READER’S FORUM

May 22, 2025 at 02:58 am Reply

Janica Dai

Amber from Masterminds is defined mostly by her extremely rigid and merciless moral code, and it's also mentioned that one of the things she's always trying to do is stay at a perfect weight of about ninety pounds. At her age, I weigh twenty more than that and am considered relatively average.

There's also a bit in the first book where she doesn't take a cookie(?) because she's 1.5 pounds off her goal weight.

The moral purity, the perfectionism she exhibits in other areas, and the weight fixation as the damning piece of evidence, this makes my psychoanalysis side immediately jump to an eating disorder, specifically anorexia. I'm not saying she has it now, but as she enters the hyper-critical outside world (No negative influence means that beauty standards were probably a lot less prevalent in Serenity), she could totally develop it.

I do hope you can give some insight. It probably wasn't intentional, but it all just aligns so well
May 22, 2025 at 05:56 pm Reply

Gordon

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Hi again, Janica,

You're probably right, but does it say she's petite? I can't recall. Actually, she strikes me as a large person -- certainly, her personality is larger than life. We also don't know who she might be cloned from. Perhaps that tendency comes from nature.

But my question is why can a fictional character NOT display the beginnings of an eating disorder? --GK--
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Hi again, Janica,

You're probably right, but does it say she's petite? I can't recall. Actually, she strikes me as a large person -- certainly, her personality is larger than life. We also don't know who she might be cloned from. Perhaps that tendency comes from nature.

But my question is why can a fictional character NOT display the beginnings of an eating disorder? --GK--
May 25, 2025 at 07:08 pm Reply

Janica Dai

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I wasn't saying they couldn't, but this is just an idea I've had since maybe first reading the books, and I wanted to hear what you thought of it.
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I wasn't saying they couldn't, but this is just an idea I've had since maybe first reading the books, and I wanted to hear what you thought of it.
May 26, 2025 at 03:39 pm Reply

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You're probably right. Did you consider that Amber is 11 or 12? I think she might have been the youngest of the characters. But yes, that could well be an eating disorder. The whole idea of the Serenity kids was how "different" they are because of their upbringing. --GK--
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You're probably right. Did you consider that Amber is 11 or 12? I think she might have been the youngest of the characters. But yes, that could well be an eating disorder. The whole idea of the Serenity kids was how "different" they are because of their upbringing. --GK--