Fujoshis are fairly scary creatures as we find in the fourth episode of Dantalian no Shoka – setting opinions aside however, we take a look at the historical facts behind the fujoshi references found in reality.
The story revolved around an author with mentally distraught adversaries. This opponent seemingly serves to be a hard-core fan, exhorting the author to rewrite the ending of his trilogy series, Crown of the Dog Days.
One thing that popped in my mind was Stephen King’s “Misery” novel. The similarity of horrific scenes seems quite uncanny.
The story of Misery is about Paul Sheldon, a best-selling author of a book entitled “Misery” within this book also dubbed “Misery”, was on his way home after finishing the first draft of his new novel “Fast Cars”. Along his route home, he is struck by a car accident – yet was luckily saved by a nurse named Annie Wilkes.
Incidentally, she happens to be an avid fan of his miserable novel series Misery. She read the first draft of the latest novel, and had an incomprehensible rage towards the outcome of the work. It became worse when she received the latest installment of the Misery novel – learning that it was the last. Just like what Paula did with Lenny, Annie viciously tortures Paul (even making him burn his first draft of Fast Cars) until he finished writing the continuation of Misery.
The episode starts with the typewriter, which is very similar with the iconic Royal typewriter used by Paul. A noticeable scene difference between the two is the axe was replaced by a machete – not as interesting to consider as the fact both stories happened during winter.
According to Dalian’s rants on “Crown of the Dog Days” with few additional information from Paula, the story was about an aristocrat Ignatius and Dyer, a poor commoner who had a grudge towards Ignatius’ family and later on fell in love with him. August, on the other hand, was Dyer’s friend and also fell in love with Dyer.
Historically this tells us perhaps the author based “Crown of the Dog Days” on Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. It also implies Paula was a pro-NTR (Netorare) fan.
The Phantom book used by Paula here was Ras Alhague by a doctor Asclepius. Ras Alhague is the traditional name for Alpha Ophiuchi, the brightest star in the constellation Ophiuchus – the famous 13th constellation in some theories.
Asclepius is the god of medicine and healing, and the son of the god Apollo. Asclepius was killed because after bringing people back from the dead, Hades thought that no more dead spirits would come to the underworld, so he asked his brother Zeus to remove him. After Asclepius’ death, Zeus placed Asclepius among the stars as the constellation Ophiuchus (“the Serpent Holder”).
The name Ras Alhague is derived from the Arabic term “raʾs al-ḥayyah” – meaning “the Head of the Serpent”.
It is revealed that Lenny and Leticia were bound by the Phantom book’s curse – if one of them will die, the other will live in place of other, or vice versa as they share but a single soul. Since the bodies decompose if dead for 24 hours, they must exchange live and death daily for each to survive and continue the cycle.
This is very similar to the story of Castor and Pollux – Pollux shared half of his immortality with his twin, Castor, for him to live. One day Castor would be with the gods and Pollux would be in Hades. The next day, the two would change places.
Seems like this episode has a lot of facts relating to Astronomy and Mythology…
