junior research fellow at tumblr university

what is an evil purple girl?

if you're new here, or just want some refreshing, the evil purple girl is a character type i identified based initially on the commonalities between two girls who were driving me insane, ianthe tridentarius from the locked tomb series and shiori takatsuki from revolutionary girl utena. here, in fact, is the post where the evil purple girl crossover concept coalesced (see the tags). what began as a comparison between two characters grew into a pattern i was noticing across a number of girls i found interesting or compelling.

primarily, i noticed how purple color schemes tend to be associated with characters who are girls/women but not the main girl protagonist. often, there's something morally, ethically, or socially off about these purple girls and not infrequently they are villains, antagonists, or otherwise problematic figures. from that observation, i made some early speculations on other possible epg prospects, noting common motifs, themes, issues, and qualities. then, i came up with a bit of a framework for identifying them. see below this very scientific apparatus (which has undergone some updating since i last posted it in about 2022):

a more serious interpretation of many of these items might lead us to the conclusion that the evil purple girl character type works through various tropes around the aspects of femininity culturally designated as negative. motifs around mirrors, visual representation and mimesis, costuming and performance register a cultural association of femininity with artificiality, duplicitousness, and seduction. these are certainly prevailing themes that the attach to the evil purple girl. the girlboss/failgirl nexus speak to anxieties around women's claims to social or institutional power but also indicate the degree to which evil purple girls, despite their typically feminine presentation, often struggle to meet the standards of 'good' womanhood. this is particularly exemplified by how many of them have homoerotic or even textually gay obsessions with other girls/women. building on that, many evil purple girls demonstrate a violent or volatile streak that is typically presented as a shocking contrast from the demure expectations of how a woman is supposed to act. this where we see motifs of cannibalism, vehicular disaster, dead birds, and girl-on-girl psychological (or even physical) torture.

sometimes, epgs are replicating these tropes pretty uncomplicatedly. sometimes, they are deconstructing them. sometimes, epgs are not doing any of this and are just kind of goofy baddies. sometimes, they're not even girls. occasionally, they're not even purple, although this, more than any other factor, strongly limits their reach in the epg space.

if you want to get to know the epg better, i recommend taking a look through the tags (linked above the cut) and/or familiarizing yourself with the two founding epgs (ianthe and shiori), then thinking about them comparatively. at the end of the day, though, it's not really a coherent system, just something i've made up to amuse myself!

who are the evil purple girls?

all good research ought to be data-driven and so i compiled information from every appearance of the epg tag(s) on my blog and have drawn the following information from it. it's worth noting that all of the percentages you'll see here are, unless otherwise specified, per appearance of a girl in the tag, not per post/appearance of the tag itself. this means that if an individual post featured multiple girls, i logged it multiple times. some of the numbers will also have a quantity of 'generalized' posts filtered out (i.e., posts where the tag is used but no girls are mentioned); i did record these in my initial data findings but didn't use them to figure out percentages around appearance rates of specific girls.

so without further ado, who are these evil purple girls anyway?

the artwork of ianthe and corona used here is from the locked tomb wiki with credit to @starcanist!

no surprises here, the top ranking epgs are the two originals: shiori takatsuki and ianthe tridentarius. i've written up a full list and more in depth descriptions of all 79 individual girls but i'll go through some of the data below.

Shiori Takatsuki (Revolutionary Girl Utena) - 185 EPG appearances out of 632 total, 29.3%

Ianthe Tridentarius (The Locked Tomb Series) - 142 appearances, 22.5%

Coronabeth Tridentarius (The Locked Tomb Series) - 33 appearances, 5.2%

Bernkastel (Umineko) - 26 appearances, 4.1%

Helen (Greco-Roman myth and literature) - 21 appearances, 3.3%

Eva-Beatrice (Umineko) - 19 appearances, 3%

Anthy Himemiya (Revolutionary Girl Utena) - 15 appearances, 2.4%

Jordan Hennessy (The Dreamer Trilogy) - 12 appearances, 1.9%

Mariko Shinobu (Oniisama e...) - 12 appearances, 1.9%

Yukari Yakumo (Touhou) - 11 appearances, 1.7%

Erika Furudo (Umineko) - 11 appearances, 1.7%

Homura Akemi (Puella Magi Madoka Magica) - 10 appearances, 1.6%

Kozue Kaoru (Revolutionary Girl Utena) - 10 appearances, 1.6%

Helen Richardson (The Magnus Archives) - 9 appearances, 1.4%

Rue / Princess Kraehe (Princess Tutu) - 8 appearances, 1.3%

Mitsuko Souma (Battle Royale) - 7 appearances, 1.1%

Eva Ushiromiya (Umineko) - 7 appearances, 1.1%

Cornelius Hickey (The Terror) - 7 appearances, 1.1%

Jacinthe (Pokemon) - 7 appearances, 1.1%

Blackfire (Teen Titans) - 6 appearances, 0.9%

Beatrice (Umineko) - 6 appearances, 0.8%

Susie (Deltarune) - 5 appearances, 0.8%

Smiling imp emoji (Discord, specifically) - 5 appearances, 0.8%

Misty Quigley (Yellowjackets) - 4 apperances, 0.6%

Rose Lalonde (Homestuck) - 4 appearances, 0.6%

Gengar (Pokemon) - 3 appearances, 0.5%

Nanami Kiryuu (Revolutionary Girl Utena) - 3 appearances, 0.5%

Harrowhark Nonagesimus (The Locked Tomb Series) - 3 appearances, 0.5%

Hisami Yomotsu (Touhou) - 3 appearances, 0.5%

Ninetails (Okami) - 3 appearances, 0.5%

Queen (Deltarune) - 2 appearances, 0.3%

Thistle (Dungeon Meshi) - 2 appearances, 0.3%

Prowler Miles Morales (Spiderverse) - 2 appearances, 0.3%

Neptune (We Know the Devil) - 2 appearances, 0.3%

Fukiko Ichinomiya (Oniisama e...) - 2 appearances, 0.3%

Lord Summerisle (The Wicker Man) - 2 appearances, 0.3%

you can read more about the remaining 43 girls not named on the chart, who all appeared a single time, in the full list linked above.

some interesting cases arise in this list when it comes to terms of qualification. are some of these characters really evil purple girls? why aren't some of them higher up?

the frequent appearances of anthy himemiya surprised me. she has posed a great challenge to the epg summit because in many ways she is, within her series, the model that makes purple the color of girls who are antagonists, but one would be very hard pressed to call her actually evil. she’s the main reason i instituted the categories of evil i'll elaborate on below. she embodies the category of Evil Woman Under Patriarchy but it’s been imposed on her by a man who uses it to exploit her, however she’s not a black and white “perfect victim” who never means others harm. she is essentially a very traumatized girl lashing out in revenge or spite from within a very constrained situation and has helped me conceptualize how there is a space for that in the evil purple girl ecosystem, specifically honing in on the stories where girls' evil is highly contextual and potentially misrepresented to serve others' ends.

beatrice would be a perfect epg if only she were purple. she has the doubling and redoubling identity issues, she has her homunculus in battler (and even natsuhi), she has a deep-seated association with the mimetic arts of storytelling, writing, and portraiture. much of umineko is devoted to unraveling her ontological and epistemological mysteries and she bears a lot of similarities in this regard to helen, the mythological godmother of all epgs. beatrice's evil is complicated; she’s self-professedly “just like this” but also the crimes she perpetrates are the culmination of a series of processes and constraints mostly beyond her control. but also she does enjoy killing those people. she is a great example of just how much of a limitation not being purple is when it comes to making waves at the evil purple girl summit.

on that note, i should spend a moment on helen, who is not featured as prominently in the tag as i suspected she would be, given that i have considered her a kind of model for the epg in a lot of ways. i often use comparison to helen as a heuristic for initial epg evaluation. nearly every epg trait is traceable back to her as an archetypal evil woman who is made to embody all that her patriarchal culture considers wrong with femininity (mostly reducible to issues around seduction and pretense). she is a figure associated with endless doublings and the deceptive power of mimesis. in fact, the major problem with designating helen as an epg is that she is too competent at wielding these skills - whether you see her as extremely agentic or extremely victimized, the literary and mythological record makes it hard to argue that she isn't at least, as one scholar puts it, "an authoritative disseminator of signs." the question of her evil is, well, you know. the most evil woman in the world and also she did nothing wrong and also she did every last thing and she’s the most wonderful woman in the world and it all depends who you ask. if you're interested in more of how i think about helen, much of which falls in line with the epg agenda, check out my helen of troy's drag name was just helen of troy tag, itself an occasional cross-reference with the epg tag.

finally, i want to think about one character who i initially designated as an epg and have now reconsidered: susie from deltarune. i initially identified susie as an epg after the first deltarune release, when her character had more antagonism and bad girl thematics to work through. now, i think she’s too much of a hero and otherwise lacks a lot of the double-dealing typical of the epg. a few people raised questions with her epg assignment back in the day and i think i agree with them now; it doesn’t really fit her. but susie also raises the interesting research question: can there be a butch epg? so many of the epg qualities and motifs are about working through cultural associations with femininity. in susie's case, i think at least part of her mismatch with epg vibes may have to do with this - is she characterized as more brash and upfront because she's more masculine? - but i'm holding out hope that a butch epg could yet emerge…

is she evil? and how?

as i mentioned before, considering the vast diversity of these girls, especially their varying degrees of malice, destructive impact, and justification, made me think it might be interesting to come up with some categories of evil. not a big philosophical undertaking at all, right? so i enlisted my girlfriend who has witnessed all 5 years of the summit and we came up with some assessments, which he distilled into the following categories:

evil evil: villains, uncomplicatedly bad people with no real reason given in the narrative for why they act the way they do. notable examples include ianthe tridentarius and blackfire.

evil but with baggage: people who do bad things but might be somewhat justified in them or there be some nuance to their actions/personality/motivations. notable examples include shiori taktsuki and most of the epgs from umineko (because, well, with love their baggage can be seen!).

morally grey: people who don’t necessarily do any specific terrible thing, but have dubious morals OR people who may have a more destructive impact but whose attitudes/motivations/culpability are for some reason more difficult to evaluate. notable examples include helen and coronabeth tridentarius.

coping under constraint: people who wouldn’t get anything out of the bad things they do unless they were in a situation they couldn’t get out of, often lashing out or unable to change their situation in any other way. notable examples include anthy himemiya and rue/princess kraehe.

interpersonally messy: ranges from bad at communicating to kind of a bully but usually not framed by the narrative as a villain. notable examples include mariko shinobu and jacinthe.

causes problems: tricksters, cute characters, bad girls, but not typically framed as doing grievous harm. notable examples include gengar and the smiling imp emoji.

not evil: not evil and potentially unfairly maligned. notable examples include neptune from we know the devil and, although she only appears once in the tag, eve from genesis.

idk her: for when idk her. notable examples include all the girls idk but were recommended to me over the years.

note that this data is compiled again based on epg appearances, not number of total girls:

Evil but with baggage - 253 appearances, 40%

Evil evil - 197 appearances, 31.2%

Morally grey - 74 appearances, 11.7%

Interpersonally messy - 51 appearances, 8.1%

Coping under constraint - 41 appearances, 6.5%

Causes problems - 18 appearances, 2.8%

Not evil - 11 appearances, 1.7%

Idk her - 6 appearances, 1%

is she purple?

not always! here are the stats:

Yes - 60.3%

Usually, but not specifically in this post - 29.4%

Not usually, except for specifically in this post - 3.1%

No - 7.2%

you can see how difficult it is for a non-purple girl to get serious penetration into the tag(s). it can give her a little boost to be depicted as purple in fanart or to wear a purple outfit once or twice.

other players in the epg ecosystem

evil purple girls are often conceptualized as such in reference to other characters, which i've perhaps overly-narrowly identified as falling into one of three categories:

the lesbian sadboy/tormented homunculus

"lesbian sadboy" is how i first designated the counterpart of many epgs, typically a love interest or object of desire. these characters are often more serious, melancholic, or even tragic to contrast with the frequent goofiness of an epg. they are often characters who are, whether by circumstance or nature, uniquely vulnerable to their evil purple girl's bullshit. the evil purple girl loves to weaponize her yearning for/against the lesbian sadboy (so named because this is typically a toxic yuri situation) and may not always have the lesbian sadboy's best intentions at heart. nevertheless, the epg typically is not able to have a successful, fulfilling relationship with her lsb, so the pursuit can reach a fever pitch of intensity and extremity, often punctuated with some kind of shockingly violent act.

another way i've conceptualized this relationship dynamic is "tormenting my homunculus (homoerotic)" but in the process of combing through my data, i've realized that, although the lsb and the homunculus can overlap a lot, an epg's homunculus need not actually be an object of erotic desire. the homunculus also does not need to have the complicated interiority or pathetic dignity of the lsb. ianthe tridentarius gives us a good example, because she has affiliations with a character who fits both lsb and homunculus roles (harrow), one who only fits the former (kiriona), and one who only fits the latter (naberius). naberius tern is, in fact, the character who got me thinking about the homunculus as a more independently identifiable subtype.

that said, the lesbian sadboy/homunculus who tops the charts in the epg tag(s) is none other than juri arisugawa. she appears 106 times in this role, which makes her the 3rd most frequently appearing character in the tag despite not being an epg herself. their symbiosis is crucial to what makes shiori such a compelling and classic epg.

there are 206 epg appearances associated with lesbian sadboys/homunculi and 29 individual lsbs/homunculi appear. the top 5 most frequently appearing lsbs/homunculi are:

juri arisugawa - 106 appearances

harrowhark nonagesimus - 22 appearances

naberius tern - 13 appearances

shiori takastuki - 12 appearances

nanako misonoo - 7 appearances

this data points to an interesting similarity or even sliding scale from lsb/homunculus to epg, as two characters who otherwise appear as epgs in their own right (harrow and shiori) also appear as lsbs/homunculi to other epgs (ianthe and anthy, respectively).

the good pink girl

my awareness of this character type also emerged in the process of looking through my data. although the idea of a pink protagonist as the norm from which the epg diverges had long been baked into my understanding of the character type, i hadn't really thought much about their dynamic. the character who drew my attention to this was madoka, who has 5 appearances in the tag(s) connected to homura akemi. she is one of the best examples of the good pink girl trope in the tag and also helps demonstrate one of the major differences between the gpg and the lesbian sadboy/homunculus, namely that the former usually doesn’t crumple in her relationship with the epg the way the latter might. gpgs have the power of protagonism and successful femininity behind them.

other notable examples include the eponymous ahiru/princess tutu and nanako misonoo from oniisama e. i’d argue that nanako is a gpg throughout oniisama e, even though she’s more typically blue or yellow than pink. it's her normative positioning that, when juxtaposed with the abnormal or even extreme behavior of other girls in the series, helps narratively situate them as, well, abnormal or extreme. in particular, nanako’s shocked and frightened reactions to epg mariko’s obsession with her signal to the viewers that mariko’s feelings for her and/or the way she expresses them are beyond the pale of acceptable schoolgirl affection. 

there are 57 epg appearances associated with good pink girls and 12 individual lsbs/homunculi appear. the top 5 most frequently appearing lsbs/homunculi are:

utena tenjou (herself a deconstruction of the gpg trope) - 22 appearances

lambdadelta (again a left turn, maybe even perversion of the trope) - 11 appearances

nanako misonoo - 7 appearances

madoka kaname - 5 appearances

ahiru/princess tutu - 4 apearances

the double

woah, a favorite. i won't allow myself to talk at too much length about this one because i would go on for ages. doubles can encompass other selves, shadow selves, characters who are archetypal refractions of each other, foils, siblings (especially twins), artistic representations of the self (like portraits), different versions of the self, doppelgangers, stolen identities, so on and so forth. basically i'm thinking of an eidolon dynamic here as the gold standard.

doubling is especially tasty for an epg when it destabilizes her sense of self. i love when there's a power struggle over who gets to be the "real" or dominant one in a dyad of doubles and i love when a girl's selfhood is diffused through a number of iterations of herself. in fact, many of the doubles featured are just different versions of the epg herself.

there are 136 epg appearances associated with a double and 19-24 individual doubles appear, depending on whether you differentiate out the different instances of the double being the epg herself. the top 5 most frequently appearing doubles are:

herself - 40 appearances, including specific subcategories, herself (locket) for shiori, herself (eva ushiromiya) for eva-beatrice and vice versa, herself (prince ianthe naberius, i.e., the possessed body in which ianthe makes her public appearances in nona the ninth) for ianthe, and herself (portrait) for beatrice.

coronabeth tridentarius - 28 appearances (the majority of her own appearances in the tag)

ianthe tridentarius - 27 appearances

anthy hiimemiya - 8 appearances (the majority of her own appearances in the tag, although this may well be due to the fact that i haven't really considered her an epg in her own right until very recently)

shiori takatsuki - 7 appearances

it's also worth noting how many of these most prominent examples are epgs who double each other.

motifs and co-occurrences

the last elements of the data i was interested were which epg motifs showed up the most frequently and also which of my epg-friendly other tags might co-occur with the epg summit.

eidolon/doubling issues - 136 appearances

gratuitous, shocking, and or homoerotic violence - 39 appearances bridging a wide array of different manifestations, from the revolutionary girl utena sword pull/reverse impalement (20 appearances) to cannibalism (19) to stabbing (14) and biting (8) to ritual sacrifice (3) and drugging/poisoning (3) to drowning (2), decapitation (2), blowing stuff up (2), diy surgery/dissection (1) and dismemberment (1), crucifixion (1), flaying (1), and shooting missiles out of your boobies (1), to bashing someone over the head with a rock 1) or a folding chair (4 - all instances where i was specified the meta victim)

mimetic arts - 115 appearances, which i've broken out the stats for further below

mirrors - 23 appearances

shadows - 20 appearances

car crashes - 39 appearances

dead and dubiously alive birds - 36 appearances, including a notable subtype of butterflies/moths that spanned multiple source materials and appeared 15 times

Photography - 20 appearances, notably including the locket photo of Shiori

Theater - 15 appearances, notably including Ianthe's self-directed play that comprises "The Unwanted Guest"

Costuming - 15 appearances

Narrative (literary)/storytelling - 13 appearances

Makeup - 10 appearances

Drawing - 9 appearances

Dance - 8 appearances, notably associated with Rue/Princess Kraehe

Puppetry/dolls - 8 appearances

Painting - 6 appearances

Textiles (non-costume) - 2 appearances

Pretend play - 2 appearances, all derived from Coronabeth pretending to die as a child to get Judith's attention

Television - 2 appearances

Drag - 1 appearance

Confectionery - 1 appearance, when Ianthe is compared to an over-frosted cake. See the entry for Ianthe in my in-depth list for why I included this as a mimesis moment.

Generalized reference to mimesis - 1 appearance

that's 115 total acts of evil mimesis! and finally, onto the tag co-occurrences

eidolon tag - 92 co-occurrences

helen of troy's drag name was just helen of troy - 25 co-occurrences

dead and dubiously alive birds fandom - 6 co-occurrences

sexy sexy image ontology - 7 co-occurrences

chomp comp am i right? - 18 co-occurrences

i'll be honest, this wasn't as comprehensive across the board as i'd expect. in some cases, i clearly undertagged even when the motif was present (e.g., dead and dubiously alive birds). i guess if nothing else it cements the close relationship of the epg to the eidolon dynamic and demonstrates helen's ascendency as a model.

we have been working with a small team to get the money from gofundme to leena, since gfm campaigns can't be set in palestine.

on the 6th of July leena asked me to share the campaign:

on the 8th of July the first batch finally arrived on leena's account, after a lot of trial and error:

on the same day leena's e-sim ran out and i got her a new one. i've been keeping it topped off since.