Anita Cicchetti/Trivia

* Anita's appearance was heavily inspired by American rapper Cardi B, who is known for wearing French designer Thierry Mugler's collections.
	+ Initially, Anita's Stand and backstory would be inspired by Cardi B's album *Invasion of Privacy*.
	+ Her hair style, is especially inspired by *Black Butler* character Angelina Dalles/Madam Red, a widowed Baroness and doctor who is revealed to be the infamous Jack the Ripper due to the grief of losing her husband, child, and her distaste towards women able to abort their children.
		- The hair someway resembles the original Anita's own short hair and bangs.
* Anita's favorite cigarette brand is Sobranie Pinks, which she has personally shipped to her home. Her favorite wine is any red wine produced in Côte de Nuits, France. Anita herself stated that she preferred red wine over any type of alcohol.
* Anita's backstory was inspired by previous headcanons that hypothesized the original Anita coming back alive after the events of Vento Aureo.
	+ In this original version, she is able to retain her Junior's ability to manipulate matter and was a part of a different mafia family based in Spain.
	+ Unlike Anita, the original Anita was simply Italian and Spanish, with no connection to being Punjabi.
* When redesigning Anita, it was decided to make her part-Punjabi in reference to the original Melone's knowledge in the *Kama Sutra*, his potential history with the Desi community, and TroyBoi's identity as half Indian.
	+ The connection to the Desi community, most notably Punjabi, stems from history, as Italy saw an influx of Northern Indian immigrants coming to Italy to work in the technology sector due to government programs incentivizing their immigration. However, many in the Desi community tend to serve in the dairy and farming industry.
	+ The name Annada was chosen to reference to Hindu Goddess Annapurna due to her association with food and nourishment. The variation of the name is chosen due to how close it resembles the name Anita.
		- The only people who have called Anita by her full first name include Olio, Zura, Marsala, and her late husband.
* According to the team's documentation, Anita's code name is Biscia, which is Italian for "snake". Alternatively, snakes are symbols of fertility, medicine, and guardianship in some cultures but also destruction, death, and chaos in others.
	+ In Hinduism and various cults in India, serpent entities known as nagas are significant in their beliefs and represent rebirth, death and mortality.
	+ The references to snakes also reference to how the original Melone died: bitten from a snake that was "reborn" from Junior's flesh.

## Notes from the Author

Anita... she had a very interesting development. I already had an idea that the actual Anita was a socialite who survived the Junior ordeal and ended up with its powers, but I initially never thought about whether it would be considered a Stand or something entirely different. But I knew right away that she was going to be a character to be in place of Melone.

Usually, I would create the character's backstory and personality first and then figure out a Stand based on that, because it would make sense to create a Stand that is a manifestation of what its user was or is. I ended up going the other way when creating and developing Anita, choosing her Stand first before diving more into her characterization. That's probably because Anita is already a canonical character with some of her characterizations already established, but also because I had no idea what her Stand will be. I knew that Melone's stand Babyface is based on the producer of the same name; Babyface himself was a pioneer in the R&B genre as well as one of the founders of New Jack Swing. So, I needed to find an artist that either is a pioneer in their own right or someone who is iconic in the R&B genre or New Jack Swing. I thought about New Jack Swing artists like The Jacksons (Michael and Janet), Bruno Mars, TLC. At the same time, I tried considering artists who would give off a similar vibe to Melone's abilities. I thought of Daft Punk's *Discovery* album or their *Interstella5* series; I even tried diving into the world of EDM and related genres with ODESZA, Adventure Club, and more. But nothing stuck with me.

EDM eventually got more of my attention in life. While I was trying to find the right music influence for Anita, I was also listening to TroyBoi's album *Left is Right* on repeat after getting it reintroduced by my significant other. I've been a casual fan of TroyBoi, falling in love with his song "Lalaach" first and then hearing his rendition of Bendaly Family's "Do You Love Me?" before I got into *Left Is Right*'s song "ili". During this time, I finally took notice of the album's art cover work and then looked into the artist that drew it; Marwan Shahin collaborated with TroyBoi (and other Desi artists like MIA and The Asoka) for this cover and I am still blown away with how the music led him to create such a masterpiece. He drew the artwork based on what he heard, which was not only his interpretation of industry clones being shelled out but also incorporated the fusion of Asian, African, European culture, which TroyBoi himself identifies with, into the imagery too. I read about TroyBoi explaining his album's themes, how it's about him subverting the EDM and music industry's expectations, and how he used many parts of his heritage as inspiration for his work. At the time, I didn't know that he identified as Portuguese, Nigerian, Indian, and Chinese, and now I can see where he got his influences from.

I began listening to the entire thing once more with a new mindset, considering what I learned from his interview and Marwan's explanation on the artwork. *Left is Right* ended up being my favorite album by far. The imagery of clones being grown from trees and then being "birthed" started to really reference Babyface's abilities with homunculi generation, the influences of Asian culture references the pseudoscience and text that Melone uses while calibrating his juniors, the creativity and style of the album itself matched Melone's unique aesthetic. To make TROYBOI its own Stand and not a simple rehash of Babyface, I decided to make it a Stand that make mindless clones that serve as a hivemind instead of being able to individually make sentient Juniors that are trained to do tasks. The hivemind and mindlessness is in reference to the "industry clones" Marwan Shahin drew in the album cover art. By doing that, it balanced the ability for TROYBOI to make multiple clones in exchange of having the clones be trainable to do more complex tasks. Even though the Stand is mostly inspired by Left is Right, I still wanted to pay homage to the works outside of it, especially the "VIBEZ" series and his other singles, so that's why I decided to use the name TROYBOI instead.

The fusion of Indian culture in the album seemed to connect with Melone's own connection with Indian culture via the *Kama Sutra*. I headcanoned that Melone himself is well-versed with Desi culture due to being in contact with various members of the community as a professional in the computer sector during the 1990s. It was a little weird to think that a white man would be immersed in Asian culture without some concerns raised, especially if the mention of it is for a book often mistaken as just a "sex guide", so I decided that Anita herself should identify as Desi as a means of reclaiming the culture to someone who identifies as Indian. Like Clara and many other characters who are multi-racial and non-Italian, I did my best to avoid stereotyping characters and make them meaningful. I wanted to make Anita a strong character who went through a lot but also subvert the expectation of what Asian women are expected to be- both within their cultures and the society they reside in.

It was kind of interesting to see that Anita was about to be put into that expectation of being this young, beautiful, wife and soon-to-be strong mother with a loving husband and soon to live that privileged life that was expected for her gender and status, but then that was taken away from her. As tragic and traumatic as it was to lose her husband, fall from grace, and encounter Ezio, her encounter with the latter caused a rebirth both literally and spiritually for her. She started realizing there was more to life than her bubble and became a powerful player in a rather male-dominated world of both crime and high society in her own way, where she represented the hyper-feminine soft power, albeit able to do so with money and status, but showed how she is not only a strong Stand user but a valuable member of the team. I think that's why she and Zura work so well together; they're opposites of each other in terms of how they define their femininity yet are able to work together well and see each other as equals instead of rivals.

I think I love her too much, in a sense that I tend to make the characters I love most suffer the most. I felt so bad for taking her husband away and killing her in Fate of Zephyr that I decided to give her a happy ending where it's confirmed that she finally meets Harsh again at the train station before actually passing away. I initially thought about having her wake up on the train and seeing him in the same cabin, to be a foil of her seeing Melone there when she was alive, and both her and Harsh leave the train together to signify that Anita officially passed on. I even thought maybe she was "awoken" by her daughter and the three of them leave the train instead. However, I thought it would be more powerful that Anita wakes up to find her finally at Roma Termani and getting off the train herself, not expecting to be greeted by the man she loved and be in his arms once more and leaving the station with him. I debated on whether she would also see Ezio in that station too, but decided against it.

I feel like Anita after obtaining her Stand is who I want to aspire to be in the professional setting: this elegant, intelligent, witty professional who takes no shit from anyone and has a reputation that is built on both charisma and fear. Yeah, I love her a lot.