#cringerambles

[cringeonmainst]

Miniature emotional rant about Sabine

I’m glad Jack got a happy ending but I keep coming back to Sabine. She grew up and died in the very town she hated while being in a relationship that was on the tipping point of ending. She was the one Roger punished the most for Jack’s actions. (Though I don’t really blame Jack because how would he have known some demigod puppet was stalking him for his brain).

Sabine wanted what was best for Jack through and through but she had ambitions of her own… she wanted out of this town, she wanted to start a new life, she wanted to start a family eventually. We usually see Sabine through the eyes of Jack as this mystified being of the past but she was never just an extension of Jack. She was a dreamer, she played the ukulele, she was a peace keeper, she was a strange girl in a strange town. And in the end, she was just a kid caught in a war she couldn’t have understood at the time.

And now, Sabine lives on through Jack, in his memories and his actions. Sabine gives Jack the courage that was stolen from him by the town, its people, and himself. In a way, it’s bittersweet seeing Jack fulfill the dream Sabine couldn’t reach. But goddamn, I’m sorry Sabine.

[cringeonmainst]

I keep thinking about the chapter in Vol. 3 after the mimic war in the gas station. Jack despite all the valid fears and suspicions of the new Jerry let’s go of all of it and follows him out of his post. I think a partial reasoning for this is within the “months” of him fighting these creatures, he’s lost every tangible thing he could’ve called normal: Rosa, O’Brien, the person that was surely Jerry, and towards the end, the gas station itself as it slowly crumples apart with the lack of costumers.

And in this brief interaction with “Jerry”, even though his survival instinct scream to have him run, hide, and fight once again, he looses that too.

He follows “Jerry” because it’s the last chance for normalcy (whatever “normalcy” looks like to Jack). This chance is the one thing he hasn’t lost just yet, and he takes it despite the dangers that could come.

And if Jerry turned out to be replaced, at least the last thing Jack would’ve seen was a familiar face. The same face that helped him through the war day one.

I think this scene is what makes the series so special in my mind, the way Jack Townsend (the author) writes these somewhat serious moments. It’s never overtly stated because our narrator is emotionally constipated and unreliable. But through these little actions and conversations, we can either choose to have a serious literary analysis or we could just leave it to the literal text. Yippee.