kind of connected but separate from the stuff I was posting last night about being interested in characters either being in denial about being young and trying to act older and be thought of as older, or characters being thought of and treated as younger than they really are and having to deal with that- and also connected to my interest in characters that have multiple minds in one body/fantastical depictions of ‘multiple personalities’ like Pre-Crisis Billy Batson and Captain Marvel, Bruce and the Hulk, A Scanner Darkly, etc.:
there’s a book series I read years ago, the Imperial Radch books, that had a teenage character who was possessed by this ancient AI that was, like, the ruler of their space government and had been for a long time. and was very big, as in the AI was spread out across a lot of different but connected bodies, or disconnected bodies that checked in with each other. and to my memory it wasn’t just human bodies that it took over, but it also ran space stations. so this AI was always observing people and knew a lot.
and then after the teenage character was freed from being used as a vessel for it, she was very traumatized from the experience of having that perspective in her head. like, imagine cringing at the memory of your younger self and make it a million times worse. because from the AI’s perspective this girl was just so stupid and her thoughts were just so facile and not unique among the variety of human stuff, merely typical teenager things. and everything she ever did was the bad attempt of a beginner. and this left behind in the teenage character just so much shame and it was so painful for her all the time and made it difficult for her to function at all.
I think it’s neat that, however the Wisdom of Solomon is portrayed as functioning, the kids don’t have this problem, either in judging themself when they’re transformed or in struggling with this effect at any level after changing back. I think maybe there’s one scene in an issue of The Power of Shazam! (1995) where Billy and the Wizard are having a disagreement and then Billy transforms partway through the conversation because he has to fly somewhere and he’s like, ‘actually now that I’m thinking this through, you’re right,’ implying that there is level of maturity difference, but that’s one minor moment and there was no judgement from Billy towards himself there.
I think that there would be a level of maturity difference caused by the transformation Post-Crisis, and it would be easy to assume that that would be really obvious to the characters and they would feel it. but the situations in which they transform are not typically times for introspection, and also I think teenagers are typically in denial that they’re teenagers tbh
