whyd jade start learning to swordfight?
so. in the source text we very briefly (abt 4 pages) actually see Jade wielding a sword!
It's during the grimbark arc, the writing of which I have a few gripes with, btu I always thought that this was a really interesting scene. Why did Jade, at her most free from inhibition, want to one-on-one duel Dave with a sword?
I think this represents the most important part of Jade Harley for my fucked up evil purposes: she wants what other people have, and she almost never expresses this. She spends a lot of time in the comic almost coddling Dave, laughing at all his jokes and telling him how cool and funny and smart he is all the time. It's one of the very few things she is actually allowed to do. I choose to believe it's deeper than that: she wishes SHE was cool and funny and smart, like Dave, but she sees herself as too deep 'in her role' to be allowed to change.
Jade has an extremely small and unshakable and sad view of herself, an instrument to enact a grander plan. Be in the right place at the right time, and be pleasant and agreeable and out of the way all other times. Swords, to her, represent what the Striders have: narrative agency. The ability to act and fight and look cool. This is something she didn't have as a kid in the story, so she's reclaiming it in Paradise.
(this is all extremely subconscious though. and it's not her idea - Dirk pitches it to her at the beginning of the AU, when they have a one-on-one conversation for the first time on her roof at a party. I think Dirk picked up on this double meaning of swords for her before she did!)
blakekathryn
yousharknotpass
izzy806
