Low-key Aiden saying that Jesse should know how to swim, to 2 black jesses, feels like he's being racist but..... Idk I can't tell😭 don't like the direction he's taking here bc he's already disliked
Noooo, Aiden isn’t meant to be racist here, and that’s not the direction I’m writing him in.
I understand why the scene could look uncomfortable from the outside, especially because Joy and Jesse are Black Jesses and the insult is about swimming. But in the story, Aiden’s problem has nothing to do with their skin color or ethnicity.
His real problem is one very specific Jesse: the blue-barrette Jesse.
Joy and Fancy unfortunately get dragged into it because they are close to her. They are part of her group, they protect her, they stay near her, and Aiden knows that if he wants Jesse’s attention, going after the people around her is one of the easiest ways to get it.
That’s also why Joy becomes such an easy target in this scene.
Jesse can swim. Fancy can swim. Joy is the only one who can’t.
And Aiden knows that.
He doesn’t discover it by accident. He already suspected it, maybe even knew it for a while, but he waited for the right moment to use it. Not because he cares about Joy’s ethnicity, but because he knows Joy’s weakness will make Jesse react. If Joy gets hurt, Jesse will step in. If Jesse steps in, Aiden gets exactly what he wants: her attention.
That’s the ugly part of him.
Aiden doesn’t know how to speak to Jesse normally. He doesn’t know how to apologize properly. He doesn’t know how to handle his own emotions without turning them into control, jealousy, provocation, or cruelty. So instead of just talking to her like a normal person, he creates situations where she has no choice but to look at him, answer him, or confront him.
Even in the group chat, he basically says that if they find the Jesse with the yellow suspenders, the blue-barrette Jesse can’t be far. That’s not random. He knows Joy is close to her. He knows the group moves together. He knows that finding Joy is one way to find her.
So when Aiden mocks Joy for not knowing how to swim, the target is not “Black Jesses.” The target is Jesse’s emotional reaction.
He is attacking Joy’s legitimacy as a Jesse because he knows it will hurt the group and force Jesse to defend him.
It’s cruel. It’s unfair. It’s manipulative.
Actually, my headcanon for Aiden is almost the opposite in that specific area. If someone was openly racist, sexist, homophobic, or genuinely hateful toward someone in that way, Aiden would probably be one of the first people to react violently. Not because he is a good person, because he really isn’t, but because he has a twisted sense of justice when he recognizes certain kinds of injustice from other people.
He would probably confront the person, tell Maya to record it, and make sure the person regrets what they said.
The irony is that Aiden can recognize some injustices when they come from someone else, but he is almost blind to the injustice he causes Jesse himself.
That’s the core of his problem.
He would defend someone from a racist comment, but he still harasses Jesse. He would call out someone else for being cruel, but he still uses Joy’s insecurity to get Jesse’s attention. He can understand when someone else crosses a line, but when he is the one crossing it, he twists it into excuses, jealousy, or obsession.
And when he does realize he messed up with Jesse, he still doesn’t apologize normally. He doesn’t just walk up to her and say “sorry.” He spirals. He avoids her. He hates himself in private. He might even leave soda cans or apology notes in her locker the next day because writing what he feels is easier for him than saying it out loud.
That doesn’t make it healthy. It makes him emotionally messy and dangerous.
So no, Aiden’s issue is not Joy or Fancy’s ethnicity.
His issue is Jesse.
Specifically, the blue-barrette Jesse.
Joy and Fancy were unlucky enough to be close to her, and because Aiden wants Jesse’s attention, good or bad, they become part of the battlefield.
I like too much to make complex characters to the point of making their problems see and translate by going deep into the iceberg hehehe! Thank you for the question because it allowed me to think better about my Aiden concept!
Are you a forgiving person? Why or why not and what created that about you?
Yeah, I think that’s a pretty fair thing to say about me. No one’s ever done anything in my life that I haven’t forgiven eventually. Life is too darn short to be angry about things that happened in the past, unless they were so terrible that you just can’t move on from them. What created it...I suppose my father’s submissives did. They taught me a lot about what it meant to be a good person, and not holding grudges was definitely part of that.
Are you a forgiving person? Why or why not and what created that about you?
Am I a forgiving person...I’m actually not sure how to answer that. I mean, I managed to hold a grudge against my mother’s second claim for about a decade, so that would suggest that I’m not great at the forgiving thing. But, at the same time, I know I’d appreciate it if people forgave me for all the stupid shit I did over the years. So I guess maybe it’s something I’m going to have to get better at if I want it from other people.
Far as what created it? I don’t know. I was an angry kid who was pissed about having a whole new group of people in my life that I was supposed to call family, so it probably started there.
