The Fractal Hall Journal

Some time ago, I was brewing a post on the thematic relation between the Punisher and Doctor Who.

Let that sink in a moment, because I can see you’re overwhelmed by my god damned analytical genius.

It does make sense of a kind. The kind you get when you’re flat on your arse drunk and talking crap to your mates about how you just innately understand how Harry Potter is a Marxist parable of emancipation from mental slavery, sure. But sense nevertheless.

My point is that both characters are aspects of the “trickster” archetype, the unstoppable outsider that enters then forever changes a specific state of affairs. A character we all identify with, that sometimes we even wish we could be, but one that is ultimately alien to us, next to impossible to understand.

Of course, there’s one obvious difference between the two: Frank Castle would probably have a breakdown (erm, an even breakier breakdown) if he killed someone he considered innocent. Who knows how far the Doctor (some of his incarnations, that is) would go for the greater good?

Anyway, poking the Whovian nest with a pokey stick isn’t really the purpose here. Obviously the above musings don’t go much further than a surface interpretation, so I doubt there’s much to gain by going deeper. But the whole “trickster” spin is a fascinating one; after all, it’s pretty rare that protagonists of any stripe get to be as ambiguous in their motives as, say, John Constantine used to be.

Here’s a question, though: How many female characters get to play the trickster? And out of them, how many get to be a trickster without having to seduce anyone?

Take the first two that spring to mind: Typhoid Mary in Daredevil and Deadpool (maybe Elektra, although she’s probably more of an anti-hero) and the Enchantress in Thor. And let’s face it, their archetype is Evily Sexy Seducer Who Wants To Make With The Sex. The only character that kind of fits is Jenny Sparks in the Authority, though at a stretch her archetype is Cynical Arsey Old Man Ellis which is practically a category all of its own.

Maybe I’m missing someone obvious; I probably don’t read enough in the fantasy genre to be certain, as that seems to be the area where that kind of character would turn up. But it seems to me that a female character from that mould hasn’t been done much, and would have a fair bit of story potential.

[EDIT, 9/2/08: It turns out that yes, I am indeed missing someone obvious. In an astonishing twist that brings the whole god damned analytical genius thing into question, it turns out Marvel's Loki is currently a woman. Oops. Many thanks to timeismine for pointing this out in the Comments.]