that one March Hare kinnie that wont shut up abt AYA? (Ku - any/all) and Leafy is also here but they don't post lol (one day I will drag them into the series more)
Most of the time, MC views their friends and lovers as normal civilians, just people trying to get by. But, of course, there are times where they can't help but remember that they're the elites of the elites.
Lucifer's red eyes are glowing through the shadow casted by the dark alley where a low-level demon thought it would be nice to stand in his path, "Huh?" He mumbled to himself then scoffed "Huh." they sounded the same to you, but the way he looked down at the demon, it surely is different treatment from how he is to you.
It's insane how much Mammon treats other people. Sure, you've come with him to play in the casino before, but this is your first time entering a... Private room. And surely, this is your first time seeing someone, Mammon, go crazy while playing Russian roulette. His beautiful laugh boomed inside the room as his opponent is about to pull the trigger, the suicide shot. "Haaah, shit! This is the type of shit I live for!" He laughed as he nuzzled on your neck while waiting for his opponents brain to scatter on the wall.
You thought Leviathan is just an extreme case of introvertness, but obviously—it's not just that. "Yeah, yeah..." He mumbled, bored, as countless nobles came to greet the head of the navy. But there was this one interesting occurance, a noble that held his hand. Sure his composure was commendable but as soon as the noble turned its back, his hand covered his mouth and you saw a glimpse of him stick his tongue out as if vomiting. Your eyes widened. Soon, maids started hurrying to his side, changing his gloves and spraying his hands with alcohol. "Opportunistic pigs... I hate greed demons." You heard him whisper, obviously not intending for you to hear.
Satan was the type to stay calm and often as a gentleman, maybe to you only. During one meeting between some nobles though, he looked particularly mad. "You sure have a lot to say." He suddenly gave off a threatening smile as he fix his position on the seat, then all of a sudden—splat. That disgusting sound rang on your ears as the head of the noble was blown away and then you saw a familiar tail coming from under the table that pierced the nobles head strong enough for it to blow away.
THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN BABY, LET'S GOOOOOOO MOTHERFUCKERRRRRR
So obviously there's going to be spoilers for the series to follow and I'm going to throw the majority of this ramble under a cut because I tend to be verbose, but oh buddy oh boy do I have Thoughts about the particular chain of motion that links the main characters and the importance of the roles they play (and how it ties into the themes of purpose and death.)
In particular these two.
I'm probably going to get ahead of myself though, so instead of starting there, let's to back to the first link in the chain of motion.
1: We're starting with Lewis Carroll, aka the Mad Hatter and also the White Knight.
He's the hidden antagonist present from the beginning when we're introduced to him as the Mad Hatter, and we're told he's the person best suited to protect "Alice" whenever a new person enters Wonderland and takes up the role of "Alice" to get the game moving. We're told he has the ability to neutralize/kill anyone who threatens "Alice" or tried to harm them. Bits and pieces of his identity and backstory are revealed throughout the entire series, and his role is a complex one.
As the White Knight, he represents Carroll's ideal self, created with the sole purpose of protecting "Alice", though he cannot perceive his inverse mirror, the Mad Hatter. (He CAN perceive Hatter once he's regained his sense of identity as Carroll though, and Carroll has chosen to discard him as his realized ideal.)
As the Mad Hatter, his identity of Lewis Carroll being sealed away from him, he is given this role to escort and neutralize threats to whoever is "Alice" on their journey to kill the White Rabbit to become the true Alice. He's stuck in a state of suspended time, thanks to the Queen of Hearts, and if he disobeys his orders from the QoH three times, his time will resume moving forward, which will allow him to regain his former identity as Lewis Carroll.
And as Carroll, he can no longer discern fiction and reality. His muse is both Alice Liddell and the Alice he's created for his story. The two identities are intertwined beyond separation for him, and his purpose has become warped. He unceasingly continues to search for ways to kill off storybook Alice, supposedly as a comfort to the real Alice Liddell, who is slowly dying. But due to his inability to separate the person and the character anymore, his desire to save her and get them both out of Wonderland together conflicts with his impulse to kill her. An impulse, we learn, that he subconsciously carries out as the Mad Hatter if he has come to accept an Alice candidate as Alice.
And, as Carroll, his ability to eliminate threats to Alice, to himself, and to kill Alice off is almost entirely total, due to his power as the author of the story. And yet he needs her, despite how many times he has killed her. The story doesn't progress for him, his time doesn't move, he isn't driven to finish the story, without her.
—
2: Which naturally brings us to Alice/Mary Ann, who is both Alice Liddell and Alice in Wonderland.
Her identity, either due to Carroll's impact on her or her own desire to survive, has blurred the lines between the Alice she actually is and the Alice she isn't. No longer can the one exist without her counterpart. And when you follow her story arc throughout the series, you begin to realize that much like Carroll, she escaped into the story. She did it to survive, because she was dying.
She fascinates me for this reason. She is afraid to accept her own death so she finds a way to hold it off. And yet she's unhappy. As time goes on, she becomes increasingly unhappy and distraught. She cannot see Carroll despite wanting to see him again, and yet she knows he spells doom for her. Eventually, when she is finally brought to him, it's because she's now realized and decided how she must face him.
She has to accept the death she's run from for so long, by taking her fate into her own hands and choosing the final manner of her death. By doing so, she can rest at last and be free and safe.
But she couldn't have gotten to that point if the White Rabbit hadn't led her there.
—
3: Which brings us of course to The White Rabbit, or Whitey, as the March Hare so fondly calls him.
I would argue he's one of, if not THE most compelling character in the entire series.
He gives Alice the name "Mary Ann" to help her evade her death she's so terrified of. He rebuilds Wonderland from the scraps of drafts discarded by Lewis Carroll, for her. He sets this entire game in motion, with the roles, the abilities, the "Alice" candidates, the goal of killing him, in an attempt to save her. Nearly everything he does, he does for her. She's his reason for existing.
Yet he has his own desires, his own wants and hopes that begin to branch off from what he's built. And all of these things go against his actual position and role in the storybook, and are at odds with his purpose. His position and role in the storybook are that, whether or not he's aware of Alice chasing him, he isn't meant to look back and acknowledge her. He has to keep running forward, so she can follow him.
And when you consider the purpose he actually serves here in the end and the way it's intertwined with Alice, it becomes clearer why.
Death is often said to have a pale visage, to be called the pale rider, evoking a skull-like pallor to his face, and yet so often he's shrouded in black robes. And here, we have the White Rabbit, wearing black. And ultimately, when he resumes his purpose to move on, to go forward so Alice/Mary Ann can be led by him to her fate, he is helping lead her to the acceptance of her death.
I think back to the Black Rabbit of Inlé from Watership Down here, and the way in which he's often spoken of with awe, with fear and dread by the rabbits...and yet when he finally appears at the end of the story, he brings a sense of peace, comfort, and resolve. And here in this manga, I feel like the White Rabbit encapsulates a similar role. I think of the way many stories and media often depict the entity of Death as one who either leads you on your path or walks beside you when They come to collect you. And that's what the White Rabbit does for Alice/Mary Ann. (And to a lesser extent but no less important, for the March Hare.)
He is Death. And when he finally accepts that, he is able to truly help those he cares about (and perhaps even those he resents) reach the end of their stories in Wonderland.
But he couldn't do that without our POV character.
—
4: Which brings us to The Fake Alice/the Little Brother.
Lewis Carroll pursues Alice. Alice pursues the White Rabbit. The Rabbit isn't meant to look back at her, and yet the manga gives us this contradictory loop, stating he is chasing "her", wanting "Alice" to kill him.
This contradiction is pointed out to him and yet in its own way, it's still needed. Because of the Alice we follow, the young man who is a fake, the imagined younger brother Carroll wrote to try to comfort Alice Liddell and make her happy, to give her at least one story in which the character of Alice can have a happy, untainted experience. Yet still circumstances have warped his existence, his purpose, and he's been thrust into the Alice candidacy. It's the closest thing to a sense of identity he has, and he's pursuing a shifting goal. Even the aim of the "game" for "Alice" to kill the White Rabbit is one we can tell his heart isn't truly behind; he simply wants to know who he is, to be able to have an identity to call his own, and to get to the heart of the mystery surrounding Alice in Wonderland.
And the reason he can do this, so he can actually make the story and the game advance, is because he wasn't brought to candidacy by the White Rabbit. The White Rabbit never picked him, he never even wholly accepted him. And he begins to (in his own way) chase the Fake Alice, the Little Brother, his reasons shifting as they go.
So we see the chain of motion.
Carroll chases Alice, who wants to see him again but must follow the White Rabbit, who must lead her but can't actually reach the point of doing so on his own without pursuing the Fake Alice.
And really, would that Fake Alice, the nameless little fictional brother who was discarded like so much paper, have actually been able to lead without the guidance of the cat, who both molded him for and tricked him into accepting the Alice candidacy?
—
5: And so we come to the Cheshire Cat, whose true identity is Dinah.
Like Carroll, the Rabbit, and the Brother, his reason for being is tied up in Alice, and like Carroll he's real. Nearly everything in the story from beginning to end is a result of his machinations, done for the sake of the love he had for Alice as his owner, and his desire to see her free at last.
And in order to do that, he's had to consistently follow Carroll and pick up his pieces, to take what he so carelessly threw away and use it well, to shape the brother, to motivate the rabbit to run, to get Alice to accept her death on her own terms with courage.
This is a chain of motion running through them all, and in more ways than one, it constantly links back to itself, not in a perfect loop, but it doesn't have to be. In a way, it's the Caucus Race, realized, tied together by these characters linked by love, by death, and their purposes.
And I fucking love it.
I fucking love the way that this is written, the way it's all intertwined. It shows so much care and deliberate attention to the story, to its own themes, to what it wants to tell.
This is good fucking shit.
I've been listening to "Miss Murder" by A.F.I. on repeat while writing this out. And yeah, I know the low-hanging fruit would have been "Her Name Is Alice" by Muse, and it's not a bad choice per se, but after getting through the entire series, "Miss Murder" is truly the song that I feel fits best. Can't get it off my mind, and now the association between that song and this series is cementing itself, given how much it helped me pump out this little essay.
If you don't mind me "yes, and"ing you, there is a very specific thing that I absolutely love about this chain of motion, what themes lie at its core (which I will later refer to as the "point of fixation"), and furthermore, the almost pendulum motion it takes before it finally stops being in motion all together.
We get the impression from the introduction that this movement is a cycle, and as we continue along the path of the story, we have a better idea about how this cycle plays out as the story unfolds. However, it is eventually revealed to us that this "cycle" is not as round as it seems. It's moving, as I said, in a pendulum motion. In order for me to explain how this chain of motion is truthfully a pendulum, and what point of fixation brings it in on an axis, I feel it would be best we actually examine examples in chronological order or order of revelation:
Arguably, as painful as it is, one of my favorite initial and exemplary points to illustrate how this chain of motion looks cyclical is through one of our side characters: the Duchess.
After this moment, where the Duke eats the Duchess, the characters of Wonderland both console and also firmly push Fake Alice to continue moving forward. Why? Because her sacrificing herself is her role- that is the role of the Duchess.
I think there is an additional tangent here that I want to briefly touch on as a call back to a discussion point you brought up, Cy, and that is how the Duchess truly acts as foreshadowing in plain sight- even if on a first pass you don't see it. The Duchess was always destined to die at the hand of her "husband"- the love of her life as asigned to her in her role. And when she actually commits and concedes to her role as she is supposed to, albiet distraught and mournful, she is met with finality and with mourning to those who loved her most. This is the Fate of Alice- so naturally, her substitute would HAVE to meet the same fate.
But as I highlight this tangent, I use it as a means to bring us back to my point. Because this is still a part of the game, despite her being the first and arguably only one until the climax to fulfill her role, we are told there will always be another Duchess so long as there will be another Alice. The cycle will always continue, so long as there is another Alice. A different Alice.
And see here, we understand that any Alice who isn't Mary Ann is "not actually Alice". And anyone who has regrets is either killed, or if they are too close to her- to close to replacing her and being her, they are killed by other means- Thanks, Dinah.
But of course, someone has to come and fill the role of Alice. Just like someone must fill the role of Duchess, or Queen of Hearts, or Hatter, someone must fill the role of Alice if Mary Ann isn't Alice. It is from these two examples that we start to see the Point of Fixation develop. And I would actually make the argument that we have known of this Point of Fixation from the beginning.
"Who Are You?" - if you read that in the Disney Catepillar voice, congrats. Have yourself a cookie.
But no seriously, what is your role? What is your purpose? Who Are You? What is your Name?
This is the hinge in which all feats of movement happen in this book- yes, including the chain of motion that Cy is describing. And it is because of this fixated point that we see a pendulum, not even a fully rounded cycle.
Someone is the Duchess, the pendulum swings until it hits that outward most point: The Point where Whitey finds "Alice". Then, her life descends into motion, heading toward that point of fixation, her role. She dies at the center point. We return to center. Someone else is pulled from the World and is appointed the Duchess. The pendulum swings outward again until another Alice is found. And because this motion rhythmically hits the same beats indefinitely, its not 3 Dimensional. Its moving from a single point on a single axis.
Someone without a True Role who HAD a name- and this is important- tries to become Alice. They are appointed by Whitey, the pendulum swings out. They begin to remember, or they begin to doubt, or they piss off the wrong person (Thanks, Dinah. Thanks, Carroll). That point is the outward most point, before the Alice descends to their death, or they themself become a regret. Then a new Alice must be summoned.
So when we examine the main characters that you had brought up, Cy, what makes them different? What makes them stand out?
All of them has to make a choice: Which role are you going to assume?
Will the Hatter be the Hatter? Or will he reground himself in reality and resume his life, his grief, his anguish as Carroll?
Will Mary Ann continue to be Mary Ann? Or will she allow herself a chance to rest and know peace from the illness she suffers?
Will the Cheshire be the Cheshire? Or will he resign himself to the life of a neglected housecat? Allowing himself to mourn the loss of his owner much like he mourned the loss of his favorite Duchess?
Will the White Rabbit be the White Rabbit? Or will he concede and acknowledge that he is a story of inconclusivity? That the ending is a murky finality that cannot be written nor predicted, much like the allusion to Death you mentioned before?
Will Alice be Alice? Or will he become the Little Brother? Will he fulfill the Fake role that was assigned to him by the Cheshire Cat? Or will be figure out who is Truly is?
And the reason he breaks the cycle, and kick starts that chain of motion that ENDS the pendulum's swing? Is because he chooses to make a space for himself. To defy the role gifted to him. To find a real name, a real purpose for himself- even if the truth reveals that he is no one. He is fiction.
And we see that with all of them. This chain of motion we see, and the resolution we see comes from a CHOICE. An answer to the very question: Who Are You?
(I hope this made sense typing this out. I'm at work, so I haven't had the chance to revise and reorganize the way I normally would an academic piece.)
Because it's an excellent example of the concepts that we are who we choose to be/become, but that can mean so many things. Even in the framework of fixed roles like what is shown in this series, there's a lot to be said for the way one chooses to fulfill a role (or even multiple roles, I would say.) Many of the characters need to accept who they are meant to be, while also understanding that that doesn't solely define them or lock them into rigid framework to the point where their choices don't matter. In fact we see the opposite is true!
I would say that Mary Ann and Carroll are excellent examples if we apply it to the need to accept what's happened to them. Mary Ann needs to accept her death on her own terms in order to rest in peace, and Carroll needs to accept the loss of his creative muse and drive. When either of them try to resist, they suffer from it, and for what?
But we don't get the resolution, the freedom, until Mary Ann makes the choices she does about her death. She has to accept it (and everything else) but she's able to do it on her own terms at last, and THAT brings peace and fulfillment.
Identity is so many things, and so critically, so very critically, it is also our choices and how they shape us.
And I fucking love the way this series explores that.
i am not immune to rare AYA items that I haven't seen before
like Hello?!?! new sort of March hare image i've never seen before and it's the cutest thing ever (the 2nd image, it's a CD case cover)
who's that waiter though :thinking emoji:
baratheonpilled
andulkaphoto
snowghoul
turnnoffyourmind
ellievsbear
prguitarman
