On Jhin and the transferred sexuality of killing
As we all know, the character of Khada Jhin, the virtuoso from League of Legends, is inseparable connected to killing and art. The description from his championsite gives a first look on what defines Jhins personality the most: ,,Jhin is a meticulous criminal psychopath who believes murder is art. […] Using his gun as his paintbrush, Jhin creates work of artistic brutality, horrifying victims and onlooker. He gains a cruel pleasure from putting on his gruesome theater […].“ (League of Legends, Jhins championsite). Jhin believes that the life of a human being is senseless and ugly until he himself ends this life in a spectacular performance that is inspired by an opera. He creates beauty from ugliness and gives his victims a new meaning by revaluing them through their grand finale. That means for Jhin only the end of a life is important, nothing in between. In this thesis however I want to take a closer look on one special aspect of Jhins killing concept.
There are different ways on how to interpret the act of killing. It can be paraphrased as an act for the sake of prematurely ending a life, as a way to achieve social and material wealth but also as a a simple act of exerting power over another persons life. Furthermore killing can be interpreted in a more psychological way, something I want to partly try with this thesis. Different ways of looking at killing however don’t have to negotiate each other, in most of the cases different drives work together to influence a person on actively ending another life. The basis for the now following interpretation is a quote from the Q&A for Jhin (2016): ,,Gun-sexual? Kill-sexual? Jhin doesn’t understand sex in the same way you do (regardless of your gender identity).”(WAAARGHbobo on being asked what Jhins sexuality is).
In my eyes this quote gives us two important hints that are decisive for the whole argumentation. First: Jhin does theoretically know what sexuality/sex means but experiences it differently than other human beings. That means he has an own concept of sexuality. And secondly: Jhins sexuality is somehow connected to guns and/or killing and if it is connected to these both things, it is also connected to his art. Firstly it may be important to define ,sexuality’ to get a mutual basis for the now following analysis. Psychological spoken sexuality is a strong driving for human behavior and social interaction. From an evolutionary point of view the most important aspect of sexuality is connected to sexes and the act of reproducing. There are different ways of sexuality, heterosexuality, homosexuality, asexuality and pansexuality being the most famous within our society. For this thesis however I would like to redefine sexuality because, as we could read in the quote above, Jhins way of experiencing and understanding sexuality is completely different from ours. In Jhins case we need to think of sexuality as a drive and want to feel any sort of stimulation in form of deep emotions and human connections, them not linked to the actual act of sex or anything connected to sexes or physical contact. We can observe this behavior of him being unable to feel something in two of his quotes: ‘I want to feel everything, the gun makes it so I do.’ and ,It is only when the gun fires that I am alive.’. This sexuality however isn’t lined up to men or women specifically. Jhin isn’t attracted to traditional views of the sexes, above all he only sees canvases for his art. Different sexes bring different characteristics (manly features vs. female features) and thus different styles of killing with them. This is what attracts and inspires him, as we can see in one of the haikus that didn’t find their way into the official voice lines:
Courtesan paints her lips red,
Let’s stay with haikus a bit longer because the traditional form of these poems knows three basic rules. First: The object that is described needs to be a subject of the nature and it has to lie outside the human nature / the nature of the author, means that the subject of description needs to show us different sensations. The writer of the poem has to actively empathize with something he basically doesn’t understand. Second: The situation the author describes needs to be an unique event and he has to describe it right in the moment when seeing it. It mustn’t be a reflected moment. Third: There needs to be a connection to the seasons of nature. With this knowledge we can understand Jhins haiku much better. It is evident that, if we interpret this as a jhinesque version of traditional haikus, the object out of the Golden Demons nature is the courtesan. He sees her, he observes her but for him she is different, an object that lies out of what he sees as his human nature. With describing her he wants to catch her essence and focus on what makes her her. The rather abstract connection to the seasons lies within the black flower tattoo, flowers being either the symbols of spring or summer. With the used tense of simple present in the last verse Jhin gives us a feeling of being right in the moment. And the uniqueness of the moment comes from the connection between the second and the third verse because these form the inciting incident. The description of her red lips leads to the virtuoso breaking her jaw because he wants to take this unique detail from the woman. For him the actual feature of this woman was her red lips and that’s how she got his attention. If we ask ourselves why he does this we need to think about his killing concept in detail. The virtuoso denies that a human has a reason to life until he turns them into art. With killing he actively wants to take away everything this human had to completely delete their prior life and solely turn them into a blank canvas he can work with. To proof them and their life wrong, Jhin likes to choose victims with special features he can take away from them. But that’s not all. Jhin creates techniques of not only taking the feature away through killing, but by stultifying them in a nearly mocking way. That’s what we can observe within this haiku too: The red lips got his attention, that’s why he includes to break her jaw into his killing.
His lack of experiencing emotions in daily situations and the want to produce any sort of stimulation that makes him feel something is, beside many more, a sign of his psychopathy behavior (Checklist of Psychopathy by Robert D. Hare, Dimension 2: antisocial - deviant). In psychology this drive is named Sensation Seeking and is, to a certain degree, a basic human instinct. It describes the readiness to take risks in order to experience new forms of feelings. In Jhins case however the Sensation Seeking is much more distinct and that leads us to the presumption that he has an antisocial personality disorder. The low arousal theory is highly connected to this disorder and explains that people who suffer of this don’t react to certain stimuli (pain, happiness, love, adrenaline) like ,normal’ people. There is an interesting quote from the two psychologists that says, that people with a low arousal disorder need more ,sensory inputs’ to feel like normal human beings (Mawson/Mawson: Psychopathy and arousal: a new interpretation of the psychophysiological literature. 1977).
For Khada Jhin, sexuality and great emotions are inseparable connected to killing and his guns, especially Whisper. That means that Jhin lacks basic human emotions and isn’t able to feel anything deep without experiencing the ecstasy of killing and/or everything connected to that: From actually killing someone over thinking about killing to just cleaning his gear (,,He had finished polishing it, but with the gun in his right hand, the temptation was too great. He knew he shouldn’t, but he unpacked the black, eel-skin bodysuit. He drew the fingertips of his left hand across the slick surface quickened his breath. He picked up the tight leather mask, then – unable to help himself – slid it over his face. […] It constricted his breathing and removed his depth perception… Delightful.“ From – The man with the steel cane, One.)
He obviously feels an addiction to performing, creating art and the objectives that turn him into Khada Jhin. That’s what the quote ,,I swear each performance is the last, but I lie everytime.’’ shows us on an even deeper level. Unable to feel these emotions he craves he got addicted to performing because that’s when he can feel alive and happy (,,Happiness is a warm gun.”). The quickened breath in the quote above also shows that he doesn’t only experience mental emotions but also body reactions when getting in contact with these objects. One can interpret this as a moment of real sexual stimulation, in my eyes however this is also a transferred sexual stimulation, means he isn’t attracted to the objects themselves but the feel of them turning him into the virtuoso. It is however, like a feeling of a metaphorical sexual erection for him, but without ,coming’. He feels euphoria, his breath quickened, his heart is pounding and he craves for the moment of a brand new performance. One can call this ,artgasm’ in Jhins case.
As already stated, this sexuality is not connected to the will of reproducing or certain body functions. It is however linked to the drive to feel a metaphorical intimacy (in Jhins case between the artist and his masterpiece). While performing he senses a certain ,love’ and bond towards his victims because they are a part of his performance (as seen in: ,,This is my love.“ and ,,You’ve awoken something deep inside me”). That makes him both attracted to men and woman but just through killing them. He chooses them as his victims and this act of actively selecting another human that will be turned beautiful is like metaphorically choosing a lover for the time of the performance where he is willingly to get in connection with his significant other to turn them into the most perfect art. The connection isn’t physically but mentally. For the Golden Demon it’s an act of great intimacy, something you can tell by the fact that he figuratively thinks of himself, his body and his soul, meaning his entire being, as the objects that kill the victims, bullets and shots: ,,Each bullet is a piece of my soul. Each shot is a piece of me.’’. That not only means that he and his guns symbolically merge to one entity but also that he gives the victims parts of himself while he kills them, like one does in a relationship through giving time, love, or simply changing behavior for the significant other. For him these emotions especially consist in the upgrading he gifts his audience through killing them. Being killed in the staging means receiving and retaining something from Jhins personality. Another interesting fact to define this is Jhins will of not only generating intimate emotions for him, but for the victim too, as we can see in his quote about touching the victims innermost parts (,,I will touch your heart.“).
Something we can frequently observe in Jhins quote is his lack of understanding why the victims don’t want to play a part in his performance (,,How blessed it is to be chosen.” from Dark Cosmic Jhins quotes) That’s because he thinks that he does something good through killing them. As already stated in his art concept a human is ugly and doesn’t have a meaning until he upgrades them through ending their life. That’s why a performance isn’t only an intimate act for him, but also for the victim because they finally get to be beautiful. Jhin thinks he is redeeming the people that get to play a role in his art.
In conclusion I want to state that, if you follow this interpretation of the performance of the great virtuoso, a staging is, for him, a transferred sexual act, although the term isn’t entirely fitting for Jhins case. If I had to redefine this term now I would probably call it ,artuality’, a connection between the word sexuality and art, the driving force of his actions. That means that he feels a sort of erection when being confronted with his art, although this stimulation isn’t connected to sexes.
After not being able to do cosplaystuff for the last days I decided to try and write something about Jhin. As you can see, this is more of a thesis than a real fanfiction, means that I try debate on the quote from Jhins Q&A . Please keep in mind that English isn’t my first language, some mistakes will definitely appear. Also: This is a thesis on how I see Jhin, different humans have different opinions. I plan to write more often now, collecting textes about specific aspects of Jhins personality. Also this texts is a first try, it’s not completely finished yet. Thanks for reading thanks to @jhindiaan for an exchange of ideas regarding this!
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