One of these days we have to talk about how no one has pulled off unreliable narrator in the history of Minecraft roleplay as well as Jaiden Animations.
Like, there have definitely been unreliable POVs, in the QSMP especially. It was such a mystery-based server. There were so many secrets. Streamers lied and did dramatic reveals not just to the other characters, but to their own audiences as well. But I've just never seen an MCRP character who was as hard for their own viewers to read as qJaiden. Not just because she kept up an air of mystery, but because the mystery itself was so contentious. It wasn't "does she secretly work for the bad guys?". It was so much deeper than that.
It was a constant paranoia that went into a pit of denial and repression, the depth of which might as well have been the bottom of the ocean with the way the water got dark and murky just under the surface. You could always tell that something wasn't quite right, but the extent to which she was aware of what she was doing was always unknown, and it remained so until the day of her death.
She was manipulated into trusting the most untrustworthy being on the island, and you could literally never tell if she truly believed him, or if she was just so deep in it that any wrong move would give her away, blow her cover. Or maybe she was constantly going back and forth, self-soothing back into denial as soon as she could, because it was easier. Now and again, she would get overwhelmed with utter terror for just a moment, before coaxing herself back into ignorance. Her mind was a prison with such a high level of security that even those literally watching her point of view, looking through her eyes, couldn't get inside.
And she kept it up for months. She kept it up until the very end. It wasn't just a little mission she went on to get some information. It was a constant state. An indiscernible mix of paranoia, hopelessness, loneliness, terror, desperate trust, and denial. At any given moment, you couldn't tell if she was absolutely terrified or blissfully falling for the manipulation that appealed to her grief and lack of self-worth, making her feel loved.
And we literally never got to find out if she even allowed herself to feel free in the final two weeks of her life, in Purgatory. Bloody and violent, but away from constant watchful eyes. Or was she just counting down the minutes until it was over? Did she feel the clock ticking in the back of her head? Did she want it to chime? Did she die trying to get away from it? I don't know. No one knows. What the fuck.
ellievsbear
yousharknotpass
annaxmalina
blakekathryn
stormborns
