I started thinking about Carla Moretti's vengeance arc and now I'm having thoughts about her and Jill meeting and I thought I'd pitch it to you as the No.1 Jill Expert to see if you had any thoughts
Before I say anything else: thank you so much for calling me No.1 Jill Expert that's such an honour omg. Also what a banger of an ask
Okay so I have to admit I haven't read her yet and I had to look her up but from what i can tell from the wiki... Based based based
As for your question I'm gonna answer this once with the lesbian brain and once with the meta brain:
1. Again I haven't read Carla yet so this is subject to change but... CrimsonCinder has a nice ring to it, don't you think?
2. Slade being an abusive parent himself, the concept of Carla, who kills child abusers, being recruited by him to kill abusers is fascinating to me. I need to read her before my opinion on the topic is better defined but. Slade is a manipulative kind of villain, so the idea of Carla working for him is very interesting to me because you have Carla, who serves a villainous abuser to get the opportunity to hurt abusers in ways she couldn't before, and Jill, who took Lee Travis' guns to give herself the power to hurt villains in ways she couldn't before, and in doing so accidentally fell under the control of a spirit of vengeance who doesn't share her values and righteousness. For me, what I would want for Jill going forward (and the reason I'm so happy Johns didn't or couldn't write her more afaik) should be a story of freedom and emancipation -it shouldn't be about her "learning" that vengeance is evil and certainly not having some white guy teach her that (like it seems Johns was going for with her), it should be about Jill's journey in regaining control of herself and where that leaves her values at. The interesting thing in Jill's story is that she starts off having a perception of justice as vengeful that is her own, and then after she loses control over her choices and life, she says "justice is vengeance" in a way that feels like... I don't want to say "it's easy to say justice is vengeance when it's the only thing it can be to you rn" because easy is not the word at all but like- justice is vengeance because it has to be, she kinda doesn't have the choice to believe that for herself anymore: her views of justice used to be the fruit of her opinions and guided her actions, but now that process is inverted: her actions retroactively feed her beliefs because she needs to stay coherent with herself. That's something that's quite common with irl people even when they're not the avatar of the spirit of vengeance: when you do something that's not in accordance with your values/beliefs/thoughts, your brain tends to solve the dissonance by retroactively shifting your values to the side until the action fits a bit better within your concept of your Self¹. So it's interesting how the spirit's control steals agency and autonomy not just when it comes to her actions but even with her thoughts. Which begs the control, to a Jill who has freed herself from that control -and perhaps even more interestingly, to a Jill who is in the process of freeing herself from that control, what does justice mean to her? How does it tie with control at this point? That's one of my favourite things to consider with Jill (though I"m aware I say that about every theme with Jill lol) and I think meeting someone like Carla would be very interesting for her in that regard, and perhaps especially if the parallel that I'm forseeing turns out correct. Would love to hear your thoughts on the topic!! In the meantime I need to add Carla to the top of my reading list