#roboremy

Jade was originally a self-insert OC for a fandom I'm no longer active in. I think that because they started off as something so indulgent, they kind of rooted themselves in my every waking thought for the last few years. I'm not kidding when I say putting them in situations is one of my favorite pastimes.

I've morphed them over time into one of the protagonists of Hivemind. It's a superhero/cyberpunk setting. The story is kind of about loneliness, or how morality and human connection interact. It's mostly about how Jade keeps making friends who turn out to be the worst people you've ever met.

In my head, Jade has three general eras: Vigilante, when they were in high school and part of a vigilante gang that spirals wildly out of control and they end up losing an arm; Prison, when they're a willing test subject in a prison-to-lab-rat pipeline and they get a million mods from their AI doctor and now ex-girlfriend, Beacon; and Haywire, when Jade stumbles into becoming a supervillain and decides that heroic activities aren't really for them.

(Jade is probably one of those characters that has way too much going on, back-story wise, but it's my mind palace and I'll decide how many concurrent parties I can throw at once. I refuse to create a timeline that makes sense.)

Most of what I ramble about in the tags is Jade in their Haywire era. They live as their alter ego, Haywire, and no one knows their true identity. They present themselves as a dumb, naive, impulsive kid who doesn't really know what they're doing when it comes to business. In reality, they spend their days keeping the local crime families in line, making sure the black market is running smoothly, and tricking powerful people into making bad deals with them. Jade has a long history of being underestimated, underutilized, and generally dehumanized- as Haywire, they've finally leaned into it and use it as a strength instead of a weakness.

The only person who thinks they're dangerous at start of their rise to power is Six, who is convinced they're the latest in a line of evil people in control of Horizon. Horizon is a computer created by a previous villain that secretly is the backbone of the digital infrastructure of the city, which Jade is connected to 24/7. Six isn't totally wrong that Haywire's a problem. But he thinks that Haywire has much worse intentions, like world domination, when in reality they're interested in much pettier things.

Also, while their connection to Horizon keeps Jade alive and in charge, it also basically beams an unregulated flow of digital information into their head. All of the Internet, every electronic component in Horizon, any device that's connected to their local network, it all flows through their head with no filter. Likewise, Horizon now has direct exposure to human emotion, and it doesn't have any kind of process to handle anything like that. When Jade gets angry, Horizon gets angrier, and it makes a feedback loop that will short out the local power grid. It's why Jade leans towards hedonism these days- joy becomes elation, and Horizon gets to experience euphoria over something as little as a box of chocolates. So they stick to the things that bring them joy, like staging the public humiliation of billionaires and stealing cool art from museums. And drugs. Lots of drugs. Drugs make it easier to think straight.

They have a good heart underneath all of the mood swings and mania- originally, they really wanted to make the world a better place! But life has not been kind to them. Jade is one of those people that will bleed themselves dry for whatever they believe in. But they literally did kill themselves trying to fix things, and afterwards the world was still miserable and out to get them, and now they're bound to a massive computer that won't let them go. They've hit rock bottom and cannot figure out which way is up. So, actually, who cares? Maybe this could be the best thing that ever happened to them. Maybe if they push all of the guilt and empathy away, and only focus on what's feels good, they can actually enjoy this weird symbiosis and become someone untouchable. Maybe being a "good person" is a myth. Maybe all they need is Horizon.

I know the whole story sounds edgy, but that's just because I enjoy things getting a lot worse before they get better, narratively speaking. One of the recurring themes is that everything is harder when you're on your own and that self-reliance is a myth. Jade's whole character arc ends with them learning to trust people again- they've been let down by a lot of people in their life (including Six, a long long time ago). It takes time and effort to get themselves to reach out to others again, and it takes nearly dying from their codependent relationship with Horizon (for real, this time) in order for them to get there.

ANYWAYS that's probably way too much info, but it was fun to write! Maybe I'll actually start posting original content instead of hijacking other posts to talk about my stuff. I already wrote a Hivemind synopsis in one of the first drafts of this post, so maybe I'll publish that first.

if you made it this far you're a real one thank you byyyyyyeee