#ywpb

And Joke recognizes that. He hid his deal with Boss from Jack because he was convinced he was right, that Jack was too rigid to allow it, and they are both too stubborn to discuss or take input or to be willing to work together.

Neither of them trust the other. They want to, but they’re not willing to let go of their perceived control of the situation or their belief that they know best. And they are going to be forced to confront that they can’t have one without the other.

And I must say I love the recognition that Jack, even though he’s a badass and we love him, is in no way more protected or less vulnerable to Boss’s reign of terror. He’s just as susceptible to control through fear as everybody else. We like to believe that our favorites are stronger than their circumstances. That they can rise above and give those bad guys what they deserve. That they can do better than their circumstances should allow. We don’t want to allow them the realism of their humanity and their circumstances.

The fact that so many people have put Jack on the same pedestal as everyone in the story is such a massive parallel to the story itself. Jack is getting a lot of crap from the sidelines about what he’s doing wrong, why he’s being unfair, come on Jack why can’t you think about everybody else’s feelings while you watch your life go to pieces, you jerk?

Joke’s arc starts because the expectation for him is perfection. And he fails. He fails over and over until he is fully rejected and made to believe his entire value as a person hinges on his ability (or inability) to perform; to be good enough, to get everything right. And so he abandons all attempts to do so.

So Jack hands the Carbon situation over to his boss and goes back to find Joke gone and the wallet on the bar and naturally checks inside to see if there is an ID to make sure it belongs to who he thinks it does and maybe a “if found return to”.card only to discover it’s actually Carbons. So he takes it over to Carbon who lets be real throws a tantrum and gets Jack fired blaming him for the missing money (that’s still sitting on the bar btw). So instead of chasing after Joke to return the wallet which lead to him saving Rosé and Joke from the thugs he goes home to await the fate of working for boss. Without that moment of feeling like a hero, like no matter how poor he was he could still do good things and help people he was left trapped in that feeling of hopelessness so he never tried to get the loan for the school. I’m sure he’d had the idea for it before that night but without that core event of being a hero he wouldn’t think of it as anything but a fools dream. This means he never went to the bank and met Joke again where even tho the result was chaotic the belief and intent behind Jokes actions of giving him the money left a deep sense of hope and without that hope Jack probably would’ve been less inclined to help people because it never did him any good (returned a wallet got fired) and no one ever helped him out of his poverty (coach was a dick) so was he cutting off fingers? No. He wasn’t that dark side but he wasn’t gonna waste his own money on helping others when no one went out of their way to help him. I also would like to think he’d be a bit smarter? Or jaded maybe? Whatever it is but don’t bloody trust Save, the thief Joker robbed the bank coz it’s shady! That was your first clue Jack. Side tracked by OG timeline sorry. This also means that he has almost no reason to hate Joke coz for all he knows the dude saw the wallet on the ground and put it on the bar top so staff would find it, his main antagonist would be Carbon (who in a timeline shift could avoid prison and actually be Rosé bodyguard and love interest).

So Joke runs into Rosé and well gets his shit rocked. So instead of Jack running in and saving his man it goes more like the big show picks up the “stick” and adds more injury to insult. Let’s assume dudes got better thing to do then cop a murder rap on a little smart ass so he leaves him alive but bloodied, bruised and broken to the point where he doesn’t go home but instead wakes up in hospital and as a result never robs the bank.. This attack leaves him mentally scared, he’s changed which his family can tell causing them to give him distance and pulling back on the pressure of education and career as it is made clear by the police investigating the incident that wasn’t a fight or brawl it was a one sided “random” attack on Joke. So they back off coz well it makes sense to let him work through it and make his way back to a normal life but also tryna work out that family’s problems is a whole other therapy session that I ain’t got time for so back to Joke. So when I first thought about the Joke side of this butterfly effect I pondered him just doing a full dark side coz the first time he had one on one directly helping someone they ran and left him for dead but I think at his core Joke values forgiveness and understanding. We see this most in the first time Tattoo steals the necklace when Jokes attitude towards the situation immediately changed once he understood tattoos motivation to save his mother. So I think once Joke is released from the hospital he put his energy and skills into understanding the situation he stumbled into starting with who this woman was and why was she worth kidnapping? Maybe the big show let the name Rosé slip while he was beating Joke to a pulp or Joke overheard something at the police station while they swept his attack under the rug as a random act of violence because the four horsemen have their finger in every pie but he gets enough info to start his descent into the empire of greed and lies. What started as his search for answers into his own attack leads to exposing the underbelly of the world around him and sets him on a journey to infiltrate and burn down the system of corruption from the inside out. On this journey he happens to run into a bartender he once met whose long festering rage at those who keep him in poverty can be unleashed by that smile he found so cute.

So instead of a debt collector with a heart of gold and a strong moral compass learning to forgive a thief with the best intentions we get two men bonding over their desire to see an empire of corruption and greed be left as a burning pile of rubble……. or something like that.

ANAN WONG THE MAN HE IS!!😭❤🔥

Okay I might be falling for this hooman bean!!

Well, I guess it's the end of an era and hopefully the start of a much better one.