#kog analysis

i saw this scene and my heart embedded itself within my throat. my breathing hitched. i'd known, yet… it's here where i felt, plainly, this story is crafted by ingenuity and artfulness; not of spite, as i see is claimed in abundance. it's a cultivated, mournful ode to understanding idolatry, slipping childhood, and inhabitations of bygone dreams. incarnated by figures of forced purity.

the princess gwen we follow is a victim of horrific pain & abuse. not only is she non-human- due to her repute as an elevated symbol of subjugation, we're unsure if, if others were to know, they'd give to her their empathy. guinevere androids excel at facial-software detection, adhering that information unconsciously for the ends you may imagine. her statue is defaced because she represents the ails of the park from which there is no inoculation other than expired aspirations, hopelessly looking for the sky, and wishing for better.

for andi... it's similar. the status-quo emphasizes daily griefs spurred by her position, being perceived as irreconcilable, traitorous, and betraying her social standing. soon enough, she's discarded all the like. she, gwen, and frankie take on roles as commodities despite distantly slotted roles in all their respective worlds. andi as an engineer, frankie as a labour worker, and gwen as the face of extraordinary, starry blisses, kiting above the undercity. for frankie? it hurts me so, so much. because we see how she clings onto this memory she shared with andi sneaking in during afterhours. she didn't meet gwen in the perfunctory manner of lining up, waiting, paying; it was a spontaneous break from the drear of her life below, shown tenderness by the princess she loved. ever since that day, she'll cling onto this idealism. she has to be an engineer. she has to be closer, up high, high enough to see clearly.. ah. because she still believes in the magic of the park that hasn't dulled, as it did, for so many. it continues.

After watching the Knights of Guinevere pilot about 5 times now, a detail that has jumped out to me is how Guinevere seems to be fully awake and aware the entire time. On first watch you might think she's too damaged to be really conscious, especially with how still she is, but if you watch her face she's reacting to everything that happens. She just can't do anything about it.

Some of these little expressions are very blink and you miss it, so I decided to make a compilation of all of them. Images under the cut, I hope you find this as interesting as I did!

Like, the way she is one character, put into various different roles in movies just to have more versions of her to sell. This mermaid is Guinevere, this ballerina is Guinevere, this princess is Guinevere. You need to get this new Barbie because it connects to the new movie, where she's a princess, or an astronaut, or a movie star. There's also the consumerism that inherently derives of this, in some cases, in spite of the messaging of the movie.

She is made as a raceless alien to be more appealing and yet she still has recognizably white features, like blue eyes, a petit nose, and thin lips, because these are features "beautiful" by default because of our white supremacist world. Sure, Barbie can have darker skin, but if you look at the toys, they never have a larger nose, or bigger lips, because those wouldn't be "pretty" on a toy.

We see costumes meant to be worn by a variety of little girls, and maybe they come in different sizes, but I bet you the marketing never features a fat kid playing in them. I bet you the movies only have fat villains, or at most a fat side character only there to be the butt of a joke. And of course, Guinever herself can be a mermaid, or a planet-hopping ballerina, but never fat. Sure we want Barbie to be inclusive of all body types, but the movies never feature a fat main character, and the ads never have fat kids or toys, and if you want a larger-bodied Barbie, you're gonna have to order them online at double the price of thin Barbies on store shelves.

We already know Andrea and Frankie are Gwen's knights, but did y'all notice that each of them is represented by broken knight gear?

Frankie is a broken shield, and Andrea is a broken sword. I might be wrong about why, but I want to try to analyze it anyways. So let's start with the most obvious one, Frankie.

So Frankie. Francesca. Frank. She's not okay, both physically and mentally. She hallucinates that her handmade toys are alive and talking to her; has 3 different life-sucking jobs, one of which includes a boss who has PULLED OUT 2 OF HER TEETH because "she didn't behave". She even tried to help a broken android of her favorite childhood character while ignoring that both she and Andrea were bleeding and bruised.

All this to say, I don't think Frankie cares about her well-being enough, which is understandable considering the things the girls need to do to make rent and survive in this late-stage capitalism hellscape. But we see that she's the kind of person who not only sacrifices herself for those she cares about, she's also willing to lose teeth and get beaten up to fix something because she wants to work with Andrea in the labs.

From what we know so far, she's been punched, dragged through the mud, and probably had to steal to feed herself and Andrea, along with stealing parts for both her and Andrea's robots. And yet, she still gets back up, she still has hopes and dreams of working as an engineer for the park.

She's a broken shield that still stands because her convictions remain strong, despite all the pain and cracks she's endured. But that doesn't mean she's indestructible, and eventually something has to give in, and that something may be her mental health, along with losing an eye.

Now, Andrea... we didn't get as much insight into Andrea's way of thinking as we did with Frankie, but I think the reason she's a broken sword is related to her working for the park as an engineer.

Throughout the entire pilot, we get to see Andrea justifying herself to others, saying she had no choice but to be a crownie due to a lack of money and the state of the world as a whole. We don't know if that is completely true or if she had to convince herself that this was the only way to survive due to a different motive. What we do know for sure is that she HATES her job and also loathes the company behind the park. There's also the fact that she isn't as good as Frankie at robotics, yet somehow got the attention of Park Planet for long enough to be employed by them for a while.

My theory on that is that she showed one of Frankie's inventions to get employed at the park, but couldn't match the expectations placed on her and got fired after her dino animatronic malfunctioned.

Her passion for robotics seems lost, along with her dreams for a better-paying job for both her and Frankie. Who knows how long she fought to get a chance at a better job at Park Planet, how many nights she stayed awake to show she was good enough, and then she got fired. Her sense of wonder and love for the park is GONE, yet she's so used to being in fight or flight mode, she's ready to yell and fight off people calling her a crownie even after she was just fired. not because of loyalty, but because she's used to it. She's used to fighting tooth and nail, used to picking up the pieces and finding a new way to survive.

A broken sword can still be used as a weapon when you're desperate, but it can also cut you if you're not careful, and I wonder if she'll accidentally hurt Frankie later on in the name of survival for both of them.

This is where I think the Queen Guinevere allusion comes in, because The Death of King Arthur depicts loyalty through three distinct lenses: 1) a knight’s worship of his King, 2) a King’s worship of his people (staying true to his word, acting chivalrously, etc), and 3) the lovers’ worship of each other. What all three have in common is a moral contradiction: Lancelot betrays his King, is exiled from the Round Table, and abducts Guinevere against the orders he’s been given. He also commits adultery. Yet, his transgressions reflect his ability to honour the code of chivalry, since Guinevere (his lover and queen) would have been doomed to certain death if he hadn’t intervened. He betrays Arthur, yes, but in doing so remains loyal to him by acting in his favour, reframing notions of loyalty and worship by locating them outside a simplistic view of good versus evil. Malory’s rendition of the Arthurian Legends thus asks: Can betrayal be an act of love and worship? Can strict obedience be a sign of ill-intent and short-sightedness?

The doll Frankie and Andi where trying to get isn't dressed like princess Gwen in the pilot.