Earlier today I was thinking about what the cast’s genderbent counterparts would be like (not just physically but in personality), and I started to focus on femJack/Jackie. It kind of ended up a feministic analysis of society and ruined my evening a little bit.
I thought, if you’re gonna go beyond a character’s physical presentation and adjust his/her story to fit the prescribed roles set by their society, how would the character’s personality have to change according to it? College/Post-College Jack is something of a prodigy and ends up a role model in a movement to get the youth more interested in the sciences (cuz he’s smart AND cool! (or so they think)). His revolutionary ideas about time travel immediately grab the attention of the scientific elite and in no time he picks up government grants and book deals and countless spotlights in journals/magazines. I wondered- would it be so easy and instantaneous if he was a young woman? Now, I’m more a patron of the arts than the sciences, so maybe this is just me being glib, but when I tried to think offhand of some prominent figures [mainly in the Physics fields], the household names are generally the likes of Hawking, Sagan, Einstein, none female. I could come up with a couple women whose fields were mostly unrelated to Jack’s (like chemistry- e.g. Marie Curie). It’s really no secret that girls aren’t encouraged to pursue careers with a mathematical bent and I thought about what Jackie would have had to go through to rise to the same level of prominence Jack had- or if she ever would.
Young Jack’s insecurities with girls are mainly rooted in the basis that they intimidate him romantically- he’s mostly afraid he’ll say something stupid in front of them or come across as ridiculously nerdy or weird. I think Young Jackie’s trouble with the opposite sex would come from her experiences that boys don’t like it when they find out you’re smarter than them- and then they’ll just argue with you until they find something they’re smarter at.
I devised a situation in which FutureJackie and her male counterpart would meet and considered what her reaction would be. I imagine she’d be fairly bitter towards his evidently greater success and maybe jump to the opinion that he was just a massive jerk. Jack, being as socially clueless as he is, with a cocky side to boot, would probably have no idea what her problem was and just tick her off some more. It would take a firm lecture from August to get him to sympathize with Jackie’s plight and eat some humble pie. It soon appeared to me that, while August was the ardent feminist in the original story, femJack/Jackie would have to pick up the mantle in this alternate world. On another note, characterizing maleAugust was a much harder task, one I haven’t completely resolved yet, but I won’t get into it now. (If you’re ever unsure of what exactly makes up the dynamics of the relationship between two characters of the opposite sex, reverse their genders and watch the double standards rise to the surface!)
I did toy with the idea that the two Jack(ie)s resolve their differences bonding over their love for Stevie Nicks, until my logic followed all the way through and realized that, if everyone in Jackie’s alternate world was gender-swapped, Stevie Nicks would have never existed, and for that matter, every historical figure and cultural idol wouldn’t have either, and actually life as Jackie knows it would likely be almost completely unrecognizable to us, and I went “screw this, my brain is tired” and gave up.
On one more note, is it starting to seem like Jack is the main character in this comic? Because I wouldn’t really consider him that. I wouldn’t be posting so much about him if his story didn’t get so much more interesting in the last third of the overall plot.
![Earlier today I was thinking about what the cast’s genderbent counterparts would be like (not just physically but in personality), and I started to focus on femJack/Jackie. It kind of ended up a feministic analysis of society and ruined my evening a little bit.
I thought, if you’re gonna go beyond a character’s physical presentation and adjust his/her story to fit the prescribed roles set by their society, how would the character’s personality have to change according to it? College/Post-College Jack is something of a prodigy and ends up a role model in a movement to get the youth more interested in the sciences (cuz he’s smart AND cool! (or so they think)). His revolutionary ideas about time travel immediately grab the attention of the scientific elite and in no time he picks up government grants and book deals and countless spotlights in journals/magazines. I wondered- would it be so easy and instantaneous if he was a young woman? Now, I’m more a patron of the arts than the sciences, so maybe this is just me being glib, but when I tried to think offhand of some prominent figures [mainly in the Physics fields], the household names are generally the likes of Hawking, Sagan, Einstein, none female. I could come up with a couple women whose fields were mostly unrelated to Jack’s (like chemistry- e.g. Marie Curie). It’s really no secret that girls aren’t encouraged to pursue careers with a mathematical bent and I thought about what Jackie would have had to go through to rise to the same level of prominence Jack had- or if she ever would.
Young Jack’s insecurities with girls are mainly rooted in the basis that they intimidate him romantically- he’s mostly afraid he’ll say something stupid in front of them or come across as ridiculously nerdy or weird. I think Young Jackie’s trouble with the opposite sex would come from her experiences that boys don’t like it when they find out you’re smarter than them- and then they’ll just argue with you until they find something they’re smarter at.
I devised a situation in which FutureJackie and her male counterpart would meet and considered what her reaction would be. I imagine she’d be fairly bitter towards his evidently greater success and maybe jump to the opinion that he was just a massive jerk. Jack, being as socially clueless as he is, with a cocky side to boot, would probably have no idea what her problem was and just tick her off some more. It would take a firm lecture from August to get him to sympathize with Jackie’s plight and eat some humble pie. It soon appeared to me that, while August was the ardent feminist in the original story, femJack/Jackie would have to pick up the mantle in this alternate world. On another note, characterizing maleAugust was a much harder task, one I haven’t completely resolved yet, but I won’t get into it now. (If you’re ever unsure of what exactly makes up the dynamics of the relationship between two characters of the opposite sex, reverse their genders and watch the double standards rise to the surface!)
I did toy with the idea that the two Jack(ie)s resolve their differences bonding over their love for Stevie Nicks, until my logic followed all the way through and realized that, if everyone in Jackie’s alternate world was gender-swapped, Stevie Nicks would have never existed, and for that matter, every historical figure and cultural idol wouldn’t have either, and actually life as Jackie knows it would likely be almost completely unrecognizable to us, and I went “screw this, my brain is tired” and gave up.
On one more note, is it starting to seem like Jack is the main character in this comic? Because I wouldn’t really consider him that. I wouldn’t be posting so much about him if his story didn’t get so much more interesting in the last third of the overall plot.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lpr4dwg0NW1qlpf0xo1_1280.png)
