The child never looks back on infancy... the youth scorns their childish pursuits. In adulthood, with some distance, it all becomes fair game again (to the point where one might even regress, but that's another subject). Until then, the former self must be destroyed, violently and without pity. She was a fool, her concerns were frivolous, she was pathetic, she didn't see the truth, unlike me: the final form. Jane wisely sees the cracks in this logic, the most obvious being that a life can't be built on rejection alone. There must be affirmation somewhere. But no one present (and/or dead) knows exactly where.
4 thoughts on “#810 + 811 – self preserving”
Mauricio Lemos
Headcannon: Childish Eve was not going to say "Amy Rose" but "Elise" and it was a good thing that Edgy Eve silenced her for good.
codetaku
Honestly after Aerith to Cloud, a far less canon and realized relationship than Anthy to Utena (Cloud's true feelings were always for Tifa, and the flirting with Aerith is more or less known to be a residual effect of Zack's personality inside of him after the mako incident and Zack's death), I was more worried about this Eve shifting all the way into pure fanfiction by bringing up Tails, Knuckles, or Shadow.
Jeff
The little smear of purple blood (ichor? angel juice?) on Bad Eve's cheek is a wonderful detail.
Tangerine
"The child never looks back on infancy… the youth scorns their childish pursuits. In adulthood, with some distance, it all becomes fair game again (to the point where one might even regress, but that’s another subject). Until then, the former self must be destroyed, violently and without pity. She was a fool, her concerns were frivolous, she was pathetic, she didn’t see the truth, unlike me: the final form."
Often I engage with this strip and the commentary with the reposts with an anthropological view–on the outside, learning about a culture I've never experienced and a person whose perspective is wildly different than mine, and sometimes mystifying.
This isn't one of those times. "I've worked too hard to get away from you!" has been a vivid and visceral experience for me, and one that, yes, I've largely jettisoned with age. There's a quote I've loved since high school that sums it up well:
"A new consciousness, to free itself from the ubiquitous, pervasive presence of the old, must fiercely reject it, overreact, overstate (and pay a heavy price for doing so, like soldiers in a war where no quarter is asked or given); but eventually they must always come back to make peace with all in the old order that gave them life and gave them the ideals in the name of which they wage war against it."
–Page Smith, "A New Age Now Begins", 1976