So the last little Author Chat I did, I talked about a trope I love: Five Man Bands. I was trying to think about what other tropes permeate PBox&Co and also had a little to do with what’s currently going on in PNecklace, so I guess let’s talk about wishes.
The Pandora Legend that gets discussed in the beginning of PBox is as follows (in case you don’t remember it, this is more a summary than a quote): Pandora appears to the demons who most longs for her, (“desperate” was the exact word used, which Nick took issue with, of course) then brings the demons who use pale blue light together and when they receive their powers back, they will fulfill the duties of their nation. And in return for this duty, Pandora gets wishes.
Now all of this is a little convoluted (in part from the abandoned constellation origins of this tale) and hasn’t fully been explained yet; we’ll start diving into it more as PNecklace continues, but if you’re familiar with the way myths work, then you may be able to start to piece it together despite the inherent vague vagueness of all of this. Meanwhile, let’s talk about wish tropes.
First the easy question, why three? Well, you always get three wishes. That’s really the only reason, lol.
The use of wishes in PBox really stems from two tropes that play on the inherent dichotomy of the major contrasts in the story: good versus evil, light versus darkness, hope versus despair, and so on (there are several of them, but those are the more major ones). These are: Bargain with Heaven and Deal with the Devil. Realistically, these are the same trope at their heart. Some mortal makes a deal with an all powerful being for something they want and the all powerful being gets something in return. There’s plenty of instances of mortals making deals with pantheons throughout history, but at their cores, these two really trace back to Christianity in their specifics. Bargain with Heaven is the older of the two, being present in the Bible’s text, and overall doesn’t have many ill-consequences for the mortal involved (unless they have some personal failing in their promise). Deal with the Devil, in the sense that we picture it, traces its codification back to Faust -- though it did exist before then and was really created as a subversion for Bargain with Heaven that included many more costs to the mortal involved. Interestingly enough, the subversion became way more popular and we typically see it more in media (guess everyone really does like Team Dark).
With PBox&Co being dominated by demons as major characters, you would think Deal with the Devil would be more prevalent in the story, but the wishes are presented as some sort of Bargain with Heaven. Though, as you know, the figure called “God” by Nick is hardly a god at all, so how much of the meeting with the “Emperor of the Heavens” is really bargaining with Heaven is up for debate. In fact, if you’re reading along, I encourage you to debate this. You know I always have fun things to reveal in the PBox&Co lore as time goes on.
The wishes Minako ultimately makes in the end would generally be seen as selfless, though clearly not permanent as all our characters have returned to demon land. This raises the question of if selfless wishes really open the box or make it serve its true purpose. Or, more realistically, is there a right wish to make on it? Minako and Nick spend a fair amount of time up to this point in their story discussing the power of wishes and what having that power would grant them. And in the beginning of PBox, Nick really wanted that power, hoping to receive “a light that makes miracles” in his own Bargain with Heaven. But, as fantasy often portrays, sometimes the journey is more important than the goal and along the way, Nick realizes that a light that makes miracles wasn’t necessarily the thing that would make him happy. Similarly, Minako becomes pretty adamant, especially after wishing on the box doesn’t stick, that wishing only does so much without action. So rather than a “right wish,” is there a “right action”? Everybody grapples with a lot in PBox&Co.
With all the focus on Bargain with Heaven in the end, Deal with a Devil is largely absent from the story. Many of the demons do make attempts at making them with the Pandoras (even Howie, even though he never gets far enough to “shake on it” with Minako, possibly just because she agrees without any sort of trade), but nothing’s ever fully solidified. There is one little demon constantly making promises and offering things… and that’s Nick, of course. And Minako does accept and reciprocate these things, and sometimes even initiates it. But it’s probably a fine line on whether this is any sort of Deal with the Devil; especially when Minako is offering “the deal” to Nick about as many times as he offers a deal to her. Is it inherently a Deal with the Devil if one party is a demon? But PBox&Co is a subversion by premise. As you know, the short way I describe it to people outside our fandom is “it’s about demons, but they’re the heroes.” And let’s be honest, it’s hard to make sinister deals when you’re the hero, even if you are a demon. This comes up again, but we’ll talk on that more next week when it’s probably time we went back to our mythology discussion.
Anyone else have thoughts on wishes in PBox or PNecklace? Let’s chat tropes, y’all! As always, see you next Wednesday!
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Topic: Drop it like it's hot! Or... Updates from Dee. :o) (Read 53702 times)