JJ feeling cornered and isolating himself in 1x07 vs in 3x04
welcome back to “how many ways can sof talk about one scene”
so i've talked SO MUCH about JJ stealing the money from Barry in 1x07 already (specifically here) but i just wanna rant about it a little bit more in comparison to the first jiara talk in 3x04.
so in 1x07, he steals the money and John B and the rest of the pogues are immediately trying to get him to rethink it, refusing to get into the twinkie with him and calling him out for his "crazy", impulsive shit. JJ tries his best to explain his reasoning, saying that they deserve some kind of reparations for the trauma of being held at gunpoint by Barry and also appealing directly to Pope by reminding him that he took the fall for him for Topper's boat. to me, this all reads as a desperate attempt to get the pogues to see that all that "crazy" stuff that he does is for them, at least in his mind. he's always trying to help them out and do right by them and perform these extravagant acts of service for them to prove that he's worth their love, but he doesn't know how to explain all of that, so he just goes on the defensive when things start going south in the conversation. and when it's clear to JJ that the pogues just don't get it (partially because how in the fuck is he supposed to explain it without also admitting how worthless and undeserving of love he feels), he walks away.
flash forward to 3x04, when JJ is starting to employ some of those same defense mechanisms from the 1x07 pogue fight in this conversation with Kiara. he has these blinders up again and is trying to protect himself by going on the defensive, ranting in fragments about how he has nothing and that Kie could never care about him and that she doesn't understand what it would take to even begin to help him, all of it building up to him finally calling her a kook, which is one of the few times that he actually goes on the offensive. and this is where we start to see the main difference between 1x07 and 3x04.
in 1x07, JJ felt cornered because of a lack of understanding, so he went on the defensive and ultimately isolated himself. but in 3x04, he felt cornered because of a wealth of understanding, so he resorted to the offensive, and once again ultimately ended up isolating himself.
JJ calling Kie a kook is the last ditch effort to get her to play into his self-sabotage. the defensive didn't work, dancing around the issue of her being from a different world didn't work, so now he's just gotta go for the killing blow and hope that she's the one to walk away so he doesn't have to do it first. he's purposefully trying to hit her where it hurts so that she'll blow up right back at him and realize that he's the piece of shit that he believes himself to be. and i think this reaction absolutely comes from Luke (as does the running away and the overall not believing that he's good enough thing, truly every bad trait of jj's can be traced back to that piece of shit i swear).
Luke is so good at fishing for people's insecurities and pushing until he gets a reaction (ie: 1x05 with JJ and 2x08 with Kie), so we can assume that that's where JJ learned this behavior from. of course, he's doing it in 3x04 more as a way to hurt and isolate himself, but let's not pretend like Kie isn't still very much collateral damage in JJ's own self-sabotage here. and of course, since JJ is actually a good human being unlike his father, we can see that he clearly regrets calling her a kook immediately after saying it. important differences there. when JJ is trying to use a trick from Luke cause his own tricks aren't working well enough, he can't stomach it.
and of course, that's only made worse when Kie still refuses to play along. she's not playing into his self-sabotage and giving him the reaction that he's trying to get out of her because she sees right through it all. she's being so gentle and understanding (while also still standing her ground and not letting him get away with calling her a kook btw what an actual icon), and it's so antithetical to everything he's grown up around.
she doesn't take the bait. not even a little bit. because she knows him. and so he runs. just like he did back in 1x07, but for the exact opposite reasoning.
Kie knows him too well, and i think for JJ, that's potentially even more terrifying than the pogues not understanding him enough back in 1x07. hence, taking a page from Luke's book and resorting to the offensive. not just walking away from Kie like he had walked away from the pogues before, but riding away on his bike. riding out to a pier and basically having a panic attack. everything about it is heightened compared to the 1x07 fight.
because being so vulnerable and so incredibly known by Kie, of all people??? his worst nightmare because it's also his greatest wish.
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