Aiden Bishop (The Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle)
Voting ended onMar 11, 2025
Propaganda for Hayato:
(by me the mod) A lot of timeloop character get trapped in a timeloop to get over their issues. Hayato is not one of those. He has issues long before the timeloop, particularly with his home life, and they get MUCH MUCH WORSE! This poor child is put into a timeloop not by a cosmic force but a serial killer disguised as his dad, and he is made the catalyst used to murder people in the timeloop. Someone get this kid a therapist.
Just finished reading The seven deaths of Evelyn Heardcastle and boy did I like it? It was a journey, I couldn't figure out the ending the till the very end, even after re-reading the chapters. Maybe I'm just bad at investigations and I would have stayed at Blackheat forever, but JAAA THE PLOTTWINSTING.
I swear I gasped throughout the whole book
May or may not ruined myself the grand finale cause I kept forgetting the names and I was like who's this bitch now?
Anyway I really recommend this book, and if u already read it, read it again cause I'm sure I'm not the only one with a nonexistent memory:)
currently finding it funny reading through the tumblr tag for 7 Deaths and seeing someone complaining that the author made Anna 'Aiden's love interest'. like, say what you want about the ending of the book, but there's no romance there. those two are friends.
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Only last month, I read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – the similarities of the titles striking a strange chord inside me, even though the stories within are very different. And I must confess that I liked this book better even while it lacks queerness.
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is set at an undisclosed time – though it feels like the 1920s or ’30s – at the estate Blackheath of…
TL;DR: "A female!Aiden could’ve had a message to add to the novel, because representation is deeper than just making a character this race or this gender. Representation can and should be meaningful, and not just face value." Anyway, here, I spiral about the in-world ramifications of a female!Aiden. This could either mean he's gender non-conforming or this sci-fi justice and criminal rehabilitation system is transphobic and would willingly misgender someone in the program. This is a very suppositional and theoretical ramble.
A female!Aiden has a lot of cards to bring to the table, but I don’t know if any of them would complement the story. That’s the issue, I think. All elements of a story must do something in a story, otherwise they’d be scrapped. What is the artistic merit of a female!Aiden and what could a female!Aiden bring to the story other than representation?
I have an interesting take on this idea: the introduction of malicious misgendering in these thought-prisons and possible parallels to the transphobia in the justice system. This idea involves some hinting in one chapter, as well as some off-the-cuff headcanon worldbuilding. Let’s look into it.
Aiden is caught in some sort of technologically advanced prison/rehabilitation center in an autocratic state. Turton didn’t say anything about the state’s views on sexuality and gender orientation, but I like to assume that they’ve solved heteronormativity and are generally relaxed on the ideas of gender identity. Let’s assume that Aiden identifies as male, and thus he is only given male hosts in the prison. If he was alright with being placed in a female host, they’d place him in a female host, no issue. That’s the simple headcanon.
But the introduction of gender-blind hosts changes some things. Let’s look at Aiden’s in-world thoughts on the possibility of having a female host.
My hand grips my cane. Whoever this Mrs. Derby is, she’s acting oddly and asking the same questions I am. Perhaps I’ve found another of my rivals.
Or another host.
The suggestion makes me blush, Ravencourt’s familiarity with women extending only so far as acknowledging their existence in the world. The thought of becoming one is as unintelligible to him as a day spent breathing water.
The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Chapter 15
It’s very vague, and it’s possible that Aiden is mixing into Ravencourt’s feelings, but as we see here, Aiden at this moment could either be ambivalent, on the fence, or uncomfortable with having a female host. In-universe, Aiden adopts his hosts' mannerisms, memories, emotions, and their biological conditions. To me, seeing how Aiden would react to a female host would be very interesting compared to just having a female host for shits and giggles or just-so representation. How would he feel, as someone who prefers identifying as male? Would he feel a discernible difference, biologically or socially? How would the people he met and knew treat him differently in a female body?
That last part is something I’d love to see. Throughout the story, we see Aiden try his best to work past his host’s limitations. With Sebastian Bell, he’s coming to terms with the man’s moral failings. With Lord Ravencourt, he’s forced to find someone else to be his feet, eyes, and hands due to his immobility. With Johnathan Derby, he constantly had to keep Derby’s addiction and perversion in check. If he were placed in the body of, say, a female servant like Anna was, he would have to find workarounds for both the sex and class stratification, furthering Turton’s critique on the treatment of working class women in his setting. If, alternatively, Aiden was turned into a higher class woman, it’d be interesting to see how we’d interact with the world around him. Or, it’d be a gateway to paragraphs of Aiden waxing poetic about gender dysphoria and sympathizing with the plight of women.
If Aiden was maliciously misgendered when he’s not comfortable with being female, it also brings up a whole lot of in-world ramifications that are disturbing: in the Evelyn Hardcastle universe, the justice system would be as shitty to trans or gender nonconforming folk as our present justice system. Making Aiden a woman if he is uncomfortable with it suggests that the people who run the rehabilitation program are fine with misgendering people on purpose. This is horrific when you remember that the goal of this rehabilitation program is to keep the prisoners inside long enough to the point of losing their sense of self and forgetting who they were to make them “better people.”
Just to be clear: This is not me shitting on the idea of a female!Aiden. This is me overthinking the lore of this universe once this point of purposeful misgendering is brought up. This book doesn’t shy away from talking about issues like sexism or elitism. In fact, this book was meant to be a sci-fi critique on the idea of making these prisons a reality in our world. Bringing up transphobia in the justice system in such an oblique but horrific way would’ve been so memorable. In doing so, it would’ve added to the discussion the story is setting and added context and consequences in the rules the author was setting. A female!Aiden could’ve had a message to add to the novel, because representation is deeper than just making a character this race or this gender. Representation can and should be meaningful, and not just face value.
I personally would love to see a novel that addresses malicious misgendering in a technological mental prison, but that novel isn’t Evelyn Hardcastle because that’s not the story it was intended to be. Literature is first art and then a platform for social critique, and it’s a platform that can only handle so many ideas before unravelling. And the best part is that even if those ideas aren’t intended by the author because we can impose our own ideas and feelings on pieces of media in any way we like!
If you’ve read this far, I’d be open to hear your thoughts on a female!Aiden and possible storylines or any musings you may have, because there are a whole lot of possibilities to be made here.
Want to see more essays like this? Check out my blog’s masterlist for more hot takes or book recommendations.
"The 7 1/2 deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle" was such an exciting and intriguing book, so of course had to try my hand at doodling all of Aiden's hosts!
This was definitely a challenge, but it was fun to try and come up with everyone's appearances (and well-needed practice for me as an artist). Gotta say I'm pretty proud of how Ravencourt came out, especially!
