Curate, connect, and discover
also final word on this probably- I *like* Joyce Messier a great deal as a character. I think she's cool and interesting. I find it fascinating that she tends to approach things very bluntly. the words she uses and the manner in which she analyzes things, this is sort of an instance of a character who knows exactly *what she is* and articulates it in a manner congruent with the writers of the game. she is, as she says wryly but honestly, "a bourgeois woman". i cant think of too many rich people who would without prompting and prodding, self identify with marxist social taxonomies in this way, even with a thin veil of ironic self deprecation. She's educated. she knows the words and the motivating logics of class analysis. and shes *cool*. harry picks that up. honesty is cool. bluntness is cool. cynicism is cool. she is quite open about her place in the world and how she conceives of it. unlike a lot of other powerful figures in the game, i dont think shes completely swallowed by self justifying rhetoric the way, say, sunday friend is. or she is up to a point. she knows about countercultural movements and she has affinities for them and is also aware that they inevitably are consumed by capital. (this, by the way, is kind of complex in that like. ok its a depressing reality but also i think if the de team was fully bought into that line of thinking, they would not make this game. it is telling that joyce of all people would critique cindy on the basis of capital subsuming revolutionary art. I dont think joyce is wrong per se, but i think she is drawn to that line of thinking because it is *very comforting for someone of her class position to dismiss the value and power of revolutionary art and critique of capital* just a thought) She's disgusting in that her power is not rightfully hers. her position is not rightfully hers. she is actively repressing and oppressing others in service of disgusting, semi-fascistic, hypercapitalist forces. shes enjoying the comforts and benefits that such a role allows her. shes disgusting shes frustrating shes profoundly arrogant (as her clash with evrart claire proves definitively). Her self satisfied idiocy is what allows her to play with fire and foolishly assume she cannot be burned. She's smart but her comfortable position puts the blinders on her and so she's also pretty fucking stupid. and shes also deeply deeply sad. I empathize. I pity her. She's so fucking sad. I don't think she is drawn to self medication and self destruction through constant pale exposure or all that rueful nostalgic rumination for no reason. She knows what she is to the world and she knows what she's doing and she's too cowardly and comfortable and self interested to change, but she's too self-aware to ignore it completely. I think she probably dislikes herself to some degree and i think its destroying her. Like most of the cast of the game, she's complex and deeply human. She's hateful, but I also think she is too well realized to hate, at least not for me.