I don't even know what to say, holy shit? This is the most beautiful thing anyone has said about anything I've made.
I adore your readings of the characters and the story - Johnny is 100% autistic for sure and I suppose now that I understand BPD more than I did when I was making the game, I was channeling that too without realising. As for women, well, yeah, Jesus Christ dude. I'm very fascinated with masculinity and the way that men's identity so often revolve around defining the things they ARENT, to the point of avoiding doing a lot of things out of this sort of deep fear that it would change them or shake their understanding of themselves as Men, which usually manifests in a super pervasive kind of embarrassment about like, anything emotionally vulnerable at all. Obviously I have experience with this as a trans woman, and I think there's an element of Jenny that poses, like, if my pre-transition self were to meet myself right now, I would be the most embarrassing fucking thing in the world. Even if I knew it was "inevitable" or the happiest version of me, there'd be a part who's like, well, fuck that! Fuck that, actually! I don't wanna be some sort of walking Twitter bio. But it's also me, it was always going to be me, liberated or not.
It's a little funny that I came to this metaphor of parts of Johnny being discrete characters as someone who has sorta discovered actual plurality in herself in recent months. The way that we compartmentalize parts of ourself to meet our needs (or our perceived needs) is super pervasive. I think a lot of that stuff operates on this principle that, if you're not thinking about it, it doesn't exist, which paradoxically means that acknowledging those parts are inherently destabilizing and confronting. Johnny's entire personality is built on repression and shame, he fucking hates himself and hasn't discovered the path to changing that, because he's so weighed down by this idea that he fundamentally will never be able to be authentic and happy, he's exclusively too much or too little - something I've felt for sure in my life. It's not a coincidence that Big Johnny uses more slang, especially slang that's a little, shall we say, f-ggy, these are things that he's absorbing and finds texturally delightful, but it's not a part of the performance of Johnny, and to let even this part of it slip would make the rest of it so much harder to maintain. I knew a big repressor at the time who I channeled a lot into the writing, because I was observing all the ways that denying a part of yourself - in this case, transness - basically cascades throughout every single part of your life, because you've made the decision that you CAN'T BE HAPPY. it's intellectualised and rationalised until it feels like this is just life, and you'll be fine, but it's obvious. I think we're fundamentally romantic creatures, in the sort of classical sense - we are all dreamers, and the decision to compromise on those dreams is one that causes basically constant psychic damage your entire life. It never goes away, even as you forget that the pain isn't a necessary part of your existence, or existence as a whole.
I dunno when the next parts will happen (I'm working on a big project rn and waiting to see if i have side project room for Johnny hehe), so I figure I'll add a little stuff from me that's beyond the script of this game just in case it's fun :) you could potentially see it as future spoilers, though.
Jenny is specifically a character from a sorta horny webcomic that Johnny's high-school best friend works on, which isn't that important to the story, but I think specifically fixating on a sort of fetishised ideal of womanhood is not an uncommon trans experience, and one that I see people occasionally be cruel to each other or themselves about. I mean, famously Contrapoints spent the better half of her entire video catalog thus far sort of arguing with herself about whether the idea of the cutesy anime catgirl is a problematic and infantile sort of image to pursue. I think this is literally just Being A Person and doesn't necessarily come at the cost of forgetting what it's like to be a real person (for whatever worth "real person" even is, a very societally enforced set of parameters), but it's sort of embarrassing, right? Oh, you don't want to be like a famously well written female character or even anything materially possible, you want to be the Carmen Sandiego ripoff your friend draws the pussy of for a living. There's obvs also that element of "do I want her or do I want to be her" that permeates favourite character lists for a lot of trans people.
Johnny and Jenny are now sharing bodies in a very jekyll-hyde way, and I do think that the change represents a sort of destructive maneuver. Johnny is too apathetic and scared to embrace Jenny, and Jenny is too resentful and emotionally malnourished to have patience with Johnny - with herself - and actually integrate without basically uprooting their lives. They're both fucked, because they're both Johnny, and they both have a lot of the same problems, because they're both Johnny! Neither part can imagine the version of themselves that is actually happy, functional and balanced, but Jenny is, at least, seeking change - destruction bears creation - and so, now our status quo is broken. What's gonna happen? :) I wonder~
Also, I'm so excited to get more into Liv. She's sort of secretly the real main character maybe. She's also trans and thats a whole thing that works into Johnny's mess. Ough. She's a total self insert in a buncha ways. You're gonna love her.
Anyway, thank you so much noxias! I can't tell you how much this sort of engagement means to me. You're incredibly thoughtful and well spoken and I'm honoured to have you around here. You're beautiful and swag and I love that my biggest supporters are all tboys because I'm the biggest motherfucking supporter of my boys. Have the best week sweetheart <3
