idletry february update
Added 2025-02-10 02:52:37 +0000 UTCas you can see, this scene is... a staggering. 30 pages long. not great!!!!!!! i will need to see what i can do for it. it is one of the most memorable scenes in the comic (to readers) and most people know jessie as the character who fucked your mom. so it felt like i couldn't just remove it wholesale.
it's worth noting that mark (renamed to dick in this scene; i have to find a spot to drop their name into the dialogue) is just a random person. they aren't like, jessie's therapist or psychiatrist. i added in a line about how they didn't make her take those pills to make it a little more obvious. i was also going to add in a line about how they're victims of the same system, but it felt a little too empathetic for jessie here, and there were space constraints.
but yeah. mark's just a person who needed support and thought other people probably need support too and went through the effort of creating, maintaining, and mediating a support group. they do get put in the dungeon regardless, though
anyway. i don't have much more to say about it. i'm tired!
Comments
Genuinely heroic to try to grab the notebook like that. If it was a Death Note type deal they would've saved the entire world with that move.
Spider Lily
2025-02-12 22:32:31 +0000 UTCunfortunately i'd have to say, once it's all said and done, coming away with the conclusion that the story has simplistic morality would just be a skill issue on the reader's part. the story goes to great lengths to address what good and bad, right and wrong even are, what morality is, who gets to decide that, what if what's morally right is patently, physically false or vice versa, what if literally everyone is wrong, and so on. this is not to be confused with posing moral ambiguity as moral complexity, frequent as that may happen. it would be more accurate to call it convoluted, i think, than simplistic, just because there is too much Literal Text attempting to regard the nuance of morality, regardless of how well does so. but that is all embedded into 70 more scenes in the story -- although, some of it is definitely here, even in this scene. you're right, these characters don't apologize until they're in an unfavorable position, feeling threatened. Jessie storms off because she realizes she cannot make someone authentically understand her and care through coercion. something is fundamentally different in the apology, even if the person saying sorry really means it at that point. this is a concept that develops throughout the story. it's one that probably won't be noticed until act 2 by most readers, but it starts here, in act 1, like it should. there are zero characters in this story who make 100% good decisions or 100% bad decisions. pretty much every single character (including Jessie) is put into a position where the only options are "bad" options, and there is no best or "least bad" option to pick. it would be as simplistic to view the characters Jessie views negatively as All Bad, entirely unsympathetic, as it would to view Jessie that way. that said, it IS worth noting that Jessie, as a character, is not limited to retaliation after a point, in the way we mortals are. she could have rewritten the past. she didn't *have to* waste 10 years of her life when given a power that allows her to retroactively change that. an astute reader may ask why she didn't do that instead, and a slightly less astute reader may assume it's just a Giant Plot Hole the author must have missed -- but the reasons why are left up to their interpretation, with guidance from the rest of the story (especially some of the very last scenes in the comic).
gray Folie
2025-02-12 20:33:48 +0000 UTCi really hope this doesn't go the route of simplistic morality because the setup seems to indicate she was treated like a joke at best and a burden at the very worst by her peers and even her own family, but after she finally found some kind of power over other people, THEN they get the idea to apologise, offer peace, and submit like they never did when she didn't have power over them. like when randall picked at her insecurities then talked behind her back and acted aloof when she (understandably) reacted really badly, i know i would if someone joked about me not finding a job. i dunno maybe it's me projecting a little too hard onto jessie and/or having a little case of chan brain but i relate to her hard. i mean, hey, arthur fleck wasnt supposed to be a particularly good guy by the end of joker, but we all loved watching him shoot those 3 guys in the subway
aidan
2025-02-12 08:01:17 +0000 UTC
