#dev magus

[jkjones21]

The Pool Fantasy

Etienne Lux agreed to appear in this promotional photo but declined to use any proxy bodies due to ethical considerations.

[idonttakethislightly]

Thinking about the pure strength of will it must have taken Jacky to send Dev off with a smile and compliments. He never liked Dev in general, and in specific he was cursing Dev out just minutes before. Now Jacky thinks Dev's smart, trusts him, and knows he wants the world to live on.

Jacky's not confident in that as he's acting, I don't think. He knows Dev's going to screw a lot of things up... but he thinks Dev will do better if he gets some encouragement before he starts. So he's talking up the guy he hates, as one of the last things he does before he dies. Because that's one of the last few things he can do for the world, before he dies.

[kn1538210]

So, that issue 10 preview...

[idonttakethislightly]

Dev really likes cheesy movies full of dumb cliches, to the point where he thinks they're reasonable models for how to live your life. Yes, I have the textual evidence to support this. See below.

First off- like the movies, TPF is fiction and so it's full of tropes. I know it's not novel to point out that stories have tropes... my specific point here is that Dev, in contrast to the rest of the cast, keeps doing things that make no sense except in very specific kinds of stories.

1. His apology to Masumi is essentially the Grand Romantic Gesture (TV Tropes link) from the climax of a romantic comedy, except without the relationship being a romantic one. Heartfelt apology for hurting someone's feelings, deliverered in the most public and impractical way possible. Fortunately for him, Masumi likes spectacle and isn't that invested in emotional nuance, so it works just fine.

2. In Dev's last goodbye to Eliza (or so he thought), with just seconds left to say something meaningful, he references what TV Tropes calls New Child Left Behind- the war-movie cliche of a dead soldier whose pregnant love interest now has Someone To Remember Him By. It's not like being a grieving single mom would be so great, but it's a poignant movie moment if you don't think too hard about it. And, to be fair, going off to die is probably a situation Dev's never encountered in real life before, so it's maybe more reasonable that he's trying to do emotional vulnerability by paraphrasing fiction. Plus, Eliza thinks his awkwardness is funny, and also she's not so big on emotional nuance either, so it works just fine, kind of.

3. Do I need to spell it out?

4. Unlike the other examples, Dev's Dramatic Unmask (TV tropes again) doesn't get him what he wants even a little bit. In fact, if he'd just lied and stalled for time, it's possible he might have distracted Valentina long enough for Eliza to destroy reality. But we'll never know, because at the end of the world, The Unmasking (TV Tropes) feels right to him. Partly, he doesn't realize it's going to undermine his choices to spend his last moments being known as himself. But I also think he can't resist the drama and catharsis of coming clean.

It's a pretty wide range of genres- romantic comedy, war movie, Star Wars (absolutely its own genre), superhero. But all the references are pretty specific to that kind of movie, whichever one it is. Dev's most remarkable skill, canonically, is that he passes himself off as Jacky for ten years. Sometimes a knack for observation and mimicry keeps you alive, and sometimes it just leads you to act Wrong Genre Savvy (TV tropes but you knew that by now.) None of the cast of The Power Fantasy realize they're in a comic called The Power Fantasy (that we know of) but Dev most of all thinks he's in a much simpler story than he actually is.

Postscript: Eliza probably spent a lot of the 1980s eating cheap popcorn while bored.

[idonttakethislightly]

Realistically I think Eliza magics her teeth clean and Dev magics his hair straight, but it's kinda funny to imagine them in the bathroom every morning for the three months before their marriage fully imploded, doing those things by hand. She's annoyed because she keeps ruining toothbrushes, and he's annoyed because straightening your hair every day for ten years would be miserable.

[idonttakethislightly]

Thinking about Dev and Jacky both facing their deaths with a smile. I don't think it's all bravado in either case- maybe a little bit, but I also think they're both genuinely at peace with what they think is coming next.

(Some analysis of the story to date under the cut, but also some theorizing and potential spoilers for what might come next. Consider yourself warned.)

...like, if you know you're going to die a hero, if you know you've done the best you can for the people you're leaving behind, if you get to say goodbye knowing that the people you've left will carry on all right... then maybe facing the end a few decades before expected isn't the worst thing that could happen.

Too bad it didn't go that way for either of them. Dev didn't die a hero, it's debatable whether Jacky replacing himself was really the best thing to do, and the world has just barely carried on intact.

I also think it's interesting to look at how Eliza's staring down this heavily-emphasized threat of certain doom, when the narrative has set up two sides of a potential equilateral triangle. Dev leaving Eliza, Jacky leaving Dev... the usual way to do a rule-of-threes in a story is to do a thing, then repeat the thing very similarly, and then repeat the thing with a significant twist.

I really really really hope that Eliza handles whatever's going to happen to her way more calmly and maturely than everyone expects. I know there's all this talk, in-universe and in the solicits, about how she's going to go nuclear, figuratively and/or literally. How there will never be an end for her, only an infinity of torture. But.

...all right, let's game this out. Dev's death- the one he thought he was going to have- was something he could face because, after apparently a lifetime of self-deprecation and fear of responsibility, he gets to die a hero. Jacky's death- the one he apparently really had- was something he could face because, after a lifetime of isolation and carrying the world on his shoulders, he gets to tell his story and pass the responsibility on. They both got a moment where the worst of their emotional burdens were gone, before they had to give up life itself.

But for another thing. I hadn't been entirely sold on this idea, but there's people on the Discord whose theory is that Jacky hitched a last-minute ride on Signal 2. The one person who actually understands all of reality and not just whatever cliffs-notes he gave to the Fucking Arseholes. If anyone can free Eliza from Hell without destroying reality in the process, it would probably be him.

...and in their goodbye scenes, Dev and Jacky both blurt out a lot about themselves that clarifies who they are. That's what a lot of people do when they're about to die, the self-censorship and to some extent self-repression goes away. I think it would be really interesting to see Eliza finally blurt out what's underneath all the pride and blame and faith and fear, because... I'm still really struggling to explain it, but for all the time she spends thinking and talking about herself, I don't think she's really very self-aware.

I don't know. Just thoughts.

[idonttakethislightly]

"Hallelujah"

Eliza, Dev, and the fanvid I don't have the technical skills to create. Song originally by Leonard Cohen, but the version I like is Rufus Wainwright. (Yes, the version that was in Shrek.)

[idonttakethislightly]

Dev is like a puppy dog, in that if he has someone who leads him around and takes care of him, he’s a good boy, and if he doesn’t, he goes completely feral.