Though anyone who knows me knows that I love “Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimensions,” casting a book populated entirely by abstract concepts is not as simple a task as one might imagine. To be frank, it would probably be easier to cast Thomas the Tank Engine with The Brothers Karamazov (Percy is Pavel Smerdyakov obviously), but nevertheless I am obligated to give this novella’s diverse cast a fair, honest, and completely serious appraisal.
A. Square: Ryo Urawa. Representative of the everyman, both the Square and Urawa are narrative devices, vessels for the absurd. Both are chosen especially for a task that requires contact with what is considered supernatural but is actually an ordinary phenomenon.
A. Square’s Wife: The baby plesiosaur. Though this is another one-off character, the role as a passive receptor of misfortune and an entirely dependent creature was too perfect to let slip through my fingers.
Chromastities, leader of the Color Revolt: Ann. The Doom Tree arc is criminally underrepresented in general, a misfortune I hope to correct. Ann’s jealous and self-conscious nature is reflected by the color revolt’s leader, one who simply wanted an easy way to distinguish polygons from one another, both to make his own high-status presence known and secure his own place in the social order.
King of Lineland: Momoko. Some may have reservations about casting a ten-year-old girl as the monarch of a civilization, but her status as a frequent victim of the week due to her position as Chibiusa’s acquaintance mirrors the King as a victim of ignorance. The King never believes in a second dimension, but it is through no fault of his own that he is unaware of the strange happenings around him.
Pointland: The Dreamland Princess automaton. She appears as a villain of the week only once but in that time managed to cement her personality as one who would not compromise for her ideals, just as Pointland unyieldingly maintains exclusively the existence of the self like a Cartesian philosopher. Her singular line of thought is admirable, yet damning.
Pantocyclus, the High Circle: Kakeru, the psychotic astronomer from the S movie. I think this requires very little explanation.
The Sphere: Mimette. Clearly she possesses some greater insight into the earthly condition than she usually lets on, but occasionally we see that her abject superiority is clear. She appears only briefly in the lives of our protagonists, but what little exposure they received was enough to change their lives forever.
sailormoonsub 