Abstract
With the globalization of anime opening from a trickle in the 1970s to a virtual torrent at present, Japanese cute visual cultures have spread worldwide. Under this umbrella is the genre of magical girl, which tells sentimental and powerful stories of young hyperfeminine heroines who, through love, friendship and superpowers, solve global-scale problems. We interview Colin Armistead, a filmmaker located in California in the United States, and voice actress Phoebe Chan, who together tap into this genre as part of their queer short-film project, Angelic Kitty Miracle-chan. Central for our interviewees is moe, which today in global circulation means cute or anime cute, but in Japan refers to an affective response to any character. We discuss concepts of hyperfemininity in anime, its excess and boundless potential and what this can mean for those negotiating trans-feminine identities.
Introduction
Anime, or animation from Japan, is by now a taken-for-granted aspect of worldwide popular culture. Under this umbrella is the genre of magical girl, which tells sentimental and powerful stories of young hyperfeminine heroines who, through love, friendship and superpowers, solve global-scale problems. While Sailor Moon (1992–1997) was the first to reach international fame in the 1990s, the genre experienced a historic flourishing in the early 1980s with series such as Magical Princess Minky Momo (1982–1983) and Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel (1983–1984) (see figure 1). The genre originally targeted young girl audiences, but transcended these constraints to move fans of all genders and ages (for an overview, see Sugawa, 2015).
Magical girls that act as inspirations for Colin and Phoebe. These include early 1980s examples targeting young girls (top left and right), breakout hits such as Sailor Moon (bottom left) and otaku fare such as Popotan (bottom right).
Citation: Journal of Femininities 1, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/29501229-bja10001
collage courtesy of megan catherine roseThis interview introduces the perspectives of two queer and questioning adults in the United States, who grew up surrounded by anime.1 Colin Armistead (he/her) is a filmographer and animator, and Phoebe Chan (they/them) is a pop idol, anime voice actor and v-tuber. Together they are exploring and reflecting on the impact of the magical girl genre on femme and gender queer communities by collaborating on a short film, Angelic Kitty Miracle-chan. The film tells the story of an individual awakening to transfeminine feelings and working through them in the shadow of an obsession with a magical girl character who can easily transform into a beautiful adult woman.2 Their project is intensely personal, given that both collaborators became obsessed with magical girl series, new and old, despite warnings that such works were, as one of our interviewees, Phoebe, recalls being told, for “silly girls.”
Central for our interviewees is the concept of moe, which today in global circulation means cute or anime cute, as a kind of “pariah femininity,” contaminating femininities and masculinities for its genderqueer potential (Schippers, 2007). Moe is a mutation of the Japanese term, which originated in the 1990s and referred to an affective response to fictional characters. These characters were not all cute girls, and were responded to by people across the gender spectrum. The term is also located in the affective response to imagining relationships (shipping culture), and sometimes moves beyond human representation. For example, one study followed Japanese women as they engaged in moe talk, or talk about their affective response to imagined and created characters, in this case a romance story between a highway in love with a particular car that rolled over it among the many others that also did so (Galbraith, 2015). In the case of magical girls, moe was taken up by a group of male consumers – the otaku – who crossed gender boundaries to step into these magical worlds themselves to live with and as the characters (Galbraith, 2019). Over time, moe developed into a specialized language to describe affecting characters, designs, elements, voices, settings, situations and more.
In addition to its association with pariah femininity, moe has become embroiled in controversy internationally. For some critics (e.g., Bow, 2022), anime cuteness shades into infantilization and desire for infantilized sex objects, if not also an infantilization of girls and women (primarily but not limited to those from Japan and East Asia). In policy circles, manga and anime have become all but synonymous for work blending sex and violence under a veneer of cuteness and allegedly contributing to abuse (e.g., Reysen et al., 2017). Indeed, there are groups of men online who imagine that Japan is an ideal country untainted by “identity politics” and “wokeness” (Cook, 2016). Such groups of online men often use cute girl characters as their ironic avatars, and also at times use their fictional nature as an excuse to circulate images of horrific violence, which further marginalizes girls and women (e.g., Petit 2022). So it is that, in some global circles, moe becomes a triggering term that gestures to sexually suspect politics, if not “toxic geek masculinity” (Salter and Blodgett, 2017).3
Recall that these nascent meanings and engendered frictions are neither part of the discourse of moe as it emerged in Japan, nor do they inform Colin and Phoebe’s politics surrounding anime cuteness and the range of possibilities for transformative femininity. With magical girls inspiring a wave of documented “queer-inclusive western animation” (Karavodin, 2022, p. 95), these icons of moe culture are as queer as they are ubiquitous for a generation or more of fans. Both Colin and Phoebe navigate a world where moe works as a tool of femme mercuriality to blur gender boundaries (Hoskin and Taylor, 2019). In its magical girl iterations, moe offers sentimental, peaceful worlds for people like these collaborators to step into and join through creation and imagination. Cuteness acts as a textual surface, embodiment and materiality with which to play with feminine scripts (Dale, 2020), its queer potentials offering new modes of gendered expression (McCann, 2017; Groscz, 2007). When it comes to magical girls, people of all genders can come together not to possess them but to “be them” (Allison, 2006, p. 140). Indeed, Colin went viral on 6 September 2023 for a tweet explaining how his research had turned up many male otaku dreaming of becoming a girl.4 It was through this, and a series of subsequent posts, that we came to approach Colin and her collaborator, Phoebe, to discuss their plans for Angelic Kitty Miracle-chan.
Interview
Patrick W. Galbraith:Colin, how has anime impacted your life?Colin Armistead:I think it’s really impacted my career path in the sense that, originally, I didn’t think a lot about animation. It wasn’t until I started watching a lot of anime when I was a kid that I was like, “Oh, animation! That’s something that I might be interested in.” I think it also affects how I consume and perceive media, because I’ve had this on and off relationship with anime. These periods where I don’t think about it, and using that time to examine what I liked about the things I liked before. For example, I was a lonely, shy kid in middle school, who didn’t have a lot of friends. I liked watching something like, say, Lucky Star (2007), because you get to watch people have fun and hang out. And shows within that sort of “cute girls doing cute things,” that school genre, kind of speak to wanting to be part of that. Now, because of this film, I’ve had to really immerse myself into anime imagery and anime aesthetics and subculture stuff so much more than I ever had to before.Patrick:How did you become interested in moe media and what does moe mean to you?Phoebe Chan:I mean other than liking cute things, I’ve always been very hyperfeminine, and yet, somehow, immersing myself in moe media I feel like I’ve begun to find myself more (see figure 2). And I’ve actually started to identify nowadays as nonbinary, even though I am more feminine than I have ever been in my whole life. And I think part of what you [Patrick] said in The Moe Manifesto (2014), for example, is that moe is a lot about love. Not necessarily a superficial love. It’s love and fixation on the things that make you happy or make you feel fuzzy inside. It’s a form of self-expression, honestly. Whether you’re the person drawing the moe characters or the person playing a moe character from like a voice actor’s perspective, or just identifying. It feels kind of vain to say so, I guess, but I feel like I identify as a cute little blob. Do you know how a magical girl has a mascot? And they’re like, really, they’re just a little guy? They’re just a little dude. That’s kind of what I’ve begun to feel like in recent years. Moe being seen as a feminine thing is something that I grew up with, but nowadays I see moe as the cute little blob thing. Like, just the cute little object of affection that is just cute for no good reason. You shouldn’t be able to be that cute. You should not be allowed to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.Patrick:So how did moe become part of your life, Colin? And what does it mean to you?Colin:Similar to Phoebe, I’ve always had an intense draw towards cute things and cute imagery and cute characters. When I think “moe,” I immediately think of the aesthetics that are connected to the term and the kind of imagery that comes up. But in terms of that sort of feeling, I mean, I definitely know I feel it when I see this [plush toy from Puella Madoka Magica, 2011]. I don’t wanna say it’s a rational feeling, but similar to love. It’s that feeling of affection where, like, other people just kind of won’t understand it. And it’s a matter of this kind of personal feeling that you have for something else that’s very strong and sometimes very based on just aesthetics. It’s not like it needs to be this deep interpersonal connection, because it’s [the character is] not a person, but I think also that I’ve always had this draw towards doing my characters using this imagery. I’m very not moe, if that makes sense. I’m a tall guy, but when I think moe, I think intensely hyperfeminine, small, cute, and these things that have always kind of felt elusive to me. Since I was younger, I always wanted to connect to other people. And so indulging in intensely moe imagery and creating very moe art feels like I’m sort of able to create that feeling in other people without necessarily being that moe creature. Which I don’t think people usually can be, because moe characters are like this “third thing.” They’re not human. They’re almost distinctively not real, in my opinion. They feel like these sort of nonhuman things. And I think that the strange characters with like huge eyes, characters that are so hyperfeminine, I find those aesthetics so interesting, because sometimes it even gets to be a little creepy. Their eyes are just a little too big, their smiles are a little too happy, their voices are a little too cute. I find that slight uncanny to be just absolutely wonderful.Megan Rose:Can you tell us a little bit about what Miracle-chan, the character, represents to you?Colin:For a long time, I really wanted to make something that talked about the connection between a trans identity and magical girls. I think those two things just go so perfectly together. I noticed when I was watching a lot of 80s magical girls, there’s this emphasis on transformation into an older, more beautiful version of yourself. And I think that spoke to a young child’s want to grow up and transform into an adult – into their most idealized, perfect self – and then be able to transform back and be a kid again. And I think that idea of being able to just wave a magic wand and transform into your ideal, perfect self [really appealed] as somebody who identifies as gender fluid and also has experienced a lot of body dysmorphic disorder in my life. That sort of fantasy has always been incredibly interesting to me. I’ve spent a lot of time on this subreddit called R/EggIrl. It’s for trans girls who are afraid to come out, or they don’t want to come out. Such a common thing on there is that they want to be anime girls and want to just go to bed and then wake up the next morning and be a beautiful girl. That speaks even more to this want to just be able to instantly transform. Because nobody wants to do that difficult work [of transitioning], because it’s usually incredibly painful. With anime girls representing this sort of idealized feminine, this sort of perfect, untouchable, fake thing… You know, it’s easier to focus on that and to want to be that rather than looking at another human being who’s just as flawed as you, who’s just as real as you. But if you want to be this fake thing, you don’t have to make concessions with the fact that this is a real thing, because it isn’t.Megan:What are the specific aesthetically pleasing things about anime girls for this community?Colin:I think a lot of the designs are based on hyperfeminine ideals. They’re short, they have big eyes, they have shiny, beautiful hair, they have cute smiles. I’m looking at a photo of Miracle-chan [now as I say this]. They wear intensely cute clothes. They don’t have to use the bathroom. They’re just like these perfect, untouchable things that could never exist.Megan:My brain is going in two different directions, but I think we should definitely talk about what’s happening in the actual short.Colin:The short is about this person named Alex who is pretty obsessed with this character, Miracle-chan, and the show she comes from. They pretty much identify with her online. In an effort to be more similar to Miracle-chan they get this cosplay in the mail, which has like a kigurumi [character body suit] head, and a maid dress and everything. They try it on and just shit goes absolutely wrong. It doesn’t fit, the head is terrifying and the whole thing is just humiliating. After getting rid of the cosplay they check the party of all girls out and decide to go home to watch Miracle-chan in bed. While the film’s ending isn’t the most positive one imaginable, something I debated about for a long time, it’s what feels most real to this character’s experience in this time in their life. Their problems don’t get magically fixed. This is just another step on their journey of self-discovery.Megan:Does Miracle-chan help the protagonist in the film?Colin:Oh, she does not help at all. She makes everything worse. She helps in the sense that she allows him to express himself online in a more feminine way, and she’s also helpful in the sense that she’s making him question more about his own gender, because he is very much idolizing her and the sort of things that she’s visually and thematically representing in her own anime. She is able to transform from a fairly androgynous looking girl to this super hyperfeminine ideal. While at the beginning she acts as a means of self-reflection, by the time that he’s trying to actually present more femininely, Miracle-chan is a mocking force. She never fully exists. She’s always just merchandise. She’s a tv show. She’s posters on walls. She’s on a projector in the room (see figure 3). Her presence is always mocking. And the negative force of these ideals that he needs to kind of learn to not be so stuck in because it’s stunting his growth in terms of his feminine presentation.Megan:That’s so interesting because I think people would expect it to go the other way. People desperately trying to attain the unattainable and maybe thinking about ways it could be reconfigured on their own terms to make something new. Colin, what sort of research did you do to create Miracle-chan’s design?Colin:Originally the idea of her was very vague in my head. I knew I wanted to make something that was about this anime girl that is mocking this transfeminine person. And the way it turns out in the film is that she never actually is a character. It’s not like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988). She’s only ever a fictional thing. The two [she and Alex] never interact [as similar forms of existence]. I went to the first things in my brain that I consider to be like very integral [to magical girl design], which are like pigtails, pink hair, cat ears, and then eventually I started to build. For me, Miracle-chan is supposed to represent these ideals, and for me what I think of when I think of those ideals are girls who are cats, girls who are maids. This conglomeration of moe imagery and moe elements to make this one character that feels authentic, because it’s easy to just kind of make a parody. As much as I am critical of this type of character and the way that she is being consumed by Alex, I have a lot of passion for these types of characters and for this type of [anime] show. I would hate to make something that would feel in any way like I was mocking this type of character. It’s a criticism that’s coming from a place of a lot of love. Building on what first came to mind, I studied a lot of like 2000s era anime girl designs. I feel like nowadays, designs aren’t as intense in terms of their moe appeal. With things like the moe boom, there was this sort of explosion in the 2000s and I just started watching a ton of stuff that I never watched before. Stuff like Moetan (2007), which is the most absolutely batshit thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Popotan (2003) has insane character designs. I feel like Poyoyon Rock’s [aka Akio Watanabe’s] art is emblematic of that time period in terms of its vibrancy. Its intense reliance on strong solid volumes where nowadays everything feels a lot thinner, a lot smoother. His art from the time was very blocky and cartoonish and extreme, and I find that so visually appealing, but also perfect for the type of character I was designing. It was a balancing act of what elements to put where or how to make it work, how to make it feel genuine, because that can be really difficult to do. I like looking back at that time when there’s this distinct digital imagery. And I think that a lot of these designs were specifically made for otaku compared, to say, the magical girl designs of the 80s, which were made for this younger audience of little girls. Whereas in the 2000s, it was made by otaku for otaku in this sort of circular type of economy. The designs became so self-indulgent. And I find that self-indulgence so visually interesting. They almost become parodies of themselves, and that is absolutely what Miracle-chan needed to be. She needed to be a parody of something, while also feeling genuine.Megan:In addition to looking at a lot of visual references, have you done much reading about how some of these artists conceptualize what it is that they’re doing?Colin:I feel like on first blush it’s really easy to look at a lot of these types of designs and not read too much into them. But there’s so much care put into details and things that I normally wouldn’t think about, and the methodology of making them. Originally when I looked at these designs, and I heard that they were being done by a lot of men, my first thought was always like, “Oh, it’s because they’re so attracted to these girls.” That is sometimes the case, but then I hear things like, “It also makes me feel like I am the girl when I’m drawing these things.” There’s this absolutely wonderful interview I’ve been thinking about for years. I also draw a lot of girls and women, and it feels so apt. I don’t remember what exactly [the interviewer] asked, but [Hisashi Eguchi] said that he doesn’t draw the type of girl that he wants to date. He draws the type of girl that he wishes he could be, but he feels like he can’t catch up to. I’ve never heard something so succinct that hits to the core of at least what I’ve been feeling. Really looking at things more individually, and seeing why artists do what they do on a case-by-case basis, I think, is much more interesting than making these broad generalizing statements like, “All these men are making these drawings because they are horny.” Sometimes that’s not the case, and sometimes it is.Patrick:What is your hope for the project? Who do you think it will reach, and who do you want it to reach?Colin:For me my biggest hope in terms of the people that see it is all of the trans girls out there who are afraid to come out and afraid to take that step because they know it’s going to be difficult. Because I’ve been there, and I know how much they sort of want to idolize this impossible thing. I know how comfortable that is, but it’s only leading to more disappointment. And there’s this need to regulate that and understand the way that you’re consuming the media that you’re consuming. So, for me, that is very much the biggest audience. And then second is anybody else who’s struggling with any kind of sense of identity and the way that they see themselves and perceive their own identity. That’s universal. Everyone struggles with that.Patrick:What do you think animation has to offer for gender diverse representations, Phoebe?Phoebe:As you can see from both Colin and I, there is a way that some of these representations and this kind of media can help people find themselves for sure, whether it’s giving them something that they want to strive towards, or something that makes them realize that they have a propensity towards one thing or another. Of course, I’ve seen a lot of discourse, too. For example, that boys love and girls love is fetishization,5 or it’s perpetuating certain stereotypes. This kind of representation has positives and negatives. But I think it’ll be better when we start getting more people of diverse backgrounds making that representation for themselves.Colin:I don’t want to say “raised,” but I was raised on boys love. I would go on my mom’s phone to go online and look it up. The fact that it exists, and that it’s out there and is being made, I think, is incredibly useful. It was through that – in what was made by women and for women – that I learned about my sexuality. Of course, it doesn’t hold a candle to things made by queer people for queer people. Things are getting better in that regard in terms of like animation and comics. And I can only hope that things will get better and better from here.Patrick:If you could change one thing about anime, what would it be?Colin:More queer representation by queer artists is a given, but, for me, I think it’s the way that people in the West, at least, are consuming the media. I have noticed this difference with how people are taking it in. There are people who are able to understand the separation between fiction and reality, and that like it because of that separation. From what I’ve seen and the people I’ve interact with in the West, however, it seems like there’s less of that kind of media literacy and understanding of the difference between fiction and reality.Phoebe:Wow, you said it exactly. Yeah. Media literacy. A lot of that inability to separate fiction from reality. Or to have an open mindedness to wonder, which leads to questions, like, “Why are people enjoying this thing that I don’t like?” This film makes us think and raises questions. It’s important for that kind of media to persist. And like Colin said, this is coming from a place of empathy and compassion about that kind of anime and moe culture.
Phoebe Chan’s V-tuber avatar, by kgr (left) and her performing live on stage (right).
Citation: Journal of Femininities 1, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/29501229-bja10001
images courtesy of phoebe chan and kgrConcept art for Angelic Kitty Miracle-chan.
Citation: Journal of Femininities 1, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/29501229-bja10001
images courtesy of colin armisteadConclusion
From this interview, we can glean new insights into the evolving role that anime plays for international fan communities and the ways that they negotiate queer femininities. Magical girl characters have touched the lives of fans like Colin and Phoebe, reaching them during their youth and providing them with new perspectives and possibilities that they carry into their adult lives. As a fantastical world that has not yet given into global norms (despite growing pressure to do so), anime appeals to people who feel out of place.
Anime’s aesthetic pliability, creativity and excess provides fans with room to play and experiment with cute feminine expression that they might not find elsewhere. While cute femininities might strike outsiders as passive, we can see from the perspectives of practitioners it is actually an active and self-reflexive negotiation within the cultural imaginary. For Colin, cute girl characters provide safety and respite, but also a creative tool with which to explore the aspirations, fantasy and limits of hyperfemininity. For Phoebe, cuteness provides them with an outlet for playful self-expression that allows them to connect, express affection and be affected by others. For both, characters move seamlessly as avatars, friends and partners in their creative work. We also can see a spectrum of cute expressions discussed, from a shapeless, genderless blob or “little guy” through to sheer hyperfeminine excess. Through the mercuriality of moe, practitioners like Colin and Phoebe are able to “move, adjust and blur” gender boundaries and binaries (Hoskin & Taylor, 2019, p. 284).
Animated femininities, however, find their limit in Colin and Phoebe’s queer discontent, as expressed in Angelic Kitty Miracle-chan. Among their critiques, which are distinct from those typically seen in the international problem space of moe, we find gaps between what is real and unreal, the difficulty of taking impossible ideals as role models for gendered change and the way that manga/anime potentially separates us from those actively transitioning. Colin highlights important considerations of how this beauty work might lead to toxic expectations and dysmorphia. Its strangeness, however, still provides fertile ground for new, creative negotiations of femme identities and failed femininities (Hoskin & Taylor, 2019). Through the protagonist’s failure to take on Miracle-chan’s appearance, new “radical possibilities” for moe femininity emerge (McCann, 2017).
Angelic Kitty Miracle-chan also raises queer discontent for the critiques that have coalesced around moe, which do not resonate with Colin and Phoebe’s lived experiences as anime fans. Indeed, activities of the alt-right in co-opting and appropriating moe would appear to stand at odds with the politics, rights and lived experiences of these two creatives and their community. Through their work, these creatives destabilize moe femininities as inherently cisgender-heterosexual (Hemmings, 1999). Already, fans from Japan and around the world are rallying around Miracle-chan.6 The overarching message of the interview is that we can no longer afford to take anime, its audiences and its effects for granted.
References
Allison, A. (2006). Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Bow, L. (2022). Racist Love: Asian Abstraction and the Pleasures of Fantasy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Cook, A. (2016, October 22). “Anime fandom has a cultural resistance to critique.” MetaFilter. https://www.metafilter.com/163007/Anime-fandom-has-a-cultural-resistance-to-critique.
Dale, J. (2020). Cuteness studies and Japan. In: J. Coates, L. Fraser and M. Pendleton, eds., The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture, New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 320–30.
Friedman, E. (2022). By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga. Vista, CA: Journey Press.
Galbraith, P. W. (2019). Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Galbraith, P. W. (2015). Moe Talk: Affective Communication Among Female Fans of Yaoi in Japan. In: M. McLelland, K. Nagaike and K. Suganama, eds., Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, pp. 153–168.
Groscz, E. (2007). Feminism, Materialism, and Freedom. In: D. Coole and S. Frost, eds., New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Hemmings, C. (1999). Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Theorizing the Femme Narrative. Sexualities, 2(4), pp. 451–464.
Hoskin, R. A. and Taylor, A. (2019). Femme Resistance: The Rem(me)inine Art of Failure. Psychology & Sexuality, 10(4), pp. 281–300.
Karavodin, K. (2022). Transforming and Queering Identity: The Influence of Magical Girl Anime on Queer-Inclusive Western Animation. Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture, 7(1–2), pp. 95–108.
McCann, H. (2017). Queering Femininity: Sexuality, Feminism and the Politics of Presentation. London: Routledge.
Petit, A. (2022). “Do Female Anime Fans Exist?” The Impact of Women-Exclusionary Discourses on Rec.Arts.Anime. Internet Histories, 6(4), pp. 352–368.
Reysen, S., Katzarska-Miller, I., Plante, C. N., Roberts, S. E., and Gerbasi, K. C. (2017). Examination of Anime Content and Associations Between Anime Consumption, Genre Preferences, and Ambivalent Sexism. The Phoenix Papers, 3(1), pp. 285–303.
Salter, A, and Blodgett, B. (2017). Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media: Sexism, Trolling, and Identity Policing. New York, NY: Palgrave.
Schippers, M. (2007). Recovering the Feminine Other: Masculinity, Femininity, and Gender Hegemony. Theory and Society, 36(85), pp. 85–102.
Sugawa, A. (2015, February 26). Children of Sailor Moon: The Evolution of Magical Girls in Japanese Anime. nippon.com. http://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a03904/.
Welker, J., ed. (2022). Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
This interview forms part of a broader project on cute media producers, supported by unsw Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee (hc190938).
See the GoFundMe at: <https://www.gofundme.com/f/angelic-kitty-miracle-chan-a-short-film?utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer>.
While the community is primarily cisgender and heterosexual, some participate as a way to distance themselves from their personal struggles with their genderqueer identity. This insight comes from a personal conversation with a networked fan on March 6, 2024.
See the original tweet at <https://x.com/colinarmis/status/1699244771934417151?s=20>.
Boys love and girls love are genres of anime and manga that depict homoerotic relationships between characters. For more, see Friedman (2022) and Welker (2022).
