![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peppercatvia http://bit.ly/2QnLtfL
Warning: this is (1) absent-minded and rambling, (2) specific to the TV!verses, and (3) by TV!verses I mostly mean the one from the 90s.
Was Zoey Clark cosplaying Prank?
I mean, she clearly didn’t want to be Megan Lockhart, the badass private investigator who helped the police catch notorious serial killer James Jesse.
But she was just as clearly trying to match up with a previously existing persona. She didn’t try to run with the idea of “I’m not Prank, I’m something better”; it was more “I’m something better, and I’m still Prank just like you wanted.” It’s trying to fit into the role she already knows Jesse likes.
(And then there’s Axel. Talk about trying to fit into a role that you already know Jesse likes. (This is possibly related to my headcanon that Axel, who I can only imagine was an utterly starstruck teen, daydreamed or wrote RPF about Jesse.))
Back to Zoey: it feels a little like she’s recreating the original with more love and attention than the concept/identity was given the first time around. As someone who’s written tens of thousands of words about a character who–for the longest time–had less than five minutes of screentime, I feel like there’s something there worth poking at. It seems like a very fannish thing to do.
(Do I need to put in a disclaimer that I’m talking about the techniques, not the end goals? I hope not.)
It’s also interesting to me that the people that the Trickster gets interested in, the ones who we see catch his attention and who he wants to be around? They’re overwhelmingly the ones who actively dislike him. Megan, 90’s Barry, a hint of it starting around Iris… Compare that to how little attention Zoey and Axel get.
There’s something there I feel it might be worth turning over; some idea that the Trickster (I’m not sure if I could generalize to the other personas James Jesse used) is more likely to notice people who go against the grain of what he expects, and more likely to want to fix them into what he wants, because they’re obviously interesting or real.
Warning: this is (1) absent-minded and rambling, (2) specific to the TV!verses, and (3) by TV!verses I mostly mean the one from the 90s.
Was Zoey Clark cosplaying Prank?
I mean, she clearly didn’t want to be Megan Lockhart, the badass private investigator who helped the police catch notorious serial killer James Jesse.
But she was just as clearly trying to match up with a previously existing persona. She didn’t try to run with the idea of “I’m not Prank, I’m something better”; it was more “I’m something better, and I’m still Prank just like you wanted.” It’s trying to fit into the role she already knows Jesse likes.
(And then there’s Axel. Talk about trying to fit into a role that you already know Jesse likes. (This is possibly related to my headcanon that Axel, who I can only imagine was an utterly starstruck teen, daydreamed or wrote RPF about Jesse.))
Back to Zoey: it feels a little like she’s recreating the original with more love and attention than the concept/identity was given the first time around. As someone who’s written tens of thousands of words about a character who–for the longest time–had less than five minutes of screentime, I feel like there’s something there worth poking at. It seems like a very fannish thing to do.
(Do I need to put in a disclaimer that I’m talking about the techniques, not the end goals? I hope not.)
It’s also interesting to me that the people that the Trickster gets interested in, the ones who we see catch his attention and who he wants to be around? They’re overwhelmingly the ones who actively dislike him. Megan, 90’s Barry, a hint of it starting around Iris… Compare that to how little attention Zoey and Axel get.
There’s something there I feel it might be worth turning over; some idea that the Trickster (I’m not sure if I could generalize to the other personas James Jesse used) is more likely to notice people who go against the grain of what he expects, and more likely to want to fix them into what he wants, because they’re obviously interesting or real.
