The 2010s were a time of rapid advancement in video games, both gameplay-wise and most importantly, storywise. Queer narratives in video games were, more or less, unheard of until the last decade, not counting very early PC releases such as 1989’s Caper in the Castro, a charityware game revolving around a lesbian private detective investigating the disappearance of her kidnapped drag queen friend. Since the early 2010s, more games have focused on not only queer leads, but queer female leads in well known releases, from 2015’s Life is Strange to 2020’s The Last of Us Part II. However, the most notable lack of representation is towards transgender women in these triple-A productions, with most depictions revolving around transgender men, such as 2020’s Tell Me Why and the aforementioned The Last of Us Part II. As a result, independent game developers pick up the slack for telling compelling narratives about transwomen. In 2017, game developer, Accidental Queens, released an inexpensive puzzle game called A Normal Lost Phone,that within its short playtime, tells a story of transgender teens exploring their identities online, as well as exploring the age-old adage of “you can never go back home.”
A Normal Lost Phone made its initial debut on Steam and Itch.io, before eventually making its way to the Nintendo Switch in 2018. The game revolves around the player discovering a phone belonging to a bisexual transgender girl named Sam, a revelation that one discovers as they solve the puzzles of unlocking the phone. Sam lives a double life, one that is pulling her apart, where she presents as a cisgender male to her family and local friends, while presenting as a cisgender female to her friends outside of town at a board game store she goes to. It’s slowly revealed that Sam’s family is extremely homophobic, a subplot revelation regarding an older cousin who she was told ran off to join a cult is revealed to have simply been kicked out when he came out as gay. Additionally, Sam learns that her girlfriend, Melissa, shares the same anti-queer rhetoric that her families does. While Sam doesn’t receive any direct abuse from her parents, the fear of being abused and kicked out sits heavily in her mind, with the fear of being outed dictating her almost every move. She finds that there is not really a safe place for her anywhere, even with online dating apps forcing her to present with two separate profiles as a straight cisgender male and female. Her identity is constantly challenged without her even being out to anyone, which eventually leads her to making a clean break from her home and old life of being two separate individuals, becoming one person: Sam, a bisexual transgender woman.
Queer and transgender teens living with homophobic parents is a reality that many are forced to live with. Like Sam, the idea of being outed is terrifying, but the lack of human connection regarding one’s true self can be tough. As a result, one of the most common things for these teenagers to do is to be themselves, hidden, online. In the game, it’s revealed that Sam has only ever explored being transgender, openly, online on a forum dedicated for sharing these experiences. When I was younger, having only very recently come to terms with being transgender, I found myself doing much of the same thing. I was afraid of being out at home or anywhere else in public, so I found myself exploring being transgender on the social media blogging site, Tumblr. This was the first time I truly felt I could figure out these feelings I had been having regarding my gender identity, when there was genuinely no place else to do so. For lack of a better term, it became my home, the only place I felt safe acting as myself and showing off my growing interest in queer media. It was where I was encouraged, and where I met a lot of the people who helped me grow to where I am now as a person. A Normal Lost Phone explores themes of queer and trans identity online, though limited by its gameplay medium, in a way that most pieces of larger media either ignore or fail to do. In more recent titles, such as Tell Me Why or The Last of Us Part II, it is very obvious that the stories being told are meant to be far more broad in order to appeal to cisgender players. While abuse and transphobia are both present themes in these games, they are explored through very different lenses. The former explores themes of trans identity through one’s traumatic transphobic past, having coming out at an early age, while the other explores those themes through a violent religious lens of a child coming out in an apocalyptic world where being transgender is much more of a challenge. There is honest difficulty in presenting these identities as online in video games, but none really attempt to do so either. That in there lies the problem of how publishers and developers mostly choose to appeal to a broader audience with stories regarding transgender characters, but in turn end up leaving out stories for the most vulnerable closeted queer teens. Independent developers, as a result, are left producing short games that explore these themes but at the cost of mostly being unknown to the general gaming public, they become games that one plays either by stumbling upon them by accident or someone with a large social media following discovers it. And with the more limited budgets these developers have, these stories end up in much smaller forms such as visual novels or simple detective puzzle games like A Normal Lost Phone, yet manage to capture these stories in a way that these triple-A studios with huge writing teams fail to do.
In 2013, the gaming community saw Gone Home, one of the seminal queer narratives of the 2010s, released on Steam. The game is a first person “walking simulator”, where the player takes the role of a woman in 1995 named Katie, who returns to her parents’ new home after being abroad. The stormy night of her homecoming, she finds that her parents and younger sister, also named Sam, are nowhere to be found. A lone note from Sam discourages Katie from looking into what happened. The eventual reveal becomes that her entire family has fallen apart in her absence. Sam is revealed to be a lesbian, who fell in love with her best friend, Lonnie, while her parents are on the verge of a divorce. Everything in the game’s setting brings up this lonely nostalgic feeling, as Katie explores a home she has no relation to where her family fell apart. Outside the large house is an unyielding storm that only highlights the isolation one feels as they play. The sisters’ parents find out that Sam is a lesbian, beginning to emotionally abuse her and deny that she is a lesbian. “You can never go back home” is the old saying that means when a person returns to a place they once were, it can never be the same as they remember it. Gone Home is the embodiment of the act of returning, whereas A Normal Lost Phone is the act of leaving. When Sam leaves, she does so without any evidence of her mere existence. Alice asks the player, plainly, to delete all data off of Sam’s phone to hide all remaining evidence of where Sam went. In a voyeuristic sense, it is the ultimate kindness one can give as the person who found the phone. When Katie goes against her sister’s wishes, it’s out of a state of worry. She has returned home, to find nothing is at all the same in her absence. And it will never be the same, her family broke apart while she was abroad and despite being a silent protagonist, the musical cues can tell there’s sadness for the loss of her sister and hope that her sister finds happiness away from their home. Both Sams are young queer women, in times where their very presence is fought against. Both leave, and via a voyeuristic third party protagonist, the player learns that going home is impossible. Not only in the symbolic sense of things changing, like for Katie and the loss of her family, but for the physical actions of A Normal Lost Phone’s Sam being unable to ever return. Her choice to abandon her old life, weighed down by the chains of her secrets, is ultimately the best choice that Sam can make. More than likely, her parents will never truly figure out why she left. Katie returns to find nothing the same, while Sam leaves knowing that nothing there will ever be the same.The internet can become a great tool for a young queer or trans person to forge their own identity, not only for the online space but also one they can eventually apply in real life to themselves.
A Normal Lost Phone encapsulates the feelings of secrecy and distress that young transgender people can have when living in a transphobic household, where there is no room for mistakes. From Sam’s secret dating profiles to her emails to her diary, hidden within a fake calculator app, there is a lot of stress the player feels for Sam. All of these are extremely realistic, right down to using fake apps to simply hide one’s written feelings. For a lot of people who reinvent themselves, and find a new way to want to live, leaving home permanently is the only real end solution to the problem of abusive or probable abusive parents. Both Sam and Sam suffer in different ways, and through queer communities, in real life and online, they manage to find something new for themselves, a hopeful future. And the overall message becomes extremely clear, and that is the simple fact that one can never return home. Why? Well, it will never be the same again.
One game that I’ve had sitting on my Steam Library, yet somehow never opened or played, for years has been The Missing: JJ Macfield and the Island of Memories. This game released in 2018, and when it comes to talking about video games that revolve around queer issues and themes, I basically never see anything about it outside of initial reviews that came out after it released. Over the past two days, I decided to finally play it all the way through to see what it was about. This game was nominated for Game for Impact at the 2018 Game Awards, losing out to Celeste, which unfortunately is a hard game to beat and is another of my favorite games of all time.
That said, as much as I love Celeste and continue to play it even now, The Missing is a game that hit me so hard that I was reminded of the first time I played Life is Strange. The latter game helped me come to terms with who I am, so the fact that The Missing managed to inflict a similar feeling upon me is impressive. Like a lot of my favorite games, The Missing is a game dripping with symbolism and dream logic. Is this my new favorite game? Possibly. My favorite tends to rotate between Life is Strange and Celeste, depending on my mood, but The Missing is an extremely well written game.
So what is The Missing? It’s a 2D platform-puzzle game, written and directed by Hidetaka Suehiro aka SWERY. If that name sounds familiar to you, it’s almost definitely because Suehiro is most well known for his work on the Dead Premonition games, a pair of critically polarizing horror games that take a lot of inspiration from western works like Twin Peaks. The second game reportedly had transphobic content in it, something Hidetaka quickly apologized for, noting his English skills as poor and something he would work to fix. Considering his history, I’m inclined to believe he made a genuine writing mistake and this game is part of why I believe him.
This game will contain deep spoilers for The Missing, so stop reading her if you do NOT want to be spoiled about the twists and turns of the game’s story and contain some triggering elements such as talk on suicide and self-harm, along some other topics.
So right off the bat, I wanna talk about the gameplay. Normally, I forego talking about gameplay primarily because I like to talk about story and character content. But here I need to point out that the game’s 2D platforming can be frustrating, especially on a better hardware setup. I recently got a new laptop running a GeForce RTX 2070 Super, which is wonderful compared to what I used to have. However, the game was running so quickly that my inputs were being read incorrectly. I was unable to jump as high as normal, making the game near impossible at the point where I changed laptops. By limiting the FPS down to 60, the game worked normal. But it did show me how finnicky the controls can be at parts where you have to do some precision platforming. In addition, some actions require small cutscenes every time you do it resulting in the game slowing to a crawl. I do believe, however, that these problems are minute enough not to cause a problem. I completed the game, with all collectible donuts, in around 7 hours.
The Missing is a game primarily about two women: Jackie Jameson Macfield and her best friend Emily. The two are extremely close, and while out camping near their hometown, Emily suddenly vanishes and the island turns into a nightmare. JJ is struck by lightning, killing her, but she’s suddenly granted the ability to regenerate her body after she dies. The goal of the game is to find Emily while proceeding through areas and solving platform-puzzle challenges to progress and grab 271 donuts, the game’s main collectible. Grabbing every donut is important, since each one takes you a step closer in understanding JJ as a character via unlockable text messages with her friends and her professor.
Most of these challenges are not solved normally, however. As I said before, JJ can regenerate her body after being harmed. Of course, her body can be completely decimated with her having to horribly harm herself to remove limbs up to only being a head in order to progress through these puzzles. JJ can also harm herself in other ways, including setting herself on fire or breaking her neck in order to flip the area upside down. All of these self-harming behaviors are integral to the gameplay. The last gameplay type is running away from the Hairshrieker, a monster made of bones that chases JJ through the island with a giant box cutter. It’s pretty much just platforming with a monster that will kill you.
First Hairshrieker encounter
So far it seems like a pretty normal horror puzzle game, right? What could possibly be so deep and meaningful about it? Especially if it’s a queer game being written by a Japanese auteur. It’s weird, because I’ve played games by queer or trans devs that deliver authentic experiences to players. Now I’m unsure whether or not SWERY consulted anyone when writing this game, because it feels a lot like Tell Me Why in the aspect of being a game written with consultants in mind to produce an experience that feels genuine.
From the very beginning, the game lets you know that there’s something up with Emily. Hiding secrets and running away from JJ at every point, with JJ unable to ever catch up to her. As JJ collects donuts through the game, reaching a certain number will unlock text chains that JJ has previously had with people she knows ranging from friends to her professor to her mother and Emily, though the latter two unlock no matter what as you progress through the game. Each chain shows what kind of person JJ is around certain people. Around her punk rocker friend, Abby, she seems always willing to help as well as being understanding of Abby’s plight about being talked down to for her attitude and the way she dressed. With Philip, who is less of a friend and more an annoying classmate, is a rich kid who takes advantage of JJ’s kind attitude, even though JJ is fully aware she’s being taken advantage of. There’s Lily, a more feminine girl who seems to have an obsessive crush on JJ. And finally there’s Professor Goodman, a product designer whom JJ works for as an AI (assistant instructor.)
Text chains with JJ’s mother and Emily are probably the most important. Throughout the game, they will periodically update to reveal more of JJ’s personality. JJ is truly only herself around Emily, where there’s a stark difference in the way she interacts between someone like Lily or Abby compared to Emily. JJ seems to put on a mask for everyone else, only showing joy and her insecurities to Emily, who is always there to show JJ support. JJ’s mother, on the other hand, has a horrible relationship with JJ. JJ often gives her mom one word responses as the mother seems to push all her wants onto JJ, such as JJ becoming some sort of heir to the family. This implies JJ’s family is quite rich in some aspect, as the mother desperately wants JJ to inherit her deceased father’s legacy and often talks about how happy she is that JJ turned out “normal.”
Early on, the game wants you to believe that Emily has a secret. The secret can easily be interpreted as Emily being a lesbian and having feelings for JJ, who may or may not reciprocate them. At the beginning of the game, Emily attempts to lay her head against JJ’s, only for JJ to pull away making Emily quickly move away. However, JJ eventually relents and the two hold their head against one another. So is that the secret? Of course not. It’s very obvious that JJ and Emily have feelings for one another, but they’re both unsure how to process their feelings. All that matters, however, is that Emily loves and supports JJ unconditionally. Because it’s not Emily who has the secret, it’s JJ.
Throughout the game’s text chains, JJ will also interact with texts from FK, her stuffed animal she carries everywhere for emotional support and the mysterious appearance of a doctor with a deer head, speaking like he was straight out of the Red Room in Twin Peaks. Eventually Emily begins speaking like that as well, making things feel a lot more like a living nightmare. While JJ is always extremely angry and exhibits self-harmful behavior both physically and emotionally, FK represents a more innocent part of her. They represent the part of her that still has love and hope inside, but the anger, fear, and depression that JJ has often overpowers FK’s innocent pleas to try and help her. As the game goes on, JJ slowly calms down and becomes less hostile toward FK, eventually their words helping JJ stand up once more.
Talking to Philip doesn’t really do much, other than show JJ’s less than enthused responses to his spoiled nature. The other three, however, all slowly hint at JJ’s secret. Conversations with Abby often revolve around JJ asking her how she has the confidence to dress and act as her true self, and how she deals with superiors who question and criticize her. With Lily, it’s often talking about more feminine activities. And despite Lily often coming off as stalker-like, JJ continues to speak to her because there’s not a lot more people to interact with her interests such as baking and cooking. Her conversations with Professor Goodman often feel more like the proper parent JJ wishes she had, with Goodman often offering her advice as well as talking about his family and interests. He also reveals that JJ’s mother often attempts to divulge information about JJ from Goodman, which only serves to make JJ more uncomfortable about how much her mom pushes her to be “normal.”
As she gets closer to the end of her journey, texts from everyone become more hostile. This all begins when JJ’s mother finds out her “secret” after invading JJ’s privacy at the family home by reading her diary and questioning why there are women’s clothing in JJ’s closet. Phone calls from Emily slowly reveal that something is wrong, with text messages lining up with what Emily is saying to her. We hear distorted weeping as JJ follows after Emily up to the clock tower they loved as kids. We hears sounds of electricity, the distorted deer man’s voice, and a voice that continuously says things from JJ’s point of view. It all continues building up to her finding Emily’s body hanging from a noose, as well as a note on the ground.
JJ reads it.
It’s a suicide note.
It’s not Emily’s.
JJ weeps and hangs herself next to Emily, before her body breaks free of the noose and she falls off the clock tower. Her body is barely able to regenerate when it lands, and she slowly walks through the hallway of her small university. We see shadows mock and berate JJ, some people even becoming physical. She only just barely gets through all of this because of Emily always being there to support her.
Final text messages reveal a few things. With Abby, JJ attempts to bring something up to her several times, but she decides not to when Abby doesn’t reply. Abby does reply eventually, revealing she was busy setting up for a concert and becomes worried when JJ never replies back. Philip doesn’t even notice that JJ’s gone, only thanking her for telling him to follow his acting dreams. Professor Goodman invites JJ to share dinner with he and his family. And Lily? Well this text chain is important, because it pretty much reveals what happened that led to the events of the game.
JJ and Lily went to the library to study, with JJ covertly checking out a book about a certain “condition.” We’re not told what it is, but Lily reveals she saw the book and proceeded to ask other people about it. Those people didn’t keep their mouth shut and word about JJ’s “condition” quickly spread. In addition, once discovering JJ’s diary, her mother decides to send her off to a special kind of therapy that will make her normal again. With all of this happening, JJ has an emotional and mental breakdown to Emily. Her emotions spiral about how much of a freak she is, while her mind makes up stories that Emily only talks to her out of pity. Emily initially gets a little angry at this, before realizing what might be happening. JJ doesn’t reply for a while only eventually saying “goodbye” to Emily, ending the text chain.
So what is JJ’s secret? While it isn’t technically revealed until the last scene of the game, one can pretty much put all the pieces together at this point. JJ is a closeted transwoman and the only person she’s out to is Emily. The clock tower JJ goes to is where she came out as trans to Emily when she was younger, declaring that she was “Jackie Jameson.” And JJ was so happy when Emily didn’t abandon her. As JJ got older, she still presented as male out of fear of being harassed. It’s why she’s so locked up when speaking to anyone who isn’t Emily. It’s why she asks Abby how to properly deal with not letting people get to you or standing up to an abusive parent.
JJ suffers from horrible gender dysphoria, taking out a book from the library most likely about the subject. Lily was not attempting to be malicious, but her actions cause her to out JJ to the entire school. It’s implied JJ is from a place where being openly trans is a death sentence, since being trans in the United States has long been a favored target of harassment from conservatives, TERFs, and other bigots. And considering how 2021 has been nothing but the rise of the GOP targeting trans people with TERFs becoming more and more prevalent thanks to outspoken bigots like JK Rowling.
Harassment against trans individuals are very real, with bad apples often being used as “evidence” that all trans people are evil and bad. Though, I’d argue by that logic then all cis people would be the purest form of evil if we judged all cis individuals by the cruelties of every cis monster in history. It’s just history repeating itself, like if a convicted criminal was gay back in time, then homophobes would use a singular instance of one person to justify hating an entire section of humanity. I think it’s important, if you are cis, to have empathy for trans individuals during this time. Trans people just want to exist. We want to live our lives without having to live in constant fear that someone wants to murder us for just existing. For just eating lunch at a park without fearing that some cis man will come and beat us nearly to death for existing. People like the GOP or TERFs like JK Rowling are cruel individuals. They don’t care about humans or anyone else other than themselves. They just want us dead.
And that’s the mindset that JJ has. JJ believes that her mere existence will make Emily’s life worse off. That people will make Emily a target of harassment if people knew that the person closest to her was trans. JJ lashes out at her for a specific reason. To make herself feel more like the monster she believes she is, so that it will be easier for her to justify committing suicide to herself. To make a monster and make Emily hate her for it, something we see when JJ is fused into the Hairshrieker while Emily shoots a shotgun at her. A symbolic representation of JJ trying to make herself feel like a monster so Emily will hate her, and not feel bad when JJ dies. Of course, the reality of this is the complete opposite. Emily loves JJ, she is the single most important person in her life. It takes a conversation, after JJ realizes she is already dying, with FK to realize that even if everyone else hates her that there’s one person who doesn’t. There’s one person who loves JJ so much, that JJ dying will doom her as well. That JJ needs to live and be there for Emily the same way that Emily is there for JJ.
A final confrontation with the Hairshrieker shows JJ, in her dream, no longer breaking apart when she self-harms. It shows that pain is always going to be there, but with the resolve that Emily will always be there for her, she’s able to avoid falling apart into pieces as she eventually kills the Hairshrieker and finds Emily. She finds what she was looking for this whole time, a final text message to FK showing that JJ is starting to feel better. It was the fear of Emily dying from JJ’s attempt that drew her to confront her negative feelings, something we see JJ do when she believes Emily is dead.
The final scene is telling because JJ wakes up as how she looks in reality: closeted and presenting openly as male. Before her is a paramedic with a deer head sitting behind him in the room. The deer man being the paramedic attempting to save her life. FK, her beloved plushie, was pooling blood together and helping stop JJ from bleeding out after she fell unconscious. A phone call from her mother shows JJ, in my opinion, ready to say goodbye permanently to her. An acceptance that her mother is a horribly negative influence on her life, suggesting and nearly forcing JJ into conversion therapy. We found out that JJ eventually told her mother and she did not take it well at all, implied to be the straw that broke the camel’s back that caused the suicide attempt. Emily discovers JJ’s suicide note and finds her quickly enough to call for help, with Emily’s weeping and saying “you broke our promise” representative of JJ dying and leaving Emily, since their promise was to never be apart from one another. Emily eventually rushes in, and the two hug with JJ thanking her for always supporting her as well as telling her she’s reconciled with herself and found what she wanted. The game ends there.
But that’s not the end. If you had collected all 271 donuts through the game, you will be rewarded with several images that take place post-game. JJ is now openly trans and Emily takes her to try on new clothes, some of which resemble her dreamscape’s outfit. The two are shown happy together, moving forward from the tragedy stronger, that one person can make your life all the better by being there for you.
One of three pictures that’s a reward for collecting all donuts
The game hits hard. It hits hard in a lot of ways. There’s a scene where JJ describes her body mutilation in detail to FK, but it’s really easily seen as JJ describing the horrific extent of her gender dysphoria. And the gameplay reflects that. JJ self-harms and her body falls apart, a body she feels so gross and foreign in. How she hates it so much, and how no one else around her can understand that pain. How she lashes out because she can’t fully understand why it hurts her so much. She hates herself, she thinks she’s an overall negative factor to everyone else. It doesn’t help that she is this way because of her mother constantly drilling this sort of thinking into her head: that she is abnormal and must be made normal through conversion therapy. JJ would rather die than that happen, and she justifies this through depression-filled mental gymnastics to prove she’s better off dead to herself and Emily.
This game is not for the faint of heart, especially if constantly hearing bones breaking and body parts flying around is a trigger for you. However, the game does not pull punches in showing how cruel the world can be to a trans person. Even if not 100% of people are going to harass you, it can feel like that if there’s a big enough chunk causing you problems. JJ’s mother is the only person not supportive of her struggles. While the game’s ending does imply the mother feels remorse, and JJ forgiving her, I’m not so sure. That, to me, may just be JJ’s kind nature showing through in general. But I feel as though the problems her mother caused can not just be forgiven through a single call right after a suicide attempt.
There’s also the talk about whether or not JJ and Emily are in love, and I believe they are. The implications show that they are closer than just platonic best friends, but JJ’s self-doubt and self-hatred drive a wedge between their relationship evolving. This is something we talked about earlier, where JJ moves her head when Emily tried to lean on her. Being intimate, both emotionally and physically, keeps them from taking a step forward due to JJ’s depression and anxiety. By the time of the post-game, JJ is starting to become more accepting of herself and she’s able to be openly happy with Emily in public, showing they may be moving forward closer than ever.
Do I recommend this game? Yes. Even though the game is written by quirky Japanese auteur, it has this genuineness to it that feels a lot like Tell Me Why, a game that features a transman as one of its two main protagonists. Though this hits closer to me because JJ is a queer transwoman. Playing through the game, I noticed my behaviors parallel greatly with JJ’s drawing me closer to this story. I’m upset I didn’t play it sooner, but now that I have it’s certainly one of the best games revolving around being trans and why I think SWERY was being sincere in his apology about the second Deadly Premonition game. Because this was a game super understanding of the trans experience, how cruel people can be to trans individuals, how others are supportive, how outing someone (even unintentionally) is something that can ruin a life. But we are humans too. We just want to live life. And be happy.
Even though this isn’t a game made by a trans individual, it’s one well-researched and genuine in its ability to make others feel empathy for the trans experience while also validating the negative feelings a trans person might feel through their life. It’s a shame this game is barely talked about, because I highly consider playing it if you haven’t yet. An excellent piece of queer horror. Since I’ve done this, I guess it’s time I put effort into analyzing HWBM next, huh?
With the release of We Know the Devil on Nintendo Switch, I believe it’s time to post my full in-depth analysis and explanation of We Know the Devil. Some of you who follow me may know this was originally intended as a video, and written with that intention. However, with my new work and my love of writing still what I love most, I’ve decided to post the script to this video as a singular post. This is a long analytical essay, clocking in at around 9000 words. This is long, yes, but it’s also an essay I’m very proud of. For anyone who has played WKTD and not fully understood what a lot of the meanings are, this is for you. This is my love letter to We Know the Devil and Worst Girls Games. Thank you for this game that helped change my life.
(Note: This obviously contains spoilers for every facet of the game, so I highly recommend you play the game in its entirety before reading this.)
Daughter of God by PhemieC, a WKTD Fan Song
Introduction
I think there is nothing more frustrating than growing up in a semi-religious household and proceeding to attend religious school up through high school. Especially when it’s Catholicism. Maybe it’s because there’s so many different messages to be said about it. How people who are Catholic can so wildly differ from center-left to extremely far right.
This too was an obvious split I could see growing up, especially in high school. Religion was always overhead when I was growing up, though, mostly in in elementary and middle school. We were forced to attend church twice a week, sometimes thrice a week early in the morning each time. As I grew up and slowly discovered a different purview of the world, it often clashed with the ideas and thoughts drilled into my mind by the religious institutions I had been raised in.
I didn’t realize I was queer or trans until I was in university as a result. Things never clicked for me because I was simply raised to believe being queer was wrong, and the idea of being trans simply never even existed. What caused my break with religion? I’m not sure. Maybe it was the people I met who were genuinely terrible, but often propped up in school as the “good Catholic kids.” How could they be so good when they would bully me at length, I thought. Eventually I would define myself as myself and not by outsider opinion, but of course I was a lot older by then.Maybe that’s why one of my favorite games of all time is We Know the Devil, a Western-made visual novel developed by Worst Girls Games in 2015. This short 3-4 hour romp is somehow one of my top five favorite games of all time. How? How is this little indie visual novel developed by a no-name studio in a little more than four months so high on my list? Well that’s what I’m here to discuss.
We Know the Devil is a game whose main target audience are queer and trans people, I think that much is obvious. Aevee Bee, the writer and co-director of the game, is a transwoman so you can tell this was always gonna be a game I was going to have to check off my list at some point in my life.
Development wise there’s not much to say other than the game was developed in a little over four months, as I said earlier. Kind of amazing to see how fast something like this can be developed. It’s well put together for a simple visual novel, though there are some grammar and spelling mistakes sprinkled throughout the dialogue. It doesn’t bother me too much though.
The art direction for the game is unique and extremely pleasing to my eyes. All the backgrounds in the game are nothing more than photographs taken on a digital camera. All of them are empty and give a feeling of isolation, of areas abandoned by humanity left to be reclaimed by nature. Some might call it lazy to not just design backgrounds, but I feel it fits the nature of what this game is. It has an eerie feeling that’s hard to shake, like watching The Blair Witch Project.
The character art for the game is equally good. Black and white monochrome character sprites with what looks like the sharpness turned up as high as it could in order to make it look like it was taken on an old digital camera from the late 90s. Of course, it goes along super well with the photographic backgrounds used for the game.
Venus
The music for the game though? Sublime. Good. I’m no musician so I can’t give you an in-depth reason for why I think the music is so good, I just find it to be very pleasing to listen to. Alec Lambert, the composer, creates a mostly haunting yet sometimes peaceful soundtrack that fits the game absolutely perfectly. It reminds me of scntfc’s soundtrack for Oxenfree, another game I absolutely adore. Only this one feels a lot more distant and corrupt, which again, fits the game a lot better than anything else.
But above all else, it’s the characters, their arcs, and the overall themes of the game that sell me on why this seven dollar visual novel on Steam is not only one of my favorite games of all time, but also why it’s one of the most important to me.
Take it from me, living in the Midwest isn’t great. Even though states like Michigan or Ohio are pretty north, you’re pretty much living in a deep southern state in most places. Much of the land you’ll see is often empty fields of corn or signs telling us we’re all going to hell soon and Jesus has spoken that the rapture is upon us.
The Summer Scouts are not a great place to be. Like at all. Dressed in uniforms with white shirts with crosses stitched onto the chest pockets, it’s very familiar. They aren’t just a religious summer camp after all. This is where they send the specifically bad kids who need the extra work put in.
Every time you run through We Know the Devil, you’ll encounter the same choices to make but with different outcome choices.
We have our members of Group West as well. First there is Neptune, who is the most outspoken and sarcastic of the three. She seemed annoyed and tired with almost everything, often shutting down anyone and everyone with her sharp tongue if she’s not ignoring them while she’s on her phone. Next, there’s Venus. Venus is quiet, shy, and called the pure one of the group who doesn’t even cuss which gets him teased by the other two. Though he’s often looking for something, something that makes him feel utterly incomplete and lost, attempting to fulfill this void by pleasing others even to his own detriment. Finally, there’s Jupiter. Jupiter is the top of the class over achieving academically girl. She’s good at most of what she does, but always fails at the end. The type to blank on the final question and cannot answer for the life of her.
The three attend a bonfire led by the titular Bonfire Captain. And oddly designed character who has more in common with the Hawt Dawg Man from Life is Strange than he does anything or anyone else.
He tells the story of himself and two friends he once had when he was younger. How he liked one of these two friends and the other he dismissed as annoying. Over time the captain talks of how he attempted to be an even BETTER friend in order to help the annoying friend along. But eventually he would give up claiming:
“Some friendships you can keep up. The rest you gotta leave up to god.”
Surface level this seems like a friendship that has simply ended, vanishing off like many do. However, as I like to always think, context is key in literally any piece of media. The captain plus his two friends equals three people, just like the rest of the groups in the game. And as expected of a camp counselor in a Christian summer camp, he is extremely Christian. He mentions that some of the annoying things his friend did includes “[He] wouldn’t go along with us.” And he follows it up with: “I probably could have stopped it if I had told him to cut it out and man up instead of basically doing the opposite.”
The implications here is that the annoying friend is someone who did not follow the status quo. Someone who was outside the nice comfortable square that a white cisgendered heteronormative Christian society has made up. Something happens to the “annoying friend” that is implied to have had something bad happen to him. But the captain did nothing. He admits he could have intervened to save the person, but he chose not to for he decided it was god’s will that this person was punished.
The game has barely even started, and yet right off the bat the game is dropping some heavy hints about what is to come. The world of We Know the Devil is different from our own. There are many evils that only God can protect the people from.
After the events at the bonfire, the captain will tell Group West that it’s their turn to face the devil. The devil being within a small cabin in the woods. On their way there, they encounter Group South, the best/worst kids in camp. In that they try to suck up so much they end up being the most annoying ones in camp that Group West hates. Group South harasses the group, particularly Venus, as they attempt to repair the sirens.
The sirens and the radios make up two of the more important aspects of the world in which the game takes place. The sirens set up around the forest are designed to make public awareness that the devil is attempting to break in. The radios that the campers have are the only weapons that can fight off the devil once it shows its face. For you see, the analog channels is how God communicates with people and protects them from corruption.
The three members of Group West have a lot of great banter off of one another, and you really come to enjoy all three of them as a group. The three have very different personalities, but they all have the same types of wants and those wants allow their differing personalities to come together well.
However only two of the three can come out unscathed…
One will end up alone. Two won’t.
[BLUE – Neptune]
Neptune: sarcastic, tired, confident, and angry.
Neptune is the only one of the three who shows any sort of backbone to anyone else in camp. Neptune is also the only one who accepts who she is on the inside. But also she’s not willing to ever show it on the outside.
More than anything, she knows that there is something more that Jupiter and Venus want. They don’t know what it is and they don’t seem to want to think more about what they want. And this? This instills anger in Neptune more than anything else.
Neptune is a character who knows what she wants. But she’s not willing to go the full way in order to obtain it. She envies Venus’s kindness, but believes that kindness will never be able to let a want be obtained. Being mean and sarcastic is more truthful, and it lets he not feel bad about being unable to get what she wants. But in the moments of kindness she does show, it’s ever filled with her wants. Her wants of Venus and Jupiter.
Throughout the game, it’s often Neptune who brings to light most of their issues. She’s perceptive, but she covers this up by a facade of sarcasm and laziness. Neptune is the type of person who knows who she is deep down, but when confronted she gets defensive about it. She gets angry and denies it.
Neptune knows who she is. She knows who her friends are. She knows what they want. But she’s not gonna rob them of experiencing figuring out who they are. But the issue stems that she herself is not ready to accept herself openly and out. She’s angry at herself too for the hypocrisy, but she ignores it. Rather she lets it fester. She lets it sit there and grow exponentially often resulting in her own anger.
The intrigue that Neptune lays out is her unwillingness to tell the others who they are, but rather she pushes them to admit it themselves. After the drinking session with Venus and Neptune, the former attempts to confront Neptune about her need to be mean to everyone. Most of it slides off of her, but Neptune’s response is calm for once. Telling Venus that the wants that he has can’t be given to him by kindness. He has to figure out what he wants and admit that to himself in order to obtain it. But Neptune also remarks that she’s a bad kid too, because her own kindness is wrapped up in her own wants.
Similarly, she does drop hints throughout the game about the other two’s identities and problems. With Jupiter, she often tells her off for her self-harmful behavior. Whether it be talking down to herself or seemingly melting down over a small thing that Neptune doesn’t think matters. When it comes to truth or dare, Neptune tells Jupiter to reveal who she likes. Neptune knows the answer, but before Jupiter can even respond, Neptune says nevermind. Perhaps she, herself, is too scared as well.
During seven minutes in heaven, though, she does show off much of her own hypocrisy that makes her seem not too different from Jupiter. They are both, physically and metaphorically, in a closet making out and touching each other. But because no one else is there, it’s impossible for anyone else to ever determine what happened. It’s their words only, and only can become truth if they both say it out loud.
With Venus, she often attempts to nudge him towards figuring out what he wants. She knows he has a crush on her, seen during truth or dare. Though she playfully, though soaked with her trademark meanness, teases him about it the two have a rapport that’s equal and as meaningful as the one that she has with Jupiter. If not more so bringing out that short gentle nature that’s buried somewhere deep within Neptune.
By the end of the night, they can hear God speaking a sermon on the radio, buzzing lowly through the cabin.
“A method for the extraction of bile. Create an incision on the middle finger. All the water of the body can be thought of as a single ocean, as one drop- and extract the resulting ink. Place in a vial and explain to it the worthlessness of the treasures of earth. Break it against a mirror, the cause of vanity- each of you shall choose. It is certain the devil is coming.
Neptune becomes angry. Why? Because both Venus and Jupiter believe they are the devils. But Neptune? Neptune believes, in every sense, that she is the most likely to be the devil. Why? Because she’s the only one who knows who she really is. And the mere idea of Venus or Jupiter becoming their devils makes her believe they are simply saying it to pity her and make her not worry about being the devil, but we know they also truly believe it.
Neptune coughs. That’s her signature reaction. She coughs primarily when she’s either rejecting her own voice or when she hears Jupiter or Venus putting themselves down. When a person vomits, they often throw up the contents of their stomach. However, if you dry heave enough without anything in your stomach and cough violently enough, you’ll puke up your stomach bile. In one of the choices of a non-Neptune exclusion route, we see that Neptune needs to eventually be taken to the bathroom to deal with her cough because she fears she’s gonna vomit up said bile.
More importantly, to me, it represents something Neptune hates more than anything. She hates when Jupiter and Venus hate themselves out loud. When people say something horrible about themselves, a tertiary party who disagrees often says to “stop spouting bullshit” if it angers them enough. She hates that they won’t accept themselves, but she herself spouts the same bullshit by not admitting the truth about her sexuality out loud.
Eventually she becomes the devil when she is forced into the bathroom. She coughs. She vomits. And she sounds louder than ever, but refuses to come out of the bathroom until she eventually relents.
Neptune is forced to the bathroom during one of her coughing fits, this one the most violent yet. The coughing becomes louder and louder, each cough more violent than the last resulting in vomiting. The others want her to come out. She refuses. Come out, they ask. She refuses. They ask again. She breaks and comes out.
Neptune is leaking bile and ichor from all over her body. Her ichor will force Jupiter and Venus to admit to themselves who they are and turn them into devils. She’s so sick of the two of them not accepting themselves, something she previously wanted them to figure out on her own. But this time? No. Their refusals have annoyed and angered her so much that her devil form wants nothing more than to MAKE THEM understand themselves.
Neptune bashes Venus up against a wall, happy enough to force him to taste. Jupiter attempts to save him, but Neptune is a devil now. With much more physical power, she easily is able to knock Jupiter away. All inhibitions are gone now. She refers to Jupiter as “babe” and opens up finally about it all.
She hates how the world determines the three of them are bad. How because of their inherent queerness that they have to be “good”, but Neptune? She thinks they’re good already. So, so, so good. Neptune can now see how overwhelmingly unhappy that Venus and Jupiter are. So she simply stands there and rants at them about how obviously unhappy they are in her eyes, and how she will make them happy by forcing them to understand. She’s angry about it. Furious even. That’s why her devil form is the only one who gets the chance to speak to the others. How being one’s own queer self is “wicked.” How it’s wrong. Neptune hates that.
The idea of “good” is brought about by what social conservatism says is correct. Being good cisgendered straight Christians who obey their parents and their church. But Neptune’s idea of being good, or by extension the devil’s, is that you are who you are without shame.
“She’s a flood, of every wicked thought, and they are pouring out of her mouth.”
Neptune’s bile and ichor will stain the others. It will make them devils as well. But there is nothing to fear when there is two against the devil. It’s there because it’s a stain that is hard, or near impossible to remove. Neptune wishes to stain both of her friends, her crushes, so that they will join her. So they finally understand.
The radio contains the power of God within it. Thus, it is the only weapon powerful enough to cast the devil out from a person, erasing who they are so they fit God’s image.
And in the end? Neptune is left to dry, the ichor draining from her while Venus and Jupiter keep watch. The wicked thoughts are gone, though were they ever even really wicked in the first place? Be who you are. Don’t let anyone else tell you who to be. Of course, that’s selfish isn’t it? The treasures of the earth are not for us. We are to obey god and not become vain…
Blue Ending CG
[YELLOW – Venus]
Venus: Kind, pure, and wanting.
Venus is a pushover. He doesn’t swear. He’s one of two kids that the captain likes. Venus doesn’t like that though. Without an intentionally mean bone in his body, Venus just wants to get along with people and avoid the complexities of arguing with people.
Unlike Neptune, who knows who she is and what she wants… Venus is the opposite. He is lost. He can’t figure out what he wants. The lights he sees throughout the game are analogous to that feeling of when a word is right on the tip of your tongue. You can almost feel it out, but then it’s gone again. And no matter how much you think on it, it simply never comes.
Venus is the only “male” character of the group, but it’s not that hard to guess there’s much more going on with Venus than meets the eye. We know very early on that Venus is pretty much a doormat for everyone else.
Despite his avoidance of arguments, he often finds himself envious of Jupiter and Neptune. Jupiter’s ability to not get harassed at all and Neptune’s ability to simply snark and harass right back.
Early on we can see Venus doesn’t really stand up to anyone. Group South particularly harasses him because he doesn’t stand up for himself. He’s timid, but also has a serious mean streak. He often says things that get under the skin of others, though it seems to be unintentional. He’s extremely innocent in a lot of facets, but also can feel extremely insensitive and not catch when he says something that does hit hard. Neptune mentions this to Jupiter, and how she wishes he did it on purpose and not just unintentionally do it.
Much like how Neptune coughs horribly every single time she says something she doesn’t truly believe or when she wants to angrily reply to a self-defeating Venus or Jupiter, we have a similar thing occurring for Venus. Throughout the game Venus will make note of lights. Lights that no one else can see, and these lights usually appear to Venus when he thinks about something. Something…
Just like how Neptune’s cough gets worse and worse as she progresses into a devil, Venus sees these lights more and more. Guiding him… somewhere.
The lights can easily be seen as something like the Will-o’-the-Wisps, small beings of light leading him “astray.” Something that Neptune mentions in a scene between her and him is that Venus is looking for something. Some sort of identity to grasp onto, but he can’t reach it. He doesn’t know what he wants, and thinks that the world can reward it upon him if he’s nice enough. It’s Neptune who informs him that it won’t happen. Why? Because she knows that exact same feeling of having a kindness filled with want.
When fixing the radio deep in the night he and Jupiter talk about his beliefs, and the most telling thing is that he finds life to be unfair. No matter how much a person can try, things will never turn out for them. That certain people don’t have to try hard, and they’ll come out on top. When Jupiter says that she believes the people in the normal scouts try harder than her, Venus can only quickly reply and ask if she truly believes that anyone in the normal scouts have tried harder than her.
This is the best point that Venus makes and shows his true belief for why he acts the way he does. The world isn’t fair. Reality isn’t fair. And that’s what Jupiter tells him. Life simply isn’t fair, but it’s what Venus says next that rings eerily true.
It’s a reality that someone else created.
And that’s completely right. We can remark life isn’t fair, and often or not people will reply with that is true, but that’s simply how life is. But Venus has the forethought to mark that the lives we live are set up by society. A society who has made the rules that life will be unfair for certain people. This entire conversation rings true to me. Immediately after he has another knowledge nugget to drop on us.
He asks Jupiter if it makes her mad when the game is rigged from the start, but they also tell her to “do her best!” Wouldn’t that make her angry? It makes Venus angry. It makes Venus so angry that he doesn’t even want to try because it’s rigged for him to lose from the beginning. Venus can only ask and wonder what is wrong with him… What does life want out of him?
Throughout the game, Venus obviously has very low self esteem about himself. Even within his own group, he finds himself only being useful for repairing the sirens and radios or being the one who gets teased. Despite this, he keeps on moving forward. Cranking out a smile hoping he can figure out what it is he wants.
Venus goes to extreme lengths to try and not cause a fuss. To his own chagrin, he is quite well attuned with fixing the radios and other things. Not because it’s something he wants to do or likes to do, but because people expect that of him to do. He hates it, but he sticks by and keeps doing it because that’s what he thinks he needs to do to keep goin. When outside with Jupiter making the rounds, he notes that Group South wanted him to screw up with a radio in the dining hall. He knows they’re wrong and he knows how to fix it, but he lets himself get in trouble anyway. Openly admitting to the fact that he gaslights himself because it’s easier than going down the back and forth where he’ll just believe them anyways.
But at the end of the day, Venus feels ignored and unseen. So disconnected from the world that when Jupiter naturally thinks that the two of them are friends Venus interjects to question it. As well as the idea that he simply wants to play dumb and sit away because he notices whatever is going on between Jupiter and Neptune. Jupiter finds the idea that boys have it easier with emotions because it seems so straightforward. Though Venus rejects this notion, claiming that boys seem to find it easier to get mad about a secondary thing in order to hide what they might actually be angry about.
Jupiter asks what Venus is angry about, but immediately notices he’s lying. He isn’t angry about anything. Rather, he’s jealous. And Jupiter notices he’s jealous of her and Neptune. A jealously so seething, that Jupiter can feel it. But Venus doesn’t know why. Venus is afraid he can’t change, condemning himself to that factor. He will let himself be hurt physically before he is cruel to to others.
Then hands appear around his neck and start choking him. Jupiter rushes to stop the hands, which suddenly vanish once she takes hold of him. He cries and says it’s okay. Not angry. He says it’s okay. But even Jupiter knows it’s not okay. It’s just not.
By the end of the night, they can hear God speaking a sermon on the radio, buzzing lowly through the cabin.
“Shining as Lucifer, the morning star, in the dawn, and symbolizing the arrogance of desiring a beauty that is not god’s. Venus 5:23. That which appears to be within grasp, and yet, is ever- of the vanity to be seen and to see. The human eye sees clearly by the light of god, but the devil by his own light, and thus sees only his own truth- each of you shall choose. It is certain the devil is coming.”
Do you see that? It’s the light. The fireflies are all over, but they don’t see it like he does?
The ending is nigh, isn’t it? God speaks of arrogant beauty that is not his. Neptune eventually tells the others they need to leave. But the lights are here. In mass, they have arrived towards them, now enough to be seen by Neptune and Jupiter. And the lights only want Venus.
When the lights come into the cabin, they decide to run. Though, they have to force Venus to follow. As they attempt to escape, the lights become more and more overpowering. They aim for the road, where the artificial street lights will protect them. But not all is well, but it’s off the table. Jupiter trips and falls onto Venus. Her attempts to help him up, results in her injuring herself.
Why are they there protecting Venus? They don’t need to. Venus is used to being the butt of the joke. Used to being the one who’s there to fix the radios. Venus is used to being the odd-one out. The one who sits back and seethes with envy against Jupiter and Neptune. They should leave him behind to his ultimate fate against the lights.
But now Venus can’t look away from them. They’re glowing oh so bright and oh so horribly, but it’s so beautiful at the same time. He wants the lights. He wants to see them. He wants the others to see him.
Venus? Venus wants them to see her. See her for who she truly is. She doesn’t want to be what the cruel artificial reality tells her to be. To be the pushover fix-it man, someone who’s only good for what he’s told to do. She hates fixing things. But she did it because that’s what she was supposed to do right? As a good boy?
She’s not that. She’s not a boy. She wants to cast shadows over the light and light over the shadows. The truth is that she is a woman. Venus is a woman and she wants people to see that. She so desperately wants everyone to see her for who she is. Venus shines ever so brightly, wings covering her with eyes wide open for her to look and be the center.
Venus reaches out to us. She has eyes to fly with and wings to see. As terrible as an angel, be afraid. That wing to see the truth and that eye to lay it bare. We feel the heat on our skin and recoil. It wants something from us, a lot of things, maybe everything. Every wish of the eyes belongs to it. Nothing can escape this light. But we do. We can’t feel the beat of the wings or the light of the eyes. We can’t be seen. We chose to cover our faces. But there is nothing to fear when there are two against the devil.
All of this boils down to the idea of looking away from transgender people, especially when they’re so self-hating about it. Venus allows herself to be opened back up by the devil. To finally admit that she is who she is, and not what the unfair reality says she has to be. When Neptune tells Venus that she wants something, but can’t figure out what it is it’s quite obvious what it ends up being.
She wants to transition, but may not even fully understand what being transgender is. She’s in some backwards ass place after all, perhaps that’s why she reached out for something she didn’t know she needed. She needed affirmation of what and who she was, but was unable to grasp for it until her old body was shed away into a being of light. The game does not miss a beat in changing Venus’s pronouns. Venus tries to open up about this, who she is to Neptune and Jupiter, who simply repel the devil from her body. Denial of who she is. And in the end, Venus is forced back into a body she does not want. She wanted to be seen, and now she simply hangs from a tree, knowing what she wants but not being allowed to have it…
Unused Yellow Ending CG
[RED – Jupiter]
Jupiter: Afraid, tired, and untouchable.
Jupiter’s personality can be easily described as not caring. Most things seem to roll right off her back. Harassment does not give her a rise, so she is left alone. People will try to walk all over her, but she doesn’t give them the time of day.
She will always take the blame, even when something is not her fault. In her mind, she will rationalize it is her fault. Early on in the night, Neptune and Jupiter attempt to get into the cabin which has a busted lock from the other groups. While there, Jupiter discovers different types of lilies in the greenhouse area before she accidentally breaks a decrepit old cabinet. Despite it being both an accident as well as something that was bound to happen because of how unkempt and unmaintained the cabin is, Jupiter breaks down and starts crying.
She is someone who tries so hard to impress and put on this facade that she’s unaffected by everything, but in the end? She takes everything on harder than anyone else. When Jupiter is left alone in the cabin, while Venus and Neptune go outside the two converse about the fact that this is happening and that Jupiter needs to let herself get hurt and then be open about it. It becomes something that pisses Neptune off more than anything, the fact that Jupiter allows herself to be hurt over and over again but will never admit she does such a thing. It is self harm.
Self harm is a recurring element for Jupiter, symbolized by her bracelet which she constantly snaps against her wrist. She does this every time she does something she believes is wrong or when she begins to get uncomfortable with her own thoughts she will snap the bracelet harder and harder against her wrist. It’s small, but it’s a persisting theme with Jupiter’s character. It’s simply analogous to self harm in that manner. Even if it’s just a wrist band snapping against her, she does it to remind herself that she is bad. She is wrong. She shouldn’t do this. She shouldn’t be thinking this. What shouldn’t she be thinking?
If it wasn’t already obvious, Jupiter is a lesbian. A lesbian with a big old gay crush on Neptune. Unfortunately, Jupiter has a LOT of internalized homophobia.
Being a lesbian is wrong. It’s bad. It’s not good. Snap. She goes back and forth between her feelings for Neptune and her internalized homophobia about what she is doing is completely wrong.
During the Seven Minutes in Heaven scene between Jupiter and Neptune, the two we can assume are kissing and Neptune is running her hands over Jupiter’s body. Jupiter, of course, doesn’t take much of it well but is reassured by Neptune that no one will ever know simply because they’re alone. Therefore what they are doing right now? It never happened. It only happened if they both admit it happened. If only one admits it happened, it’s only one person’s word versus the other. Therefore, whatever happened in the closet? It stays in the closet forever. And no one in the Midwest will ever know or admit it either. The two could do whatever and they would be denied until admission occurs.
More often than not, it’s easy to see her own internalized homophobia through the entire game. Just like with Neptune, you find more about her when she’s in the closet with Venus. Venus, as she knows at that point, is a boy. She’s not attracted to boys like she is with girls. Not to mention, Venus doesn’t ACT like the boys she often deals with. But she has as much an emotional connection with Venus as she does with Neptune.
She buries her face in Venus’ hair, making remarks about how soft and nice it is. Jupiter tells her that she feels safe around Venus compared to everyone else, whether it be because of her inherent dislike of guys or the overwhelming feelings she gets around Neptune. Venus seems perfect to her because of that. Venus is someone who won’t hurt her, someone safe and kind who she can just bury her face into and not care about it.
Even more interesting is that Jupiter herself ignores the pain inflicted upon her by others because it’s easier. Just like Venus, it’s easier to let pain and suffering hurt you. Except with Venus, who reacts to these lashes, Jupiter doesn’t. She shrugs and moves on, angering Neptune and making Venus sigh. She let’s all the pain hurt her because not only is it easier, but somewhere deep down she thinks she deserves it. She deserves it why though?
Unlike the other two, Jupiter is the only character who we know has some concrete things occurring at home. During the drinking session, Jupiter reveals that her dad is gay but married a woman anyways. Internalized homophobia aside, Neptune asks why then, of all people, would he essentially send his definitely lesbian daughter to such a horrible place. And her answer? They did it because it was easier than dealing with her mom.
The idea being that most of how Jupiter feels about herself is internalized because of her mother. And despite her dad being the same, he finds it easier to simply hide who he is as well and passes these teachings down to her. Not because of anything inherently bad, but because in this world it seems being yourself only leads to hardships and denying yourself to appease others makes life easier. It’s easy to see that Jupiter really does live by this sort of tenant.
So she sits back and lets herself get harmed. Jupiter takes a beating from the world around her and says it’s okay. It’s not okay though. It’s self-harmful behavior, but for Jupiter she thinks it’s the right thing to do. Just so mom will chill.
By the end of the night, they can hear God speaking a sermon on the radio, buzzing lowly through the cabin.
“A hand held against the world. To be touched and to touch; touch is a language unto itself. And it too is a language of power. Thus unto Jupiter, which is also the language of gravity, according- the fist which can give takes too, and gives by taking, or takes by giving. Just as a word is honest or dishonest not by how it is spoken, but by he who speaks it, so is the honesty of touch. It is certain the devil is already here.”
Jupiter isolates herself from the others. It’s certain this time she’s the devil. No plan this time either. Jupiter sits there and snaps her band against her wrist, the room growing warmer with each passing moment.
She continues to try and hold it all in. To continue to deny it. Only a few more hours until dawn, right? No need to find out who the devil is, even if they all know who. Both Venus and Neptune can only look away.
It’s just a phase, right? No agreement. She begs them to mock her. To make fun of her. To make her feel bad. But they know her. They won’t do that.
There hands and fingers everywhere. They touch everything. They squeeze the cabin like an empty water bottle. And just like that Jupiter breaks. All of herself begins flooding out in a wave of internalized hatred.
She’s so gross. She always ruins everything. And then her hairband finally breaks. And the storm of hands breaks loose in the cabin. Jupiter tells it like she thinks. She isn’t good. Like Venus had said before, anger directed at a rigged competition that is life, Jupiter bemoans the unfairness of religious doctrine changing to fit the needs of whatever society deems correct in a certain time period.
Jupiter could do her best to be good and get into heaven on that good merit. But then they ripped it out from underneath her. They changed the rules just went she thought she had it right. Her mother told her not to touch others. Dad taught her not to let herself be touched.
What if she stopped trying to be good? Jupiter is starved. Touch starved more than any person should. And she hates every minute of it. This time, however, Venus and Neptune are here for her. But she doesn’t want them to be. They should be disgusted with her. Even when they tell her otherwise, that internalized disgust of herself rings out.
She wants to touch. She wants to be touched. She wants to hurt. She wants to be hurt.
Jupiter controls a flurry of hands able to do all that she desires. Even before this form of her came out, it was present even earlier. In the closet with Venus, she gets annoyed when Venus tells her that she simply would rather be physically hurt than to be mean. On the other hand, Jupiter wishes she could be even more mean than she already is. Jupiter absentmindedly snaps her hairband, and suddenly hands begin to choke out Venus. To hurt Venus. Her deepest desires to touch and to hurt, and Venus accidentally gave her desires an open shot.
But Venus forgives her anyways, even when they both know it was Jupiter’s hands. A moment that solidifies both of their own desires. Venus being seen as a girl and Jupiter touching Venus like how she wants to touch girls. In a moment they are who they are, before they are forced to retract from that moment.
Jupiter is a lesbian raised to never be touched or to touch. Instilled that touching and being gay is wrong and dirty, and that she needs to be punished for it. She thought denying it would make her life easier and better. After all, being good is based on merits until they decide not anymore. So what happens? She breaks down. And for a moment? Jupiter’s storm touches everything.
“Jupiter reaches out to us. She has a hand for every kind of touch; that hand is for hitting, that hand is for petting, that hand is for grabbing, that hand is for holding. We feel the pull on our skin and recoil. They want so many things from us; maybe everything. Every wish of the body belongs to it. And every wish is a hand, expressing that desire. And every hand is a storm that is bigger than the world, reaching for us. But it will not. The hands don’t touch us and the storm doesn’t break over us. We chose to be distant from her.”
Jupiter dared to be wanted. Dared to be touched. Born to only hurt. Born to think that her feelings for girls is only a phase, something queer people are told all the time. It’s only a phase. You’ll like boys soon enough, the say. Harassing you over the idea of not liking men. You hear it all the time from anyone who isn’t a lesbian. Lesbians can like men and be in relationships with them, so saying you only like women is just a phase. It’ll pass, as soon as you get the right man. Jupiter is mocked and she lets it happen. Maybe she’ll get past the phase soon.
Jupiter allowed herself to become a devil to try and get what she desperately needed. She hated herself too much, however, and told Neptune and Venus to expel the devil from her as soon as they could. They accepted her, but Jupiter could never accept herself. It was too internalized in her.
And in the end? There’s heartbreak. Jupiter lay unconscious and alone, the devil expelled from her body. And Neptune and Venus? Te two people she cares most for? Te two people she so desperately wants to touch? They sit there together with hands interlocked with one another. Held. Touched.
Red Ending CG
[TRUE END – The Worst Girls Since Eve]
Parables I:I “The devil is only the shadow of man cast from the light of god.” The meaning of this parable is that there is no devil.
What do you do then? What do you do when the answer seems desolate and meaningless? When the devil is everywhere, filling every gap of the darkness?
To break away from the analysis for a moment, in order to actually obtain every ending you have to leave one of the three characters alone and isolated. So what if you mathematically leave everyone out the same amount, thus no one is left totally alone?
By the end of the night, they can hear God speaking a sermon on the radio, buzzing lowly through the cabin. Wait no. It’s on the wrong frequency.
“Oh. Hi there. Oh, darling… I miss you. I have always missed you. I can still remember what your faces were like. I have missed them since before you were born. Please come back. I know I can’t offer much. The bodies I can give you are weak. The stores I tell are impossible. My world is even more precarious than this one. But please come back. It hurts to see you like this so much. So unhappy in those bodies of yours. Stricken by those stories. Forced to live in so much pain. I can’t even come save you. But I can promise one thing. There is room for three in my world. And only two in his.”
The sirens roar out through the night. Those in the camp are coming for Group West. They know the devil. Jupiter fears the worst will come upon them. Venus hopes it’s quick and painless. Neptune? Neptune destroys the radio.
The radios themselves represent a physical connection to religion and the religious community. You sit there, turning on the radio to listen to god and his sermons. The radios themselves are weapons capable of reducing a devil back into a human. Even just having one thrown can cause a devil to crumple over onto the ground, as if hit by a speeding bullet.
Neptune wonders why if god hates the devil so much, why does he not do it himself? Why does he send out his followers to do the work for him? Neptune is the first of the three to give into the devil. The devil fucking rules.
Venus wonders where the devil could be. But they are the devil. But again, Venus wonders where the devil is? Jupiter once more falls into her own pit of despair. All of her insecurities about being bad flowing from her mouth. But like Neptune yells at her about, she shouldn’t be good for people who hate her. More importantly, if she’s going to suffer and hurt herself to appeal to the people who make her feel like she is worthless why won’t she martyr herself for Neptune and Venus? More of a confrontation than anything else.
Venus suddenly blooms as well. She has found the devil just like Neptune has. In what can only be described as one of the most liberating things I’ve read since the book Dreadnought, Venus’s old body falls off. Literally falling off of her, shedding it off like a snake. No blood even. It’s not her body anymore and it’s one of the most affirming things I’ve read in fiction for a trans character.
There’s no pain. A moment of euphoria of accepting one’s self and casting who you used to be away. Neptune, for the first time, isn’t filled with vitriolic anger and sarcasm. Rather she asks Venus how she is. Her new arm looks to be in a rough place, and she makes sure Venus is okay. Jupiter still is in denial though. But this time, the other two are already devils. It’s not just her alone this time.
More important for Venus is outright talking about her dysphoria. All this time something had been bothering her. She would look on at her friends with jealousy, but there was never an answer there for her. And how the body peeling off, transitioning, helps her to not have to feel pain thinking about the things that are off about her body. It’s normal. She feels normal in a body that better reflects her.
Jupiter is the only hold out, still fearing for her own life. The false ideas instilled in her are staying strong. Neptune brings up a new argument. One that relates to the other three endings in the game.
In those three endings, they are achievable by leaving one of the three out and then having the other two use their radios the exorcise the “devil” out of them. And then the other two will be completely fine, at the cost of the third who was turned due to their isolation and not allowed to exist. And the worst part? Jupiter calls it gross, but Neptune says it’s normal. Because it is normal. The other endings show how normalized that kind of behavior is. To give up one of your friends in exchange for one’s own self preservation. To out them.
It’s ugly to do that to someone. To turn someone into a scapegoat. To live in a society where one’s self preservation can make you hurt someone else so badly. And the fact isn’t that there’s a scapegoat to be had, but as Venus said: “What’s ugly is we have to choose at all.”
But Jupiter’s walls are finally breaking down. She cries. She misgenders and then properly genders Venus correctly. Despite it all, despite knowing it the fear is still there. It’s an understandable type of fear. Coming out and living as yourself can be life changing, either negatively or positively. It’s scary.
But in the end, there is no more going back. To a life that they all hate. Neptune doesn’t want to go back home. To that life. Venus doesn’t want her old body back. She’ll die if she has to go back. But they promise they’re there for Jupiter. And they won’t abandon her in this time of need. And that’s what makes it different. They’re all there for each other. There is no two against one. There isn’t a scapegoat. None of them are afraid anymore since they finally do have each other supporting them.
The devil is representative of things that society forces people to repress, especially queer and trans people. As much as non-queer people want to say it is, the problems that queer and trans people faces, including teens, is still horribly relevant today. God are those who believe in a world that must be ruled by their religion. They don’t think for themselves, they follow the teachings of their church and hurt others. It’s a religion that teaches you to love your neighbor, but they hide behind their religion like a wall. They hide and harm and say its in the name of god. And if there is a god? Well he’s a shitty god. He lets people suffer in his name and kicks back watching them suffer.
But now they are the devil. They are together. They love one another. It’s best friends forever. It’s a first kiss. It’s a love story. Jupiter’s storm finally is allowed to begin, her blood mistifying around them. Neptune’s dark color ink and bile finally begins to clear up, all the toxicating elements within her finally washing out. And Venus is there to help clean her. Calm and patient. And Jupiter’s storm of hands makes sure every part of Venus knows she’s loved and seen. They’re finally content and happy.
Though despite it all, others will try to rob them of their happiness. It’s only natural. Humans are cruel to others who aren’t exactly like them. Ready ot hurt at a moment’s notice. Why? Because they’re different. Not only are they different, but they are no longer ashamed that they are different either.
And while the three dream of fixing the camp. Dream of freeing everyone from shackles that institutions have placed on them. The camp? All of them are like Venus, Jupiter, and Neptune. They just need a little coaxing to be freed. To understand like them.
They have a new apple. There is nothing to fear when there’s two against the devil. But they can’t wait to see what they’ll do against the three worst girls since Eve.
True Ending CG
Ending Remarks
I want to thank you, personally, if you made it this far into the essay. This was one of my favorite things I’ve ever written. And going through it again personally reminded me how much I do enjoy love writing. I would love to make writing my profession one day, since it’s something I genuinely love doing and it’s the one thing I think I’m pretty decent at. I’m not GREAT at SEO, so I’m not sure how many people will come across this. But I would love to make posts more regularly, however now that I work I’ve been unable to to do so as much as I want. My ultimate goal is to make this my job. And I would be thankful if you considered tipping me on Ko-Fi. It would mean the world to me, truly. Links below to my Twitter and Ko-Fi, in addition to links to where you can buy WKTD yourself now on Switch!
Also yes I do own the glow in the dark art print. And yes, it does hang on my wall framed.
People keep talking about the grim reality of Luz having to go home eventually. I really hope there’s a part in the show where Luz gets to make the decision of what she wants in her life. Gravity Falls didn’t do this, by having Dipper and Mabel leave Gravity Falls at the end and return to their normal life. But there was nothing necessarily problematic for them in their normal environment either.
I really hope this show allows Luz to remain in the Boiling Isles. For her to be able to pursue education of becoming a witch and doing something with it in her future. It’s something she loves. It’s something she wants. And more importantly, it’s something she excels at, especially when you consider she’s a human.
Luz has nothing at home except her mom. And even then, her mom is less than pleased with the type of person that Luz is. What I really hope for is that conflict between Luz and her mother. The conflict of actually wanting to stay, and not giving in for other people. My point being, someone like Amity does everything she does from self sabotaging herself by being a bully to destroying her own ability to make friends all to uphold the standards of making her parents happy, at the cost of her own life. It’s only by Luz wandering into her life, that she’s able to start making her own decisions again and acting like the person she is as opposed to the type of people her parents make her to be.
I want to see Luz go through a mirror image of that kind of thing. Where she is under this assumption that she’ll have to go back home. Because in stories like this? The girl goes home when summer ends. That’s the normal trope that Luz knows will happen. She has to go home eventually, leaving behind a world that she feels truly comfortable to be in. That’s how these stories go. But The Owl House is also very smart at subverting all these regular tropes seen in this kind of story.
From things like a money hungry principal only obsessed with money and donations to the petty rich rival girl. These story lines are abandoned and subverted because the show sets out to do that. Principal Bump knows when he’s made a mistake and even moreso goes AGAINST the emperor’s cover by allowing his students to mix magic. Amity, well we know about Amity by now and her own arc of subverting the rival trope.
Considering we’ve seen Luz’s mom open the door in the trailer for Season 1B, I can almost guarantee this is going to be something that happens. Luz is gonna be dragged back home during the midst of major problems, and damns herself to the path that her mom wants her to take. Her mother is misguided. And no matter the good intentions that Luz’s mom has, it can damage Luz regardless by robbing her of the future she wants to have with the people she wants to have in her life. She has friends now. A mentor. These people who genuinely care about her, and also accept her as she is. And while Luz’s mom loves her, she can’t or won’t understand her daughter. After all, the inciting incident of the show is Luz being send to a conformity camp.
My point being, if the show ended like Gravity Falls in that, Luz goes back home and the story ends there that kinda robs the whole point of the show. The idea of not letting anyone tell you who to be or what to want. Eda has Lilith constantly telling her who she SHOULD be, aka someone works for the Emperor’s Coven. You have Amity’s parents telling Amity she can’t associate with “weak witches” in order to not damage their family name. You have Willow being too afraid to switch tracks at school despite how wonderfully powerful she is at plant magic.
Luz is avoiding the issue for now, but she’ll need to eventually need to confront her mother on this. Because that’s something that would fit into the overall theme of the show: being yourself. Luz is learning magic. Why? Initially it’s because she thinks it’d be super cool to be a witch. But the more time she spends in the Boiling Isles, the more she becomes connected to it. The more she is discovering magic that has been lost to time, revealed to her my the nature of the realm itself. Luz’s initial “I want to be a witch because it’s cool!” is thrown away. She wants to be a witch now because she’s honing her skills and it’s becoming a part of her. The world itself is opening to her. She’s understanding it, and her overwhelming sense of empathy is what allows her to excel so much.
She managed to easily shatter the walls that Amity had built around her. She quickly befriended and became mentored by the Isles’ most wanted. She helped a long abandoned powerful Palisman move forward with her life. And there’s so much more. Luz brings positive change to the lives of the people she meets on the Isles. And more importantly? Them being in Luz’s life helps Luz to become a a far better person too. Luz was socially stunted from the fact that her peers rejected her and the adults above her stifled who she was, resulting in someone who throws herself into fantasy to escape the harsh treatment she receives for simply being different.
Luz may only be 14, but going through a door into a whole different realm filled with magic and demons? I feel like that’s a good card to play for literal life changing and discovery moments. Luz has a dream now. Luz is actively changing a stunted society because of her “misplaced confidence” as Eda describes it. Eda wanted to bring about change, but does so in a chaotic way. Luz brings change in a similarly chaotic way, but does it in small ways. She brings change by interacting with people. She didn’t really do that prior to the Isles.
If Luz was to go home permanently, it would feel antithetical, as I had said prior. Luz’s dream is to become a witch now. People have skills that they make use of in trying to achieve their own dreams, so that they can be happy. More often than not, someone else will enter and quash that motivation. Whether it be parent telling their dreaming artist child to not become an artist because “it won’t make you money” or anything else, it’s something that happens.
Luz’s mom’s good intentions shouldn’t overrule the happiness that Luz draws from the Boiling Isles. Luz can love her mom like any child would, but I also think Luz should be allowed to pursue the opportunity fate has given to her. The sad and alone Luz from the beginning of the show is gone. She didn’t show it a lot, but early you can see it. Things like the chosen one and stuff were part of Luz’s misplaced pre-conceived notions of magic. But now being a witch? That is something that people train to be, and it’s something Luz wants. She has a want now for herself, as opposed to a want of others to simply accept her.
I love the end credits because it shows one major thing. And that’s the idea that The Owl House, to Luz, is home. It feels like home to her. While we don’t see much of Luz in the human realm, we can tell it’s a place she doesn’t want to be. Eda gives her the chance to go back home. Hell, she can go home whenever she wants. But she doesn’t. Luz strolls happily through this new world she is a part of, and the credits end by Luz running back to the Owl House, a place she wants to be. A home.
There’s this really weird disconnect because of Luz’s mom, which is the regular fuel of a story like this. Luz feels inclined to go home eventually, not because she wants to or because she believes there’s any sort of future there for her or even because it’s home. She feels inclined to go back because her mother is there. She loves her mother, but feels hurt by the fact her mom can’t/won’t understand her. So many series like this end with the human going home because of that sort of connection. The idea that she must give up her newfound happiness because she MUST go home to her mother.
But Luz’s mother, as we see, eventually shows up in the Boiling Isles through Eda’s door. A second season is already greenlit. Which means the show itself won’t end with just summer ending and Luz going home. Luz’s mom will know about the demon realm, and that Luz is being trained to be a witch. That all these things are happening, and it will most likely result in over protective parenting occurring. Whether that be for safety or more related to the mere idea of Luz learning magic.
This is a conflict that should DEFINITELY be explored, and I just don’t want people to assume that’s how this show is going to end. A second season was greenlit before the show even premiered, so while we’re nearing the end of the first season, we still have an entire next season to look forward to. And if everyone, in show, is already fearing about the idea of “You can’t stay here forever”, we know it must be something they will subvert. Otherwise, why would the characters keep bringing it up in this fashion?
The Owl House has become Luz’s home since the beginning of the show. And while Luz’s mom certainly throws a wrench into how Luz should feel about that, it’s something that I think, and hope, will be explored. If Luz didn’t want to live in the Boiling Isles and grow up to have some sort of witch job, she wouldn’t have fought so hard to get into Hexside, a SCHOOL FOR MAGIC, when she has like less than three months max to be in the Boiling Isles.
I feel like Luz shouldn’t go home because the human realm isn’t her home anymore. She may be a human, but the inhabitants of the demon realm are starting to see her as one of their own. Home shouldn’t be solely defined as living in a house with your parent, regardless of how much you care for or love them. That shouldn’t be your sole defining thing of home. Home should be a place you feel safe and loved. A place where you can define yourself without fear of judgement.
Luz’s mom may love her, and may think that stripping Luz of her eccentricities is for the best, we know it’s not. Eda may not be super reliable sometimes, but her growing love and care for Luz is evident. Luz has created more of a life for herself in the demon realm compared to her entire life in the human realm. Hell, Luz went from having no friends to several friends and even having someone potentially romantically interested in her! *cough* Amity *cough*
My overall point is that Luz’s very being is linked to the Boiling Isles now. She lives there. She attends school there. The reason Luz flourishes in the Boiling Isles despite the challenges she faces as a human is because it’s the place she’s meant to be in. She doesn’t aim to be a witch because it’s cool or because it’s fulfilling her own fantasies, she does it because she realizes this is truly what she wants to be. Nature itself shines it upon her to learn from it. It knows that Luz desires this and works hard for it. Yes, her attention problems lead to issues, but she discovers her spells when she does set her mind to it. The ice glyph is shown when she finally is forced to sit down and take a moment. Not trying to cheat it out with the wand, but to take in her surroundings. And then she notices it. It may be her second spell, but it’s her first acceptance that the realm itself will help her learn. It knows this place? It’s where she belongs.
After all, if Luz’s calling is to learn magic the way she is what good would any of her lessons from the demon realm be if she were to return to the human realm permanently?
P.S. Luz could literally visit her mom whenever too, Eda could just open the door on weekends or something so Luz and her friends could visit. Boarding school is a thing, remember. You get sent away all year to nearly all year for school, thus what becomes home? The school you spend 9-10 months in or the home you spend 1-2 months in?
Back in the beginning of 2020, I had made a short post on Tumblr talking about how I think Gravity Falls was the best animated series to premiere and end in the 2010s. Alex Hirsch and his team created one of my favorite stories with wonderful themes and one of the greatest mysteries presented in an animated medium. So when I initially found out several years ago that Dana Terrace, Alex’s partner and someone who was probably most well known for her work on the DuckTales reboot, I was very excited.
Of course, time passed and I wondered when the show would finally drop. Luckily, it came right at the best time. Several big and well loved animated series, like SPOP or SU, were beginning to end. And The Owl House broke into my heart as quickly as Gravity Falls did.
For anyone reading who might NOT know what The Owl House is, I’ll give a short synopsis. Luz Noceda is a 14-year-old Latina girl who is an outcast at school. She doesn’t have friends and enjoys fantasy worlds to escape into. After an incident at school, her mom decides to send her off to a summer camp to be converted into a “normal person.” Before she can leave, she finds an owl has stolen her favorite book and she follows him into an old shack with a door that leads her to the Demon Realm. From there she meets a woman named Eda, a witch called The Owl Lady, and her roommate, a small demon named King. From there, Luz decides to stay on these Boiling Isles, finding herself accepted amongst her new housemates while she learns to be a witch from Eda.
Already, the overall theme to me is great. Don’t let other people, regardless of who they are in your life, tell you who to be. And this is something that permeates for the entire main cast. But this is kinda common, so why is this easily becoming one of my new favorite animated shows? Well, for me, it’s because of the tropes it subverts almost entirely in this magic school genre.
And they do go from smaller tropes to bigger ones. Some smaller ones include the principal at Hexside, Hieronymus Bump. From his appearances, he comes off as extremely worried about the school in a stereotypical way of the image of the school and not exactly its students. In the episode, The First Day, Luz finally attends Hexside where she is unable to pick one single magic track to go onto. When she’s caught mixing magic, she’s placed into the detention course where she can’t learn magic. Bump is following the rules to a T as he wants a donation from the huge Emperor’s Coven to pay for the repairs to Luz’s previous visits, and the Coven forbids mixing magic.
However, after Luz and her fellow detention classmates save the school from a Basilisk by mixing magic, we see that Bump actually dissolves the detention class to allow students to mix magic and in turn allowing Luz to study every track. It’s a nice subversion of the usual mean principal who might only do this if he’s being blackmailed. Rather here, Bump sees the usefulness of mixing magic and how well it was used to stop the Basilisk who easily incapacitated the entire school.
That’s only one example of subverting these kind of magic school tropes. But obviously, the most important subversion in the show is the character of Amity Blight. Amity first appears in the third episode, I Was a Teenage Abomination, which also introduces a lot of the Hexsiders like Willow and Gus.
In the episode, Amity is portrayed as just the generic rival character and foil to the main protagonist. Someone who exists solely to not like and to see Luz triumph over. She’s the mean girl who excels at everything and stopped being Willow’s friend because Willow wasn’t good enough. But… that’s not who Amity is. At all. Amity really only fulfills this role for this singular episode. Following this, her major appearances are about deconstructing this Draco Malfoy-esque role.
Amity is important because it’s allowing Amity to follow along with these themes of not letting anyone tell you who you can and can’t be. In the episode, Covention, we meet Amity again which results in Luz challenging her to a Witch’s Duel. Of course it doesn’t go well when Eda and her sister, Lilith, use Luz and Amity in an attempt to prove their own ways to the other. We see how upset Amity is, and in this moment of vulnerability, one can see how much pressure she is under to become a powerful witch. At first, we’re not sure why, but it’s something we’ll get to. This is only Amity’s second major appearance, and we’re already seeing that this stuck-up and bullyish exterior is nothing more than a facade.
In Hooty’s Moving Hassle, Amity isn’t a main character, but we can see her at the end of the episode looking out the window forlornly. She’s supposed to be doing a ritual with her “friends”, but she isn’t. Rather, she sits there alone. She looks tired and sad. Not with anything in particular. Just herself. Her situation. She doesn’t look like she wants to be there.
This moves into Lost in Language, which is directly after this. In this episode, Luz encounters Amity at the library while returning some overdue books for Eda. We see Amity reading her favorite children’s book to the kids there. An open and honest depiction of who Amity actually is. Of course, once more, she comes off to a bad start with Luz, whom Amity can’t seem to figure out. Luz spends the rest of the day hanging out with Amity’s twin older siblings, Emira and Eldric. The two are complete troublemakers, who seem to be on the complete opposite end of the personality spectrum from Amity.
A star flies past the library that night, bringing the books contents to life. We find out Emira and Eldric brought Luz here to get revenge on Amity, whom they find too uptight and want to get back at using Amity’s diarty. Luz is obviously uncomfortable with this, and finds Amity may be someone she truly can be friends with. Especially when she finds out that Amity’s favorite book series is the same as her own. Of course, Luz accidentally finds Amity’s diary. After a small struggle, pages fall out revealing Amity’s deepest thoughts.
Most of those thoughts though are about Luz and some other things. Why won’t the human leave her alone? But the first one is the most important. She writes “I wish I had somewhere to go.” This just hurts. Amity sees what has happened and pins the blame on Luz, calling her a bully. I think this is where we can really see where Amity is. Who she is. While she comes off as the antagonistic bully, she isn’t. She’s alone. Sad. She flees to a secret nook in the library where she can be herself and doesn’t have to think about the kind of life outside that’s being pushed onto her.
Amity may hang out with the popular girls. But Amity doesn’t like them. Amity doesn’t consider those people her friends. Amity, deep down, knows she doesn’t have friends. And her only reason for hanging around with them is to keep up appearances. But… that’s not for her own ego. She’s being forced to do that.
Amity’s favorite book being about a character named Otabin, who seeks friendship and positive relationships, is very reflective of herself. Amity wants friends, but she can’t find them. She’s forced to be stuck with these people she doesn’t like, but has to keep up with. And by saving Otabin with Luz, Amity finds someone she can possibly have an actual fresh start with. After all, things didn’t go well with Willow. And Luz tries to apologize by giving Amity the newest Azura book, which Amity didn’t have.
It’s a small gesture, but it is a reached out hand to bridge a gap by using their shared common passion. It shows that even Luz can tell that Amity isn’t a bad person, but rather there’s something more to her. And Amity is torn where to go. We see a lot that Amity is kind of in the shadows, and in the shadows are the only places she can be herself and let her true emotions out. In Covention we see this when she runs off after the duel. And Luz shows her the small lights she can create now. And in Lost in Language, the same thing happens. Amity’s most pure personality is only allowed out in the dark of the night in the library, the only place she truly feels safe to be herself.
By the time of Adventures in the Elements, we see Amity is moving tiny steps forward toward being herself. But most importantly, we see how quickly she has moved toward being Luz’s friend. To the point where she’s setting up a time and place to meet with Luz to talk about the Azura book. She’s also happy to hear that Luz may be attending Hexside, but that Luz needs mastery over two spells.
Eda attempts to teach Luz to take in nature so she can learn magic from it, Luz is impatient though. They head to the mountains where they encounter Amity and her siblings also training as Amity attempts to master a fire spell. And there’s just a lot of cute moments in the episode. One of the best ones being Amity turning and seeing Luz in the middle of training and waving to her, before Amity falls into the snow. It’s a small detail, but it does show how quickly Amity is progressing in trying to find someone who genuinely likes her for her and not for some obtuse arbitrary rich family reason.
Even when Luz ends up using up Amity’s training wand’s power, which results in a snow monster kidnapping Eda and the twins, Amity traps Luz so she won’t get hurt. She lacks confidence in Luz’s abilities, but is more worried about Luz’s safety than anything. And when Luz finally takes in nature, and discovers ice magic? Amity is actually proud of Luz. Sure, Luz has to apologize for nearly getting everyone killed, but Luz is making strides toward magic and Amity is making strides toward Luz.
Again the subversion is that, the Malfoy-esque character isn’t allowed this kind of development early on. Usually it comes out at the very end. But, Amity is being allowed to develop from step one. She enjoys being around Luz. And as we see in The First Day, this absolutely terrifies Amity. To the point where she’s walking alone in the hallways wondering how this affects her and Luz and if them attending Hexside together changes anything.
These are just small things. Amity is opening up. And this? This scares her. Especially because she’s extremely drawn to Luz more than anyone else in her recent life. As many others have pointed out, Amity is trapped in the shadows until Luz comes along as her light, represented literally by Luz’s first spell being able to cast light.
The last major episode that we’ll talk about is the most current one as of airing, Understanding Willow. This episode may seem to be about Willow, but it’s major focus is Amity as well. Most importantly, her previous friendship with Willow and what exactly led to that ending. It’s all set up through Willow’s memories being pulled out and placed out as photographs. When Amity sees them with one of her “friends”, she panics and attempts to burn the memory. Of course, we see that Amity loses control of the fire and they burn up all of Willow’s memories.
Luz and Amity seek out help from Eda, who transports them into Willow’s mind in order to repair the damage to her memories. We also see that Willow has two dads, which is just good for us to move forward with the idea of Lumity happening. But again, back to Amity’s character. One thing I find interesting is the faith that Luz has in Amity. Luz is disappointed in Amity, but she’s not angry. Luz knows Amity well enough by now to know that even though what Amity did was wrong, she didn’t do it out of maliciousness.
When we see Amity going through these memories that both she and Willow shared, we can see that… these are things that Amity treasures and holds dear to herself as well. And when they see that the inner part of Willow’s mind is purposefully burning and destroying everything with Amity in them, this hurts Amity. There’s a final memory that Amity has been avoiding this entire time, and the inner Willow forces Amity and Luz inside of it.
This memory is the moment where Amity told Willow they weren’t friends anymore. And this occurred at Amity’s birthday party. We see how much this shakes Willow, and why it angers the inner Willow so much. And Amity, as much as she doesn’t want to face the memory, allows her own memory to play as well. That, right before this interaction, Amity’s parents were… well… abusing her emotionally. They don’t like Willow, and they find her to be so below their family. They don’t care that Willow brings Amity joy, they just want their appearances to not be tarnished by having a child play with this other child they find repulsive. And if Amity doesn’t stop being friends with her? If Amity doesn’t cut things off and starting being around her shitty modern “friends” they will make sure Willow never gets a chance at becoming a proper witch. They will make sure Willow never steps a foot into Hexside.
And they’re pushing this onto a child. A small child. Their small child. And the only thing Amity can do is stop being friends with Willow so that Willow can pursue her own dreams one day without Amity’s parents doing something to ruin them. And this episode just shows how harsh Amity must live. Why she is the way she is. How even from young childhood, her parents have been emotionally manipulating and abusing her. How they utilize the most powerful ways to get someone to do something for them. Guilt. They can ruin Willow’s life and place that guilt on Amity, their extremely young daughter.
You could have stopped being friends with her! It’s your fault for not doing so.
This one scene makes my heart break for Amity. To see that so much has been done to her, to the point of her closing herself into the darkness completely so that she doesn’t hurt anyone she might come to care about. She plays the role of the bully to isolate herself. So people won’t want to be her friend. No matter how much she wants love and companionship, she sets herself up to never be able to have that. Because if she does, her parents may step in to ruin it all.
“Willow, you were never too weak to be my friend. I was too weak to be yours.”
This sets up why Luz is so important to her, but also why she’s always so worried about her relationship with Luz. Luz is a human. Not even a witch. Luz is the epitome of everything her parents hate about witches. Except Luz is even worse because she can’t perform magic without drawing out the Isle’s natural energy through magic circles.
And this? This frightens Amity. Even more possibly than her friendship with Willow. While we know same-sex relationships exist on the Boiling Isles, as we see Willow has two dads, and it’s very possible that Amity’s feelings for Luz may run deeper than friendship. And this? This is why she’s so scared. She’s falling for a human. She’s a Blight. She couldn’t even be allowed to have a “weak witch” as a friend when she was younger. How could she possibly deal with any burgeoning feelings for Luz?
In the hallways, Amity worries if this will change anything between her and Luz. Why? Because now they will see each other everyday at school. This creates more chances for Amity to gravitate towards Luz. And with Understanding Willow, we see that Amity may even start to disregard that. The invitation to her “friend’s” party? She lets it fly away. Almost… almost like she’s taking a full step to try and be more open in public with her feelings. She wants to be who she wants to be. And after seeing the damage she caused to Willow? That might have been her own wake up call.
I find this important. Many people have been using the song “Little Miss Perfect” to describe Amity. And what Amity is going through can be compared to what a younger lesbian may go through. Parents who convince you to be one way, and use threats to force you to shove parts of yourself down. Parents who see signs of who you may turn out to be when you’re young, and use emotional manipulation to repress that within you. Obviously here, it’s Amity having feelings for Luz being referenced to a real life case of the “Little Miss Perfect” realizing she’s a lesbian but her status and parents forcing that back down, creating a miserable person who only exists for the status of others. And I think tackling this issue of homophobic parents underneath the more veiled references to Amity being a Blight, a powerful witch family, and Luz being a human, someone the Blights probably see as utterly worthless.
The next episode that airs, next week, is Enchanting Grom Fright, where we got that good image of Luz and Amity in formal wear at a dance in the hallways. Alone. Close. While Amity has a very soft smile on her face. The amount of time spent up on Luz and Amity is very indicative of where we possibly might be going with them. And I find this to be important because of how Amity’s character so closely resembles that repressed lesbian kid who is slowly opening up to someone she knows won’t judge her. And to have this on a Disney show? To have this happen before the series finale is paramount in the evolution of LGBT representation in animation.
To allow a relationship like this to grow and actually show the nuances of a possible queer teenage relationship from its start? That’s important because shows like LoK and SPOP give us some great rep, but that rep isn’t too focused on post-admission. And the way that, so far, that Amity’s character and relationship with Luz has developed so far has been so wonderful. It doesn’t make us wait to the finale or final season to show that Amity can be a better person. We’re seeing that all right now. And that? That’s important to me. That’s important to a lot of people. To see Luz, this oddball girl, become accepted by Eda and King and all of her new friends? To see her then essentially reach out and save this abuse victim in probably a time where she’ll need it most? There’s so much here, and it’s all done so wonderfully. And I can’t wait to see where The Owl House goes next.
(Contains spoilers for Boom Studio’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers up to Shattered Grid #1)
Lord Drakkon. A name many might not know unless you’re a fan of Boom Studio’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers comics. The character first appears in issue four, as a voice, but appears in-person in issue eleven.
I am a big fan of the comics for Power Rangers. They, for me, are the series saving graces since 2016. I consider the last decade of Power Rangers, since Power Rangers Samurai, to be pretty bad. While Power Rangers has always been for kids, I feel like the age range has slipped more and more since the show moved to Nickelodeon. Whether this be the result of Nickelodeon or Saban getting the brand back, I’m not sure. I’m sure it was Saban though, since you can see those grubby paws all over the recent season, Beast Morphers. And even then, I think Beast Morphers is extremely hit or miss with its writing.
Today, I wanna talk about Lord Drakkon as a character and why he utterly fascinates me. I consider him to be one of the best villains ever placed into the Power Rangers multiverse. So let’s talk about Lord Drakkon, shall we?
Lord Drakkon, for the uninitiated, is essentially an evil Tommy Oliver, the Mighty Morphin’ Green Ranger. In the original series, Tommy is a new student at Angel Grove High and he quickly befriends the Rangers before he is kidnapped and brainwashed into Rita Repulsa’s evil Green Ranger. The entire arc is called Green With Evil, and I recommend watching that arc specifically if you plan to get into the comics.
At the end, Rita’s spell is broken and Tommy joins the team. The comics pick up from there, but takes place in modern day, with Tommy adjusting to joining the team. Lord Drakkon, however, is meant to be the version of Tommy who is freed from Rita, but goes back to her instead of joining the other Rangers. This leads to an apocalyptic event in which Rita takes over the world in a subversive Donald Trump-esque fashion. With Rita saying that she’ll stop destroying the worlds if the people give her the Power Rangers, slowly manipulating the same kind of Trump supporters in the real world into supporting her.
In the end, Rita’s army goes to war with Zordon, the team’s mentor’s, army. And they lose. Zordon attempts to upgrade Jason into the White Ranger, but Tommy arrives and kills Jason before stealing the powers for himself, thus giving us Drakkon’s iconic Green/White Ranger hybrid design.
But what we’re here to talk about is the question of whether or not do we hate Drakkon or do we pity him? Drakkon’s most major appearance is in the massive event known as Shattered Grid, which celebrated Power Rangers’ 25th Anniversary (more so than Dimensions in Danger did.)
Shattered Grid gives us the insight to Drakkon as a character along with the annual issue that shows us the immediate aftermath of what led directly to Drakkon.
Drakkon is a bad person, there is no doubt about that. What he has done is unforgivable. From slaughtering members of the Rangers to instituting a complete fascist dictatorship under his rule to enslaving the minds of others to bend to his will, Drakkon is for sure a horrible person. But what led him to these decisions? Are his reactions normal?
To me, in a way, a little bit. Imagine you’re Tommy. You’ve suddenly been zapped out of a trance where you don’t know where you are or what’s happening. You vaguely remember and run away. A teenager. Alone. Afraid. Easily manipulable. The difference between Tommy and Drakkon though is that Rita found Drakkon first. Rita, in the comics, is a great villain. She’s a horrible person and an even smarted master manipulator. So it’s no surprise that by playing on Tommy’s weaknesses? The same weaknesses the mainline Tommy has? That she is able to reel him in. The idea that she saw greatness in Tommy and chose HIM to be a Ranger while Zordon didn’t. She claims that she only wants peace and that by taking over the planet? She will make peace.
A young scared lonely teenager… of course it would be easy to wrap someone like that around your finger and then proceed to continue to brainwash him in a more realistic way. She molds him into a horrible person over time as opposed to the magic spell. And thus, Drakkon is born. And he’s ready to become the savior that Rita said he’d be come.
Of course that? That’s a lie. We all know it. And eventually Drakkon, now becoming addicted to power just like Rita? He kills her and takes over the throne. He doesn’t need Rita anymore. Of course, this eventually leads into the Black Dragon arc of the comic. This is the major introduction to Drakkon and the World of the Coinless. There isn’t much here in terms of what kind of person Drakkon actually is. No, for that? For that we have to go to the 2018 Annual. More specifically, it’s Zeo story.
The Zeo story in the annual is simple. The Zeo Rangers throw a farewell party for Jason after he gives up the Gold Zeo Ranger powers back to Trey of Triforia, the power’s original owners. Jason heads to the roof where Tommy meets up with him. The two chat about the future as well as Tommy asking about how he felt when he first joined the team. Jason admits that while things were tough, Tommy was there for them. A friend. A hero.
The two affirm their friendship and the fact they met, before Jason eventually leaves. Of course, we then find out that the Tommy in-question was Lord Drakkon. But there’s something… off about Drakkon here.
So far, we’ve seen Drakkon willing to just barge and kill whoever he wants without remorse but… when Tommy sees that Drakkon has stolen Adam, the Green Zeo Ranger’s morpher, and asks if he hurt his friends? Drakkon’s response? No. He didn’t. He wanted to… but he didn’t. Which is out of character. Put this up with Drakkon saying he was happy to have met Jason, and things start to become much clearer.
Now, we know Drakkon is not without any sort of empathy. In issue twenty-six, we’re introduced to Finster-Five, a weird amalgam of Finster and Alpha. And Drakkon? He truly cares about Finster, considering him to be his only friend. Friend. Oh…
This is where we really start to ask the question about Drakkon. Do we hate him? Or do we pity him? Do we hate the man who mercilessly kills people, including several of his alternate selves? Do we pity the man who had his life stolen from him and was manipulated and brainwashed into becoming something even worse than his abuser?
I’ve seen people talk about Drakkon being overrated as a villain or character. Mostly because he’s just Tommy, and I think a lot of us (thanks to the TV show) are tired of Tommy. But the comics bring a light to the character of Tommy that the show never could. The show just spends every anniversary talking about how great Tommy is and how he’s the best Ranger of all time. The comics forego that route to make Tommy a person and not this idealized version of himself that the show has done over and over again.
Drakkon is one of my favorite antagonists because of how flawed he is, but also the fact that abuse shaped who he became. He was picked up off the streets by a toxic manipulative abuser, who molded him into another of her. And when he realizes the multiverse exists? He realizes something. It breaks him. This is the only universe in infinity where Rita got to him first. The only universe where Tommy Oliver killed people who are his friends in other realities.
This realization BREAKS Drakkon. It breaks him. The entire point of Shattered Grid and his armies and his invasions? They were for nothing more than to amass Morphers so that Drakkon could transport himself into the heart of the Morphin’ Grid. Why? So he could erase every other reality in the universe. Everything gone except a white void.
And when Drakkon wakes up? He’s at breakfast. Having pie with his parents, Zordon and Rita, as well as his dog, Cruger. He’s young. Smiling. Tommy. He’s Drakkon, the superman of this new world. People adore him. The Power Rangers, now normal people, look up to him and he sees them as his friends.
Drakkon’s goal in the end was to create a reality that would allow him to be like every other Tommy. The real Tommy, whom he had killed, taunts him through the reflections as the world falls apart slowly around him. Drakkon’s very spirit is what keeps the world itself alive, and if it collapses? So does the world. Tommy’s taunts are of a more malicious side though. They’re both right and wrong.
Drakkon created this reality in an attempt to make himself whole, but at the same time? He just wanted to be like every other Tommy. A Tommy who didn’t get picked up by Rita and turned into Drakkon. While Drakkon is responsible for everything he did, it’s the fact we know that it didn’t have to turn out like this for him. We know the alternative is much better for Tommy. One where he has friends. He may be scarred, but maybe with his friends? He can move past it.
This is, in the end, what separates Tommy from Drakkon. Drakkon has grown to be jealous of the Rangers and their relationships to Tommy. So much so that he tries to emulate it, but when Tommy breaks that illusion he loses it. Drakkon is a child. A broken child who created a dream world to escape the horrible and monstrous things he did. And even when Tommy extends a hand out to him? A chance to redeem himself? A second chance that everyone, even Drakkon, deserves?
Drakkon turns away. And he vanishes into nothingness along with his dream world. Reality crumbles. Drakkon, for a moment, perhaps did the right thing. Maybe he’s too stubborn? Maybe he knows he’s beyond redemption? And perhaps he knows that his death would be more beneficial than if he was alive.
Drakkon, to me, is a simple idea taken as far as they can with that idea of an evil Tommy. Drakkon, essentially, is a representation of one of the outcomes of an abuse victim. The same goes for Tommy. There are people, like Tommy, who are abused. They suffer this abuse, and that hurts them. It scars them. But it gives them an understanding of abuse, and they do not want that abuse to occur to anyone else. You have empathy for other abuse victims like yourself. On the other side is Drakkon. He is manipulated and abused. And in the end, he chooses to become another abuser. That he was abused thus he has the right to inflict the pain he received onto other people.
Drakkon is a character I both pity and think is a horrible person. A person so broken and demented, that in the end, he realized that death is the only option he can take to be a hero like Tommy or the other Rangers. He wanted the friends that Tommy had, to the point where he couldn’t bring himself to harm them. The only person he could openly harm himself, Ranger-wise, was himself. As much as he wanted to reject the idea that he wanted friends or needed them, it was clear as day that deep down he desired them. And in order to achieve that dream he needed to become a god and remake the world in his image. All for a simple goal. Love and friendship. To be a hero. Even if it required killing and destroying everything around him.
This is a few months late considering I never finished watching this until last night. I Am Not Okay with This is one of the latest supernatural teenage dramas to hit Netflix, having dropped on the service at the end of this past February. With everything going on, it was something I started when it dropped but now only recently finished. With only seven 24-28 minute length episodes, I didn’t expect much. But what I got was something that I thought was extremely well written and well paced in the time that it was allowed.
The basic set up of the show is that seventeen year old Syd Novak is grieving the suicide of her father. She lives with her emotionally distant, and sometimes emotionally abusive, mother as well as her little brother, who is one of few people she actually cares about. Syd soon enough discovers that she has telekinetic abilities, and the downward spiral that follows her interpersonal relationships with her best friend, Dina, and her neighbor, Stan.
Now I usually avoid shows like this, anything that remotely feels like Stranger Things. That’s a show that is so overblown and over saturated in modern pop culture, that it leaks over into everything else. Including things like the modern IT remakes. But this show, in seven episodes, does everything I would want out of a supernatural teen drama than anything Stranger Things had produced.
Syd’s telekinetic abilities push the plot forward, and they occur in violent situations when her negative emotions surge. As a result, they don’t surface when she’s “happy.” Now the thing about Syd is that she is rarely happy. There are points where she is just content and neutral, but the only times we see her actually happy is when she’s with Dina or her little brother, Liam.
The show portrays Syd as someone who realistically has horrible depression. She’s irritable, tired, and anxious as all hell. There are moments where she can be happy, but she’s so anxious that she often can’t say no when placed into situations that she doesn’t want to deal with. Things such as hanging out with Stan to going to homecoming with Stan to learning how to use her powers with Stan… She just says yes to avoid conflict, seeing as home is a never ending battleground between herself and her mother.
Syd is someone who is desperate to feel something, especially as she grows distant from Dina, who is dating the stereotypical jock football popular boy, Brad. This harms Syd emotionally, because to no one’s surprise, she is really in love with Dina. At the beginning of the show, she attempts to repress these feelings by getting high with Stan which eventually results in them having sex. However, Syd feels nothing from this. It’s not something she enjoyed, and it causes her to feel severely awkward around Stan.
Repression becomes a somewhat common theme in the show as it stands now. Syd’s negative depression induced emotions and attitude results in her powers often occurring at random. When she gets a little angry at Brad? His nose starts bleeding. When she and her mom argue? The wall in her bedroom cracks. When she kisses Dina at the party and thinks she screwed up? She obliterates a good chunk of forest and uproots several trees. And finally, when Brad outs her as a lesbian to the school as well as telling everyone about her personal issues grieving her father? She wants him to shut up and his head explodes.
Syd’s powers are really just a metaphor for her mental illnesses. Mental illness can her inheritable, and something we see near the end is learning that Syd’s father’s reason for suicide was that he had the same powers. The conversation that Syd and her mother have is calm, but also it’s something that you can miss if you’re not looking.
Syd’s mom leads the conversation off pretty much saying that what she will tell Syd may taint her view of her father forever. Now previously, Syd’s mom had said that her husband, while kind and sweet, could also be “vacant”, with some days he’s unable to get out of bed. It’s obvious that Syd’s mother has some inherent problems with people who have mental illness. Why? Because you think she’s going to drop that Syd’s dad was a horribly abusive person behind the scenes, but he isn’t. Even not knowing that Syd and her father share powers, it is one of those things where it’s as if Syd’s mother equates her deceased husband being mentally ill to being a bad person. She remembers the good times, but equates his depressive state as something that would “taint” Syd’s view of him. It’s ableism in every sense of the word.
If we ignore the aspects of their shared supernatural power, I don’t think it would affect Syd in a negative way. Rather, it’s something that draws Syd even closer to her father. They both have these mental illnesses which are beating down on them. Whereas her father would vacate his emotions, repressing, and just laying down in bed all day Syd is the opposite. She lashes out. She’s too anxious to say no to Stan but also, as a result of her personality, lashes out at him for the signals she’d been half-sending. She lashes out, she lets her emotions rip out of her body more than anything at some points. The school counselor isn’t much help, though. Because her mental health problems are far deeper than simply grieving her father. Her depression and anxiety rooted far deeper than one would see on the outside.
When she confronts her brother’s bully in the street, she is attempting to kill the kid, or at least harm him with her powers in order to keep him from harassing her brother. But it doesn’t hit the same way as other things do that actually trigger her outbursts. Her outbursts are related more to deep seated things about herself. Her triggers consist of things like her mother emotionally abusing her to having her own insecurities dragged, such as when Stan purposefully triggers Syd to activate her powers. Syd has horrible insecurities, further deepened by the destructive nature of her powers. She can’t control her powers at all, it’s something that simply happens when she has an emotional outburst.
I find it interesting how much the show leans into using her powers as the metaphor for her illness. In the final episode, Syd decides to repress all of her negative emotions. She decides that putting on a happy facade will allow her to better control her powers. If she doesn’t let herself feel depressed, then she won’t have outbursts. Of course, anyone with mental illness knows that repression one’s emotions can be… harmful to say the least.
Mental illness can be destructive to one’s life if they fail to try and cope healthily. Whether that be going on medication or going through therapy, coping mechanisms need to be healthy. Unhealthy coping mechanism can often backfire spectacularly. Example, using my own unhealthy coping mechanism, is that when I love and care about someone so much that I start to fear that my constant mood shifts might cause them to leave. So I begin to second guess anything that could possibly be misconstrued as negative and start to distance myself from them in preparation to be blocked. It’s unhealthy and makes no sense, but in a moment it can make sense. In a calm time you need to know that it doesn’t make sense, it just will hurt you even more in the long run.
Syd’s powers occur during unhealthy emotional outbursts. She doesn’t confront her problems, they build up, then something happens and her powers begin to lose control resulting in destruction. This causes Syd to further spiral and continue the cycle. By the final episode, as I said prior, she decides that this cycle can be broken by repressing her negative emotions entirely. This, of course, is a horrible idea. And we do see things begin to turn out okay at first.
To me, this is fully representative of how people who are mentally ill are expected to fully change their personalities to fit what people want out of them as opposed to who they really are. Syd’s snarky personality is who she is. It’s not a horribly bad thing, it’s just who she is. When her mother thrusts, unfairly, the jobs of motherhood onto Syd she’s rightfully annoyed with her mom. It doesn’t help the way her mom treats her is like shit. When Syd, later on, tells her mom “I was a dick” and her mother agrees? I could only shake my head. Syd is admitting some her behavior was shitty, but the mom, who has been shoving these things onto Syd? The mom who is yelling and putting Syd down all the time? She’s worse. And I think it has to do with this common feeling that the mentally ill person is always to blame.
This is something I personally live with on a daily basis, and it’s something I have to deprogram myself from believing. It’s the belief that because of my sometimes snarky attitude, as a result of emotional abuse, that I am deserving of the emotional abuse and therefore it is my own fault. I am the dick. It’s something Syd says because repressing her emotions is causing her to believe the same thing. That the shit her mom put on her is her own fault.
Of course, finally we need to talk about the homecoming dance. Having repressed her emotions, she finds some solace in Dina, whom she makes up with. The two decide to attend the dance together, where being at Dina’s side allows her to actually feel calm. Not repression calm, but actual calm. She manages to make up with Stan, admitting she likes him but only as a friend as her romantic feelings lie with Dina. It’s a mix of things to take into account. Because she was repressing her negative emotions, including anxiety and worry, she didn’t focus on her diary which was stolen by Brad. Brad outs Syd as a lesbian to the school, as well as reveling in her mental illness that he’s read in her diary, and finally attempts to tell everyone about Syd’s powers. We visibly see Syd breaking down. She’s trembling. We see tears rolling down her eyes. In her head, she’s telling Brad to shut up as her mind races through everything she’s written in her journal. Until… Brad’s head pops. She’s not in control. Repression didn’t work.
She leaves the homecoming, covered in blood, as we get what I consider the most important thing she’s come to.
I tried. I tried to be normal. But I’m just not wired that way. Thanks dad.
Syd Novak, I Am Not Okay with This, Season 1 Episode 7
It’s the conclusion that she can’t hide from who she is. She’s not neurotypical. She’s mentally ill. No matter how much she represses it or how much she says she’s fine, it’s not true. The final episode of season one modifies the title to read I Am Okay with This. This simply speaks volumes about where Syd was at the beginning and end of the finale. She tries to trick herself into believing that if she just ignores her only issues and tries to conform to what everyone wants from her? It will just end worse than if she hadn’t tried to pretend to be someone she isn’t.
Which one of you will follow me? and which two will survive and cast us out?
I will apologize for the lateness of this analysis. I don’t have any excuse other than a mix of being sick and feeling slightly burnt out. However, I finally made my first leap and bought a keyboard specifically for writing on this blog. It may seem silly, but I wrote a lot over the last two years of having this laptop. Ever since the incident, my hand feels weaker and there are days where it buzzes and makes it impossible to write at length.
Today, however, we will finally be covering Neptune’s character and ending. Neptune is the final character we have to really delve into, and she’s also someone most queer people can relate to at some point in their lives. This one may be a bit shorter than the others because Neptune is probably the easiest of the three to fully understand. Why is this? Well… let’s get started.
The biggest reason Neptune is easier to understand from a symbolic standpoint is because while Jupiter and Venus are constantly denying themselves the truth of who they are and what they want, Neptune has already accepted the fact that she’s queer. She is inwardly accepting of who she is. However, she is outwardly refusing her own identity. But this itself is only one half of her personality. The other half being her love for Venus and Jupiter, while also utterly and violently hating the fact that both of them ignore who they are.
Throughout the game, it’s often Neptune who brings to light most of their issues. She’s perceptive, but she covers this up by a facade of sarcasm and laziness. Neptune is the type of person who knows who she is deep down, but when confronted she gets defensive about it. She gets angry and denies it. This is something we can easily see during her time in the closet with Jupiter.
“No one can prove it.”
Neptune knows who she is. She knows who her friends are. She knows what they want. But she’s not gonna rob them of experiencing figuring out who they are. But the issue stems that she herself is not ready to accept herself openly and out. She’s angry at herself too for the hypocrisy, but she ignores it. Rather she lets it fester. She lets it sit there and grow exponentially.
“Like mine is.”
The context of this comes from Neptune, for once, being kind and telling Venus he will never achieve his own happiness until he figures out what it is. He can be as kind as possible, but kindness will not fill the hole of desires he has. Venus does follow this up though with the fact that Neptune, while knowing of who she is, doesn’t say it out loud. She’s just as bad as Venus and Jupiter are when it comes to this.
And Neptune? In this rare moment of clarity for her, which isn’t blinded by her usual anger, admits that she’s a bad kid too.
The other major point about Neptune, as said previously, can really be seen throughout the game. She is not happy about the fact that Venus and Jupiter refuse to figure out who they are. Rather, they avoid that truth at any cost possible. And that often pisses off Neptune. When Neptune brings out the bottle of wine, she does so to remove the annoyance and anxiety of Venus and Jupiter.
“You’re an angel who doesn’t deserve any of this.”
Neptune wants to see herself as someone who can be brutally mean, or as she believes, honest. She loves Venus and Jupiter, and is mean to them in her attempts to push them towards introspection to finally figure out who they are. Neptune knows Jupiter is a lesbian. Neptune knows Venus is a lesbian transgirl. Neptune knows herself. But she outwardly refuses to admit it, or she gets angry.
“Don’t PITY ME.”
Neptune is angry because both Venus and Jupiter believe they are the devils, but Neptune believes, in every route, that she is the most likely to be the devil. Why? Because she’s the only one who knows who she really is. And the mere idea of Venus or Jupiter becoming their devils makes her believe they are simply saying it to pity her and make her not worry about being the devil, but we know they also truly believe it.
Neptune coughs. That’s her signature reaction, similar to Jupiter’s hairband or Venus seeing the lights. She coughs primarily when she’s either rejecting her own speak or when she hears Jupiter or Venus putting themselves down. In Neptune’s ending, God speaks on the radio once more. This time it’s about bile. God speaks of draining the bile out of a person, putting it in a vial, before finally telling it the “worthlessness of the treasures of earth.” After that you smash it against a mirror, the symbol of vanity.
“Extract the resulting ink.”
This of course is relating to Neptune. When a person vomits, they often vomit up the contents of their stomach. However, if you dry heave enough and cough violently enough, you’ll vomit up your stomach bile. In one of the choices of a non-Neptune exclusion route, we see that Neptune needs to eventually be taken to the bathroom to deal with her cough because she fears she’s gonna vomit up said bile.
More importantly, to me, it represents something Neptune hates more than anything. She hates when Jupiter and Venus hate themselves out loud. When people say something horrible about themselves, a tertiary party who disagrees often says to “stop spouting bullshit” if it angers them enough. She hates that they won’t accept themselves, but she herself spouts the same bullshit by not admitting the truth about her sexuality out loud.
Eventually she becomes the devil when she is forced into the bathroom. She coughs. She vomits. And she sounds louder than ever, but refuses to come out of the bathroom until she eventually relents.
Neptune is leaking bile and ichor from all over her body. She’s the only one with a sprite for her devil form, by the way, because she’s the only one strong enough to fight for what she believes in once she becomes the devil. Her ichor, at least from what I can assume, will force Jupiter and Venus to understand themselves and turn them into devils. She’s so sick of the two of them not accepting themselves, something she previously wanted them to figure out on her own, but this is the revelation it annoyed and angered her so much that her devil form wants nothing more than to MAKE THEM understand themselves.
Jupiter can only attempt to get Neptune off of Venus, but she’s not human anymore. She’s way stronger and way more durable than them. Whatever inhibitions she had are gone now. She openly refers to Jupiter as “babe” as well.
“Just wait a MINUTE.”
Neptune is the easiest character to dissect of the three because of one simple reason. Once she becomes the devil, she talks. And honestly? I don’t need to go into detail because Neptune does about it.
“You kids are trying so hard to be good.”“And I guess I don’t want you to.”“Doesn’t it feel unfair?”“You’re already so good, so why do you have to try so hard to be good?”“It makes me mad.”“Why do we have to be here?”“I am trying to fuck up Venus for the rest of his entire life and you too if you let me and if you want to stop that I guess there is a problem and you will have to kill me.”“Does that kid look happy to you? Well I guess we have different opinions and you will have to stop me from making him into what he is trying very hard not to be.”“And Jupiter I want to do the same to you so badly. So, so badly.”“I don’t want to be good ever.”“And neither of you should want to be good either.”“She’s a flood, of every wicked thought, and they are pouring out of her mouth.”
All of this boils down to one thing and one thing only. Neptune can openly see the fact that the arbitrary “goodness” assigned to being a good cisgendered heterosexual God fearing Christian is meaningless. She sees that Venus and Jupiter are already good. They aren’t bad people. They’re good. But society would say they’re bad. So why should they have to forcibly convert to that way of thinking? Neptune’s ichor is the truth. It’s every “wicked thought” that anyone can think of. Wicked doesn’t mean generally horrible in this context. But rather the truth of accepting your sexuality or gender identity, as questioning either of those things are seen as “wicked thoughts.”
Jupiter is the storm. Venus is the light. But Neptune? She’s the ocean. And the ocean is so much more. And Neptune has so much to share. She knows the truth and she will make the others face that truth and become what they are actively pretending they are not. She will drown both of them in the ocean of the truth.
I’ll be calling you… Through the crackle of the radio
When playing through We Know the Devil, you’re bound to see a lot of the same stuff, but also a lot of new stuff. As you learn more about these characters, you will begin to re-frame every single word they say. As well as re-frame how you view these three campers.
For example, if you play the game in certain order, some character stuff might be left out and that’s really interesting because you re-evaluate other endings and routes, before going back to piece it all together.
The Yellow Ending, just like the Red Ending, can only be achieved by leaving its corresponding character out of interactions. In this case, the person being left out is Venus. Tying back to my previous paragraph, you can note that some stuff you’ll only find out about on other playthroughs to obtain the other endings. For example, in order to obtain the Yellow Ending, we must leave Venus out while Neptune gets Jupiter drunk.
“He just doesn’t LIKE women.”
This post IS about Venus, it’s just an interesting factoid that adds to Jupiter as a character. The fact that she openly knows her dad is gay. Her dad is gay and she is a lesbian, and the only reason she’s at the camp is because they wanted to shut the mom up. Interesting.
All routes will begin the same, so I don’t really feel the need to talk in-depth about the narrative as a general whole again. The set-ups are always the same, but change depending on who is doing what with who. In this case, we will attempt to leave Venus out as much as humanly possible.
Venus is the only “male” character of the group, but it’s not that hard to guess there’s much more going on with Venus than meets the eyes. We know very early on that Venus is pretty much a doormat for everyone else. Venus often attempts to take the path with the least conflict, but is also very conflicted with their own way of thinking.
“I wish they’d leave me alone.”
Early on we can see Venus doesn’t really stand up to anyone. Group South particularly harasses him because he doesn’t stand up for himself. But it turns out it’s mostly because he seeks out the path with the least amount of yelling and fighting. He’s timid, but also has a serious mean streak. The type of person who’s too innocent for their own good, but also makes a lot of remarks that come off an insensitive. However, because of how Venus is it becomes hard to tell whether or not he’s intentionally saying these things out of malice or spite.
Much like how Jupiter’s band is snapped against her wrist the more she thinks about being a lesbian and doing lesbian related activities like kissing, impressing, or being felt up by Neptune we have a similar thing occurring for Venus. Throughout the game Venus will make note of lights. Lights that no one else can see, and these lights usually appear to Venus when he thinks about something. Something…
“Sorry… I thought I saw something.”
Just like how Jupiter’s band is snapped more and more as her progresses into a devil, Venus sees these lights more and more. Guiding him… somewhere. He claims he isn’t a fan of getting mad and believes heavily in turning the other cheek. When he tells this to Neptune, she quickly calls him out on it by saying the people who do say that are obviously the ones who want to slap the person the most instead of turning the cheek.
The lights can easily be seen as something like the Will-o’-the-Wisps, small beings of light leading him astray. Something that Neptune mentions in the Red ending route is that Venus is looking for something. Some sort of identity to grasp onto, but he can’t reach it. He doesn’t know what he wants, and thinks that the world can reward it upon him if he’s nice enough.
“You think being nice is going to give it to you.”
Later on, if left alone with Jupiter, Venus will talk to her about how he feels about reality. This is probably the other most important conversation that Venus has when talking about himself. Venus, and the others, make note that he’s extremely good at fixing the radios as well as practical work with the sirens. However, he sees the unfairness of it all. That he’s usually forced to do it because he can do it, but not because he wants to do it.
Jupiter speaks more to him about his beliefs, and the most telling thing is that he finds life to be unfair. No matter how much a person can try, things will never turn out for them. That certain people don’t have to try hard, and they’ll come out on top. When Jupiter says that she believes the people in the normal scouts try harder than her, Venus can only quickly reply and ask if she truly believes that anyone in the normal scouts have tried harder than her.
“You have to say it isn’t fair.”
This is the best point that Venus makes and shows his true belief for why he acts the way he does. The world isn’t fair. Reality isn’t fair. And that’s what Jupiter tells him. Life simply isn’t fair, but it’s what Venus says next that rings eerily true.
“Reality that’s someone’s fault.”
And he’s right. We can remark life isn’t fair, and often or not people will reply with that is true, but that’s simply how life is. But Venus has the forethought to mark that the lives we live are set up by a society. A society who has made the rules that life will be unfair for certain people. This entire conversation rings true to me. Immediately after he has another knowledge nugget to drop on us.
He asks Jupiter if it makes her mad when the game is rigged from the start, but they also tell her to “do her best!” Wouldn’t that make her angry? It makes Venus angry. It makes Venus so angry that he doesn’t even want to try because it’s rigged for him to lose from the beginning. Venus can only ask and wonder what is wrong with him… What does life want out of him?
“That’s not fixing radios.”
He sees the light again. It’s coming closer. It’s beautiful. Why can’t they see it like he does?
“The arrogance of desiring a beauty that is not god’s.”
It’s already quite obvious where this train is heading. The group tunes into the radio, and we can see who the devil most likely is this time around. Beauty that is not God’s? Arrogance?
“Vanity to be seen and to see.”
The ending is nigh, isn’t it? God speaks of arrogant beauty that is not his. Neptune eventually tells the others they need to leave. But the lights are here. In mass, they have arrived towards them, now enough to be seen by Neptune and Jupiter. And the lights only want Venus. As they attempt to escape, Jupiter injures herself trying to help Venus.
Venus can only then ask why they try to protect him. Injure themselves for him? Why won’t they go on without him?
“I don’t want to be that sort of person at all.”
But Venus can’t look away from the lights. They’re horrible, but he wants to see them. He wants them to see him.
Venus wants them to see her. See her for who she truly is. She doesn’t want to be what reality tells her to be. To be the strong fix-it man. She’s not that. She’s not a man. She wants to cast shadows over the light and light over the shadows. The truth is that she is a woman. Venus is a woman and she wants people to see that. The others however can only admit to looking away from this truth. And despite that, then end the life of the devil within Venus.
All of this boils down to the idea of looking away from trans people, especially when they’re so self-hating about it. Venus allows herself to be opened back up by the devil. To finally admit that she is who she is, and not what the unfair reality says she has to be. When Neptune tells Venus that she wants something, but can’t figure out what it is it’s quite obvious what it ends up being. She wants to transition, but may not even fully understand what being transgender is. She’s in some backwards ass place after all, perhaps that’s why she reached out for something she didn’t know she needed. She needed affirmation of what and who she was, but was unable to grasp for it until her old body was shed away into a being of light. The game does not miss a beat in changing Venus’s pronouns. Venus tries to open up about this, who she is to Neptune and Jupiter, who simply repel the devil from her body. Denial of who she is.
“Venus hangs from the highest branch he can.”
The way the line goes is… disturbing to say the least. Venus hangs from the highest branch. Venus, denied the ability to come out, now is being presented with he/him pronouns again. The Yellow Ending shows primarily the fact that even among some, being trans can be denied even by the people closest to you. And they think they did the right thing. Here, Neptune and Jupiter deny Venus, but also deny themselves of their own romantic inclinations as what had happened in the closet. All of them sit there, hanging from the trees. It’s less dark than Jupiter’s ending but… as they hang there, they’ve denied everything of their true selves. And perhaps hanging there is all they have left.
“When the summer is too hot to bear When the scent of incense is in the air“
We Know the Devil‘s Midwestern setting can get unsettling at times. As someone who lives in the Midwest, it can definitely become apparent that there may not be anywhere else in the country that can be as uncomfortable. The Midwest is stuck between being in the northern states and the southern states. While many of the most bigoted, racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc towns and cities are mainly located in the south it becomes something you accept and know simply as fact. The Midwest can be uncomfortable as you travel. In one area you could be in the most liberal place imaginable, but travel even ten minutes another way and you’ll end up in the most backwards places as well, places that will heavily resemble the south.
As a child, I would often be interested in the clothing of my sister. Perhaps it was something I was drawn too, but I would often get caught and reprimanded for doing something. Because it was “bad” and “weird.” I’d get told not to do it. So… I didn’t. Eventually I stopped doing it altogether simply because of being yelled at or being embarrassed at doing such a thing.
We Know the Devil is everything wrong with the Midwest when it comes to conservatism and we’re gonna talk about Jupiter today. Jupiter. Red.
Every time you play the game you’ll begin with the same setup. Jupiter, Venus, and Neptune are the three members of Group West. These three attend the Summer Scouts, and the Summer Scouts are well… Just what you would expect. They are a religious summer camp, and I’d say as much to say a conversion camp. The cast of the game is very limited. Jupiter, Venus, Neptune, The Bonfire Captain, and Group South. And two more as we dig deeper.
The group heads, rather late, to a bonfire where the captain relays a story about how he once had two friends. And one of the two friends was someone he thought was annoying, and as such he attempted to be an even better friend to get the annoying friend to follow him. But eventually he gave up and said:
“The rest you gotta leave up to god.”
This is an extremely interesting story he tells. Because on the surface it just seems like a friendship that died off. But within the context of the overall game and its setting? It’s much more than that. If there’s one obvious thing, it’s that the Bonfire Captain is as Christian as anyone would expect a counselor at one of these camps to be. He mentions that the annoying things the friend would do included “Wouldn’t go along with us sometimes.” We also see that the captain was attempting to “help” his friend. And it’s said that this friend got into trouble. The last line before the aforementioned quote about leaving up to God is… well… something that makes a lot of sense in context.
“Man up instead of basically doing the opposite.”
Honestly, this one line makes me wonder what had happened to this friend. It’s something I’ll get back to later on. The best way I can describe it right now is that the “annoying friend” was someone who did not follow the status quo. The Bonfire Captain, in all his benevolence, was attempting to be a “good friend” and tried to mold the “annoying friend” into someone who followed the status quo. But something happened, and the Bonfire Captain stayed silent. He did not interfere in something that possibly fucked up the life of the “annoying friend.” He admits he could have stopped it, but he does not take any sort of blame or feel guilt. Rather this was simply how God intended it to be.
Through these early scenes we learn some basics about the main three characters. Jupiter is a top-of-the-class kind of student and generally good at whatever she does, even if she doesn’t know much about it. But she tends to fail at the very end, described as “missing the winning goal” or “always [blanking] on the last question.”
“She’s the perfect role model.”
Venus is the type of person who simply wants to please people and he does not like being mean. He’s a goody two shoes, but only in the most genuine sense of the phrase. Someone who is just too good, nice, and pure for his own good.
Finally we also have Neptune. She’s sassy, sarcastic, and prefers to be on her phone rather than listen to the Bonfire Captain. She often spits out sarcasm when she sees Jupiter and Venus lying to themselves. To her? Being mean is better because it’s more honest in her opinion.
But today we’re focusing on Jupiter and her route/ending. In order for one to achieve this ending, you have to leave Jupiter alone the most. Through the game you’ll be given choices, but unlike most VNs where the choice is usually an action, in We Know the Devil the choices will simply be the symbols of the planets that ascribe to the names of the cast.
Only two…
When you choose one of these choices the person not mentioned will be left alone to do something else while the other two remain together. For leaving someone alone, even for a moment, can be dangerous in this world. So in order to achieve the Red ending you must continuously choose choices that only include Neptune and Venus. Some choices will always have Jupiter in them, same goes for the other two, but you’ll always end up with a specific ending based on who was excluded the most times.
Shortly after the bonfire, the captain will alert Group West that it’s their turn to face the devil. The devil being within a small cabin in the woods. On their way there, they encounter Group South, the best/worst kids in camp. In that they try to suck up so much they end up being the most annoying ones in camp that Group West hates. Group South harasses the group, particularly Venus, as they attempt to repair the sirens.
The sirens and the radios make up two of the more important aspects of the game’s world. The sirens alert you to when the devil is near and the radios can fight off the devil once it shows up. For you see God can communicate clearly with analog signals to the campers.
Every major scene is split between the hours from 7pm to 5am, and you’ll get a choices to see who you exclude. The three members of Group West have a lot of great banter off of one another, and you really come to enjoy all three of them as a group as opposed to when they’re paired off and one is excluded from the group. The three have very different personalities, but their ideals tend to come together similarly and perhaps that is what makes them so much fun to see interact.
From seeing them do things such as getting into the cabin, while mocking the Bonfire Captain, to them getting drunk with shitty alcohol to pass the time in the night. It’s a lot of fun, and three are wonderful characters. And I relate to all three of these characters as well.
Much of Jupiter’s character stems from her “not caring” personality. The idea that she allows people to walk all over her, but she does not react. Rather, she sits there and takes it until the other person stops and a new one takes their place. She will always take the blame, even when something is not her fault. In her mind, she will rationalize it is her fault. Early on in the night, Neptune and Jupiter attempt to get into the cabin which has a busted lock from the other groups. While there, Jupiter discovers different types of lilies in the greenhouse area before she accidentally breaks a decrepit old cabinet. Despite it being both an accident as well as something that was bound to happen because of how unkempt and unmaintained the cabin is, Jupiter breaks down and starts crying.
Jupiter is simply someone who tries so hard to impress and put on this facade that she’s unaffected by everything, but in the end? She takes it on harder than anyone else. When Jupiter is left alone in the cabin, while Venus and Neptune go outside the two converse about the fact that this is happening and that Jupiter needs to let herself get hurt and then be open about it. It becomes something that pisses Neptune off more than anything, the fact that Jupiter allows herself to be hurt over and over again but will never admit she does such a thing. It is self harm.
“It’s not good for you.”
Self harm is a recurring thing with Jupiter, symbolized by her bracelet which she constantly will snap against her wrist. She does this every time she does something she believes is wrong or when she begins to get uncomfortable with her own thoughts she will snap the bracelet harder and harder against her wrist. It’s small, but it’s a recurring theme of Jupiter’s character. It’s simply analogous to self harm in that manner. Even if it’s just a simple wrist band snap, she does it to remind herself she is bad. She is wrong. She shouldn’t do this. She shouldn’t be thinking this. What shouldn’t she be thinking?
If it wasn’t already obvious, Jupiter is a lesbian. A lesbian with a big old gay crush on Neptune. Unfortunately, Jupiter has a LOT of internalized homophobia. Being a lesbian is wrong. It’s bad. It’s not good. Snap. She goes back and forth between her feelings for Neptune and her internalized homophobia about what she is doing is completely wrong.
During the Seven Minutes in Heaven scene between Jupiter and Neptune, the two we can assume are kissing and Neptune is running her hands over Jupiter’s body. Jupiter, of course, doesn’t take much of it well but is reassured by Neptune that no one will ever know simply because they’re alone. Therefore what they are doing right now? It never happened. It only happened if they both admit it happened. If only one admits it happened, it’s only one person’s word versus the other. Therefore, whatever happened in the closet? It stays in the closet forever. And no one in the Midwest will ever know or admit it either. The two could do whatever and they would be denied until admission occurs.
“All you have to do is not say it out loud.”
Eventually the three turn the station on the radio to God. God speaks about touch. The language of touch. How touch feels. The honesty of touch. And almost as if God was speaking directly to the three, he tells them the devil is coming. Not only that, he says it is certain the devil is already here.
Parables I:I
This means there is no devil. The only devils are the humans who do not accept the light of god. Neptune and Venus can only look over as Jupiter sits alone, falling into the endless void of her own internal hatred of herself. But still she says nothing. She simply sits there, snapping the band against her wrist.
Jupiter makes note that they don’t need to say it. Dawn is only a few hours away. They can just ignore it. The devil is just a “phase.” Again, this can be boiled down deep to simply being the internalized homophobia that a lot of homophobic or transphobic parents will say. “This is just a phase. You’ll like guys, you just need to find the right one.” Or even the bigoted cishet men who say “Lesbians aren’t real, you just need a good d*ck.” It’s constant invalidation of how a lesbian feels, whether it comes from their parents or friends or anyone else. Here it’s Jupiter being unable to accept that fact. It’s just a phase, everyone else said so, so it must be true. She then tells them to make fun of her for it, again knowing that this is something that happens. Mockery for who she is.
Jupiter is the devil.
Jupiter begins to unravel, her body giving way to the devil she is. Hands. Hands everywhere. Squeezing the cabin lifeless. Her hands touching her friends. It’s gross, she says. “I’m gross.” She breaks down before them, letting it all out for once in her life. Distant and alone, even though things felt fine earlier. Eventually she begins crying and she notices her hairband is broken. There is nothing left as the three of them are lost in a flurry of hands.
Jupiter melts down. She wants to touch. She wants to be touched. She wants to hurt. She wants to be hurt. She wants to love. She wants to be loved. But mom says not to touch people. And dad says not to let people touch you. Jupiter has shoved down how she felt for her entire life in an attempt to be what God and everyone else says she should be. It’s not good. It’s bad. It’s gross. She wants Venus and Neptune to reject and rebuke her. She wants to be the devil everyone has ever told her to avoid. And… it hurts.
“She has a hand for every kind of touch.”
Jupiter’s inner desires are manifested with multiples arms and hands that come out of her own body. And she wants everything. Every physical and intimate desire she has every craved comes with these hands. She is touch starved from every pore of her being. She wants them, but in the end they reject her. She asked them to, after all. Jupiter believes that, as a devil, she will never be happy. And thus the devil must be expelled from her body permanently, even if it means permanently living a lie for the rest of her life. And the devil is expelled.
“Or, it turned out, we already were.”
The Red Ending is distressing, as are the others as we will see soon enough. Jupiter allowed herself to become a devil to try and achieve what she wanted. She hated herself too much, however, and told Neptune and Venus to expel the devil from her as soon as they could. They accepted her, but Jupiter could never accept herself. It was too internalized. And in the end? The most heartbreaking thing of all for Jupiter is that she lay alone, unconscious. While the two people she does care bout? They sit there next to her, their hands interlocked. Held. Touched.
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