Jemima Szara
She’s based on both Jemima Shore (her namesake by the way) and Nancy Drew, as they’re both amateur detectives with strawberry blonde hair. Jemima Szara tends to work as an investigative journalist, but because she tends to report crime that she often works with the police. She has an uncannily good sense of direction, sort of like a GPS device, which is good for finding out criminal cases in addition to her own intelligence. She’s had relationships with other men before, though she’s currently dating Maurice Lu (who’s also her best friend). She also had something of a girlhood crush on Richard Sorm, whom she also dated before moving onto other men and eventually Maurice.
There’s also some Marianne Faithfull in her because she dated a guy named Nick Hunter (Mick Jagger), despite being married at the time and eventually miscarrying their child. One of her aunts is a major misandrist, stemming from being raped herself. Faithfull’s grandmother was a misandrist due to being raped herself, one that had negative consequences for her in her formative years. Jemima has a younger brother named Nicholas, who works as a newspaper cartoonist, and their only surviving parent is Bonifacy Szary. Her middle name is Ewelina, the Polish form of Evelyn (Marianne’s middle name is Evelyn). She has a white cat named Sneg and a dog named Lome.
There’s a bit of Yasuho Hirose in her, especially in having a similar ability. Except that Jemima often uses this in investigative journalism, as well as assisting police officers find criminal offenders and their victims. It’s something that I don’t think not a lot of writers have considered, concerning the use of such abilities for noncombative purposes. In the case with both superhero stories and ability battle manga, there’s a tendency for writers to resort to depicting characters indulging in creative ways of attacking each other, instead of creative ways of solving cases, cooking and the like. Jemima being an investigative reporter with an uncanny sense of direction works in this case.
Fabrice Tientcheu
A Cameroonian forensic scientist with the ability to soften items, he’s based on both Trish Una and her stand Spice Girl, considering he went undercover as a janitor to find Colin Sallow. Considering that Spice Girl is actually based on cats, whilst it’s not particularly obvious at first, it does leave claw marks (something Killer Queen hasn’t done to my knowledge). Fabrice actually has cats himself but that’s because his father is afraid of dogs (there’s also a real Cameroonian musician named Mink who feels the same way too), so he’s got them instead and is more used to those than he is with dogs. It’s not that strange when there really are African cat owners out there, I’m part of a group called ‘Kenyan Cat Lovers’.
In Tientcheu’s case, his father’s wary of dogs so they got cats instead. Not particularly perfect but it’s something they got considering his father having cynophobia, Fabrice also looks like a younger Maxim Reality. As in he’s one of the surviving members of the band The Prodigy, alongside Liam Howlett, since Keith Flint passed away and the other two (Leeroy Thornhill and Sharky) left for certain reasons. Despite being based on Maxim, he’s also based on Freddie Mercury. Especially considering his outfit being reminiscent of Freddie’s own, but with the colours reversed (white coat, yellow shirt). He even likes cats too, so there’s some commonality between the two.
He’s even got Freddie’s boxing skills too, though he’s not shown engaging in combat that often. As for the Trish Una connection, he’s shown to dress in clothes with a numbers pattern like hers. Well not so often, but to show you that the fruit doesn’t fall too far from the tree. In his case, it’s as if Spice Girl’s connection to cats has been made explicit, given the stand doesn’t seem to resemble a cat at first. But it’s done something Killer Queen hasn’t done, to my knowledge that perhaps the similarities have more to do with its actions than its overall appearance. It seems unlikely at first but since Hirohiko Araki said it, so it’s going to show up however unlikely it appears to be.
Graham Knightley
As opposed to Fabrice Tientcheu, his connection to cats is implicit. He does dress somewhat like Yoshikage Kira’s stand Killer Queen, having the same fingerless gloves and boots and there’s an embroidered leopard patch on the left part of his jacket. And he’s been caught dead wearing a floral shirt, referencing Stray Cat being a cat that controls plants. He has the same power as Killer Queen, the same motivations as Yoshikage Kira at least when he first appeared (he’s no longer a serial killer in the later Jojo stories). Why is his surname Knightley? Because there’s somebody in the real world named Keira Knightley, so the connection to Yoshikage Kira is also based on wordplay.
He also shares the latter version’s interest in bondage, what no better way to communicate by that he wears bondage trousers himself. It’s like how some cartoonists communicate the idea that a female character is promiscuous by the way she dresses, so it’s only fair to do the same to a male character. He’s so kinky that he’s going to be open about it and Jemima even dated him before, despite being married to another woman. He’s not just a salesman but also the son of somebody who’s both a member of the British gentry (like Jemima and also an immigrant to boot) and a billionaire, he’s very much the epitome of eat the rich. As in he’s both contemptible and rich as to warrant getting attacked by humbler characters.
It’s not surprising given the growing distrust of multibillionaires like Elon Musk that it feels fit to have the son of a billionaire be an actual serial killer, since there’s somebody else saying that really rich people think of themselves as above the law. But I suppose for some people, the idea that the very rich indulge in crimes themselves feels kind of unthinkable, though this means that they’re not any better than poor people doing the same thing too. This makes him pretty relevant in some way, perhaps it’s no surprise why Absolute DC’s Batman is an engineer who can afford to make his own stuff without relying a lot on wealth to do it. Advancements in technology have made it easier to get something, without relying on much money when it comes to piracy.
Colin Sallow
Like I said elsewhere that he’s based on Dio Brando, despite also coming from a dream, right down to the fashion sense and ability. Except that in this case, both spacetime and gravity are interrelated as they are in reality. So if he lowers gravity in a localised area, he also slows (or if you will, stops) time too. This is convenient for not only literally stopping people in their tracks, but also for escapology and it’s going to be tough tracking him down at all. He’s also based on Tadzio from Death In Venice, well Tadzio as represented in the 1970s film, even dressing up as a sailor but only undercover to kill somebody else with. He kind of comes from a political family and is groomed for a life in politics, but he’s also a serial killer who’s weirdly loyal to his father.
So much so he killed the son of his father’s rival, he does this because he honours his father so much that he’s not going to let the other one win. Just as Fabrice Tientcheu is based on Maxim Reality, Colin Sallow is also based on a younger Liam Howlett. The two surviving members of the band the Prodigy, effectively a duo at this point, perhaps save for live members showing up in concerts. So there are really only two original members of the Prodigy left, Keith Flint’s no longer with us and Leeroy Thornhill and Sharky have gone on doing something else. So befittingly there are only two characters based on these two musicians, the other one being Fabrice. The same guy he ended up attacking, well Colin is usually pretty cool-headed and good-tempered.
This makes his capacity to murder all the more shocking, given he seems so nice and well-mannered. Maybe he’s got something nasty in his closet, despite contrary appearances. Not to mention he’s also based on the cinematic version of Tadzio, the unlikeliest inspiration for a fictional murderer. As for his father’s rivals, they’re also based on the real life Medici family. They went from being a plutocratic family, whose wealth came from banking/usury, to becoming a proper aristocratic family serving the Holy Roman Empire. The Medici did inspire some characters in Skull Girls, some fighting game in the 2010s, but it would be interesting to use one such incident in their family history as the inspiration for a mystery/puzzle game.
Akosamesew Kanewopasikot
He is based on DC Comics’s Cassandra Cain but I feel transposing a number of characteristics associated with her personality and upbringing would read differently when grafted onto a Native American character, because it kind of becomes triggering considering the history Native Americans have with white people upon colonisation. Especially where they find every bits of their culture (and even their languages) stripped from them in a bid to assimilate into white settler colonial cultures, that I feel an indigenous Cassandra Cain would be far more tragic given the context. Akosamesew is capable of speaking, though not particularly well in Cree as he should be.
But due to colonisation, it’s not uncommon for Native Americans to be this fluent in English. So he’s not as fluent in Cree as he wishes and wants to be, considering he puts every effort into learning it as much as possible. He’s also been trained to be something of a living weapon, though it’s something he wishes he’d unlearn or at least wouldn’t be reminded of daily. Due to his uncanny ability to read body language well, he’s considerate but also very conscious, fearful to the point of being timid and tries very hard to be polite. He does strive to be more outgoing, but he feels the need to not hurt or offend anybody. He’s also good at catching criminals this way, leading to an interesting confrontation with Colin.
He’s also based on a historical figure known as Poundmaker, who also has dreadlocks like he does and is also of nearly the same ethnicity. Maybe not so much in the personality side of things, but mostly in the way they look. When it comes to the world of anime, the first dreadlocked Native American character would probably be Gat from Saiyuki, which is based on Journey to the West. Then comes Mink from Dramatical Murder, which is based on a really graphic video game. Though there is a precedence for dreadlocked indigenous people among the Cree, or so it seems to be, it’s not something you see often in the media. Mostly because it’s usually seen as something black people wear.
Jean-Louis Lumiere
Based on David Bowie though he still has his own idiosyncrasies that make him his own person to a decent extent, this character emerged in 2016 alongside Maurice Lu though neither of them have names yet. To go further with the David Bowie comparisons, he also has natural blond hair. He dyed it red and cut into a Ziggy Stardust mullet, he even dresses like him and has a loving black girlfriend in the form of Yvette Tientcheu, Fabrice’s twin sister and seamstress. He’s also the game’s main detective by the way, though he can be rather ruthless when dealing with criminals. He has the ability to manipulate light, which he uses to render something, someone or himself invisible, create holographic illusions, glares and lasers.
He’s also good at unarmed combat, not just in savate but also primarily wrestling. Both freestyle wrestling and Greco-Roman wrestling, he’s done them both when he was younger whilst training to be a detective under Richard Sorm. Having been orphaned at age 19, he not only looked up to his uncle but also to Mr Sorm because he’s his mentor. In a sense he’s also his successor, despite the differing abilities. Despite the fact that Jemima Szara is based on Jemima Shore, Jean-Louis has a black dog named Minuit just as Jemima Shore’s black cat is named Midnight. The other thing keeping Jemima Szara tethered to her namesake is that she’s sometimes attracted to married men, though the latter is probably already married herself at this point.
Whereas Jean-Louis has a schizophrenic cousin just as Bowie had a schizophrenic brother, even if Jean-Louis still isn’t exactly like David Bowie in other regards. He also seems to share Bowie’s love for dogs, whom he takes out for hunting every early morning. Anyways Jean-Louis enjoys hunting with his friends and dog, reading (just like Bowie himself), writing, playing football/soccer and fishing, he’s kind of rustic in some regards having been brought up in a Quebecois countryside. His girlfriend is Yvette Tientcheu, though he sometimes gets into fights with their father over dogs. Their dad is deathly afraid of dogs, Fabrice’s suspicious of them and Yvette doesn’t know what to do with them, so conflicts happen.
John Zelensky
Named after Volodimir Zelenskyy (oddly enough), but parts of his life are based on that of River Phoenix. River Phoenix was the older brother of Joaquin Phoenix, having played a younger Indiana Jones before. River Phoenix also played music when he can and could, having done some recordings with his sister. Just as River spent his formative years in Venezuela, John spent his own in Mexico. He’s kind of nostalgic for Mexicana, often planning on going there again in years. He knows some Mexican Spanish, which he uses to communicate with others online. He has thoughts of acquiring Mexican citizenship one day, though this might put his career into jeopardy.
Much like these two, he’s of Jewish descent. In the case with River Phoenix, he’s in some regards the farthest from what you expect young Jewish men to be. In the sense that you’d expect Jewish men to be respectable, kind of square sort of people. But River Phoenix did drugs in private, until they got the better of him. You’d expect Jewish men to be nerdy, studious and stuff, but River Phoenix was no big nerd. He seemed to be more comfortable with rock music, than he would with acting and he would’ve gone on as a musician anyways had he lived. John Zelensky also doesn’t seem to be a particularly nerdy man either, being more into Goth and punk rock. Well, he’s in good company really.
Especially when you rope in some members of the Ramones and Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell being Jewish, that you begin to see where I’m coming from when it comes to something like a Jewish rocker. They really are present in rock music in some way or another, whether if it’s Gene Simmons from the band Kiss (I was made for loving you), or somebody like the late Hillel Slovak who was a member of the band Red Hot Chili Peppers. Coincidentally, River Phoenix was a friend of Flea (one of the members). It’s not that strange really and some of them are really prominent, but it’s easier to fall back on Jewish stereotypes, especially if your point of reference is really narrow and limited.
Ellen Wachak
Renamed from Ellen Tonkawa, she has the ability to magnetise things like Mariah and her stand Bastet in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. She often calls it telekinesis, because it’s like she moves things with her mind. She still does it to this day. She’s also based on Kate Miskin, except that she actually loves her grandmum. She’s also based on this woman from the nonfiction book Women In The Martial Arts, because she’s also part indigenous and part East Asian. In her case, she’s part Dene/Chipewyan and part Korean. She knows some martial arts, particularly gungdo as she has a particular affinity for projectiles/marksmanship. It’s not that there aren’t any mixed race indigenous people, either in fiction or in real life.
But in the case with the west, it’s easier to relate back to white people than to consider the possibility of indigenous people who’re also descended from black and Asian people, probably because I feel it makes them too foreign in some way. Whiteness feels more approachable and familiar, making an indigenous person part Asian (though it’s always possible if this book is any indication) makes them too foreign and alien for some people. The one prominent mixed race indigenous character who’s not part white that I can think of is Eliza Maza from Gargoyles, she’s actually part black and admittedly it’s a long time I watched this programme. But it wouldn’t hurt to have an indigenous character who’s part East Asian.
Ellen Wachak might not be the first example of one, as there are likely others before her in fiction, though they are mostly in the minority. Aside from this, she enjoys collecting soft/plush toys and dolls. It’s not that there aren’t any doll collector type characters before, one example would be Alice Margatroid from Touhou, but I kind of suspect that such a character would come off as childish for some people. Especially if they’re an adult, despite that adult toy collectors (not that they collect sex toys) exist in the real world. It would be nice to have a mixed race officer who collects and plays with dolls in her spare time, though this involves humanising her a lot more than one usually would.
Hector Yang
Based on Jobin Higashikata in terms of manipulating heat without causing fire, though he also has albinism (pallor and a degree of vision impairment). Not that these characters never existed before, though it’s not pulled off often due to semantic connotations. The one video game character who’s comparable to him in any way would be Touhou Project’s Mokou no Fujiwara, who has white hair and manipulates fire. Whilst these characters personify the phrase white hot very well, it’s more common to associate the colour white with the cold, which is kind of understandable.
But the funny thing about heat is that in the case with flames and heated up items, the more energetic they get the more whitish or bluish they become. This is because shorter wavelengths are more energetic, with something reddish being relatively cool and something blue being really hot. Blue skies are often going to be warm and bright, because that’s where light is at its most energetic. Red skies tend to be cooler and dimmer, for the same reason but in reverse. Mokou seems to be the only truly white hot video game character at this point, if because she has white hair and manipulates fire. Not necessarily so unique, but not particularly common either.
It should be noted that the word for albino in Tagalog is ‘anak araw’ or ‘sun child’ because they’re so pale as to be reminiscent of sunlight, ironically the very thing that hurts them. The sun is hot and bright, but it kind of fits in a way. Snow also reflects a lot of light and can easily blind somebody if they’re not careful, though I don’t think it’s particularly common to associate white-haired characters with light. The only ones that do fit the bill are both versions of Amaterasu (one of them is from The Five Star Stories), Marvel’s Dagger at some point and arguably Mokou no Fujiwara, even though it’s kind of logical because there’s such thing as white light and white reflects all the colours. I’m misremembering the other one, but it kind of fits.
Mary Stilfox
Based on Aya Tsuji and her stand Cinderella, she has the ability to generate implants which she uses to replace someone’s organs with them. She actually works as a plastic surgeon so she’s often called upon to do surgeries of any and every variety, so her ability is perfect for this and why almost nobody has ever considered this. She’s also a Scottish immigrant who moved to Canada with her husband and has two sons or daughters (or maybe two sons and a daughter) there, ever since Jean-Louis got orphaned that he started seeing her as a kind of mother figure. (Jemima has hers in a housekeeper named Molly, yep another Nancy Drew reference.)
I feel there’s an argument to be made for Aya Tsuji being a surgeon because her ability’s convenient for it, like say you want a smaller nose and she could easily do that whilst operating on you. If somebody wants bigger breasts, she could’ve just practically the same thing too. Though it does make one wonder if there are anybody in comics out there who have been interested in plastic surgery at some point or another, well I was into this sort of thing before when I was younger. Considering that cosmetic surgery is such a big industry that Aya Tsuji could’ve been very much in demand for it, it’s no different with Mary Stilfox and why she’s the most in-demand plastic surgeon in town.
Mary Stilfox doesn’t mind Jean-Louis’s habit of hunting in his spare time, if because not only do some of her relatives back in Scotland do this (primarily for pest control), but that one of her most trusted friends is into hunting herself. She has some knowledge of hunting and she sometimes helps out Jean-Louis whenever he’s out to get those pesky vermin and game when he feels like it, since she’s no stranger to helping her own relatives whenever they do the same thing too. When she brought along her own cousin, that’s when he introduced him to ferreting–that’s hunting with ferrets. Predictably, she gave Jean-Louis tips on looking after ferrets, when she gave him one.
Patricia Kyenge
In terms of ability, she’s derivative of an earlier version of Josuke Higashikata as both of them restore things to where they were, but in her case she uses this often in nursing as well as doing everyday repair work for others. It’s something not a lot of people have considered or realised, since you could have characters with fantastical abilities yet refuse to use them in combat, especially if they see no point in doing it. There’s something of a missed opportunity for this version of Josuke to grow up using this same ability in medicine, whether as a nurse or doctor, but it makes perfect sense for him to do just that.
Oddly enough the character who got to be a medic is Yoshikage Kira in Jojolion, even though he’s ill-suited for medicine unlike Josuke I. There’s also a bit of Trish Una in here (Trish–Patricia), like her boyfriend Fabian she also likes cats. Considering that she’s a Congolese nurse who moved to Canada, there are Congolese people who actually have cats as pets (well, primarily for hunting rodents) and there’s one account of a Congolese chemist that has a cat do just the same. Since Patricia also has a relative who doesn’t like dogs much either, in fact that’s actually a grandparent, so she understands why Fabian’s father’s like this.
Patricia Kyenge is also named after Cecile Kyenge, a Congolese woman living and working in Italy. While Italy didn’t colonise the DRC the way Belgium did (it conquered Eritrea and Libya instead), it does attract immigrants from anywhere else in Africa. There are Italians of Nigerian and Ghanaian descent, one notable example being footballer Mario Balotelli who got adopted from a Ghanaian family. Though Italy’s no stranger to African servants at some point (I think), its relationship with African colonies happened more recently than that of the Netherlands, Britain, Portugal and Spain. So it never trafficked Africans to work in its American colonies, the way these four did.
Rose Marie Gaultier
The inspiration for her is Kate Bush in the music video ‘Wuthering Heights’, similar appearance but dissimilar personality and life. There’s a character in Italian crime fiction who has the ability to talk to the dead, just like hers, but I forgot their name though I do know they exist. It’s not that both superhero comics and video games lack women wearing dresses, but so far with the former there’s a tendency to make the dress either skimpy (Supergirl, Mary Marvel and Nightshade) or with thigh high slits (Raven), mostly to emphasise sex appeal.
It would be interesting to portray a kind of superheroine in a video game wearing a more modest dress, it can be pulled off. She dresses like a younger Kate Bush, similar preference for flowy and romantic dresses. But I feel considering that since there are video game developers who especially don’t do dress-up games (and also superhero cartoonists), so they wouldn’t be particularly inclined towards making their female characters dress stylishly. Or in a way that where their fashion sense tends to be more romantic than sexy, it may not be sexy like Dead or Alive or Soul Calibur but I feel there’s a tendency to play up sex appeal more.
Even if it’s something that’s not appealing to all women, especially if they’re really disgusted and/or alienated by this sort of thing. Maybe not necessarily a more romantic fashion sense, but rather a less sexualised way of dressing. I feel this would also extend to other female characters in this game I’m proposing, maybe not exactly like Rose but in the lines of less sexualisation for all of them. Given how video games get flak for sexualising female characters a lot, it would be nice to do the opposite direction for all the female characters here. Many video games at this point are currently desexualising female characters, but the more the merrier.
Nootaikok Alakannuark
Based on Jojo’s Ghiaccio in personality, ability and appearance, he embodies and personifies the peculiarly French idiom ‘colère froide’, which refers to lingering anger that borders on bitterness and resentment. It’s also a passive aggressive sort of anger, it’s not apparent but it’s there on some level. How does he manipulate the cold? He heats up whenever he creates something cold, like temperatures get transferred or they lower as his body temperature raises. So he absorbs heat and he has a hot temper, sort of makes sense on some level too. Many of the same things can also be said of Ghiaccio himself, he too embodies and personifies this French idiom well.
It’s one of those things that make sense in some other language, like colère froide in the case with these two. They manipulate the cold and they get angry real easily, in the case with Nootaikok he’s grieved by racism every time. He gets angry whenever people mispronounce Inuk words, especially whenever Jemima does it and goes so far to either scold or insult her for it. He also gets angry at others for doing the same thing too, sometimes getting angry at others whenever something bad happens. I feel Ghiaccio might not be the only character who’s like this, but he’s part of a minority of characters who’re like this. Even if the way he acts perfectly aligns with the French idiom colère froide real well.
And for another matter, Nootaikok Alakannuark too. Aside from that, both of them ice-skate. Both of them wear ice-skates, which is something you don’t see cryokinetic superheroes doing the same. Regardless of the risk of hurting themselves from slipping at any time, I feel the use of cryokinetic characters moving on icy platforms without wearing ice-skates looks cool. But it’s also weirdly impractical considering the possibility of slipping, so Ghiaccio wearing ice-skates while manipulating ice is appropriate. In some regards, it’s also good character design because this involves thinking through things. This may not be true for all the JJBA stand users, but it’s something to consider regarding cryokinesis at all.
Maurice Lu
His outfit’s actually based on what Andrew Eldritch (he’s from the band Sisters of Mercy) wore at some point, which is a yellow-apricot long coat worn with a black shirt, black shoes and black pair of trousers. But since he manipulates weather and many of these characters are based on their Jojo counterparts, so he could easily be analogised to Weather Experince. His shirt has a dragon motif, since in Chinese culture dragons are associated with weather and water. His long coat is actually a peacock blue beizi, a kind of Han Chinese long coat by the way, worn with a black shirt, black Han Chinese trousers and black shoes. He’s sort of like the Azure Dragon from the Four Celestial Beasts, so it could be said that Jean-Louis is the Vermillion Bird by then.
The Azure Dragon’s cardinal direction is east (Maurice’s actually from the Philippines, part of the Far East) and its element is wood, so the Vermillion Bird’s cardinal direction is south and its element is fire (while Jean-Louis doesn’t manipulate fire per se, his photokinesis comes close in a way). Logically Nootaikok could be analogised to the Black Turtle because its cardinal direction is North (he lives in Arctic Canada) and it’s associated with both water and the cold, so befittingly Nootaikok manipulates ice himself. Also Maurice is Jemima’s boyfriend and early on, her biggest male friend around. He gets jealous easily whenever Jemima flirts with some other guy, so he often tells her to stop immediately.
That’s not to say there aren’t any Asian guys who get into romantic and marital relationships with non-Asian women, whether if it’s Australian white women going out with Balinese gigolos, African women getting into relationships of sorts with Chinese men and Brazilian prostitutes having a thing for Filipino sailors, these kinds of relationships do happen. Francis Manapul is married to a white woman himself, he even has a family with her. It becomes even less strange why some white women are attracted to Korean men, earlier on in the 21st century this would’ve gone to Indonesian gigolos instead. It was such a phenomenon as to warrant getting mentioned often in the press and also in academia.
Alvin Kwame Boateng
He has the ability to run preternaturally fast (though he’s really just as fast as a moving vehicle), which he uses to cause serious fires as a way to keep criminals from attacking people any further. He’s also based on Usain Bolt, who’s a sprinter, football fanatic and avid gamer. Alvin also enjoys and plays football, and video games in his spare time. He’s particularly fond of puzzle games, football games and adventure games. There are black people who do work in video games, play video games and think about video games. Alvin could easily represent them, since they don’t seem to appear often in fiction. Maybe not as little as I made it out to be.
But it’s not hard to see how representation or the lack of it affects people, like if they’re only exposed to certain portrayals and preconceptions surrounding a certain ethnicity, then it becomes the baseline for what they expect them to be. The prototype for what they expect certain people to be, to the point where others internalise it and think of others as not conforming to their idea of their given identity. Like in the case with African Americans, there’s not much diversity in their portrayal on television until recently. The other black peoples more underrepresented than them, especially outside of African media, would be sub-Saharan Africans. They’re not necessarily this underrepresented.
But they’re much likelier to be kind of detached from who they are in reality, since I feel the prototypical black person in American media is most likely to be African American. Kind of makes sense that some of the most well-known black people in this day and age are more likely to be African American themselves, whether if it’s singer Beyonce Knowles or rapper Jay Z. But this would mean that black Africans are kind of underrepresented on the international stage, maybe not entirely so underrepresented, but not exactly often showing up in American media outside of certain preconceptions and African media. Both Fabrice and Alvin are black Africans working in Canada, though the former is a forensic scientist.
Hamish Gallagher
Because he’s based on Secco whose stand is called Oasis (the Gallagher brothers, his namesake, were part of the band also called Oasis), Hamish also has the ability to liquify solid ground as to cause potent shockwaves and augment his punches as to kill his victims. Despite sharing the same surname as the Gallagher brothers, he looks like a masculinised version of the Danish model Freja Beha Erichsen. His fashion sense is kind of punkish and traditional Goth, like he wears a black suit but with a moon print tie and combat boots. It’s also pretty practical to wear, given he liquifies anything solid. It’s kind of rock and roll, but also practical to wear when standing on liquified ground.
I guess when it comes to character design and clothing, it would be much easier making the character look cool, instead of making it actually practical when it comes to something. Not necessarily always practical in the sense of how it’s often conceptualised and actualised in live action superhero productions, but in the sense of being suited to the task and activity. Characters like Maurice Lu and Hamish Gallagher endure muddy, wet ground so wearing combat boots would be more practical for them, whereas somebody like Jean-Louis who’s given into wrestling would wear wrestling shoes instead. Not so much looking kind of tactical as it tends to be in live action superhero productions, but more in the lines of what somebody else would actually wear to something.
Not to mention he comes from Edinburgh, the same place where Mary Stilfox came from. When it comes to Scottish characters in American comic books, if Rahne Sinclair’s any indication, they’re oftentimes shown to come from somewhere rustic and parochial. Not that there aren’t any Scottish people who don’t live in the countryside anymore, but considering that Scotland actually has cities it’s kind of surprising why there’s not a single Scottish character that I can think of who comes from any Scottish city themself. Unsurprisingly, the most nonstereotypical portrayals of Scottishness come from actual Scots themselves. Especially stories by Irvine Welsh, as to give you an idea of how a Scot would come up with their fictional counterpart.
Cyril Darkholme
He has the ability to manipulate darkness from transducing and absorbing energy (especially electromagnetic energy), though the sort of darkness he makes is only restricted to force fields and solid constructs. That’s really about it though he uses those in very inventive, creative and lethal ways, something like creating a force field inside something to explode it. He also kind of looks like Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys, but with more sunken cheeks, deep-set eyes and serious eyebags that make him look older than he really is. (He’s about the same age or nearly so as many of the characters here, being in their early thirties or late twenties.)
He keeps his hair naturally blond, whereas Jean-Louis dyed his red. It should be noted that the character of Eve Eden, a Charlton (and then DC) heroine going by the stage name of Nightshade, is actually blonde herself but wears a black wig to fight crime or something. Another one would be Rumia from Touhou Project, but never wears any black wigs at all. Cyril would be in good company in this regard, because he’s also another blond-haired darkness manipulator. So there is some precedence for him in both comics and video games, though another one would be Marvel’s Darkstar. Not to mention, he’s basically something of a criminal and a serial killer. His lackey was the late Scott Nygaard, who could only move through shadows.
It’s sort of like how in comic books where darkness manipulation tends to be portrayed as a rather ghostly ability, it may not be true for all characters but it’s not uncommon to have them phase through things and stuff, especially shadows. But since poor old Scott is a mini boss, so it makes sense for both darkness manipulation and shadowmelding to be treated separately. If time manipulation and gravity manipulation are usually treated separately in fiction, so can both shadowmelding and darkness manipulation, which works in Scott’s advantage as he travels through darkness, but Cyril’s useless in the dark. Also Scott tends to be timid and cowering in Cyril’s presence, since the latter tends to be really mean and irritable.
Tommy Heikinnen
Some man of Finnish descent, he has the ability to nullify gravity (which also speeds up time) which he uses to assault his victims using centrifugal projectiles. Sort of like what Lang Rangler does through his stand Jumping Jack Flash, Tommy’s surname is taken from a writer reporting about feral rabbits in Helsinki. His face is a masculinised version of Nina Hagen’s, the latter being a German rock singer. He dresses like what Cinamon Hadley wore in one photograph, Cinamon was also the inspiration for the DC Comics character Death. She comes from the magazine series The Sandman as written by disgraced author Neil Gaiman, she also shares some traits with Terry Pratchett’s version (being the older relative of other characters and also friendly).
Mind you, Terry Pratchett was a good friend of Gaiman’s. But for most of the part, Tommy Heikinnen is practically a separate person from all the real world people who inspired him. Two of them being women, especially appearance wise. It should be noted that both Tommy and Colin are blue-eyed, something neither Nina Hagen nor Liam Howlett are, despite being the inspiration for these two. Also Tommy tends to be blond and usually keeps his hair braided, given there are instances where it’s worn loose and flowing. Conversely speaking, Colin Sallow has the ability to stop time in a localised area (which also increases gravity) and usually keeps his hair loose, but has it tied in a ponytail from time to time. Tommy could be feisty, whilst Colin’s often calm.
As for fictional Canadian characters of Finnish descent, they certainly do exist and already have. I haven’t read any stories featuring them, but this is pure speculation here. So Tommy Heikinnen is in good company here, a Finnish Canadian criminal if there ever was one. He’s also a competent fighter, being kind of well-versed in kickboxing and while he’s not an escapologist like Colin, he’s athletic enough to do physically challenging activities a lot. Like sprinting fast enough to track down his victims, being able to lift something heavy with ease and so on. Colin’s also kind of athletic too, having somewhat decent boxing and fighting skills though he tends to be an escapologist.
Richard Sorm
He has the ability to preternaturally replay events as to solve cases, or so he did at his peak since Jean-Louis is now the main detective of the department. He’s something of a recovering alcoholic, because he’d drink as to calm himself down or make himself happier, however destructive this habit tended to be. He also suffers from depression, basically if Leone Abbacchio and Adam Dalgliesh are one and the same person. I actually wrote an unofficial story involving the latter turning out to be not only depressed, but also negligent towards his family. His wife Emma Lavenham would cheat on him whenever he’s away, yet she often prevents their son Mick from hanging out with his friends for long.
They never really divorced, but often lived apart from each other. You could say that despite AD falling in love with her, they ended up in a rather loveless marriage. Especially later on in life, after begetting Mick together that it’s shocking why Adam never divorced her or vice versa. Richard’s the same way with his own son Ian and his own wife Emma Havisham, except that Ian’s allowed to hang out with Jean-Louis but it makes one wonder if both parents did a bad job at parenting him. Jean-Louis feels more like his father than his actual father ever was and is, going so far to attend hunting expeditions together and stuff. Not to mention, Jean-Louis often saw Richard as his father after his own parents died.
He was his mentor and role model, so his methods of investigating resemble his even if their abilities differ. Much like Adam Dalgliesh, Richard Sorm has a habit of writing. He wrote poems, though they’re often very morbid, having attempted suicide multiple times before. Well, all roads lead to Finding Adam, where Adam Dalgliesh has attempted suicide before and often gets hospitalised for it. A man who seems to be a brilliant detective is actually a trainwreck as a parent and spouse, a real basket case behind closed doors. Richard Sorm is no different, having failed relationships before and stuff. While Richard was still a detective, Jean-Louis was the one who found Jemima trying to solve a case herself, though he had her sent back because she was intruding on his turf.
Trần Khôi Mạnh
A notorious criminal with the ability to create zippers as to not only make an escape but also to conceal weapons and trap people with, basically Bruno Buccellati if he’s a Vietnamese Canadian murderer on the run. When it comes to the way the Asian diaspora are seen in the west, one way is to portray them is to depict them as a model minority. The baseline for what other ethnic minorities should strive for and aspire to be, regardless of the former’s own struggles with racism and the like. The film Turning Red, as directed by the Canadian Domee Shi, depicts a girl who gets into loggerheads with her mother. Both of them are Chinese Canadian, where it turns out that the daughter in question wants to do things her parents disapprove of.
This might not be the only one to delve into cases where Asian westerners do rebel against their parents, another instance would be Simu Liu’s autobiography which got him beaten up by his own parents. Trần would be one such example where what appeared to be desiring a better life has taken on a turn for the worst, because he’s become a terrible serial killer on the run. One who’s even a gangster, well just like Bruno Buccellati. That’s not to say there aren’t any Asian western criminals either in fiction or in real life, but given the model minority stereotype it’s going to be hard thinking of them as actually indulging in criminality, let alone without the dog meat stereotype. One would wonder why nobody gets mad at Germans for poisoning dogs, even if it’s a big problem in German-speaking Europe.
Well, it’s something that plays into the othering of Asians in the western imaginary. Whilst they are upheld as an example to aspire to, they’re not necessarily fully trusted because they’re often treated as opposites of white westerners in some regards. So alien they might as well not be human, apart from white westerners and humanity in general. So to counter this, Maurice Lu actually keeps dogs and likes them. So does Hector Yang, though that’s because he’s legally blind and needs a dog to guide him whenever he’s out and about. Tran also keeps dogs, though he also uses them to attack his victims with. (Well, white boy Cyril does the same thing too.)
Alice Buquid
Another female character based on a male Jojo character, this time it’s Tsurugi Higashikata. Both of them have the same ability, that’s to find ways of unsettling people after folding something by proxy. She’s also the younger cousin of Maurice Lu and works as a seamstress, especially back in the Philippines where she acts as the main breadwinner since her own sister became a widow. She’s also kind of timid towards westerners, finding them rather strange upon arriving in Canada. She did make friends with Jemima and Patricia, though she pretty much prefers the Philippines more. She’s much happier in the latter than the former, mostly due to the racism she receives.
Now onto Asian seamstresses and the like, they do exist in fiction as they do in real life. But I feel outside of Asian media, they might as well be nonexistent in western media. It should be noted that whenever Asians get jobs in western media at all, they oftentimes work in STEM despite the existence of Asian westerners in the garment industry in the real world. At other times, it speaks to a narrow point of reference. Sometimes it’s due to holding onto preconceptions, regardless of the contrary facts being given (confirmation bias). So this is probably why it’s easier to portray Asian characters being into STEM, than say anything else that they’ve been caught dead doing in the real world.
Whether if it’s football like Maya Yoshida, or fashion in the case with one of my aunts, it’s going to be hard naming Asians who are into anything else if you either hold onto preconceptions or know so little about them that it’s going to play out the same for you. Other than that, it would be nice having a seamstress character in video games. This may’ve happened before and particularly in some dressup games, though this is largely hypothetical. But it’s not bad to have another seamstress character in video games, given the potential to explore what’s like to make clothes for a living, how to sew garments and stuff. One could have done an interactive fiction game with a tailor/seamstress in it, to teach people what’s like to make clothes for a living.
John Birdwhistle
The traitor of the department who’s in fact a spy sent to kill people, considering he has the ability to spread a virus that kills its victims instantly. Basically Pannacotta Fugo if Hirohiko Araki went with the idea without feeling bad about it, he even looks and acts like him but older (definitely a real adult). There were a few others leery of him, considering that he’s something of a serial killer who brutally attacks his victims. But the fact that he seemed to be on the side of good makes it easy for others to trust and overlook his faults, however detrimental they may be in the long run and in reality. In the case with characters who infect people to death, they certainly do exist but it’s not always well-thought out or well-done.
One particularly early example would be Infectious Lass from DC Comics, her ability’s potentially really deadly if you consider how infections can risk killing people in due time. Something that could’ve been played up at any point in the actual stories she may’ve appeared in, though I don’t think it’s used often because the consequences are going to be grisly. Even with less censorship restrictions, I feel writers generally shy away from it. If you have a character who could infect somebody to death, there’s no getting around how deadly and disgusting, even horrifying it is. Something like Resident Evil plays up this idea, though it’s something DC Comics may’ve considered but largely shy away from.
Since Resident Evil’s all about surviving a world where people get infected and become terrifying creatures to be defeated, this easily lends itself to macabre atmospheres and sentiments. Not so much with a superheroine that while it could be pulled off, the consequences are hardly ever going to be nice. I suppose making the character a villain would make things better, though making them a good guy may’ve already worked before in video games since Pannacotta Fugo did appear in a video game adaptation of Golden Wind. It wasn’t released internationally because the characters’ stands are often named after bands, albums and musicians, though they’re being renamed these days.
William Raube
The game’s very own Cioccolata and has the same ability (and occupation) as he does, he’s a surgeon gone rogue with the ability to spread a fungus that rapidly decays its victim. He is Mary Stilfox’s first boyfriend who’s incredibly cruel with an obsession with recording his victims’ deaths, no wonder why he’s on the run from the police. Both local and international, considering that Jean-Louis is Canadian. His ethics are very questionable, even early on in his career and the worse they got, the more Mary broke up with him. It’s not that there weren’t any Scottish villains before, one such example would probably be DC’s Doctor Alchemy.
Though having him be a rogue Scottish surgeon is an interesting development, one that makes him an evil parallel to Mary Stilfox in this regard. Or at least someone who ended up choosing the wrong path and ethos in life, someone who was involved in Mary’s life and were friends turned lovers for a while. Until he did sick experiments onto people that she got fed up with him and moved onto somebody else instead, to get back at her he did this to one of her male cousins and had her fuming with serious rage. I kind of feel that given Jojo’s tendency towards foreboding and the macabre, owing to the author’s love of horror, it would be befitting to adapt a chunk of it onto something mystery-related.
If because I feel mashing up Jojo with straight up superheroes kind of feels wrong, because Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure tends to have a rather foreboding atmosphere. One that’s more at home in a Roald Dahl story than it would with DC and Marvel, tonally speaking at times, but then again I read Roald Dahl a lot before. Maybe not wrong all the way, but I feel Jojo doesn’t consistently feel like its stories would belong in DC and Marvel. When I mean by foreboding, there’s often a feeling of looming misfortune and mishap happening at any point in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Something bad would happen at any point, something disgusting will happen at any point. Again Hirohiko Araki’s a horror fan and it shows.
Scott Nygard
He can be considered analogous to Pesci in that both of them travel through shadows, in the latter’s case through his stand Black Sabbath. I’m misremembering things but since this is a video game where the main boss is Cyril Darkholme, a character who transduces energy into darkness but is useless in the dark, so it makes sense for his ability to be separate from darkness manipulation proper. It’s like how in fiction it’s common to treat time manipulation as separate from gravity manipulation, even though they’re interrelated in science and reality. So it’s only fair to treat darkness manipulation and shadowmelding as separate, which works to Scott’s advantage as he’s a miniboss.
He also tends to cower in Cyril’s presence, since he often gets mad at him and makes him do things when he threatens him. So he does whatever Cyril tells him to do, though sometimes he does things at will. I feel when it comes to darkness manipulation in fiction, it’s often treated as a rather ghostly ability. Maybe not always consistently so, but in the lines of being kind of eerie and supernatural. Sort of like the thing with DC’s Obsidian, he doesn’t just manipulate darkness but also make himself intangible and stuff. But since darkness manipulation is separate from shadowmelding in this game, so Cyril only makes shadow constructs from transducing energy while Scott goes through shadows.
That’s really what both of them only do respectively, one only makes shadow constructs from transducing electromagnetism and the other only moves through shadows. Sometimes I feel it’s still kind of convenient to treat darkness manipulation as a rather ghostly ability, something that encompasses shadowmelding yet time manipulation’s treated independently of gravity manipulation. Even if both of them are interrelated in reality, or for another matter light manipulation and invisibility from time to time. Considering that Jean-Louis manipulates light himself, he’s shown to make someone, something and himself invisible. In addition to creating blinding glares, lasers and holographic disguises and illusions.
fynm 