Modern Marvels indeed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nearly forgotten associations

When it comes to conceiving of the character Ermentrude Wolfenbarger, it’s primarily based on the odd fact that wolves were actually this associated with witchcraft in some countries like Switzerland before (she is Swiss herself). Mind you even their domesticated relatives dogs were also highly associated with witchcraft in countries like France, Germany and Britain at some point, the association still exists in some African countries like Cameroon and Ghana even not all Africans believe in this themselves. Though there are African sermons and devotionals that do bring this up, they also bring out other topics like forgiveness and arrogance for instance. It is one interest but not the only one around, as they also discuss other matters like love as well.

But even then this is one association that does deserve some reappearance, if one wants a break from the usual stereotype, more often than not it’s informed by a very limited experience with certain things and peoples. Very limited interest in such things and peoples as well to boot, that’s why a number of fictions tend to be kind of dyed in the wool repetitive. TV Tropes might be interesting but not to a reliable extent since most of its obsessions relate to modern pop culture or mass culture in some way or another, not so much earlier folk cultures and high cultures alike. For both of these two, you might as well peruse both older documents (including those dating back to the early modern period) and academia to better delve into such subject matters that don’t appear often in modern mass culture.

And if you want to go the extra mile, then you could also peruse inspirational literatures and journalistic literatures on the same as well, but in a way that makes one wonder if American mass culture/pop culture is kind of very selective in some fashion. Maybe not necessarily selective but more in the lines of being really detached from the past, if because American culture kind of came out of the blue when compared to not only Europe but also China, India, Iran and arguably Senegal, Ghana (when it was both the Ashanti Empire and the Gold Coast), Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo. From the early modern European standpoint, associating dogs with witchcraft’s rather unsurprising, which goes to show you how common this association was in the past.

It’s not at all forgotten in African countries, if because it’s still relevant to this day. But I feel European countries have gotten more postmodern, alongside the profound American influence that came by. Germany had a vexing attitude to dogs before and still does to this day, only in the past it had a lot to do with witchcraft. At present it’s due to both canine predation and people poisoning dogs out of spite, but either way Germany seems more apprehensive around dogs than America is. The same goes for both Austria and Switzerland, since they also have the same problems as well. It’s kind of befitting that one of the most prominent dogs in Germanophone culture is the demonic familiar of Dr Faust, as popularised by Johann von Goethe.

One that’s more deeply embodied in German culture than what Cujo does for American culture, in some regards a lot moreso. And then there’s Malleus Maleficarum, which brings up the association of wolves with witchcraft. So associating either wolves or dogs with witchcraft in the European mind wasn’t that strange before because it used to be this commonplace, similar associations exist in America as a country but only in isolated pockets among some indigenous communities. This is where the American attitude to dogs diverges from its German counterpart, one that seems more consistently enthusiastic around them. That’s not to say Germans don’t value dogs at all, but it’s undermined by recurring suspicions of foul play. Something America doesn’t have to the same extent, really.

The association of wolves and dogs with witchcraft wasn’t really that strange in early modern Europe, owing to its previous ubiquity, that had a character like Ermentrude Wolfenbarger emerged in say 1618, she wouldn’t have been surprising. She is a witch who not only habitually uses dogs and wolves to attack people, but also bewitches them the same, sends dog spirits to torment them and turns into a wolf herself, a witch who’s right at home in African Pentecostal thought as she would be in early modern European Christian thought. But given Canada’s greater proximity to America that a character like Ermentrude Wolfenbarger would stick out like a sore thumb, as Canada was also formed fairly recently and very much a settler-colony as America is.

On the subject of serial killers and pet dogs, there are instances where such characters do like and care for dogs. Most notably the likes of Harold Shipman (who had a black poodle), Myra Hindley who had a dog named Puppet and Dennis Nilsen who had a dog named Bleep, though the thought of murderers having dogs wasn’t so odd during the witch trials. But that’s got to do with them being associated with or suspected of witchcraft in some way that it was to be expected, Ermentrude Wolfenbarger being a murderous witch who likes dogs is pretty unremarkable in this light and likewise the same would go for Harold Shipman, Dennis Nilsen and Myra Hindley in a way. In modern fiction, the closest equivalent would be Dudley and his dog Muttley, which speaks to a kind of underrepresentation.

As underrepresented as witches with dogs, which are historically interconnected and interrelated in Europe before. To the point where if American fiction is in short supply of villainous dog owners that the only viable alternatives are real life stories of murderous dog owners and folklore involving witches who have dogs for familiars, especially if these beliefs are outside of mainstream American culture (Europe at some point, Africa at present). Ermentrude Wolfenbarger and her dogs would be a return to the earlier portrayal, as found in Johann von Goethe’s Faust, so is her using their wild relatives the wolves to do the exact same thing.

These were even mentioned in the book Demons of Urban Reform, which features mentions of documents encountering similar characters in real life at the time. Ermentrude Wolfenbarger and her canine association might be a controversially refreshing change of pace, a villainous witch who uses both dogs and wolves to antagonise people and animals alike.

The Stars, Their Destination

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is sartorial impracticality in character design objectifying?

I feel when it comes to what constitutes as a practical character design and whether if sexual objectification has anything to do with it, at other times it doesn’t seem to be what it ought to be. One could be dressed modestly and still dress impractically, speaking from personal experience wearing really baggy sleeves that get in the way of eating. In the context of superhero stories and the like (i.e. a good number of video games), it usually refers to highly sexualised character designs that get in the way of fighting or whatsoever. From my personal experience, it might be possible to dress demurely yet also impractically, that it does make one wonder if our understanding of impractical dressing’s largely limited to just dressing sexily.

But that would mean the subject matter’s more nuanced than the dichotomy of sexy/ugly, even this has shown up multiple times in video games before in some way. Most notably what both Princesses Zelda and Peach wear, though from a certain standpoint what they wear’s positively anodyne compared to the more sexualised likes of Samus Aran (even before she wore a catsuit, she kind of dressed skimpily and also the way some illustrators depict her catsuit risks pushing things), Lara Croft, Cammy White and Kitana. Actually with Lara Croft, it’s a more complicated by now. Especially when you have lots of women dressing like her in real life, whether the leggings or the shorts, that at this point the way Lara Croft dresses is very unremarkable.

Not necessarily any less sexualised, but highly unremarkable in this day. It would be all the more provocative to see another female character dress in a more demure yet stylish manner, given we’re practically desensitised to sexualised female designs both in ACG media and in real life, especially if it’s a character design that’s barely seen in years that it’s kind of monstrous in its own right. In the sense of being very out of the ordinary, like say supposing if this character named Jemima Szara goes about in a demure black turtleneck blouse and red maxiskirt paired with black tights and red shoes, it wouldn’t exactly be monstrous. It would (still) come off as kind of unusual, because we’re not used to seeing a civilian dress this way.

Let alone an investigative journalist a la Lois Lane and also Insomniac’s Mary Jane Watson, but that’s got to do with American culture favouring both sexiness and comfort in dress over ornamentation and demureness as it is in Japan. Especially among Japanese women in real life that makes the differences between them and their ACG counterparts all the more drastic, but it also means that sometimes dressing impractically doesn’t necessarily mean the character’s sexualised. Princess Peach could be seen as dressing impractically despite dressing modestly, especially if she does certain things contrary to the way she dresses. Lara Croft could be seen as dressing comfortably, despite also dressing skimpily, especially if she starts going about in hot, damp places as there are women who do dress like her for this purpose alone.

It kind of upends one’s understanding of what it means to dress in such a manner, since sometimes dressing impractically might sometimes mean the character dresses too fancily for something. Princess Peach is generally like this and there could’ve been instances where she did dress too impractically for the occasion, just by wearing a nice gown alone and one of my sisters point out that I dress impractically because I habitually wear blouses with baggy sleeves a lot. I don’t play video games much but just by going from my own experiences dressing in such a manner that sometimes dressing impractically might also mean dressing in a way that’s too fancy or gets in the way of eating in my case, not necessarily because the character’s outfit is sexualised.

Not necessarily always because the character’s outfit is sexualised, which means our understanding of what it means to dress practically is kind of context-dependent. Somebody like Lara Croft might actually tend towards comfort over dressing fancily, the sort who feels more comfortable wearing shorts or leggings over a super nice dress, when she’s out looking for adventures in far off places. It happens to be rather skimpy or sexualised, given how they risk coming off as at inopportune times. A hypothetical character like Jemima Szara could be seen as dressing impractically, because she opts to dress in a black blouse and long red skirt with red shoes and black tights, as to look kind out of place and too fancy for the occasion.

Characters like Zelda and Peach, both Nintendo princesses by the way, do upend one’s understanding of what an impractical character design’s like, in that they needn’t to be sexualised to be impractical for the situation they’re put into. They also upend the sexy/ugly dichotomy so falsely assumed by a number of gamers when it comes to coming up with nonsexualised female character designs, similar things can be said of Lara Croft herself who dresses quite practically for the situation, despite being also rather sexualised at the same time (favouring shorts or leggings), there are even women who dress like her in the real world by the way. So it seems what is impractical needn’t to be sexualised, since this can involve dressing too fancily for the circumstances they’re in.

But one that fundamentally upends our understanding of things like these.

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.

California Girl

Somebody said that the destruction of California is the true beginning of the end of America as we know it, even if America’s own decline had been underway for some time now. Japan too will also face its own downfall and disaster, if not demise, but from rejecting God so much that it’s practically like Ananias and Sapphira on a nationwide scale. The couple that vehemently denied God in their hearts and eventually died together, Japan is no different but on a larger scale as many of its people are like them. Though thankfully Saint Ananias is a different person from Ananias, husband of Sapphira despite sharing the same name together, in the same way Jude is the brother of James and actually has the same name as Judas Iscariot as it’s evident in other languages.

It’s been known to people that Japan is the missionary’s graveyard, given how hard it is to convert many more Japanese to Christianity. Compare this to China where despite (or rather because of) opposition to Christianity there, it grew exponentially and the number of Christians in China is substantial enough to justify a decent number of onlinel lectionaries and devotionals to read. There are also fairly substantial Christian communities in both Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam to justify the need for multiple lectionaries and devotionals to read, it’s also like this in both Cambodia and Malaysia to some extent. Japan seems to have a lot of good things going on for it, but ultimately vehemently rejected God all the way.

To the point where a natural disaster will finish or undermine it in a sad way, whereas for California its demise is the true start of America’s end as a superpower. It’s not surprising because the multimedia industry in California is a major contributor to the US economy, given this is where people get much of their entertainment fix from if their own countries’ local industries aren’t substantial enough. This is where many famous Hollywood studios are located in, there is where Netlix is from and possibly a few other streaming services just the same. This is where one of the Disney theme parks are located in, where I think one other prophecy kind of mentioned this. This is also where America’s porn industry is from, so this shouldn’t be surprising.

This shouldn’t surprise Christians that if you reap what you sow, then this is what you get and this is what California will be getting. The East Coast would be next in line for destruction for similar reasons, however politically incorrect it may be because New York is the world’s gay capital. It’s also the centre of America’s own publishing industry, wherein DC used to coexist with Marvel. Or for another matter, both the American Midwest and the American South. If California’s own destruction is the true beginning of America’s end, this would have geopolitical ramifications for America’s own allies in the Asia-Pacific region. This would make them just as susceptible to being captured by China, but one that’s permanent due to their own sins.

I don’t think it’s just the Philippines that will be getting this, since South Korea and Japan would also undergo this just the same. South Korea for similar reasons like the Philippines and Japan for blaspheming against the Holy Ghost, to the point where the latter doesn’t just get destroyed it also gets captured by China for this reason. But this would be a kind of return to form because China used to influence the rest of East Asia to varying degrees depending on the country, this becomes particularly evident when it comes to cuisine and for others, the rest of their own cultures like orthography and the like. I remember what Celestial said that the Soviet Union might return but with many more members this time, given God will use Russia as a weapon of indignation against backsliding Europe.

This would be no different with him using China to accomplish the same thing to both South Korea and the Philippines (reprobate apostasy) and Japan (repeat blasphemy against the Holy Spirit), that it’s conceivable there will be a new Sinosphere with many more members this time. Many of which weren’t part of the earlier Sinosphere as these include Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines, which now constitute as part of Greater China along with the Sinosphere proper (Vietnam, Korea and Japan). A kind of eastern parallel to the new Soviet Union, with a new eastern bloc composed of all the African countries. But this still plays into the true decline of America, as its sphere of influence is already diminishing.

This natural disaster would only hasten its ongoing decline and it’s even plausible it might further hasten the undoing of American influence wherever it went, the more its own allies fall to its enemies for good. Given Canada’s newfound mistrust of America, one would wonder if it’ll ever consent to joining Russia at any point in the future. But even when this happens, this will result in a new west with Russia as its epicentre. Then again Russia does see itself as a new Rome and Rome for the longest period of time greatly influenced Europe, not just in terms of spreading Christianity elsewhere there but also on a linguistic level. Not just due to the emergence of the Romance languages proper.

But also evident in Germanic, Slavic and Celtic languages to varying degrees, for as long as Christianity is spread there with either Greek or Latin as the ecclesiastical languages depending on the denomination. It’s very recent that America would be the seat of western civilisation, since would’ve went to Rome centuries ago. Even then if a thousand years is a day to God, then America’s really just a major flash in the pan. Perhaps America really isn’t meant to last for long, perhaps as a consequence of its sins. But if some things are there for a season, America’s rapid rise and fall kind of plays into this. Perhaps America is never meant to last this long, which is the most horrifying part as this involves realising how transient American influence actually is. But it’s kind of evident with Europe and Canada actively revoking American products, the earthquake will hasten things further.

This also means as a weakened America’s unable to stop Russia from conquering the west, or China conquering the Asia-Pacific region for another matter, these situations will happen anyways and it’s going to be permanent. Russia wouldn’t just succeed in invading Poland but also the rest of Europe and possibly North America to an extent, whereas Japan, South Korea and the Philippines all get captured by China in some manner. And I think even when America starts collapsing for good that coupled with its inability to defend these countries from defending them against its enemies is when these countries kind of hesitantly agree to join their enemies anyways, if it means finding some other superpower to rely on now that America’s way too helpless and impotent to help them.

The destruction of Japan precedes the destruction of America, though Japan’s going to get destroyed for repeatedly blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. America will get destroyed due to it being Mystery Babylon that it’s going to be finished sooner than expected, but since this largely concerns the forthcoming California earthquake that it could ruin other industries. Mind you Sony’s Santa Monica studio is the one behind the God of War series, just as Tencent’s Riot Games is also somewhere in California too. The one behind League of Legends (thus begetting the Arcane programme) and Valorant, unless if these studios move away from California in time they’ll also get destroyed in some way.

But if America’s own video game industry gets ruined by this and America’s own forthcoming economic collapse, would people turn to alternatives more by necessity? This is highly plausible because not only does Japan already have one of the world’s largest video game industries, there are also other countries that are churning out their own successful video games like China with Genshin Impact and Black Myth Wukong, France with Steelrising and Assassin’s Creed in a way. Italy’s got Entoria and eventually La Divine Commedia at any point, though Cameroon’s even got its own gaming publisher in the form of Krio’o Games. The loss of America as a multimedia superpower would necessiate alternatives in its place, however awkward it is (it’s like me whenever some sermons don’t go as expected).

But even then if America’s overdue for destruction, then the California earthquake is one of those and one that’ll succeed in hastening America’s decline.

Colin

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

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

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

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

The thing with Akosamesew Kanewopasikot

As for the figure of Akosamesew Kanewopasikot, he’s based on DC Comics’s Cassandra Cain. As in he not only reads body language real well and is skilled in martial arts, but also kind of quiet (or rather has difficulty speaking eloquently) like she does. Basically the same character if she’s an adult man and also Native American, not that Native American characters are nonexistent in North American fictions. But sometimes the stereotypes of Native Americans run counter to stereotypes about Asians, in the sense that if Asian Americans are the model minority, then Native Americans are considered to be maladjusted failures. If Asian American men are highly desexualised and undersexualised, then Native American men are ridiculously oversexualised.

If Asian Americans are intellectually orientated, Native Americans seem to be portrayed as more supernaturally orientated instead. This isn’t always the case but it does feel this way when it comes to the way these demographics are portrayed, Asians and Asian Americans are almost always portrayed as martial artists, but Native Americans are seldom if ever depicted as such, despite being also stereotyped as warriors of some sort. This character might not be the first Native American martial artist in fiction, but more of a break from tired cliches and why there’s practically no Native American character that’s as well-known as the likes of Shang-Chi, Lady Shiva, Cassandra Cain and Katana tend to be, okay only one of them is this well-known to the general public.

But you should get my point that it’s rather rare to find a Native American martial artist character that has the same clout as Cassandra Cain does, one would only wonder how would she fare well if she and her mum had been Native American from the get-go. Assuming if her backstory remained the same but where both of them are Native Americans instead, they’d be read very differently with Cass being the unfortunately assimilated indigene and Lady Shiva being the bad indigenous mum. Even then it’s practically rare to find a Native American martial artist character, let alone one that has the same clout as she does, if not entirely nonexistent. Akosamesew knows some of the same martial arts as she does, most notably Okichitaw, which is a martial art invented by the Cree.

He also knows savate, jujitsu and muay thai, though contrary to this he tends to be shy and retiring in person. When he’s not working, he’d hunt and fish with his best friend Jean-Louis Lumiere. He’s learning Cree, since he got denied the opportunity to learn it when he was younger. He was briefly fired for sleeping with Richard Sorm’s wife Emma Havisham, which greatly angered their son Ian (Richard was largely indifferent to it). He returned to duty after begging for it and that Jean-Louis misses him very much, so in those days he worked as a PE teacher and also as a fitness instructor for actors. Aside from that, he has a particular affinity for ice hockey (which he plays with Nootaikok), sharpshooting and playing chess, I’m sure there are some Native Americans who do the last one.

When it comes to the way Native American characters are portrayed in comics again, I feel based on what I’ve read although Native American martial artists certainly do exist and have existed before, it’s not exactly the first thing to come to mind and whilst his presence could change things, given the number of nonstereotypical indigenous characters is already pretty small that him existing wouldn’t change much. That’s should he also appear in webcomics at all and this could also be applicable to video games to an extent too, although such characters do prominently feature in things like Tekken for instance. I guess for every Native American character that does diverge from stereotypical portrayals, there are those who adhere to it in some way.

And then there are Native American characters who could belong to an actual tribe or community, but the people in charge of these stories kind of mess it up. When it comes to how a number of western geek authorities demand a lot of worldbuilding in those stories is that authors are kind of pressured to take inspiration from actual cultures, like say taking inspiration from Kazakhstan but given the risk of cultural appropriation is so great that they’re better off writing about actual Kazakhs and depicting Kazakh culture instead. So it would be more sensible to have a realistically portrayed Native American, than something that’s coded Native American but also isn’t really Native American at the same time.

Although coded representation is fine from time to time, sometimes showing the real thing in a less stereotypical light is the better way to go. It’s one thing to relate to a cartoon duck or mouse, it’s another to relate to a cartoon representation of somebody who’s Lakota or Cree. Somebody might be really desperate for representation enough to latch onto any character who seems like them, especially if they’re bereft of similar role models before at some point or another. When it comes to indigenous characters, whilst there are those who aren’t stereotypes, but on the flip side there are others who may not be outright stereotypical but are othered in some way. In the case with Sarah Rainmaker, from what I’ve read, whilst she’s outspoken about many issues, these don’t seem to be influenced by an indigenous worldview.

None of them seem to be influenced by her upbringing, whether if it’s Comanche or Apache, because these have little (if any) bearing on her activism. Oddly enough, if she ever existed in the real world, her activism would most likely be intersectional in nature. She wouldn’t just address racism and sexism, but also how these two intersect when it comes to the lived experiences of indigenous women like herself. Even if not all indigenous people are like this, let alone indigenous women, but it’s not uncommon for a number of indigenous women to discuss the intersections of racism and sexism aimed at themselves. Sarah Rainmaker could’ve easily done that really, though I feel the people who depict her aren’t indigenous women, sadly and terribly. Or even indigenous people in general, since they’re the ones who’d relate to her struggles the most.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, these things include MMIWG (Murdered, Missing Indigenous Women and Girls), sexualisation of Native American outfits (especially when worn by those who aren’t indigenous North Americans themselves) and the like, but also less commonly talked about is how sexualised Native American men are. In the sense that in such romantic stories, they’re portrayed as the epitome of virile masculinity or something. I think I read a story like this before, coupled with how romance novels had these men as their leads. It’s not any better if it happened to him and it would be more of the same thing really, just compounded by his ability to read body language real well, despite being rather shy and retiring around people.

As for his appearance, you could say that he looks like Poundmaker. He was a Cree and Metis man raised by a Blackfoot family after losing his own parents or something, he also wore what appeared to be dreadlocks and you get an idea of what Akosamesew looks like. Though it could be said that some of his own relatives are Blackfoot and hung out with them, so they kind of rubbed off on him in a way. Not to mention some of his own relatives are Metis or the descendants of white people and indigenous people, but are considered to be separate from scions of more recent European and indigenous descent. Culturally they’re kind of different as well, though it’s not uncommon for them to have both First Nations and settler relatives, since I know somebody who’s like this. There you have it, a good idea of what he is as a character.

Nootaikok et la colère froide

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

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

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

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

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

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