalistic red hair shade, almost brown even that I feel this is what cartoonists may’ve been aiming for. But it didn’t turn out as expected, given what they used didn’t give them the results they expected, though the advent of computer colouring has made it easier to get that shade of red hair right.

This could’ve shown up in comics a couple of times before, it’s a pretty interesting shade of red as it’s kind of really red without being too bright red itself. Well there’s another cartoon character in the Marvel canon who dyed her blonde hair red is Elsa Bloodstone, because as initially introduced she really has natural blonde hair. But white women dyeing their hair red is a fairly common occurrence in the real world, whether as a fashion statement or following the trends in hair colour. Before Chappell Roan arrived, there was France’s Mylene Farmer. She’s a French singer who dyed her natural brown hair red for years, though it could’ve greyed by then which gives her an even more convenient excuse to dye it red agan. Moreso that it’s become part of her public image and she sang songs like ‘Libertine’.

Though in reality I feel Chappell Roan’s more of a modern Katy Perry as both of them came from Christian households, before getting exposed to secular music a lot and becoming really flamboyant secular musicians. Katy Perry even started out as a Christian musician and it’s unknown if she’ll return to both God and her roots in a way, assuming if her own relatives and the like have been praying for her to return to Him this time. Maybe she will in due time if God operates under His own timing, so you might as well wait and see her do it in earnest. I even prayed for her to be saved and maybe she will return to God, though in His own timing and maybe in an unexpected fashion. Her own husband Russell Brand’s saved and he’s likely praying for her to go back to God this time around.

Maybe she really will but the right time will show up when God wills it to, so there’s a chance that Katy Perry at present might be returning to Him. But the process is going to be hard and it’s like this with me before, so eventually she might return one day. Okay, I’m getting off-topic but it’s kind of telling that Chappell Roan’s more of a modern Katy Perry than she’s an American Mylene Farmer, given the former two come from Christian households and presumably went to Christian schools just the same. So going to the secular world means they get to act out in ways they wouldn’t if they remained closer to their Christian roots, though not in a good way if this involves bringing God’s judgements on them. Not to mention both of them have mental health issues, Katy Perry with her struggles with depression and Chappell Roan’s own issue with bipolar disorder.

But even then I feel Katy Perry could find her way back eventually, especially with people’s intercessions, that ultimately she’ll return to God in earnest. Maybe this is also true for Chappell Roan, presumably if other people who personally knew her (related or not), have done the same thing as well. Jean-Louis Lumiere is kind of similar because he did go to the same Catholic school as Jemima Szara did, she actively prays for him and may even want to marry him one day. He has a bad experience with his previous wife, Margaret, who cheated on him multiple times with other men. He initially let it slide but that’s because they weren’t particularly that close when they were married, mostly due to their generally incompatible stances and personalities. Jean-Louis likes hunting animals and reading nature books, his ex-wife wants to be an actress and be a celebrity.

It kind of turns things on its head because in the DC and Marvel canons, it seems superheroes are like the celebrities of their respective worlds. But it’s weirder still to have superheroes who technically have jobs but spend much more time literally fighting bad guys instead, it’s like saying that Supergirl is an actress but spends more time beating up bad guys. The superhero school is peculiar in that characters who’re supposed to have jobs often wound up brawling with bad guys more often than they should, especially if they have salaried jobs at that. The Wasp is technically a fashion designer, but she doesn’t appear to have much time on designing clothes and sewing them herself. True, people can handle multiple jobs at once. But superheroes spend a lot of their time fighting people as vigilantes.

Making Jean-Louis and his cohorts detectives and officers of sorts seems to be a doable compromise, since this has a precedent in Top Ten, though given Alan Moore’s then stronger sympathy for superheroes, it didn’t feel like a crime story at all. It might not even be the first superhero noir story either, but that having a proper superpowered detective in the form of Jean-Louis Lumiere would be interesting. If because he manipulates light in multiple ways that assist him in criminal investigation, like he could literally light a way to find criminals with, render something invisible to uncover clues, set up lasers to retrieve offending items with (or even destroying them himself). Superpowered detectives have existed before, though one that manipulates light is an interesting choice.

If because it’s something that would easily lend itself to private investigation, especially when it comes to looking out for clues in the dark. It’s also an ability that easily lends itself to hunting at night and in the wee hours in the morning, again it’s something not many consider even if this is what the anglerfish does. I’m not saying many superhero writers are against hunting as much as it’s something they barely thought of much, even if the application makes perfect sense when it comes to tracking down game animals in poorly lit areas. Again they’re not against hunting but they were likely never into hunting to begin with, nor do they have any secondhand knowledge of hunting themselves. Anyhow, Jean-Louis likes hunting rats and deer with his dogs and friend Akosamesew, despite his friend not having any powers himself.

But even then it’s something not a lot of writers have considered when it comes to light manipulation being used in both private investigation and hunting, or even reading books just the same and that’s something Jean-Louis would easily make use of. When it comes to light-manipulating characters, I feel any one of them could use such an ability to hunt and/or detect, maybe they already did but not so often. It’s not that authors behind their stories are against hunting but they were never into hunting this much either, so this explains why there are a lot of stories where we get yet another glorified fistfight. But not stories where a photokinetic would use such an ability in their hunting trips, even if it’s actually plausible they would easily do just that if they’re into hunting themselves.

On the controversial subject of fur farming, given how some fur farmers get fur from foxes by electrocuting them to death, perhaps an electrokinetic would gravitate to fur farming. It’s quite vexing but it’s also something they’d gravitate to if they’re this starved for money, though I suppose even if superhero writers don’t necessarily condemn fur farming themselves it’s something they don’t know more about. It’s doubtful somebody like Stan Lee would even have a character like Electro actually be a fur farmer himself, assuming if he doesn’t know anything about fur farming to begin with. Even if this is likely how he makes money this way, even going so far to electrocute foxes for a living just to supply fox coats to certain clients. I don’t read Spider-Man comics much but this is how he’d funnel his abilities into something useful, however disturbing it may be to some.

But I know fur farming better than I know Spider-Man lore, so I feel this is what Electro would gravitate to if he’s desperate for a consistent salary. It does speak volumes about how and why there are practically no stories about a photokinetic hunter, even if this is something they’d gravitate to if they’re in the mood for hunting themselves, even if this is an ability that’s useful for detecting both vermin and game animals in the dark. It’s not that superhero writers necessarily condone fur farming and hunting either, but these are subject matters that they’re barely aware of if possible. Maybe not at all and this explains why they don’t write stories about these kinds of things to begin with, they were never interested in those from the start. Even when it would make sense for a photokinetic like Jean-Louis to do both hunting and detecting really.

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.

Hit The Road Jack

The same person said that God told them to tell Christians to get out of California (and also America as a whole), because this place will get destroyed for its own sins and that America is Mystery Babylon. The nation-state found in Revelation that’s said to corrupt the entire world with its filth, as personified by a woman, America had been personified as a woman before. Though this iteration eventually faded away from the public, only to be replaced by Uncle Sam. But with America being Mystery Babylon, one would wonder if Columbia readily gives away its real Biblical identity. Maybe not exactly in attire, but in a way it fits how and why Mystery Babylon’s portrayed as a woman atop of a seven-headed monster that’s set to destroy her, though the same has been said about Lady Liberty.

As for Bethel being strange fire, it’s like it offers sacrifices that insult God. (I’ve done something similar before, to the point of missing out on a sermon back then.) God wants obedience rather than meaningless sacrifices, though this is sometimes hard to pull off given our tendency to sin. Bethel Church is a highly influential American church that condones cartomancy in the form of Christalignment cards, it’s like this prophecy by David Wilkerson about Christian churches condoning elements of occultism for as long as it’s presented in a socially acceptable manner, but sin is still sin no matter how hard we try to make it out to be. Here is an except from the book The Vision on the matter:

The super church will never officially accept occult practices outright, but phrenology, palmistry, fortune-telling, and
horoscopes will be widely respected.

America has a habit of offering strange fire, despite thinking it’s Christian. It’s even worsened by that at present, it’s the biggest superpower in the world. But this only magnifies its own irresponsibilities, that it practically succeeded in popularising things that lower people’s inhibitions like porn magazines, that it truly is Mystery Babylon in a way no other country qualifies, even if they come close at various points. America popularises things that should never be enjoyed by people, it may not have originated in America, but America popularises and codifies things in a way their originators don’t get to or don’t get enough credit for. It’s like the thing with animation, animation didn’t originate in America. In fact, it even originated in France.

But America not only popularised it, it also codified many conventions animators around the world use today, especially things like full animation and limited animation. Limited animation’s very much in use in Japan, whereas Disney tends to use full animation. That’s not to say animation is inherently wrong, but that America played a hand in popularising and codifying emerging media, far moreso than their originators despite being the ones who deserve far more credit. But seeing how a number of prominent US animation studios are in California, including the Walt Disney Company, that they too could be collateral damage in a way. But it gets weirder when it comes to the Disney company: Walt Disney may have sold his soul to the Devil, thus getting really successful and rich. The rabbit hole gets even worse not just because Walt Disney was a part of a secret society himself, but may’ve also molested somebody in his care.

I’m referring to Bobby Driscoll, a largely forgotten actor who portrayed Jim Hawkins in the first Disney adaptation of Treasure Island. Given nobody wants to find out that Uncle Walt’s a nonce, that his namesake company will do a lot to obscure any mention and inclusion of Bobby Driscoll in any capacity, so the second Disney adaptation of Treasure Island (Treasure Planet) is better known to people today. If God’s going to judge the Disney company and its founder for what they do to people, it could come sooner than expected should it do something like air an Omen television series now that the House of Mouse bought Fox, the one behind the Omen (about the Antichrist). Disney could either be divided up by Chinese competitors or get dissolved by the Russian government once it uses its theme parks as a means to dispose Christians with.

Thus becoming the unhappiest place on Earth, the worrying world of Disney will come to an end. Its assets will be forcibly given over to other companies with less spiritual baggage like Globo, that the Radio Disney network will become the Radio Joven network instead, same songs and staff but different owner this time. Its theme parks will be destroyed beyond recognition, Disney stores will become something else like indoor churches and the like. I even think it’s too late for the Disney company to propagate Disney stores in the Philippines, given the US’s declining stature that a more sensible move is to have Sanrio stores in their place instead or perhaps something else altogether like churches and bookstores. Whatever those may be, SM Disney stores will not remain Disney stores for long.

Especially once Disney gets outed for child abuse, animal abuse, killing Christians and stuff that to save face, both the Chinese and Russian governments will dissolve the company and give its assets over to other companies. Some Disney studios might not remain Disney studios for long, ultimately becoming something else altogether. One would wonder if such a scandal were to hit the Disney company in the future, especially for persecuting Christians, that it would be a bittersweet irony for the Walt Disney Company Philippines to become the East Asian arm of Soyuzmultfilm. This animation studio’s located in Russia and can be thought of as a Soviet counterpart to Disney, in terms of scope, influence and prestige, that it’s appropriate it houses a number of productions with clear Disney counterparts.

Most notably the two Little Mermaid productions, the Frog Princess, the Snow Queen, Peter and the Wolf, and the Winnie the Pooh trilogy. Ukraine’s late Kievnaukfilm comes close with its Alice in Wonderland and Treasure Island films, again Soviet productions with clear Disney counterparts. Lastly but not the least some of my relatives are in America, so I’ve been praying for them to stay here in the Philippines, lest they end up as casualties there. Celestial kind of said this about making immigrants return to their homelands, that if America’s going to get destroyed for good, then these people better leave ahead of time. Better be alive and safe elsewhere, than be dead on US soil. I didn’t always get it right, but at least they wouldn’t have to suffer badly elsewhere.

And even then America is a declining superpower, nowhere as strong as it was before. Ultimately it’s not going to last, its influence will be undone and it will be forgotten.

Animation after America/Mystery Babylon

When it comes to the history of the animation industry, though such industries do exist outside of America, but it’s not a hot take to say that America did a number of innovations in animation. Some of these include the use of rotoscoping to better capture more realism in movement, the integration of sound with animation and the introduction of colour in animation. Though production companies like Soyuzmultfilm and Anima Estudios might be less spiritually suspicious (to some extent) than Disney is, but Disney’s the one that brought in a good number of innovations to animation as a medium. The only problem is that the namesake founder made a deal with the Devil to get to where he was when he was around, if you believe Analia Campbell, that the smoking gun made in his lifetime is Hell’s Bells.

Another is his involvement in a certain secret society affiliated with the Freemasons called DeMolay, which makes one wonder if his deal with the Devil paid off the way it did, but with him doing unspeakable acts behind closed doors like molesting a kid named Bobby Driscoll. Those who have the misfortune of encountering this event said that this is excessive or something like that, perhaps as all secrets are known to God so ultimately he’s going to have the Russian government reveal more of Walt Disney’s dark habits, especially when it takes over America before the latter disappears. It’s kind of terrifying to think that a powerhouse of a very innovative studio would hide dark secrets, to the extent that it would be forgotten to time, if not outright erased from the annals of history.

Which makes its influence on animation all the more terrifying because it’s very influential in the world of animation, but hides such dark secrets that make one wonder if it’s really up to no good at all. It’s kind of painful for the more spiritually innocent animation studios to live in the shadow of a far more influential, but spiritually dubious company that even when it’s wrong to charge such studios of something like a genetic fallacy, but I suppose if you could tell a tree by its fruit then what Disney wrought is also bad in some way. Whether if it’s the crass commercialism, the popularisation of odious stereotypes about certain peoples, the cynical inculcation of gender stereotypes onto unsuspecting youngsters, or whatever those are, Disney’s not above its own faults every now and then. Even if Soyuzmultfilm isn’t any better, Disney has the baggage of being both an innovator and powerhoues in animation and something that has dark secrets.

The animation world without Disney in the future would be almost unthinkable given Disney’s immense influence on subsequent animators and cartoonists such as Japan’s Osamu Tezuka (who watched one of his films multiple times over), even if the animation industry existed before Walt Disney’s professional arrival. But the fact that the animation industry’s heavily shaped by Disney means any animation studio’s bound to owe Disney something in some way or another, not just going by references, but also by the techniques Disney either introduced or popularised. Soyuzmultfilm owes Disney something when it comes to the use of rotoscoping in some of its films, Warner Bros owes Disney something when it comes to that Merrie Melodies is its answer to Silly Symphonies. Don Bluth owes his animation career to Disney, given he worked there for a while.

The twelve principles of animation got its start at Disney and has become a blueprint for subsequent animators to imitate, follow and abide by, even if it’s not true for all other animators and animation studios. Life without Disney isn’t impossible but a future without Disney would be kind of frightening to consider, given the impact the company left on many other animation studios. I suppose if Disney’s no longer the face of family entertainment and animation in the future, especially should it ever get forcibly dissolved by the Russian government for killing Christians in its theme parks, perhaps Soyuzmultfilm will take its place or at least some other animation studio will. If nature abhors a vacuum, then inevitably a substitute will appear in its place. One with less spiritual baggage to boot, as Uncle Walt made a deal with the Devil. Whatever it may be, it’s something else.

But Soyuzmultfilm is one of the more plausible candidates as it was something of a major rival to Disney during the Cold War years, the days when the planet’s dominated by two competiting superpowers: Russia and America. If Disney represents American imperialism (as suspected by others before) and soft power, then Soyuzmultfilm represents Soviet ethos and Russian soft power. When thinking of Winnie the Pooh, Mila Kunis was most likely referring to the Soyuzmultfilm version given her childhood in what was one of the former Soviet republics, that this is the version that she watched while growing up. It would be a weird irony that as Russia (America’s rival) is poised to displace America as the face of western civilisation, its version of Winnie the Pooh will be the one remembered more fondly by subsequent Europeans instead. Or even Canadians, since I prayed to God to have it join Russia one day.

Even then this is praying in his will since he’s not going to let America get away with it this time, so he’s going to allow Russia to not only overtake it, but also take over many of its allies in North America and Eurasia in some manner. Celestial even said that European countries like France will become Russian protectorates, with Canada becoming Russia’s sole North American protectorate and America being a colony, mostly due to these countries’ backsliding. If you lose sight of God, you risk certain consequences. So this is what Europe and North America will be getting, but for America it would be a nasty twist of fate that its Cold War rival is the one that will become the epicentre of western civilisation. America, the nation that brought in many innovations in video games, comics and animation (ACG in other words), will be replaced by Russia and its own ACG scene will be remembered more instead.

America, the nation that brought us Looney Tunes and Silly Symphonies, will be forgotten to time. Its own creations will be forgotten to time as well, perhaps rather shockingly in the near future where it gets destroyed sooner than expected, its creations will be forgotten more quickly than one realises that by then, people would’ve already forgotten about Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny. A kind of memory wipe done by God as to rid the world of America’s pernicious influence, as it’s Mystery Babylon, the very nation-state in the Book of Revelation said to corrupt the entire world. For those who kind of come to resent America and want to avoid American influence, this could be a blessing in disguise that while it wouldn’t entire undo the past, it helps people forget about it real well. It’s bad enough to think that these productions were consecrated to the Devil to popularise and inculcate certain habits onto people.

Even if other animation studios aren’t any better, but with America being Mystery Babylon (the nation that originates many abominations that it unleashed to the world), that revoking the country and its impact on people wouldn’t just leave a big gap, but also kind of undoing its influence in some major and unexpected way. I feel even if its influence isn’t entirely wiped out and forgotten by many, much of it wouldn’t just be undone but also forgotten to time. By then, one would have difficulty remembering who Woody Woodpecker, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are, who is this Chuck Jones bloke and what did he do in animation? Maybe not necessarily this forgotten but not exactly a character who’ll be very much remembered into the future, once America ceases to exist in its current form. But the loss of Disney and the like would leave a big gap.

One would wonder if animation studios like Soyuzmultfilm and Anima Estudios would be charged with filling in such a big gap, that it’s going to be awkward at first standing in for a fallen giant like The Walt Disney Company. It’s going to be awkward doing animated productions after this company’s disappearance or dissolution at the hands of the Russian government for killing Christians behind closed doors, though hopefully some might be resilient enough to turn to viable substitutes in its place. But it’s kind of horrifying or shocking to think that many American animated characters have a demonic origin, that even when it may not appear to be the case, there’s something oddly Faustinian about Disney and its ilk when it comes to their rise to power in the animation industry. If demons can possess people through any medium, one would wonder if this is the real origin of certain paraphilia.

Sort of like the Exorcist but in a more surprising fashion as this involves seemingly innocuous animated programmes, even if it gets obvious at times when it comes to not only Daffy Duck dressing up as the Devil himself, but also Disney’s very own Hell’s Bells. It becomes obvious which entity they’re promoting and it’s not God, I also had the misfortune of hearing a song by this band called AC/DC involving angels and demons, this song showed up on Disney’s very own radio network called Radio Disney, so I changed it right away. These days, I listen to far less secular music than I did months before, listening to much more sermons instead with Christian music being the thing that either comes with the sermons or usually before them. Disney’s really bad to the bone then, that even if it has Christians in its echelons, you could be in Disney but not of Disney. If Satan’s the god of this world, then it’s not surprising this is who Disney pays tribute to.

Even if it’s not always obvious in some of its productions, but this is telling when it comes to something like Hell’s Bells. Similar things can be said of Disney’s Marvel which brought out a character called Daredevil, a superhero who dresses as if he’s the Devil himself. He lives in Hell’s Kitchen, although it’s a real place, it feels like a dogwhistle to the Devil because of the way he looks or dresses. It’s surprising why not a lot of Christians cared about this, given they’re the ones who should be aware of what the Devil’s up to, since he knows his time in the universe is short. Or for another matter, X-Men when it comes writers like Chris Claremont having a seemingly negative opinion of Christians and Christianity. It’s still telling that if the Devil rules our world, then inevitably things like Disney and Marvel would homage and honour him in some way. So that’s why there’s something like Hell’s Bell, that’s why Daredevil dresses as the Devil himself.

All the more a reason for God to revoke America’s influence as it’s largely no good, not just because people promote witchcraft and do rituals behind the scenes, but that they’re of the world and from the Devil. Once God gets rid of Disney through Russia, American influence in animation would be mostly undone by then. Or at least people’s memories of American productions will fade over time, but perhaps so drastically that you’ve have to jog your memory to know what Steven Universe is by then.

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.

Superpowered but not fighting

It seems in the world of superhero stories and their ilk (ability battle stories), if characters get extraordinary or supernatural abilities they’re almost always compelled to fight. This may not be true for all of them but it does a big disservice to what else they can do with those skills, let alone without delving into certain activities. Like if you have a character who makes silk by hand, if they see no point in fighting bad guys, they might as well make a living from weaving and sewing. This is an actual thing in the silk industry, people breed silk moths for the sake of making silk once these creatures spin cocoon whilst they’re still young. Then they get killed in the line of duty when their cocoons get boiled so that the humans will use those for silk, though some avoid killing these creatures altogether.

Similar things have occurred before and after, something like Roald Dahl’s Matilda having a telekinetic ability, although he’s not known for reading comics it’s kind of weird why these things don’t happen much in comics. If you could use comics to visualise explosions and characters going through walls, you could visualise stories where characters who make silk work in the fabric industry instead. Somebody even pointed out that superheroes, regardless of gender, barely have much free time. As in they’re almost always fighting bad guys, but not taking the time to study, read, sew or whatever. Maybe they do with the latter but rarely so, probably because it’s easier for writers to depict them beating up bad guys by necessity. So superheroes will almost always be led to defeat bad guys at any point in time.

I guess transitioning to what amounts to glorified detective stories, just with added superpowers, would be somewhat easier as these still involve heroes having to defeat bad guys, but in a different way by relying on deduction and investigation more. These may have happened before but over time superhero writers and their ilk would rather have superheroes actually beat up bad guys in the most colourful and elaborate manner possible, if this involves spectacular displays of gore in some cases, then it counts. So these gory Mortal Kombat-type battles are really just the logical endpoints of having superheroes defeat bad guys by fighting, as fighting always involves violence, so this was bound to happen in hindsight. You might say there’s something bland about people using their powers to work in factories.

But that’s actually more realistic in that if some people have certain skills, they’ll wound up working in certain industries where these are needed more. Not that they don’t have anything else to do outside of those occupations, which they certainly do, but this involves a very different way of using such powers. Some of those supposedly useless abilities might turn out to be very useful in other situations, like if you have radar sense you’d be very good at investigating criminal cases and the like. Or if you have a light-based ability, you wouldn’t just make yourself invisible, create blinding glares and fiery lasers. You’d also make something invisible and strobes to find clues and detect bad guy activity, as well as locating where the victims might be. These might have happened before, though not very often.

If it’s possible for our heroes to defeat bad guys in a different way, it’s also possible for superpowered characters to forgo fighting altogether in favour of accepting factory work for life. It’s not end of the world if Marvel’s Cindy Moon forgoes fighting in favour of weaving fabrics for a living, though this isn’t a very likely situation, even if it helps her earn some money along the way. One might wonder how are superheroes able to successfully juggle their jobs with their normal lives when they spend much of their time fighting bad guys, in the case with wrestlers and boxers fighting is their occupation. In the case with police officers and the like, fighting bad guys is their occupation. But it seems in the world of superhero comics, even if superheroes do have hobbies, they’re almost always beating up somebody in some way. Moving onto Mortal Kombat style fights is really the logical conclusion to this.