analysisn3rd

The Shading Scale of Morality (something that I use to be able to describe a character’s morality better)

‘My Evil Twin’ by They Might Be Giants has always seemed to me to be a take on the popular ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ trope and I wanted to expand on that.

One of the ways that the stories are similar is how the ‘Evil Twin’ and the narrator are intertwined in a way very reminiscent of Jekyll and Hyde; it’s a sort of “two sides of the same coin” type of situation. They’re almost essentially the same person (and in ‘Jekyll and Hyde’, they are the same person), and this shows through the song when the narrator says “My friends have seen him hiding underneath my skin”, which I think is a rather brilliant metaphor for Jekyll and Hyde. Hyde seeps out beneath the mask of Jekyll’s identity, he’s his “evil twin”, he is his worse half and all. I would say that the main difference between the “Evil Twin” and Hyde in this case is that the narrator makes the “Evil Twin” sound almost parasitic, he doesn’t exactly want his twin there, but Jekyll sort of invites Hyde with open arms; Hyde is- well- his mask. Hyde is his ability to do whatever he wants without repercussions and without losing his social standing, friends, and general society.

Which brings us to the next point: the “Evil Twin” and Hyde both have very similar effects on the narrator and Jekyll’s lives; they’re ruining them, but they’re making them convenient. Hyde and the “Evil Twin” take the blame for whatever horrible thing that Jekyll and the narrator wanted to do but couldn’t. As I’ve mentioned before, Hyde is sort of a mask for Jekyll’s “worse” morality, he is what enables Jekyll to really explore his darker desires. The narrator sings that he’d “hate to see you leave, ‘cause I have grown so grateful for the blame you save me from” to his evil twin in the same way that Jekyll is grateful for the mask that is Hyde because he, too, is saved by his evil twin; “Search lights look for an alibi, but I’ll be home by then”, his evil twin covers for him and rescues him from situations where he’d otherwise be implicated, putting the narrator in a very similar position to Jekyll.

Autistic stereotypes and how Jeeves fits and doesn’t fit into them

There are several autistic stereotypes in which Jeeves fits rather well, and there are others where he doesn’t really act in that way. For the most part, Jeeves is rather like a stereotypical depiction of an autistic genius, very much similar to a character he is (to a degree) based off of, Sherlock Holmes.

One of the many ways that Jeeves fits into these stereotypes is how observant he is. His high attention to detail, something which is seen in several autistic people due to how they process their environment, is very evident in almost all of the stories because it’s usually what saves Bertie from the situations that he was landed in. He also has quite remarkable pattern-recognition skills, where he’s able to tell how a situation is going to play out before it happens because he’s seen something like it happen before.

Not only is Jeeves smart enough to be considered a genius, but he’s also seen as rather emotionless and cold compared to other characters, especially Bertie, who wears his heart on his sleeve rather openly. This is another autistic stereotype; the unemotional mastermind genius that seems more machine than man, which, I would say, got popularised partially by a horrific misunderstanding of Sherlock Holmes’ character. Jeeves isn’t unemotional nor cold, he doesn’t really know how to express his emotions all too well, which is something I will discuss later on.

Additionally, Jeeves acts in a very stiff and formal manner towards everyone, even those whom he would normally be very comfortable and slightly informal with, which is seen as “different” compared to all the other characters. Now this, in particular, isn’t necessarily an autistic stereotype but the idea, the behaving in a way that differs so vividly from others, is. I would say that he uses the rules of formality, of feudality, as a sort of social guide on how to interact with others because he wouldn’t really know how to do so otherwise, and it’s something that I will elaborate on further in another section.

Not to mention that the only instances where he acted otherwise was when he was out, gathering notes for Rockmeteller Todd’s letters, and when he was forced to be a part of Bingo’s communist dinner, both of which were instances where he was acting. 

One of the ways that Jeeves deviates from autistic stereotypes, however, is that he’s often quite sarcastic. It’s a stereotype for autistic people to not understand social cues, especially those regarding people joking and people being sarcastic, and Jeeves differs from this; he’s awfully sarcastic with Bertie at times. 

I will now delve into specific aspects of the autistic experience and how they apply to Jeeves.

Masking

Autistic people mask by hiding their autistic traits and by trying to mimic the way in which others act, by either people watching or through seeing how interactions play out in media.

I find that I cannot tell the extent to which Jeeves masks, because although he relies on what he was taught when it comes to formality to interact with others, he doesn’t exactly hide his autistic traits much. I would say that the only thing that he masks is his social confusion, he doesn’t really know how to interact with people outside of feudality and his inability to express his emotions too well.

He sticks very strictly to the social hierarchy rules, the manners in which one should interact with another from a different social class, because they give him guidelines and an outline for how to act and what to potentially expect in return. For someone who would be otherwise lost, this is incredibly helpful; he follows the rules of feudality so adherently because he doesn’t really know what else to do. Because of this, he finds it rather distressing and disturbing when Bertie breaks them by being overly friendly. Due to this, he’s seen as being stiff or formal with other people from his social standing like Brinkley. He just doesn’t know what to do without it, and he hasn’t been told how to interact with people otherwise, so he dials down the formality a tad but it’s still seen as odd.

Social differences

The way that autistic people tend to interact with others tend to differ from that of allistic, or non-autistic, people. This can show up in so many different ways, and, here, I try to shed light on the areas where Jeeves differs from the norm.

As I’ve mentioned in the previous section, one of the ways that Jeeves’ social differences shows up is by how he uses the social hierarchy rules to live by, making him come off as stand-offish at times.

Another way in which his social differences show up is by how quiet, compared to everyone else, he is. This is actually another autistic stereotype, that they’re very quiet people, and Jeeves is definitely one. He’s much more of a listener, which is one, of the many reasons, why his friendship (or at least Bertie sees it as one) with Bertie is so good.

Furthermore, he’s not all that expressive, which is why he could be seen as “cold” or “unfeeling” by others. His facial expressions don’t really change much when he’s trying to convey his feelings on his face and Bertie is the only one who can detect them. I believe this might be to do with masking as well, because one of the most important things for servants and valets is to make their presence unknown, and one of the ways that Jeeves could do that is by reducing his facial reactions to things. It could also be because he simply doesn’t know how to express them aside from his minimal way.

Additionally, he doesn’t really know how to verbalise or express his feelings in words too well without quoting someone. He doesn’t, despite his genius Bertie would say, know how to put his emotions and thoughts into words that are his own.

When it comes to jokes, especially Bertie’s, Jeeves tends to respond in either an annoyed or blank manner. Jeeves typically has a rather morbid humour, so it might be because he simply hadn’t found them funny, and he might be reacting to Bertie’s jokes in the way that he does because he could potentially simply not understand them too well, or he might’ve thought that Bertie was being genuine. This could be because he has a rather literal and very genuine interpretation of Bertie’s words.

Special interests

Autistic people have deep, sometimes called restricted, interests in things that bring them a lot of joy. Jeeves has several of these.

Jeeves has a very deep interest in books, especially philosophy and more intellectual literature, fashion, which has been very evident all throughout the show and the books, amongst several other things. Sometimes even random things that don’t exactly make sense for him to know so much about. He has a tendency to speak about these interests in a rather lengthy manner; he likes to ramble a lot, and, generally, Bertie likes to listen to him ramble. However, Jeeves sometimes does it at inappropriate or unfitting times, which is probably because he didn’t know that it was considered unsuitable to do so now; he wasn’t taught this.

Sensory sensitivities

One of the diagnostic criteria for autism is having sensory sensitivities that are very prominent, regardless of how they may differ in nature (meaning that they could be related to sound, texture, smell, brightness, light, etc). Some of the sensory issues that Jeeves has are ones that people are more familiar with and some others not so much.

Jeeves displays sensory sensitivities regarding colour. He often thinks it garish and distasteful when Bertie brings home another one of his brightly coloured articles, and this is not only because it’s against fashion rules, but it’s also because he finds colours a tad much for him. This shows in the way that he always wears the same thing, even if it’s not his uniform. He still wears darker colours, if not black, outside his valet duties, and this is most likely because he finds colour a bit overwhelming. It could also be to create a sense of sameness and routine within what he wears.

Jeeves has expressed his distaste for loud sounds a lot throughout the series but I would say that the most evident example of this is when Bertie brought the trombone home. He threatened, and did indeed, to leave Bertie’s employ if he continued playing it because Jeeves found it so disturbing and awfully loud.

Additionally, Jeeves always has his hair slicked back, regardless of what he’s doing, which means that it could be a reason for sensory disturbance to him.

Routine

Autistic people tend to find a lot of things rather overwhelming because of how different they can be, so they cope by developing and forming routines and predictable habits to sort of make the world a more familiar place to them. I would say that Jeeves is very fond of routine

One of the reasons why I say this is as he expressed an amount of distress when Bertie told him that he wanted to adopt a girl or live with his sister and her daughters. Despite all the hijinks and shenanigans that they go through, which can actually be seen as part of the routine with how often they happen, he and Bertie have maintained a rather good one. Jeeves thrives with the sameness of everything; he has to do these same tasks every single day, so they’re predictable and they’ve become sort of second-nature to him and not at all tedious nor boring.

Personality

I would say that Bertie Wooster has one of the most remarkable personalities in fiction, much like his man, Jeeves. He, too, is quite similar to another rather famed character, Dr John Watson, but not quite.

One of the most notable things about Bertie is his kindness. He’s too nice to refuse his idiotic relatives and friends’ pleas for help, resulting in almost all of his problems. He’s nearly too kind, really, as it’s what usually causes him to be “in the soup”, as he would say. Additionally, he’s a bit of a people-pleaser, which I will expand on more in the “Insecurities” section, as he’s mostly unable to refuse his friends asking for help, even if it will cause him to get in trouble. He’s, essentially, physically incapable of saying “no” to someone (and, if he does say no, his friends, mostly Stiffy but there have been others, end up blackmailing him into doing what they require from him).

Similarly, and much like his Holmesian counterpart, he’s incredibly loyal. This mostly presents itself in the form of the “Code of the Woosters”, and how he ought to, as a Wooster, help a friend in need and all that. I would even go as far as to say that he sees it as an obligation to help his friends, as a Wooster and all. His loyalty to his friends and relatives, and how much he cares about them, are major reasons why he’s (mostly, let’s be honest, because sometimes their schemes are horrifically idiotic) willing to help them. 

Another quite remarkable thing about Bertie is his friendliness. Not only is he incredibly kind and nice to everyone he meets, he’s also rather friendly, and this extends beyond social classes. He treats everyone almost the same, greets them, regardless of status, with his usual cheery “What ho!”, and it’s not really out of wanting class equality as much as it being simply that that’s how Bertie is. He’s awfully informal with everyone and it kind of makes them able to warm up to him relatively easier. Additionally, he’s awfully talkative. He tends to ramble on and on about random things that his Drone friends have done, unrelated topics and what-have-yous.

Bertie is often considered an idiot, stupid or mentally negligible, and I think that he is almost definitely not. What he is, however, is a rather naive man, who’s mostly concerned with the happenings of his direct social circle, that tends to take things a little too literally at times, which makes him seem stupid. Speaking of his naivety, I would say it’s because he hasn’t experienced anything aside from the usual shenanigans and problems that the other fellow Drones encounter, where this makes him more susceptible to manipulation (usually done by Stiffy in the form of blackmail) and the like.

On that same train of thought, something that I think others tend to forget a little about Bertie is that he’s bright in his own way. He’s creative. He has a musical genius that is unmatched, as he’s able to play songs on the piano without notes or anything, almost perfectly after hearing them once, which is what happened with “Goodnight Vienna” at the beginning of the series. He also writes and he does so in such a characteristic way that it sets him apart from other writers, with his odd language and rather conversational style of writing. Another way in which his creativity shines is in his choices of clothing, which are rather bold and flashy, causing the usual disapproval of Jeeves.

Additionally, Bertie’s schemes, even though they might not work, are quite smart in their own right and it’s usually his forgetting that some of the elements of his plan weren’t exactly considered that leads them to failure.

Bertie, unlike most men of his time, wears his heart openly on his sleeve. He’s very unabashed with his emotions, regardless of what they might be, and he’s quite open about them. I would say that this has allowed him to understand emotions to a greater degree than some others. However, I think that, putting those feelings to words and trying to describe his more emotional experiences to someone, would be rather difficult for him.

Insecurities and fears

Despite being a very happy-go-lucky character, Bertie Wooster has several insecurities and a handful of fears (two of which I would say are engagements to girls he doesn’t like and Aunts). I’ll be talking about a handful of them in this section.

Bertie has a horrifically low self-esteem, which is something that I think is only logical after being constantly criticised by his Aunt Agatha. She has called him awful things all throughout the series, of course he’s not going to feel good about himself after all of that. What’s worse is that he most likely genuinely believes what’s told to him, since it’s all that he’s ever really heard. All he hears from others about himself is how he’s stupid, how’s he’s useless, how he’s lazy, etc, etc; it’s perfectly sensible that he would end up feeling horrible about himself and brushing off any thanks for anything he’s ever done as nothing, because, at the end of the day, it wouldn’t really make up for all his supposed “awful-ness”.

It’s part of what makes him such a people-pleaser, I would say, as he’s trying to make up for all of his flaws and failures by trying to help people, to make them happy, to make them proud of him as much as possible.

Additionally, he probably links his self-worth with how often and how much he’s able to help his friends and relatives. After all, it’s been made clear to him that that’s essentially the only thing that he’s good for, aside from providing company and the occasional song on the piano. Even then, the one who usually does the actual help is Jeeves (this doesn’t mean that Bertie doesn’t try forming his own schemes).

One of Bertie’s most prominent fears is losing Jeeves, because he wouldn’t be only losing a valet, but also a mentor (of sorts) and a dear friend. This is not only because he would have to hire a new valet, which is an awful ordeal of its own, but it’s also because Jeeves means a lot to him. Jeeves doesn’t only help him and his fat-headed friends get out of “the soup”; he listens to Bertie and is sort of like a friend, if not more, to him. Over the course of the series, I would say that they’ve reached a major understanding with one another. They’ve gotten to know, know thoroughly, the other over their years together and they definitely love each other, regardless of how one describes this love. Losing this, losing Jeeves, would be one of the most devastating things for Bertie. I also want to mention that it seems that Bertie has sort of deleted that “unfortunate period”, when he and Jeeves weren’t on speaking terms because of the banjo, from his memory, because he appeared to have forgotten it when Jeeves mentioned that they previously knew Bingley, who was the valet stand-in at the time.

Conclusion

Again, I am talking about the show version of the character here, as I’ve only read one of the books so far.

Personality

Jeeves has one of the most remarkable and characteristic personalities I’ve ever seen. There’s no character quite like him, even if he’s rather similar to Sherlock Holmes.

He’s, to put it rather simply, brilliant; it’s one of the most notable characteristics of his. Not only does he like to handle things in a more analytical approach than anything, but he’s also rather sharp-witted, very quick at thinking, and coming up with solutions to fish Bertie & Co out of the soup ever so often. Although I think that he’s naturally just that brainy, I believe that his experiences as a valet and working with a lot of the upper-class folks like Bertie has given him a lot of knowledge on how to dissolve any issues that he might have to solve despite not really being involved in them. Additionally, he’s a very logical person who would ignore or dismiss anything that didn’t make sense to him.

Something that goes hand-in-hand with his smartness is his creativity. Jeeves is creative in thought more than in forms of art, unlike Bertie with his brilliant piano playing skills. His solutions to most of the problems that he’s presented with (mostly by Bertie) are all rather inventive; things that the other parties involved have either entirely dismissed/forgotten about or hadn’t noticed at all.

Alongside his intelligence, he’s incredibly observant. I would even go as far as to say that he’s the only observant character in this series with the rest overlooking things so easily in such a silly way. He often does this while trying to not be physically there (much like other servants, butlers and valets) or while watching things go down and trying to get involved as minimally as possible.

Aside from being incredibly bright, he’s sort of an information-hoarder. He knows a lot about several topics, including fashion, literature, silver, philosophy, music and cooking, amongst several others. All of which are things that he likes to talk about, mostly to Bertie. He’s also a bit of a nerd, mostly reading philosophy and what Bertie would call “intellectual books” and whatnot.

One of the most characteristic things about Jeeves is his formality. His so called “feudal spirit” is incredibly strong and unwavering. It’s because that’s how he’s taught to interact with people, especially those of a higher social class than him and I think he believes that this propriety must, at all times, exist, even if he could be more informal. I also think that Jeeves doesn’t really know how to interact with others too well without having some form of guidelines (which are present in his normal life in the form of his “feudal spirit”) or a part to play (like in the New York nightclubs), so the loss of formality, like when Bertie acts incredibly friendly with Jeeves, would be odd and distressing to a degree for Jeeves because it’s not how things should be.

Despite being very stiff and much like a stuffed-frog as Bertie likes to say, Jeeves can be rather mean and awfully judgy at times. This has occurred several times throughout the series, and he would usually judge Bertie’s more colourful or flamboyant fashion items or Bertie’s idiotic friends (where Bertie rightfully  joins him in the judging here). He usually does this by either subtly insulting the offending item, usually a flashy hat, or by staring in a slightly judgy manner that most wouldn’t notice it, due to Jeeves’ facial expressions being rather subdued, except for Bertie.

Even though he can be rather mean, he deeply cares about those he loves, namely his family and Bertie, who, I would argue, is more like a friend (if not more) to Jeeves than an employer. He, much like Holmes, just shows it in an odd, unorthodox way, which is kind of funny since everything about Jeeves is supposed to be very normal aside from his intelligence. He shows his care to Bertie, in particular, by “fishing him out of the soup” (as Bertie would say) and by making sure that he looks how a gentleman ought to as well as by listening to Bertie’s various anecdotes and rambling, in turn, about things that he finds interesting that Bertie would also be interested in (though he usually does this at rather unsuitable times).

Insecurities and fears

Although he is painted to us as a paragon, a god amongst men, by Bertie, Jeeves is very much human, and he, too has his flaws, insecurities and fears. However, I would say that I will be talking more about his flaws and fears because I couldn’t pinpoint any particular insecurities throughout the show; this, obviously, doesn’t mean that he hasn’t any. He probably just hides them really well, much like his emotions.

Speaking of his emotions, Jeeves is emotionally repressed to a degree. As I previously mentioned, he’s a much more logical person than an emotional one and that sort of means that he understands his emotions; he knows how to identify what he’s feeling (to a degree) and what caused it. However, he rarely expresses his emotions openly, unlike Bertie, and I think there are several reasons for that. One of which is his social upbringing, he might’ve been taught that he ought to hide what he feels, that it’s shameful, that it’s unsuitable for a man and a servant, someone who’s meant to blend in with the background. His opinions and feelings shouldn’t matter as much as his employer’s, so he learns to hide them. A way that this presents itself is his minimal facial expressions (though I think there another reason for this, though I’ll be talking about it in another essay) and his quoting other people’s, usually authors’, words to describe how he feels about or thinks of a certain situation.

Another flaw that Jeeves possesses is overconfidence. It’s understandable why he could be, after all, he’s great at his work and he’s a brilliant individual who can easily get himself (and his employer and his employer’s fat-headed friends). I would, however, say that he’s rather subtle about it; he doesn’t really boast about any of his achievements or accomplishments, which I think is both due to class difference (where the servant should be more humble/less noticeable or notable than their employer) and Jeeves simply not thinking much of what he does. His overconfidence shows in how smug he is, which is rather often.

One of Jeeves’ biggest fears, I would say, is losing Bertie or no longer being Bertie’s valet. Despite not exactly seeing Bertie as a friend (due to “feudal spirit” more than anything really), he still deeply cares about him and he doesn’t want to be too harsh with him, like he was at the end of season 1 with the bike ride in the rain, because he doesn’t want to lose him. When they were separated because of the “unfortunate incident”, as Jeeves called it, with Bertie’s, rather poor attempts at playing the trombone, they were both very clearly upset about the whole affair. Considering how judgy Jeeves can be, I believe that the only employer of his that he somewhat approved of was Bertie, and he also makes it very clear that he admires Bertie’s seemingly never-ending kindness, even though it is the reason why he gets in the soup most of the times. He respects Bertie a lot, and Bertie respects him as well, and I think that he doesn’t want to lose that at all. Bertie means a lot to him.

Conclusion

I just want to mention that I’m talking about the 90s Jeeves and Wooster adaptation and not the books. I would say that they’re very similar generally, but, then again, I’ve only read one of the books so far.

Although I feel like this is something that’s talked about a lot in the Sherlock Holmes fandom, I wanted to write about it just because I like talking about it; Sherlock Holmes is autistic. There’s a lot of things, clues, pieces of evidence, whatever you want to call it, present in the ACD canon to prove this and I will present it to you.

Autistic stereotypes and how Holmes fits into them and doesn’t simultaneously

There are many autistic traits that are considered stereotypical, but the one I mean here is the “cold, emotionless, non-empathetic, calculating machine” autistic stereotype, which Holmes does fit into, but he also doesn’t. Despite the use of this very description in several of the short stories, Holmes doesn’t fit this description quite well. It may be what people see on the surface, it may be what people are first faced with when they meet Holmes, but it’s not the truth, or, more accurately, it’s not the complete truth.

As I’ve written before in one of my analyses about Holmes, he doesn’t lack empathy. He’s quite empathetic, and he cares a lot about people (specifically Watson, Mrs Hudson and his clients), but he shows it in a different manner than others normally would. He shows it by listening to people and believing their stories and caring about them, not just for the thrill of the case or the mystery behind it. There have been several cases where everything was mostly resolved, he didn’t need to dig deeper than he had and the answer was not as unclear as it normally is, but Holmes didn’t leave it be until his client got the closure they needed. There have been other cases where he didn’t think that it was going to be an important affair, but, because he understands what his client might be feeling, he heard them out and helped them to the best of his ability. With Watson, there have been several examples of him showing that he cares about him and that he truly values him, and the same goes to Mrs Hudson.

Holmes also isn’t emotionless; he tends to express emotions in different ways than “normal” people would, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t possess them. He also reacts differently from “normal” in some situations, like how, during one of the more grim cases, he was able to take his mind completely off of it and talk, rather animatedly, about one of the topics that he was researching (which is probably to do with his research subjects being his special interests, something that’ll be talked about below)

Saying that Holmes is a “calculating deduction machine” isn’t necessarily incorrect, but I think that it takes away from his humanity quite a lot. The reason why he’s so good at deduction (well. It’s not really deduction, it’s induction, but that’s a discussion for another day) is because of his pattern-recognition ability and high attention to detail, both of which are things that are quite common within autistic people due to the way that their brains process information; something that’s called ‘bottom-up’ processing, where the details are processed before the big picture.

I will now talk about certain autistic traits and aspects of being autistic and how this is found within the Holmes canon.

Special Interests

A great portion of autistic people have specific, sometimes called rigid, interests that are also called special interests. Holmes has several of these and they’re mentioned quite a lot within the series.

The most evident one is deduction in of itself and mysteries. As we’ve seen several times within the series, when Holmes doesn’t have a case, or anything that he finds engaging like another special interest of his, he feels awful, to put it in simpler terms, and he experiences what Watson calls his “black moods”. 

Some of his other special interests are chemistry, especially when it involves forensics, which is something that he’s seen doing quite a lot and spending hours upon hours carrying out experiments to see if his hypothesis was correct or not, much like what he was doing when he initially met Watson in ‘Study in Scarlet’. 

Music is another one, which is something that he’s quite knowledgeable about, and he likes to engage with this particular interest by attending concerts with Watson and by playing the violin, where he either plays melodies to reflect his thoughts and feelings or composed symphonies that he and/or Watson enjoy.

Another is bees (and nature to an extent), which is something that he’s very interested in, considering how he took up bee-keeping during his retirement and how he’s written several monographs about it.

Aside from his special interests, he’s also had various hyperfixations throughout the stories, which he’d write monographs about as well.

Social differences

It’s very obvious how Holmes interacts with people differently compared to other characters, and the ways in which his social interactions differ is very similar to that of autistic people. 

One of the ways in which this presents is how blunt Holmes is. He’s very truthful and he doesn’t realise that what he’s saying, which he mostly means in a very literal, very genuine way, could be taken in another way. An example of this is this quote, which is from ‘The Hound of Baskerville’: “It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it”. This, amongst several other compliments from Holmes, tend to sound backhanded and they’re mostly read as him being snarky or simply mean to whoever he was saying them to, but I think that he just meant it in a very literal way.

Another way that his social differences present is how he doesn’t quite understand other people, especially women, where he tells Watson quite often that he’s the one who understands and appeals to the “fairer sex” from the both of them. His not really understanding people also shows up in how he’s never really having a friend before Watson or Victor Trevor; he’s never really understood anyone aside from them and I don’t think that anyone, aside from them, tried to understand Holmes back. I also think it’s evident that he doesn’t understand social norms by how he chooses not to comply with them. Holmes is a very logical person and if something doesn’t make sense to him, he simply wouldn’t do it and would probably deem it stupid.

Another thing that I don’t think is a social difference as much as it’s a difference in how Holmes sees the world is how he has a really strong sense of justice. His sense of morality is interesting, to say the least and I’ve discussed it before in one of my analyses of him, and his sense of justice kind of ties into it. Regardless of what he views as “right” and “wrong”, he will strongly defend what he believes and he wouldn’t let anything that he thinks is “wrong” slide. As I’ve written earlier, some cases had a fairly clear resolution and he could’ve just let them go, but it’s because he cares about his client and because he absolutely cannot let injustices simply pass without the persecutor getting punished, he solves the case until it’s completely resolved.

Masking

Generally speaking, Holmes doesn’t mask, and I think it’s mainly because he doesn’t really see a point in doing so; he doesn’t do it often, and the only instance of him masking is the beginning of ‘A Study in Scarlet’, when he and Watson hadn’t known one another quite well yet. He would hide parts of himself, he wouldn’t try to talk about any of his interests at all (to the point that Watson didn’t even know what he did for work until months after knowing him) and he made sure to be very neat and organised with everything, which is something that he most likely struggles with. However, once Watson found out about everything, he didn’t really bother masking again. 

Holmes’ struggles in relation to his autism

There are several things that autistic people struggle with (including communication, which I already discussed above) that Holmes also struggles with.

One of which is how he struggles with eating. I think that’s mainly because he doesn’t exactly feel hunger cues as most people would; he doesn’t exactly realise that he’s hungry until his stomach is cramping from the lack of food or he’s on the verge of passing out, which I think is a very believable conclusion considering how often he forgets to eat and Watson has to coax and/or remind him to do so. Another thing that Watson really helped him with is his injuries. I think it’s very likely that he doesn’t feel pain normally, which is something that happens to some autistic people, where they either feel it too much or too little; the latter is what Holmes struggles with. He doesn’t really notice injuries that he gets on cases because he doesn’t really feel the pain. This is most likely why he has several scars and acid burns on his hands when Watson first met him.

Another thing that I think he struggles with is executive dysfunction, especially when it comes to chores like cleaning his space and laundry, which is something that I recall Watson complaining about Holmes not doing in the beginning of one of the short stories. It’s possible that he has his own system when it comes to his organisation, but it was said in ‘Study in Scarlet’ that he was a very neat man, so I think it’s more reasonable to think that it’s just something that he always wants to start but could never really get to doing it due to executive dysfunction.

It’s also possible that Holmes struggles with sensory issues regarding his hair touching his face, which is why he always has it gelled back, and that he has them regarding facial hair, which is why he’s always described as clean-shaven (though I know that both of these could be due to other reasons as well).

I think that cocaine was Holmes’ way of self-medication. He needed something to help him through feelings of overwhelm and under-stimulation from the lack of cases, so he used it. It served as a distraction to him from his overwhelm and scarcity of mental stimulation that’s enough to keep him satisfied.

Similarly, I think that his habit of smoking was a way to keep his hands busy instead of stimming.

[ID: a venn diagram that consists of three circles. one is light blue and it has "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley in the centre, one is light pink and it has "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson in the centre, and the third is a light yellow and it has "The Picture of Dorian Gray". between all three circles is a section that has "fuck around and find out" and "morality". between the pink and the blue circles, there's "science fiction" and "transformation/formation of a creation". between the pink and yellow circles, there's "main character slowly changes, morally, for the worse" and "published within 5 years of one another". between the yellow and blue circles, there's "gothic fiction" and "main character is a (relatively) rich young man. /end ID]

I think that the similarities and differences between these three books are very much worthy of discussion. I’m mainly going to be talking about the section that’s common between all three of the books, as it’s the part that I find most fascinating.

“Fuck around and find out”

All three of these books feature an experiment, of sorts, as its main plot, and this experiment usually ends up causing issues for one of, if not several, the characters. In ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’, the experiment was quite literally the meaning of the word; it was a scientific procedure done to discover, test or prove something.

In ‘Frankenstein’, it was the creation of the monster, the creature to help humans in the chores that were too strenuous or demanding, and in ‘Jekyll and Hyde’, it was the creation of a “potion”, of sorts, that allowed Dr Jekyll to create the body of his “evil” spirit, Mr Hyde, and to switch between the two bodies as he liked. 

However, in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, the experiment wasn’t scientific in any way, and it was more of a moral experiment, where Lord Henry convinced Dorian Gray to give his soul up to the painting done by Basil Hallward, and to lead a life of pleasures and hedonism.

I would say, though, that the experiment in ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ could also be viewed as a moral experiment in addition to it being a scientific one, since, despite having separate bodies, Hyde’s traits, his personality and cruelty, was still a part of Jekyll; it stemmed from Jekyll and, through the drug, took a physical manifestation.

All of the three experiments resulted in a formation of a monster, of sorts, where in ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ and ‘Dorian Gray’, the “monster” wasn’t one in the literal meaning of the word, it was just a terrible, immoral and cruel man, while in ‘Frankenstein’, the “monster” was an actual creature, living and feeling just like humans. 

In ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ and ‘Frankenstein’, it was the main character who was carrying out the experiment, whether that be on himself, which was the case in ‘Jekyll and Hyde’, or by creating a new creature, which was the “perfect man” created by Victor Frankenstein. In ‘Dorian Gray’, the creator wasn’t Dorian, the main character, it was Lord Henry, his friend, who wanted to see the outcome of a hedonistic lifestyle, but couldn’t risk it on himself. Dorian, young and beautiful Dorian, however, could withstand it. What’s the worst that can happen to him anyway? If it was Lord Henry instead, he would’ve lost everything he’s ever had.

In all of the experiments, the result causes massive guilt on behalf of the creator. The guiltiest of all, in my opinion, would be Frankenstein, because his intention was to help people. It was to benefit humanity, to relieve them from the difficult work that could, instead, be done by this “perfect man”, he never wanted to hurt anyone. Especially not his beloved. Jekyll is also quite guilty because he never meant to scare Lanyon, or any of his friends, away, and he didn’t want to lose his position in society, the love he received from people, but his guilt wasn’t enough for him to want to change and get rid of Hyde. He liked the pleasure of torturing people, of being cruel and unapologetic about it. The least guilty would be Lord Henry, who, I think, was more scared of and for Dorian than ashamed of what he had done to Dorian. Dorian himself, on the other hand, was guilty, he definitely felt bad for what he did to Sybil Vane and that other girl towards the end of the book, and his guilt was enough to lead to his death, although it never felt real to me.

Morality

All of the books deal with a lot of themes to do with morality and their plotlines are heavily dependent on the morality changes that the characters go through.

In ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ and ‘Dorian Gray’, the main character slowly “loses” their morality and gradually becomes worse. 

In ‘Jekyll and Hyde’, this was because of Jekyll’s discovery of his “darker” side, how he likes to see people wither in pain, how he likes to hurt people and how he likes to be mean and cruel, but because he couldn’t be seen as the one doing all of these atrocious actions, (after all what would the people say?!) he sort of separated those morally different parts of himself into two bodies. 

In ‘Dorian Gray’, this was due to Dorian’s lifestyle shift to a more pleasure-seeking and self-indulgent one, where he did whatever he liked and indulged in all of his interests and fascinations, and, because of his painting, ugly and hidden away from the world, showing all of his sins to nobody, none of the effects of his actions showed on his body, keeping him forever young and beautiful.

In ‘Frankenstein’, the change in morality is for the “better” and it’s a lot more gradual than in either of the two books. The change occurs because of the indescribable amount of guilt that Victor Frankenstein must’ve felt due to what his creation has done. He never meant to create a monster, as I’ve mentioned before, it was the last thing that he wanted to do, he just wanted to help people, and his plan had backfired. I would say that he was initially morally gray, indifferent towards morals and “good and bad”. He never cared about the ethics of science, which is evident because of how he used random people’s corpses to create his “perfect man”, and it was this very creation that helped him shift to a morally “better” side. It made him realize that what he had done, how badly he’s messed up,  and he regretted it so deeply, which made him want to change for the better and, essentially, undo what he had done, to any extent.

A character who might’ve felt similarly would be Lord Henry. He probably had come to the realization that his creation, Dorian living a new and unrestricted lifestyle, is going to lead to horrible outcomes early on in the story, but, and this is what separates and sets him apart from Victor Frankenstein, he was too amused to care. This was what he had always wanted to see and to explore, and now he was getting a front row seat with no damage to his reputation or anything. I would say, though, that he started getting concerned towards the very end, when he realized that there might be another Sybil Vane.

The way I see it, Holmes and Watson are two halves of a whole. This is for many reasons.

First and foremost, they compliment one another personality wise. Where Holmes is seen as cold and calculating, Watson is depicted as warm and welcoming. Holmes can be rather impulsive at times, while Watson has a sort of steadiness and routine to his life, which makes him appreciate his adventures with Holmes further. They’re similar, yet they’re different. They’re both smart, though in different fields and manners, as Watson is more emotionally intelligent and Holmes is more intellectually intelligent. They’re both kind people, despite expressing their care for others and for one another in their own individual manner, where Watson’s way of showing care is more orthodox while Holmes is anything but. Not only do they mean so much to one another, but they also wouldn’t be alive without each other. 

Each of them needs the other to live, quite literally. 

Of course they would’ve made it if they hadn’t known each other; Holmes would’ve solved a few cases for the police here and there, and he would’ve taken cases from Mycroft, but he would’ve never make a name for himself further than that, since all his writings are very academic and that doesn’t really appeal to the people, and Watson would’ve run a surgery and worked as a doctor. Neither of them would’ve been the characters that we know and love now if they hadn’t met one another.

Additionally, I think that, given the circumstances that both of them were going through at the start of ‘Study of Scarlet’, I don’t think that they would’ve lived as long as they had without one another.

As we’ve seen in most of the Holmes short stories, Holmes doesn’t really care much about his physical, or mental, health. He brushes off injuries, even if they are a bit concerning, and although he would care were he to get severely injured during a case, he wouldn’t mind risking it if it meant finding the solution. He continuously endangers himself and the only person to take care of him afterwards is Watson. Without Watson, I think that it’s not unreasonable or illogical to assume that he would’ve died of some wound infection or an illness that he refused to get treated for.

Although it’s not well-discussed in the books, I would say that Watson definitely helped Holmes to stop his drug addiction and on his road to sobriety. He cares a lot about Holmes’ health and he would always be worried when he’s in one of his ‘dark moods’ that he’s on drugs.

Alongside that, he’s a lot happier with Watson. I don’t think he would’ve admitted to anyone (and I would say that the closest thing to admitting it was when he wrote about Watson leaving him for a wife in ‘The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier’ and how upset he was about that), but he’s always been rather lonely. Having Watson, a companion who tries to understand and help him as much as he could, someone who cares about him, someone who loves him (regardless of the type of love), has made him significantly happier. Watson means so much to him; he’s his ‘Boswell’ and he has refused, on several occasions, to help his clients if it meant that Watson wouldn’t be there (and then they’d relent and let them both handle the case). He's always there with Holmes and he's always there for him, he's his "one fixed point in a changing world" and Holmes would be absolutely distraught (as seen in 'The Adventure of the Three Garridebs', where Holmes was quite distressed about Watson getting hurt).

Furthermore, as I mentioned before, Holmes probably wouldn’t have had his ‘household name’ if it weren’t for Watson’s publications. The people (both fictional and real, but I’m talking about the fictional ones here) enjoyed reading about his adventures and it was through them that they got several clients, who were people that Holmes would’ve never reached if he was on his own.

Watson, on the other hand, desperately needed someone, anyone, to restore his love of life after he came back from Afghanistan. He came back a “broken man”, essentially. He hadn’t had any close friends, any relatives, anyone really, and he was completely and utterly alone in London. He needed someone to, for a lack of a better word, “cure” this loneliness that he’s faced after the war.  Holmes was that “cure”. He gave him a “purpose” in life; a “raison d’etre”. He allowed him to help people. He gave him the opportunity to go on adventures, do things that he would’ve possibly never imagined doing, and provided him with excitement, leading him to love life and living again. He helped Watson become who he really is, and not the shell of a human being that he (understandably) was after returning from the war.

I think that this song can be seen as both Aziraphale talking about Crowley and Crowley talking about Aziraphale (which is what most people think), and I’m going to expand on that.

Aziraphale about Crowley:

“You’re too sweet for me”

Aziraphale thinks that Crowley is “too sweet” to him because he thinks that he doesn’t deserve the way that Crowley treats him; he doesn’t deserve Crowley’s kindness, Crowley’s care and love. This is because he’s been taught to think that he’s only worthy, that he’s only loved, if he were “good” or helpful because of Heaven, and its unrealistic standards for Aziraphale, and because of the unimaginable amount of guilt that he carries around. He feels so bad for so many things that have happened, so many things that he hasn’t been able to stop, and although he knows that, logically, he couldn’t have done anything, it doesn’t stop him from feeling bad. The narrator/singer thinks that their partner is “too sweet” and “too good” for them, meaning that they don’t deserve the narrator/singer, and they don’t want to be with them, which is opposite to Aziraphale’s case. He wants to be with Crowley, and he truly loves him, though he shows it in odd ways, but he doesn’t think that he’s deserving, that he’s worthy, of such love, of such care, of such kindness because of the aforementioned reasons.

“I take my whiskey neat, my coffee black and my bed at three”

This means that the singer/narrator indulges in life’s little delights without changing them, having them as bitter as they are (like the coffee). This doesn’t necessarily apply to Aziraphale in the literal manner, but he does definitely indulge in Earthly things that Heaven views as a waste of time or dirty like books, food and theatre.

Crowley about Aziraphale:

“I take my whiskey neat, my coffee black and my bed at three” Unlike Aziraphale, this sentence’s meaning is very literal in Crowley’s case. He does like indulging, but the only indulgences that we’ve seen him take part in are alcoholics, especially wine, bitter coffee (six shots of espresso) and sleep.

“You’re too sweet for me” He thinks that Aziraphale is “too sweet” because he’s genuinely kind to Crowley, something that he’s not quite used to, and because he’s an Angel; he represents all that’s good, while Crowley’s a Demon, and, as much as he hates it, they’re on opposite sides. Crowley’s considered a “lowly creature”, though I don’t think that he thinks this of himself, but he definitely thinks that Aziraphale thinks in this manner because of him wanting Crowley to come back to Heaven and wanting him to be an Angel again (that was for a different reason, in my opinion, but that’s another day). He thinks that he’d be more lovable if he were an Angel, so Aziraphale, the Angel that he is, is “too good” for him. That’s quite similar to how the narrator/singer sees their partner as “too sweet” and “too good” for them. The partner wants a more healthy lifestyle (“You keep telling me to live right”, which can also be seen as Aziraphale telling Crowley about returning to Heaven and becoming an Angel again, because, in his eyes, it’s the “right” thing to do) for both of them, which is the singer appreciates, but disagrees with.

An additional point:

“You know you're bright as the morning As soft as the rain Pretty as a vine As sweet as a grape” 

I think that that’s one of the ways in which Aziraphale would describe Crowley, and it’s also how Aziraphale would be described by Crowley. 

(This is essentially slight elaboration on the morality section for both of them and how they're different and similar at the same time. I hope that this isn't as poorly written as I think it is)

Aziraphale and Crowley are both morally equal. They're both morally grey, morally neutral, not exactly "good" nor "bad" but a bit more on the good side 

However, Aziraphale would be, technically, considered worse. It's because he doesn't care that much about people, at least not enough to do anything about their situation, and he's very nitpicky and fussy with everything, including those who he can empathise with. Because of this, he's judgy and a bit of a "bastard" (but just enough to be worth liking, of course). That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t like or want to do good; he does, a lot actually, but there are many things that hold him back from doing so in certain circumstances. Also, despite all of this, he's scared of not being a good person, which is partially due to how he views Heaven and goodness. Although they symbolise goodness and all that’s holy, Angels aren’t actually that good; they only care about carrying out God’s commands, and not what they entail, which leads to them doing horrible things (like how they wanted to kill Job’s children), so it feels a bit unfair to say that he’s “bad”.

On the other hand, Crowley would be considered better. He is incredibly empathetic. He can understand people, especially the typically misunderstood, quite well because he's been in similar experiences (because he fell because of simply asking questions and nothing more, so he’s able to understand and empathise with the typically misunderstood), yet he's unable to help them because of his job. The last time that he did help was with Elspeth and Wee Morag, where he got into serious trouble, serious enough that he'd ask Aziraphale for holy water, literal demon poison. There was also an instance before that, with Job and his children, but Aziraphale managed to help him get away with that. Despite all of this, Crowley doesn't care about Hell; he is scared, that's undeniable, but he has definitely stopped caring, especially not after facing Satan and defeating him by stopping time because Aziraphale threatened to never talk to him again.

All of this, amongst other reasons, is why they are absolutely perfect for one another. They balance each other out and make up for what the other lacks; they are two halves of one whole. 

Morality

Crowley is neither good nor bad. I’d say that he’s morally neutral, while leaning a bit on the “good” side, despite being a Demon, a creature that’s supposed to be “bad” and evil. This means that he’d be in the same place as Aziraphale, in the light grey region. This is for a multitude of reasons, which I will shortly explain.

Although Crowley loves denying it, he’s a relatively good character, which is why he’s placed where he is. This is because he helps people a lot, and he genuinely cares about them, like Job and his family, especially his children, Elspeth, and, most importantly and most prominently of all, Aziraphale, where this was shown in how he was almost always aggressive, whether that be passively or actively, towards Gabriel/Jim while he was in the bookshop, by saving Aziraphale constantly, by treating Aziraphale to dinners in places like the Ritz, by how he always entertains Aziraphale in his hobbies and interests, like magic, and encourages them despite not liking them, by how miserable and utterly dejected he was when he thought that Aziraphale has been discorporated when the bookshop was on fire and when Aziraphale left for Heaven.

He’s also quite empathetic, especially with those who have gone through situations that others seem to constantly misunderstand, whose situations make them seem like they’re the “bad person” when they’re just trying to do their best and get by, like Elspeth, because he can understand their situation quite well. He Fell for simply asking questions, he didn’t mean to Fall, he didn’t mean to hang out with the wrong sort of crowd, so he knows what it’s like to be treated so terribly, so cruelly, so horribly for something that really doesn’t deserve this type of treatment, for something that wasn’t exactly anyone’s fault and was just a huge misunderstanding. 

Even though he’s aware that what he’s doing is typically thought of as “good”, he doesn’t like to be thought of as “good”. This is because he associates goodness with Heaven, and, from what I can see, he feels very bitterly about Heaven. This is because he doesn’t like their system. They reject anyone who deviates from their very strict image of goodness, their image of an Angel, a weapon of righteousness and nothing else, which is why, as we know so far at least, he Fell; he was just asking questions, he was questioning their work methods, things that they don’t want to happen. They just want people who work with the system, not people who question it and defy it. Another reason why he would feel sour about Heaven is how they treated Aziraphale; cruelly, harshly, constantly aggressive, either actively (like when Crowley was in Aziraphale’s body and Gabriel told him to “shut his stupid mouth and die”) or passively (which happens a lot in the show, especially bits of season 2). He doesn’t want to be associated with a place that treats anyone, any being, like that, and if that means being a “bad guy”, then so be it.

Another reason why he isn’t particularly good (aside from how I believe that there can be no such things as fully good beings of any sort) is that he likes to irritate people. It’s mostly to do with his job, so it’s not something that he particularly enjoys, but it’s still something that he does quite a lot, and it does have its effects. However, he doesn’t particularly care about this, and often takes credit for human’s, rather creative and rather terrible, work.

Overall, Crowley is a morally neutral character who can also be called “good”, despite disliking that.

Personality

Crowley has a very distinct and characteristic personality; he’s quite interesting.

Alongside from his kindness and his empathy, which were discussed in the previous section, Crowley is an extrovert. It’s something that may not make much sense about him at first, but, when one thinks a little about his curiosity further, the pieces start to fall into place. He’s always liked to catch up with the times, to know all of the trends of the world as of this moment, he’s always found it interesting, so it’s only logical if he were to talk to the humans to get to know more about it. 

Despite it being the reason why he lost it all, why he Fell, he still holds curiosity in a high place, and he is quite the curious character. He likes to question things a lot, and understand why and how they are the way that they are. He encourages humans to embrace it, to have a thirst for knowledge (which is quite interesting, because what provides most knowledge is books) because he understands this; he understands what it’s like to want to know something so badly, and what it’s like to be ever so fascinated by something. An example of his encouraging curiosity is when he answered Gabriel/Jim’s questions about gravity. Despite his hatred towards Gabriel/Jim, he didn’t let that interfere with wanting to teach him more about the universe, because he loves it when people are curious, when they want to know more, and when they’re passionate about what they like.

Speaking of passion, Crowley possesses a lot of passion towards his interests, like music, especially Queen, space and plants, and he knows a lot about them. He’s also quite careful with the things that he cares about a lot, like his Bentley, which never got a scratch in the 90 years that he’s had it, despite Crowley being impulsive. 

Alongside being impulsive, Crowley’s a bit more open about his feelings and emotions. He definitely “wears his heart on his sleeve” and he isn’t afraid to tell people, or show them, what he really thinks and feels about them. An example of this is how he was literally smoking when he was angry in the beginning of season 2. This is mainly because he doesn’t really see the point in hiding them; he’s not ashamed nor afraid of them by any means. However, despite being able to express them well, he’s not good at communicating them (much like Aziraphale, really, but that’s for different reasons).

He’s quite an intelligent character, which is something inherent within him and gained from his experiences on Earth, and it shows in how elaborate his plans to save Aziraphale are, and how he always has a plan ready, which means that he’s able to think of them quite quickly. He’s also remarkably creative, which is something that Demons typically lack, and imaginative as well, which, hand in hand with his optimism, has helped him when the Bentley was on fire.

Crowley is an optimist. It’s one of the most fascinating aspects of his character, for me personally. He always tries to look at the better side of things and he tries to hope for the best while taking advantage of his situation. He knows that things could be worse, and he’s gone through the, arguably, worst thing that has happened to him before, Falling, so how bad can this be compared to it? Nothing, in his opinion, could be worse than Falling. Nothing could be worse than losing absolutely everything that he ever had. Nothing could be worse than the consequences of asking questions, than the consequences of curiosity. Nothing. So, if he already went through that, why couldn’t he go through this? 

And when the worst has happened, the universe took care of him. That’s another reason for his optimism; he always believes that the universe will, somehow, some way, take care of him, and look after him. He will turn out alright, well as alright as he could be really, after all. 

Examples of his optimism is when he believed that Aziraphale would choose to run away with him. It worked for their bosses, and they turned out to be fine, so why wouldn’t it work for them? Why wouldn’t his love confession go wrong? He already lost everything before, once, it’d be too cruel for him to lose it all twice, wouldn’t it?

Insecurities and fears

Crowley doesn’t seem like a character who would have fears nor insecurities. This is because he constantly hides himself behind a rough exterior; showing only his thoughts and feelings about anything and everything except for what he finds scary. Considering how Hell is with their Demons, it makes sense for him to be that way. It’s a defence mechanism of sorts, and he does this when he pretends to not care as well, which is something that he’s done often, like when the Bentley was on fire and when Hastur and Ligur came to his apartment. He does this because he believes that if people start thinking that he truly doesn’t care, that he’s truly not afraid, then maybe he really isn’t.

He finds it difficult to trust others, which is something that Nina, a complete outsider to his existence, was able to tell from a few interactions, so it’s rather evident about him. This is because he doesn’t see the point in trusting when he knows that, eventually, this trust will be broken. It happened before, with Heaven. He believed that he was going to stay as an Angel; he did nothing wrong after all, and he trusted that Heaven would only allow the good ones to stay, then they broke that trust. He ended up Falling. Due to this, he has a hard time trusting others because what is the guarantee that they won’t break it? What is the guarantee that things won’t go wrong? He knows that he will be fine afterward somehow, someway, because, after all, he is an optimist, but he doesn’t want to go through this in the first place. He doesn’t want to lay his vulnerabilities out in the open for them to be taken advantage of again, for him to lose it all again.

Something that he probably beat himself over was his Fall. He saw it as a failure, something that should’ve never happened, and he keeps blaming himself for it relentlessly, as seen in season 1 when he was reminiscing about how he helped build some of the galaxies. It’s something that he deeply regrets and it was only quite recently, I would say towards the end of the first season, that he realised that it was never quite his fault. The system was simply built that way.

Despite feeling this way, I don’t think that Crowley has ever feared failure, because he knew that there could be nothing worse than Hell, and they don’t really care about their Demons much. They’re the opposite of Heaven; disordered, chaotic, crowded, dirty and another one of the aspects that this is evident is how they deal with their beings. As long as they’re doing something mildly bad, they’re fine. He cannot disappoint when there are no expectations to begin with, so what is there to fear?

His most prominent fear, one that we’ve seen multiple times within the series, especially within season 2 is losing Aziraphale. It’s quite simple, really. He’s Crowley’s best friend, his only friend. Someone who has always been there with him, no matter what. Someone who he was always able to talk to. Someone who he went to dinners, shows, everywhere, really, with. A dear companion for 6000 years. He simply wouldn’t know what to do if he lost Aziraphale. He means too much to him to stand to lose, and this was very clearly shown at the end of season 2.

Differences between the book and the show

There aren’t many differences between the character in the book and in the show; the major difference, really, was how panicky and nervous he was. In the book, he was significantly more nervous than in the show, despite having the same idea to get rid of the Antichrist, even though he did disagree with how Aziraphale wanted to go about it, because he knew that Hell wasn’t going to react nicely to any of it. He still went forth with it because Earth, and everything on it that he had experienced and loved, was too much to give up. He cared about it, and loved it, enough to know that he will never cause this to happen, even if it goes against the Ineffable Plan.

Conclusion

Crowley is an incredible character, and he’s so cool; I would even go as far to say that he’s the definition of a cool character. I’ve always liked him, honestly, but this analysis made me like him even more. He’s such a multi-faceted and, really, human character; they both are. I’m, much like with my Aziraphale analysis, horrified that I might’ve made a mistake, which is the reason, in part, why I’m posting this a month after the Aziraphale one.

I see him and Aziraphale as two parts of a whole, so the parallels between their personalities is so interesting to dissect and write about. It was kind of difficult from refraining to mention at certain points what the other is like and how they’re different and how they’re similar, because it would be a bit confusing then, I think. They’re so brilliant. They’re definitely some of my favourite characters of all time; Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett wrote them beautifully.

Morality

Despite being an Angel, Aziraphale is not wholly good. I don’t think it’s possible for an Angel to even be entirely good, considering what they’re typically like. Aziraphale, much like Crowley, would be in the light grey area of the morality scale, and I shall explain why.

Aziraphale is a good being. This is a simple and known fact that cannot be debated. However, as I previously stated, it is impossible for any being to be entirely good, or entirely bad, and this presents in Aziraphale in a rather mild way, which I will explain.

One of the reasons why Aziraphale’s a good character is because of his never-ending kindness, which shows up many times during the show and within the book, like when he helped Anathema after he and Crowley crashed into her, when he told Maggie that it’s alright that she didn’t pay her rent, helping Gabriel, and many other instances. One of the reasons why he’s so kind, a reason that I consider the most prevalent is that he genuinely cares about people and about the world, and he genuinely wants to help. It makes him feel good when he helps people; he loves it. That’s not only because he knows that it’s a good thing and that he’s succeeding at his job, but it’s also because he’s able to understand people’s situations really well, as he’s hyper-empathetic, so he’s able to realise just how much he’s been able to do, and how much he’s been able to help.

As I briefly mentioned, Aziraphale has a lot of empathy. He’s able to understand people’s situations very well and this compels him to do good. He cannot just sit there and watch people suffer while knowing what their pain is like. This has been evident several times, throughout the show especially, with Adam and Eve, with Job, and with Adam Young, among many others. Even though he’s hyper-empathetic, his empathy is slightly selective at times, where it’s evident that he’s able to understand this person’s situation and that he’s able to “feel for them” or “put himself in their shoes” sometimes, because he’s been in similar situations or he has seen similar situations before, and some other times he absolutely cannot. This has resulted in him acting horribly and treating people in ways that they do not deserve.

Another reason that factors into his being good is his naivety. Despite being quite intelligent, Aziraphale is horribly naive. This is something that I will expand on in the following section, but it’s due to this that he thinks that everyone wants the best for everyone else; that everyone genuinely wants to do good to one another. It’s what he lives by, essentially.

In spite of all the traits I mentioned above, Aziraphale isn’t entirely good. He’s a bit of a bastard sometimes, like Crowley said, and he can be quite rude and he doesn’t really like people (or any beings really) and interacting with them all that much. He’s also a bit selfish, where he likes to indulge in the things that he likes, such as good books, good plays and good food, while ignoring or not paying much mind to others and how their lives are like. 

To put it simply, Aziraphale is a good character, but he’s a bit of a bastard sometimes and that means that he’s not completely good.

Personality

I find Aziraphale’s personality to be quite remarkable and distinct; I don’t think that there’s a character quite like him, or even similar to him.

One of the things that I see as the most characteristic about him is his idealism. Aziraphale is an idealist, and it shows quite clearly in how he talks about Heaven to Crowley. He always says that they’re the “good guys”, he’s talking about how they do good things and help people, but what he’s talking about isn’t actually Heaven, it’s what Heaven would ideally be like. It’s what he wants Heaven to be like, not what it really is, and he knows that, but he likes to pretend like it’s not actually what it’s like. This is part of the reason why he accepted the Metatron’s offer. He saw it as a chance to make Heaven into what he thinks it should be, a place that’s ruled by kindness and wanting to help others, not power-hungry, cruel people that don’t care at all about others. He wants to make things right, he wants to turn Heaven into what he thinks it should be, but the issue is, and what he’s currently unable to realise, is that this is how Heaven was meant to be. 

Another memorable thing about him is his naivety. Despite being so incredibly intelligent that it’s one of the first noticed things about him, Aziraphale is quite naive and acts rather stupidly at times. This isn’t because of his lack of experience or something of the like; it’s because he’s too wrapped up in his ideals to see what reality is like, where this shows evidently in how he thinks of Heaven and of Angels. He thinks that all they care about is helping people, doing good and thwarting wiles, when, in reality, it’s very different from that. Gabriel even said it, Aziraphale, and Angels in general, are supposed to be “lean, mean fighting machine”s and not kind nor soft, which is what Aziraphale thinks that Angels should be.  It’s also quite clear that they don’t care about kindness or anything of the like because of how they treat Aziraphale himself. They show very clearly and very evidently that they don’t like him; they want him to see that they think that he’s nothing more than a naive idiot and a poor excuse of an Angel. They don’t even bother to be fakely-polite with him, because they don’t care about being kind. They don’t care about respect. They don’t care about others to begin with. All that they care about is power, and winning the Great War. Due to his naivety, he thinks that everyone wants to do everyone good at heart. He probably has a hard time wrapping his mind around the idea that people can, and will, deliberately harm one another. He also always sees the good in people, preferring to overlook the bad, where this is evidently seen with Heaven (though his relationship with Heaven, especially, is far more complicated than that). 

One of the things that’s noticed first about Aziraphale is his intelligence, as mentioned in the book. This is because he’s very experienced and he knows a lot about the world, as he’s seen a lot of it, and read a lot about it of course, and it’s also because it’s just naturally how he is. I think that it shows up a lot in his overthinking, which is usually a result of him thinking too deeply about things and that’s a trait associated with intelligence. Another characteristic that’s linked with intelligence that he has is being attentive to detail, where this is shown in how he’s always able to remember the minor details about events, like the Job minisode, and in how detailed his drawing of Gabriel/Jim was.

He’s also quite curious, and he loves to learn about new things, but only when they’re to do with his interests, which is why it seems a lot more subtle compared to Crowley’s. He does, however, have a thirst for knowledge, and it’s one of the reasons why he likes to read. Due to his curiosity, he asks a lot of questions when it comes to practically anything, as he wants to know and understand more, but he doesn’t do that with orders coming from Heaven because he’s seen what that would result in when Crowley Fell, he knows that they’ll react poorly and that he, too, will Fall if he did that, and because he fears his higher-ups. 

As mentioned before, he’s incredibly kind and empathetic, and, usually, characters with the same traits would be extroverted and bubbly. However, Aziraphale isn’t. He’s quite introverted, and it has, at some point, gotten in the way of his doing good deeds simply because he didn’t want to interact with people. He probably finds it tiresome and pointless because he doesn’t really enjoy people’s company for longer than a few minutes, with the exception of Crowley. 

One of the most remarkable things about him is that he’s quite fussy. He’s very specific and particular about the things that he likes and dislikes, where he finds modern music weird and insists on calling it “bebop”, usually drinks tea or hot chocolate only and absolutely adores crepes and sushi. He’s very passionate about his interests and the things that he likes, such as books, humans and classical music, where he knows a lot about them. He also despises change, which is shown in how he refuses to change his style and his way of talking despite the world changing around him.

One of his more negative personality traits is how he’s too nice to people. This is due to his naivety, and how he thinks that everyone, deep inside, is good one way or another. He doesn’t see any reason to be less than nice to people, and his niceness, on its own, is a bit excessive to begin with, where this causes him to end up in awful situations, like one of the cut scenes and most of his dealings with Heaven, where Crowley has to rescue him (or he chooses to let Crowley rescue him because he probably has a plan). As a result of this, he probably has a hard time setting boundaries with people, because he’s afraid of being too mean or rude to them by asking for anything.

Another negative trait of his is that he bottles up his emotions and thoughts a lot, especially those regarding Crowley. This is mainly because he’s scared and ashamed of them; he shouldn’t be thinking this way, and he developed this mindset because he’s afraid of Falling, of failure essentially, so he doesn’t want Heaven to find out anything about what he’s truly like. This results in him pushing Crowley away a lot, although he really doesn’t want to. 

Insecurities and fears

I would say that Aziraphale is evidently a nervous and worrisome character; he basically frets about everything that happens in the show, but the fears I’m going to list are the most prominent ones.

His most obvious fear is losing Crowley. To put it simply, Crowley means a lot to him and he really meant it when he said that he needed Crowley. Crowley’s the only person who’s always been around Aziraphale, humans die, but Crowley, whom he always understood (to a degree really but that’s a discussion for another time) and who always understood him, has always been there. Crowley, who he shared countless experiences with. Crowley, his best (and probably only) friend. He wouldn’t be able to handle it if he lost Crowley, which is why he’s so afraid of that. He wouldn’t be able to stand it.

He’s afraid of failure and of disappointment. I think it’s rather evident in how he would always deny his and Crowley’s friendship just to please Heaven because he doesn’t want to disappoint his higher-ups, as he’s scared of Falling, which he would definitely consider a failure. He does, however, already know that he’s somewhat considered a disappointment to Heaven, and he even thought that he was going to Fall in the Job mini-sode because he’s so scared of it that it’s all that he can think about. He knows that Heaven is strict, he knows that he’s already a disappointment and he’s slowly inching towards failure, and he feels so terrible about that because he doesn’t want them to think of him in that light. He doesn’t want to Fall. He doesn’t want to fail. He wants their approval and their praise, which is so hard to get, and that shows how he’s insecure; his self-esteem is inherently tied with how useful or how good he is, both in general and to Heaven. This appears a lot within the series, but the most prominent example is in Eden, when he told Crawly that he was worried that he wasn’t doing the good thing. It’s something that’s so seemingly simple, because he’s an Angel of course he’d be doing the good thing, yet it means a lot to him because if he’s not good, then he’s nothing. What is he, if not an Angel? And what is an Angel, if not good? (Because he wants Heaven’s approval, he accepted the Metatron’s offer. He saw it as a chance to right the wrongs within Heaven’s system, and as a chance to prove himself to be worthy to God and all the other Angels, who always undermined him.)

Differences between the book and the show

I wasn’t going to make a section for this, initially, because I didn’t think that the differences were that grand, and, in a way, they really aren’t. They’re just minor character changes, but they make everything else incredibly different, especially when it comes to Aziraphale. Everything that I’ve written before can be applied to the book character as well, and the differences are the following:

The book character isn’t naive at all. He’s very experienced, he knows what humans are like and he knows that beings, whether they’re human or not, can be malicious and they could purposefully want to harm others, and he uses this experience that he has, which makes him seem a lot wiser and smarter than the show character. 

He isn’t hyper-empathetic, he’s far more selective with who he gives his empathy to, and he’s not as kind. He doesn’t really care about others, aside from Crowley, as long as they’re not directly bothering him.

He’s a lot less insecure, and nervous, because he’s a lot more confident, where this confidence is the reason for the majority of the differences mentioned above. The show character can become like the book character, but it will take him a while to reach that point; the show character is far too scared of Heaven and what they’d say about him, unlike the book character, who knows that he’s powerful and doesn’t care in the slightest about Heaven.

Conclusion

When I first listened to this song, I couldn’t help but think that it matches the whole story-line of season two of Good Omens so well. I couldn’t stop listening to it on repeat, and I’ve been listening to it on repeat in my head for a few days now; it just fits the season so well, and it’s even more obvious now that I’ve finished it, so I’m going to talk about that in detail.

I know I stand in line until you think you have the time to spend an evening with me

And if we go someplace to dance, I know that there's a chance you won't be leaving with me

Then afterwards we drop into a quiet little place and have a drink or two

Here the singer talks about how their relationship with their partner is lovely, but it’s kind of strained, and they’re worried that, if the opportunity arises, their partner will leave them. However, their anxieties dissipate when they go drinking, and it’s all alright again.

This part matches up with the majority of the season, with how it was all like before the last episode. It was quiet, gentle and romantic (well, at least it was more so than season one); we got to see more of Aziraphale and Crowley through history, we got to see more of their past together and of their relationship with one another and how it developed, but there were undertones of things going wrong. It all started little by little, with things seemingly improving as we go on, but then descending downwards again.

And then I go and spoil it all by saying somethin' stupid like, "I love you"

Everything was going alright with the singer and their partner, the mood was right, they were both happy, so happy that the singer told their partner that they love them, and that ruined it all.

It was much like that in the last episode, at the very end. What Crowley was trying to hard to say, and what Aziraphale said in a way that Crowley didn’t quite understand, in those moments of clear misunderstanding, what ruined it all was a simple “I love you”. 

Crowley told Aziraphale that they should just leave Heaven and Hell to themselves, much like Gabriel and Beelzebub did, and they should go and be with one another. A group of the two of them. They could be just them, no Angels, no Demons. He wanted to do this because he loves Aziraphale so much, and they couldn’t spend any more time dancing around that fact, like they always evidently have. That was his “I love you”.

Aziraphale, on the other hand, told Crowley that he could go back to Heaven with him, where everything will be alright again, and they could rule the world together. He wants to fix Heaven for Crowley, he wants to right their wrong in causing Crowley to Fall. He wants, he needs Crowley to be there with him because he loves him so much. That was his “I love you”.

It was their confessions of love, their incredibly misunderstood confessions of love, that ruined the whole night. There were no nightingales. 

I can see it in your eyes, that you despise the same old lies you heard the night before

And though it's just a line to you, for me it's true, and never seemed so right before

I’m not quite sure what the singer might be referring to here, honestly. Perhaps they were lying about something to their partner, maybe saying that they don’t love them or something of the sort, and they wanted to right their wrong by saying those words. I don’t know.

However, how I see it for the show, I think that the “same old lies” that are “despised” by the singer’s partner could be applied to how Aziraphale would always push Crowley away by telling him that “they’re not even friends”, that he “never liked him”, that Crowley “goes too fast for him”, and many other examples. He knows that these are all lies and Crowley does as well, and they both hate that they had to do this, which is why their respective “I love you”s mean so much to them. They each thought that their “I love you”s were going to fix everything because being finally together officially means the world to both of them.

I practise every day to find some clever lines to say to make the meaning come true

But then I think I'll wait until the evening gets late, and I'm alone with you

The time is right, your perfume fills my head, the stars get red, and, oh, the night's so blue

The singer wants their partner to realise how much they’re loved and they try and try and try to find the words to convey that because it’s so important to them to show their partner how much they love them. They want to make it all right. They want to get the mood right. They want to get everything right. They want the picture-perfect moment where they make their important declaration of love, something out of the movies.

These lines remind me of Crowley, when Aziraphale was out with the Metatron, after Nina and Maggie told him that he needed to tell Aziraphale about how he felt. He wanted to get it all right and he wanted to truly show Aziraphale that he really loves him because it’s true and it’s so, so important to Crowley. He wants to get this right and he can’t risk messing it up.

And then I go and spoil it all by saying somethin' stupid like, "I love you"

Everything was going so well for the singer; the mood was right, them and their partner were happy. It was all going so right, and they just messed it all up by saying those three simple words. 

Like I said previously, Aziraphale’s and Crowley’s respective “I love you”s ruined it all. It ruined the romantic ambiance that the show had. They were both miserable by the end of the season, all because of a simple “I love you”.

Personality

I think that Mika has an interesting personality, especially because there’s so much that she hides of herself. I think it’s interesting how a lot of the Skip and Loafer characters hide their true personality because the way in which they do that is so incredibly different.

 One of her most remarkable characteristics is how smart and observant she is. I don’t mean this in the typical academic intelligence, although she is smart in that aspect as well; what I mean is that she’s quite good at reading people, which means that she’s attentive to detail and that she’s observant. She’s able to use the information that she reads off of people to see whether they like her or not and to get a read on their character as well.  Because she’s able to read people well, due to her being smart and observant, she’s brutally honest with people because she knows what they’re truly like.

Although she started learning about makeup and fashion as a way to better fit in, I think that she’s genuinely passionate about it, which makes this passion of hers a major part of her personality. She knows so much about it that she’s sort of considered the ‘expert’ within her friends. She also really enjoys sharing the information that she has and talking about fashion and beauty products with Yuzuki and Nao, which is what led me to make my conclusion about it being a real passion of hers because this shows that she genuinely likes it.

I would say that the most important thing to her is to make herself likeable, which is why I consider it a form of people pleasing; it has caused her to change so much of herself and to push herself to do things that she didn’t like just for the sake of fitting in better with others and making them like her. She knows exactly what people expect of her and she changed herself a lot, to the point that it’s difficult to see what she’s  genuinely like. She hides herself behind this ‘mean pretty girl’ personality because she knows that, if she were to be herself, she would get bullied and picked at mercilessly. She saw how people treated her when she acted like how they expected her to, they were better to her, more friendly. This caused her to see her mean and rude attitude as a way to defend or protect herself from being bullied.  

Despite acting really rude and unpleasant towards Mitsumi and only being fakely nice to her to get what she wants, she’s genuinely a kind person, especially to those she cares about. I would say that this is because she’s in a better place now, where she can be herself fully without being shamed for being weird, which allows her to show her friends how much she really loves them. 

One of her more negative traits is how she’s very evidently jealous, mostly of Mitsumi but sometimes of Yuzuki as well. She’s jealous of Mitsumi because she doesn’t seem to care even though people think that she’s a weirdo or an airhead. She’s jealous of how smart and hardworking Mitsumi is. She’s jealous of how Mitsumi isn’t like her, where she isn’t ashamed to be herself, unlike Mika. She’s also jealous of Yuzuki’s natural beauty. I think that, now, she’s trying to decrease those feelings of jealousy because she genuinely loves and cares about both Mitsumi and Yuzuki.

Another negative trait of hers is that she probably has some form of self-esteem issues, where she sees herself as ‘lesser than’ or ‘worse than’ others. This is probably, along with the reason that they have what she has always wanted so effortlessly and she tries hard to get it but doesn’t, why she feels so incredibly jealous of Mitsumi and Yuzuki. She thinks this way because she knows that she’s faked or hidden a lot of her personality, a lot to the point that I’d say that there are parts of herself that she probably wouldn’t recognise. She also feels this way because she’s so focused on how her friends are so much better than her that she loses sight of how she’s not that different from them.

Overall, Mika is an incredibly interesting person who’s quite complex because of how much she hides of herself, making her harder to read.

Insecurities and fears

Mika’s fears make a lot of sense regarding her past experiences with people and her personality.

She’s scared of being left alone and being abandoned. She knows what being alone is like, and she’s been alone before with no friends. That was what made her realise that, if she wanted to be liked by these people, she should change herself to what they want from her. This is why, amongst other reasons, she’s jealous of Mitsumi acting like herself, acting weird, and not caring about how she sticks out from everyone. 

She’s also afraid of being unloved. This is because she experienced what that feels like and it’s the only thing that she really wants, to be loved and admired (and maybe feared slightly) by friends and a boyfriend. That’s why she changed herself so much. That’s why she acted terribly to Mitsumi and Yuzuki initially. She just wanted to be loved, and the girls understood that, each in their own way, and accepted her for who she really is, and not the image that she presents of herself for people to like her because it’s what people expect of her.

Conclusion

Personality

I find Shima’s personality to be incredibly interesting, which is mainly because he hides himself behind masks, which makes his character a bit difficult to understand at times, and I find that interesting.

One of the most notable traits about him is that he’s quiet. He doesn’t really talk much to others and it’s usually other people who start the conversation with him. 

Much like what Mitsumi thinks of him, Shima’s a kind person. I find this to be quite clear because, even though she treated him terribly and blamed him for something that he hadn’t done, he’s still friends (somewhat) with Ririka and he still genuinely cares about her. Another example of his kindness was how he was concerned about Mitsumi when they first met, despite not knowing her at all and despite her being a complete stranger to him.

Shima is someone who people-pleases a lot, where this manifests in many different ways within his interactions with others. He tells people exactly what they want to hear from him, as to not repeat his mistake and upset people, even if it would mean that he would be lying to them. He also forces himself into situations, like the first year class play and dates, that he finds uncomfortable, just to make people happy. I think that the initial reason for him developing those tendencies was of how his mother made him believe that he hurt her when he refused to act anymore; something that she regrets doing now. This has led him to think that he should do what’s asked of him, even if it makes him uncomfortable and even if he doesn’t want to do it because, if he doesn’t do it, that means that he’s selfish. 

He’s also an introvert and he doesn’t like people all that much. Alongside that, he doesn’t really know how to properly interact with others. He wants to tell people what he truly thinks of them without hiding his personality behind a mask of people-pleasing and forced smiles, but he doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know how to talk to people normally without fearing that he’s going to hurt, like he believes he did with Ririka, where she blames him for something that he hadn’t done, and he accepts the blame because he still cares about her and because of him feeling that he needs to make her happy with their friendship, or embarrass, like he believes he did with his mother, where she called him an embarrassing child, those that he talks to and befriends. Him wanting to not hurt, embarrass or upset those he befriends has led him to seeming distant, which is something that Mukai and Shima’s younger brother have felt, and unapproachable. However, this is also due to Shima hiding his personality.

I mentioned this previously, but Shima hides his personality, and I can’t seem to understand why. Perhaps he fears being considered weird for how he really is. Perhaps he thinks that, if he hides his personality, people will like him more. 

He doesn’t understand his emotions that well, and I think that it takes him a while in order to identify how he’s feeling, which we’ve seen in regards to how he feels about Mitsumi. He also bottles up his emotions a lot, especially negative ones, and I would say that he probably feels shame around showing his emotions.

Overall, Shima’s an incredibly interesting character, who I found a bit hard to read at times.

Insecurities and fears

I think that Shima’s fears make a lot of sense in regards to his personality, and I find that they’re all connected with one another, which I’ll elaborate about shortly.

He’s terribly afraid of hurting his loved ones. I consider this another reason for why he’s a people-pleaser and why he tells people what they want to hear from him. He doesn’t want to hurt them because he knows that, if he does, he will lose those he loves, and, although it’s not talked about much in the series, he has probably experienced loss, through his parents’ separation, before and doesn’t want to experience it again.He holds his close relationships in a special place, even if he tries to hide that, which makes him afraid of hurting those he loves and, thus, losing them.

Because he’s so afraid of losing those he loves, he’s afraid of disappointing his loved ones. He knows that, if he were to disappoint them, they’d no longer think highly of him and they would eventually leave him or he’d somehow lose the close connection that he had with them, like he did with his mother. This is probably why he continued to act; he didn’t want to disappoint his mother and he wanted to make her proud of him.

Conclusion

Personality

I would say that Mitsumi’s personality is quite simple, even though I have a lot to say about it. 

One of the most remarkable traits of her personality is her passion and her determination. There are many things, that I suppose could be called dreams or ambitions of hers, that she’s quite passionate about, like becoming the Student Council President and solving her hometown’s issues, and she’s more than willing to work towards achieving her aspirations. She channels the passion that she has towards those dreams into determination and will-power, which, along with her hard-working tendencies, allow her to achieve those ambitions of hers. How passionate she is about her dreams usually seems to come off as “too much” to some characters, like Shima at the start, but her friends find it inspiring, and Shima comes to find it that way too eventually.

She’s incredibly smart, and I think that this is something that’s quite clear, given how we see that she’s doing quite well in her school work. I would say that she got to this degree of intelligence through her hard work. She takes her studies so seriously that Fumi even jokes that the only thing that Mitsumi’s good at is studying, and, sometimes, she takes them more seriously than she takes her own well-being. I would also say that this is because she’s genuinely fascinated by the information that she’s learning. This is shown in a flashback scene in the manga, where a younger Mitsumi is telling  younger Fumi that she read one of their textbooks in one day, and when Fumi exclaimed, Mitsumi explained that she found it interesting and fascinating to read. Alongside being intelligent, I would say that she’s also a bit of a nerd.

She’s one of the friendliest characters in the anime and manga. This shows through the number of unexpected friendships that she made, like how she befriended Ujiie and Makoto. This is because she’s quite extroverted, and she finds it enjoyable to talk to other people, hear what they have to say and understand their perspectives. This is quite beneficial to her, as the President of the Student Council, but I think that she does this because she genuinely cares about others.

She has a lot of empathy towards others, and she can quite easily place herself in other people’s shoes and imagine what their lives might be like to a degree that’s higher than most people’s. This has helped her befriend people who would’ve otherwise been her ‘enemies’, like Ujiie and Mika. She was able to understand why they were treating her that way and she told them that she understood their situations, which made them feel better and treat her better.

She has slight people-pleasing tendencies, where she’d take too much work that she wouldn’t be able to handle just because she couldn’t say “no” to others. She knew that people expect something from her, and she doesn’t want to disappoint them, so she feels compelled to agree and help out even if all it would do is drain her. I believe that she has worked on that to a degree because the only example I can recall is when she helped out with the class play even though she had other stuff to do for the Student Council.

She’s an incredibly loving person and she loves so deeply that it’s simply beautiful. I would say that her love language would be gift-giving, considering how she always makes sure to get souvenirs an gifts for her family and friends. I think that it makes sense for her to be so loving because she grew up surrounded by so much love, which is something that’s commented on by a lot of characters.

Despite being an extrovert and despite being incredibly friendly, Mitsumi isn’t that good at social situations. She tends to miss social cues and she sometimes does or says things that would be considered socially inappropriate, which makes her seem like a weirdo to people. This could be because all of the characters that she’s interacted with in highschool so far are from Tokyo, while she’s from the country side, but I believe that this is just how she is, because she behaves in a similar way with Fumi.

She also always assumes that people have good intentions, which makes her quite naive. It had also led her to awkward interactions with many people, where she’d believe that they're telling her something to help her, but, in reality, they were making fun of her. An example of this is how everyone seemed to pick up on how Mika was using her to get closer to Shima at the beginning of the story, but she wasn’t able to realise that until someone pointed it out for her. This, along with her missing social cues and acting inappropriately in some social situations, make people see her as stupid and as an airhead.

She’s a bit bad at figuring out how abstract emotions, which feel different to each person who experiences them, like romantic love, is supposed to feel like. This is why she didn’t realise that she likes Shima in a romantic manner until later on in the series. 

She doesn’t quite see the point in lying, even if it’s to keep someone happy, and she’s quite blunt and honest when it comes to talking to other people. She’s very genuine in everything that she says.

She has an incredibly strong sense of justice, and she doesn’t let people who broke the rules get away with that. Unlike Mika, who will attack the person who did the injustice, Mitsumi will protect the person who was prejudiced against and defend them. This is probably because she, herself, has faced some form of prejudice before, which happens within the series where girls have made fun of how nerdy she is, like that scene where she was upset that Shima hadn’t defended her. 

Overall, I just think that Mitsumi’s an incredibly interesting character despite having a simple-to-understand personality, which consists of many interesting facets.

Insecurities and fears

Although Mitsumi seems like the type of person who wouldn’t have any fears or insecurities, I think it’s quite the opposite. They’re few, yes, but they’re still prevalent and I wanted to delve a little deeper into them.

One thing that she almost definitely fears is failure. This is because she has planned her entire life with a great deal of detail, which means that, to her, failure would simply be unacceptable. She thinks this way not because she has been punished for her failures before, no, but because she thinks that she should help her hometown and its people as a way of giving back. She’s also afraid that, if she fails, she would disappoint her loved ones because she hadn’t achieved the great things that they wished for her.

An interesting fear that she has is that she’s scared that her loved ones don’t realise just how much she loves them. She’s afraid that what she’s doing isn’t enough, and that she should be doing more, but she doesn’t know what more should she do. This is why, when Maharu was upset at her for buying her the wallet, she was quite sad about it. All she wanted was to let her little sister know that she’s loved by her, and she did that through a gift that she thought would be meaningful, but when Maharu said that Mitsumi didn’t know her tastes anymore and that she didn’t want the wallet, Mitsumi couldn’t help but feel miserable. I would say that she also fears being distant from those she loves because she’s scared that, if she does become distant, they’ll leave her, and she doesn’t want that to ever happen because she knows that it’ll be painful, even though she’s never experienced, as far as we know, the pain of loss.

Conclusion

Morality

Erik’s morality is quite interesting yet obvious. I shall explain why I see it in this manner, but after placing him on my scale. He would be in the grey section, not near the dark but not near the light. This section is commonly associated with amoral characters and those who do know what morality is but don’t work with a moral code. 

Technically speaking, Erik is amoral. This is because he has no clue what morality even is, which is something that’s stated in the book. He’s always seen cruelty and people using others to get to what they want, and, since no one told him that these types of actions are frowned upon, he does them as well. Even though the reason why he did all of his terrible actions is just to feel loved and appreciated much like everybody else, that doesn’t excuse his actions in any way. However, he didn’t know that what he was doing is “wrong”. He was never taught the difference between “good” and “bad”. The first thing that he was ever met with was, actually, cruelty and evil.

Although he isn’t aware of the concept of “right” and “wrong”, there were some things that he did which would be considered “good”, like how he was kind to Madame Giry and Meg Giry and treated them with respect, even though he did that in order for them to help him.

In conclusion, Erik’s morality doesn’t exist, and, as a result, he doesn’t realise that his actions are “wrong”. However, not all of his actions were terrible.

Personality and insecurities

Erik’s personality is quite interesting and very simple. All of the characteristics and traits which can be associated with him are quite obvious within the novel, and I shall explain why he acts in the way that he does. 

He’s obviously quite creative, because he’s able to compose his own music and because he’s able to build brilliant, yet horrific, architecture within the Opera cellars. His creativity also shows that he’s quote smart as he’s able to understand architecture and is able to make so many trap doors that he’s called “trap door lover”. He’s also intelligent because no ordinary person would’ve formulated a complex plan as he did to get what he wanted.

This is very obvious about him, but he’s evidently an appreciator of the arts.  He’s able to see the beauty in music, musicals and plays. He adores music; it’s undoubtedly one of his passions, and I would even go as far as to say that it’s a form of escapism to him.

He’s obviously an introvert; he would much rather be alone than be with someone else. This is because, over time, he’s learned to fear people just as much as they fear him due to his appearance. They always cause him harm one way or another, and very few of them have actually done anything to help him. He also has no clue how to socialise normally, which causes him to be unable to communicate with anyone to begin with.

A characteristic that I find to be very apparent in him is loving forever. What I mean by that is that when anyone ever does anything kind to him, he will forever remember them and love them. People are mostly atrocious to him, so, as a result, he cherishes the memories of those who were anything but. The perfect example is Christine. She showed him what he wanted; love and kindness, so he wanted her to forever stay with him because he will forever love her for doing that to him.

Because he was brought up in inhumane ways, he doesn’t know or understand much about his own emotions. The only exception for this are extreme emotions, like intense love, which no one could help but recognise. The environment where he grew up in also taught him that he shouldn’t show emotion because, if he were to do that, it would make it easier for people to take advantage of him and use him for whatever they want. As a result of this, not only are the only feelings that he truly knows are sadness and loneliness, but he also isn’t able to realise that the Daroga is his friend. He doesn’t understand what are feelings of friendship, because they are usually not extreme. However, despite this being the case, Erik is quite comfortable around the Daroga as he was vulnerable, crying about Christine, in front of him at the end of the book. 

Erik has two very obvious insecurities. He hides a lot about himself, which makes it difficult to determine what he might be afraid of, but there are two fears which make the most sense for him to have.

He undoubtedly fears abandonment. He has experienced abandonment for his entire life. All of his life, he was alone, hated and feared due to something that he couldn’t control, where the first time that he experienced friendship, and wasn’t even aware that he was experiencing it, was when he was a young adult with the Daroga, which resulted in him fearing being left alone forever, which is why he would’ve done anything so that Christine would marry him. 

He also definitely fears vulnerability. I touched upon this in a paragraph above, but he’s fully aware that letting his guard down means that people could easily use him and take advantage of him. Besides, there’s no one to protect him for the most part. This is also why he most likely has trust issues.

Conclusion