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As much as Bouche is the protagonist of Boutopia, I think the story would benefit from significant portions being seen through Laura’s eyes. She is both an audience surrogate and I think a good reminder that no matter how fucked up URNA is, there are good people there too. Laura’s family are all incredibly decent and kind people who, like Jacques and Dr. Montero and Diana, have faced the dark heart of the world. But unlike the more villainous characters of Boutopia, Laura does not externalize her struggle with the cruelty of the world. In this sense she provides a parallel to Bouche, who is similarly incapable of outward-facing anger. 

I really like Laura. She is heavily based on my teenage fascination with the sexless and incorruptible protagonists of turn-of-the-last-century detective stories… I really thought such characters were the height of nobility. Laura was a later addition to the story of Bouche but I think I really needed a detective character to pull the story together. After all, it’s kind of a murder mystery, told from the perspective of the corpse…

I want to explore Jacques and Laura’s relationship as well, as they have very opposite worldviews and personalities, but the story relies very heavily on them working together… Jacques ends up exploiting the prejudices others have about women like Laura to commandeer the narrative and situate himself as Bouche’s soul defender. I think that Bouche was able to keep in touch with Laura even so… They are all kind of this weird quasifamily and Jacques is a lot more concerned with defining the nature of everyone’s relationships to each other than Bouche and Laura are…

I wonder too about Laura’s opinion of the political landscape that Bouche and Jacques spearhead… She comes from a wealthy Catholic family but she is certainly not completely sheltered from the realities of the world. I dunno I have to think about it :0b