![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Post-Final Game Ramblings
This is a little late, but now that I've run the Masked Lady's final game, I want to talk a little bit about her original story, where I was coming from with her, and where the game took her. This will not be nearly as tidy as Haru's writeup for Marjory and June, but it's intended to sort of serve the same purpose, albeit in a much more ramble-y way.
The Kuchi-sake Onna
"In what is now Shinjuku, a manservant in his mid-teens was walking with an umbrella when he saw a soaking wet woman. The manservant told her to come under the umbrella, and when she turned to face him, her mouth was split from ear-to-ear." So says an Edo-era story, as related by Wikipedia.
The story of the Kuchi-sake Onna -- the Split-Mouthed Woman -- isn't a new one. But the version of the story most people know is the one that became popular in the 1970s as an urban legend (that actually caused quite a panic in some areas). It goes something like this:
Children should be careful when walking home from school, because they might be stopped by a young woman wearing a surgical mask. She'll ask them, "Am I pretty?" If they say yes, she'll pull down the mask, revealing that her mouth has been slit open nearly ear-to-ear. "Even like this?" There is no right answer to this question -- she'll then attack the children.
Regional variations say that you can escape her by saying the word "pomade" (which she hates because ???? who knows) or by giving her candy (which she likes). There are two usual explanations for her appearance: 1) she was disfigured by a jealous (male) lover, or 2) plastic surgery gone horribly wrong.
The Masked Lady
I originally apped the Masked Lady because I thought the Kuchi-sake Onna would be fun. That's it. An urban legend persona combined with my interest in Japanese folklore? That would allow me to run J-horror-esque games? COUNT ME IN. I knew I wanted her to be more "traditional" than the 1970s version of the legend, hence the kimono and noh masks as opposed to the popularized overcoat and surgical mask. Aside from that, I really had no idea where I was going with her.
There were a few things that I'd read that stuck with me, though, and started to shape who the Masked Lady would be:
"The relationship between the type of suffering the woman endured and the actions of her ghost is a notable element in [Japanese ghost stories]."
--Brenda Jordan in Japanese Ghosts & Demons: Art of the Supernatural
"… [the Kuchi-sake Onna] invokes the intimate connection between desire (Am I pretty?) and disgust (Even like this?), between the pleasure principle and the death drive. . . . Komatsu posits a connection between Kuchi-sake-onna and Japan's oldest frightening female, Izanami, a deity who dies giving birth to the fire god. When her husband, Izanagi, ventures after her into the underworld (yomi), he discovers to his horror that she has been transformed into a frightening maggot-infested figure."
--Michael Dylan Foster, Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai
"A major component of the link between women and demons in Heian literature is the tension between the need to be hidden and the need to be perceived, either visually or through other senses. Demons are most powerful when they are emerging from the state of being disguised or concealed. . . . Women, too, are frequently delineated in literature in terms of the interplay between invisibility and partial or full visibility."
--Michelle Osterfeld Li, Ambiguous Bodies: Reading the Grotesque in Japanese Setsuwa Tales
“As we have seen, one result of this equation seems to be the difference between the look of horror of the man and of the woman. The male look expresses conventional fear at that which differs from itself. The female look--a look given preeminent position in the horror film--shares the male fear of the monster’s freakishness, but also recognizes the sense in which this freakishness is similar to her own difference. For she too has been constituted as an exhibitionist-object by the desiring look of the male. There is not that much difference between an object of desire and and object of horror as far as the male look is concerned.”
--Linda Williams, When the Woman Looks
It's hard for me to synthesize all these things into an articulate explanation of where I was coming from with my ideas, so I decided to just quote them and let you guys digest them on your own. But I'll try anyway.
Basically, as anyone who's watched The Ring or Juon or any number of popular Japanese horror films know, female ghosts in Japanese scary stories usually start off as victims. They are harmed and betrayed, and because of that, they come back as ghosts to exact revenge. That's the monstrous female ghost. That's the cultural reference the Kuchi-sake Onna pulls from. Add that to the historical background of folkloric ideas of ritual pollution (death and menstruation), Buddhist ideas about jealous and weak women, and the universal tendency of the horror genre to simultaneously critique and revel in misogyny, and... well, you basically get the idea that women are weak and victimized, at which point they turn into a monster and gain strength. That's where the Masked Lady developed from.
Aather and the final game
Of course, Aather does what Aather wants. This is an excerpt from an email discussion I had with Dream's players about where the Masked Lady was in her mindset leading up to her final game:
"On the one hand, there's what would have been "the hidden" in her original role: the mask, outside trappings of beauty of any sort, etc. The part that's meant to be broken so that the other side, "the revealed," can gain its power and become the monstrous and vengeful. Thanks to her interactions with everyone in Aather, the hidden side has taken on an aspect of creativity. She keeps MAKING things instead of destroying them. She taught the Tales group how to make lanterns to appease the dead, instead of gaining power from the unhappy dead. And her other side just... hasn't had any reason to come out, really. According to her personal story, people SHOULD be trying to find out what's behind the mask, at which point the monstrous can be revealed. But they haven't.
At this point, she's caught between what her role SHOULD be and the role that Aather has been changing her into. The recent surges of "creative" energy are good for the part of her that has become about making crafts and mending things, but it's also in super opposition to the part of her that's supposed to be about vengefulness. No one's being wronged and holding grudges. This dissonance is causing her some real pain."
She was never the monster, the source of pollution, the vengeful ghost. She was never revealed, only hidden. The thing is, as was hammered home in her last game was that it's the wronged/vengeful side of her that gives her any power in the first place. The female ghost has to be a victim before she can re-emerge as a monster.
When planning the game, I (and she, ICly) set things up so that people could hypothetically choose the doll that was actually her if they looked behind the screens to "reveal" her. In fact, I actually thought that was going to happen, though I'm now glad that it didn't because it allowed for a conclusion that I hadn't planned on: namely, her revealing herself in a way that didn't involve vengeance at all. While the game itself was set up to imply three rounds, I didn't actually bother to write a third because I was pretty darn sure no one would actually choose to "destroy" their doll, and I knew that the Masked Lady would intervene at that point out of frustration. I wasn't sure what would happen after that, and ICly neither was the Masked Lady. I was counting on Aather to work its magic, and she was counting on Aather to either justify or destroy her.
And boy, did Aather pull through with their rewriting of the various stories of her tale type (incidentally, the stories in question were Izanagi and Izanami, Yotsuya Kaidan, and a version of Kuchi-sake Onna). And everyone chose to deconstruct it in different ways. Agreeing that she could be a "monster" in her own eyes but leaving the possibility of moving on from that. Seeking help elsewhere before she could be a victim. Choosing not to look and holding on to the fragile power she had in her concealed state.
These are all objectively "better" endings to the story, but they're all also denying the basic premise that she exists from: she has gone from victim to monster, and if she is not a monster, then she is simply a victim. And then she is powerless. But, well, that's a problematic state of existence. But everyone successfully argued that it's not the only state of existence she could have. The story wasn't limited to a woman, a man, a knife, and a monster. There were other places to go from there. Whether or not she was a monster, she had the power of her own choices. Even if she hadn't exercised them before now, she could always choose to do so at a later time. No one could take that away from her. And most of all, there wasn't blame for her being a victim or a monster.
And so she chose to reveal herself.
The doll
I didn't realize she was the hitori kakurenbo doll until I was planning her final game in my head, which was, oh, a few days before I ran the game. The Masked Lady was originally intended to basically be exactly what was on the tin: an example of the story of a woman who became a monster due to an injustice, who, as a Persona, came to embody that general tale type. But she's ALWAYS been associated with hitori kakurenbo. I apped her with one game in mind, and that was it, though I never managed to figure out how to run it. That -- and the fact that the Kuchi-sake Onna story targets children -- is why she's always had the association with toys, crafts, and children's games.
And then I thought, well, hitori kakurenbo is also an example of doing something horrible to someone and them coming back for revenge. You stab and mutilate the toy, and it gains the ability to act on its own to hurt you. That's the same story at its core. And dolls are cherished for their beauty, but they're also easily betrayed when children grow up and stop playing with them. Wouldn't playing hitori kakurenbo with a doll that was once loved, and in the process destroying its beauty... wouldn't that be the worst betrayal possible to the doll?
So that's who she was. A doll who was once loved, once beautiful, who was mutilated and drowned and stabbed. But through the narrative of the victim turning into the monster, she could have all sorts of power that a doll didn't have. Being a Persona bound her, but also made her more of a "person" even as it made her a "monster."
As for who she is now? We'll have to see. I really want to thank everyone who ever played in one of her games or threaded with her. But I especially want to thank the people who played in the final game. That was some heavy stuff, and you guys gave her a better resolution than I could have dreamed of. You're all fantastic.
APPEARANCE NOTE: The Masked Lady no longer binds her hair up. She wears it loose with a white spider lily tucked into it. She'll still sometimes wear her mask, but her face is actually present and visible. Generally if the mask is up, she's just holding it on with one hand or covering the right side of her face with it. What were cracks on the doll's face are thin scars on hers. They're not fresh wounds, but they give the impression of having just begun to heal in earnest.
The Kuchi-sake Onna
"In what is now Shinjuku, a manservant in his mid-teens was walking with an umbrella when he saw a soaking wet woman. The manservant told her to come under the umbrella, and when she turned to face him, her mouth was split from ear-to-ear." So says an Edo-era story, as related by Wikipedia.
The story of the Kuchi-sake Onna -- the Split-Mouthed Woman -- isn't a new one. But the version of the story most people know is the one that became popular in the 1970s as an urban legend (that actually caused quite a panic in some areas). It goes something like this:
Children should be careful when walking home from school, because they might be stopped by a young woman wearing a surgical mask. She'll ask them, "Am I pretty?" If they say yes, she'll pull down the mask, revealing that her mouth has been slit open nearly ear-to-ear. "Even like this?" There is no right answer to this question -- she'll then attack the children.
Regional variations say that you can escape her by saying the word "pomade" (which she hates because ???? who knows) or by giving her candy (which she likes). There are two usual explanations for her appearance: 1) she was disfigured by a jealous (male) lover, or 2) plastic surgery gone horribly wrong.
The Masked Lady
I originally apped the Masked Lady because I thought the Kuchi-sake Onna would be fun. That's it. An urban legend persona combined with my interest in Japanese folklore? That would allow me to run J-horror-esque games? COUNT ME IN. I knew I wanted her to be more "traditional" than the 1970s version of the legend, hence the kimono and noh masks as opposed to the popularized overcoat and surgical mask. Aside from that, I really had no idea where I was going with her.
There were a few things that I'd read that stuck with me, though, and started to shape who the Masked Lady would be:
"The relationship between the type of suffering the woman endured and the actions of her ghost is a notable element in [Japanese ghost stories]."
--Brenda Jordan in Japanese Ghosts & Demons: Art of the Supernatural
"… [the Kuchi-sake Onna] invokes the intimate connection between desire (Am I pretty?) and disgust (Even like this?), between the pleasure principle and the death drive. . . . Komatsu posits a connection between Kuchi-sake-onna and Japan's oldest frightening female, Izanami, a deity who dies giving birth to the fire god. When her husband, Izanagi, ventures after her into the underworld (yomi), he discovers to his horror that she has been transformed into a frightening maggot-infested figure."
--Michael Dylan Foster, Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai
"A major component of the link between women and demons in Heian literature is the tension between the need to be hidden and the need to be perceived, either visually or through other senses. Demons are most powerful when they are emerging from the state of being disguised or concealed. . . . Women, too, are frequently delineated in literature in terms of the interplay between invisibility and partial or full visibility."
--Michelle Osterfeld Li, Ambiguous Bodies: Reading the Grotesque in Japanese Setsuwa Tales
“As we have seen, one result of this equation seems to be the difference between the look of horror of the man and of the woman. The male look expresses conventional fear at that which differs from itself. The female look--a look given preeminent position in the horror film--shares the male fear of the monster’s freakishness, but also recognizes the sense in which this freakishness is similar to her own difference. For she too has been constituted as an exhibitionist-object by the desiring look of the male. There is not that much difference between an object of desire and and object of horror as far as the male look is concerned.”
--Linda Williams, When the Woman Looks
It's hard for me to synthesize all these things into an articulate explanation of where I was coming from with my ideas, so I decided to just quote them and let you guys digest them on your own. But I'll try anyway.
Basically, as anyone who's watched The Ring or Juon or any number of popular Japanese horror films know, female ghosts in Japanese scary stories usually start off as victims. They are harmed and betrayed, and because of that, they come back as ghosts to exact revenge. That's the monstrous female ghost. That's the cultural reference the Kuchi-sake Onna pulls from. Add that to the historical background of folkloric ideas of ritual pollution (death and menstruation), Buddhist ideas about jealous and weak women, and the universal tendency of the horror genre to simultaneously critique and revel in misogyny, and... well, you basically get the idea that women are weak and victimized, at which point they turn into a monster and gain strength. That's where the Masked Lady developed from.
Aather and the final game
Of course, Aather does what Aather wants. This is an excerpt from an email discussion I had with Dream's players about where the Masked Lady was in her mindset leading up to her final game:
"On the one hand, there's what would have been "the hidden" in her original role: the mask, outside trappings of beauty of any sort, etc. The part that's meant to be broken so that the other side, "the revealed," can gain its power and become the monstrous and vengeful. Thanks to her interactions with everyone in Aather, the hidden side has taken on an aspect of creativity. She keeps MAKING things instead of destroying them. She taught the Tales group how to make lanterns to appease the dead, instead of gaining power from the unhappy dead. And her other side just... hasn't had any reason to come out, really. According to her personal story, people SHOULD be trying to find out what's behind the mask, at which point the monstrous can be revealed. But they haven't.
At this point, she's caught between what her role SHOULD be and the role that Aather has been changing her into. The recent surges of "creative" energy are good for the part of her that has become about making crafts and mending things, but it's also in super opposition to the part of her that's supposed to be about vengefulness. No one's being wronged and holding grudges. This dissonance is causing her some real pain."
She was never the monster, the source of pollution, the vengeful ghost. She was never revealed, only hidden. The thing is, as was hammered home in her last game was that it's the wronged/vengeful side of her that gives her any power in the first place. The female ghost has to be a victim before she can re-emerge as a monster.
When planning the game, I (and she, ICly) set things up so that people could hypothetically choose the doll that was actually her if they looked behind the screens to "reveal" her. In fact, I actually thought that was going to happen, though I'm now glad that it didn't because it allowed for a conclusion that I hadn't planned on: namely, her revealing herself in a way that didn't involve vengeance at all. While the game itself was set up to imply three rounds, I didn't actually bother to write a third because I was pretty darn sure no one would actually choose to "destroy" their doll, and I knew that the Masked Lady would intervene at that point out of frustration. I wasn't sure what would happen after that, and ICly neither was the Masked Lady. I was counting on Aather to work its magic, and she was counting on Aather to either justify or destroy her.
And boy, did Aather pull through with their rewriting of the various stories of her tale type (incidentally, the stories in question were Izanagi and Izanami, Yotsuya Kaidan, and a version of Kuchi-sake Onna). And everyone chose to deconstruct it in different ways. Agreeing that she could be a "monster" in her own eyes but leaving the possibility of moving on from that. Seeking help elsewhere before she could be a victim. Choosing not to look and holding on to the fragile power she had in her concealed state.
These are all objectively "better" endings to the story, but they're all also denying the basic premise that she exists from: she has gone from victim to monster, and if she is not a monster, then she is simply a victim. And then she is powerless. But, well, that's a problematic state of existence. But everyone successfully argued that it's not the only state of existence she could have. The story wasn't limited to a woman, a man, a knife, and a monster. There were other places to go from there. Whether or not she was a monster, she had the power of her own choices. Even if she hadn't exercised them before now, she could always choose to do so at a later time. No one could take that away from her. And most of all, there wasn't blame for her being a victim or a monster.
And so she chose to reveal herself.
The doll
I didn't realize she was the hitori kakurenbo doll until I was planning her final game in my head, which was, oh, a few days before I ran the game. The Masked Lady was originally intended to basically be exactly what was on the tin: an example of the story of a woman who became a monster due to an injustice, who, as a Persona, came to embody that general tale type. But she's ALWAYS been associated with hitori kakurenbo. I apped her with one game in mind, and that was it, though I never managed to figure out how to run it. That -- and the fact that the Kuchi-sake Onna story targets children -- is why she's always had the association with toys, crafts, and children's games.
And then I thought, well, hitori kakurenbo is also an example of doing something horrible to someone and them coming back for revenge. You stab and mutilate the toy, and it gains the ability to act on its own to hurt you. That's the same story at its core. And dolls are cherished for their beauty, but they're also easily betrayed when children grow up and stop playing with them. Wouldn't playing hitori kakurenbo with a doll that was once loved, and in the process destroying its beauty... wouldn't that be the worst betrayal possible to the doll?
So that's who she was. A doll who was once loved, once beautiful, who was mutilated and drowned and stabbed. But through the narrative of the victim turning into the monster, she could have all sorts of power that a doll didn't have. Being a Persona bound her, but also made her more of a "person" even as it made her a "monster."
As for who she is now? We'll have to see. I really want to thank everyone who ever played in one of her games or threaded with her. But I especially want to thank the people who played in the final game. That was some heavy stuff, and you guys gave her a better resolution than I could have dreamed of. You're all fantastic.
APPEARANCE NOTE: The Masked Lady no longer binds her hair up. She wears it loose with a white spider lily tucked into it. She'll still sometimes wear her mask, but her face is actually present and visible. Generally if the mask is up, she's just holding it on with one hand or covering the right side of her face with it. What were cracks on the doll's face are thin scars on hers. They're not fresh wounds, but they give the impression of having just begun to heal in earnest.