I keep picturing all these kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going, I have to come out from somewhere and just catch them.
That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.
Lorsqu'une personne en sait aussi long sur tout ça, il faut du temps pour décider si au fond elle est pas quand même idiote. Pour Sally il m'a fallu des années. Je pense que je l'aurais su bien plus vite si on avait pas tant flirté. Le problème c'est que je me figure toujours que la fille avec qui je flirte est intelligente.
oh I would love to read your meta about kilgrave and salinger being opposites!
fuck now I gotta organize my thoughts here we go
heads up, i haven’t rewatched seasons 2&3 and i’ve got the worst memory so feel free to correct any mistakes! i’m an idiot!
series wide spoilers, obvs, and TW for kilgrave and sallinger ie r//pe/abuse and murder, medical/parental/child abuse etc. this is a fun series
this is an adhd powered mess of a post, enjoy
1.
so Kilgrave is introduced in the narrative by Jessica’s perspective, for the first few eps we only hear his voice in her flashbacks. we know he’s the bad guy and at least some of what he did from her very clear trauma, but we only see his effects on others. in the first episode even as he’s stealing the penthouse and turning the family there into slaves he’s shot from the back and has the presence of a ghost. Sallinger is confirmed the bad guy at the end of the first episode iirc, and its darkly humorous as he’s cutting an apple while a man takes his last breath behind him and the shot is stationary as he moves to reveal the victim.
so, one, he’s funnier but only if you can laugh at that sort of thing.
but really: Kilgrave is all about his image from the start. he gets the benefit of making near everyone believe it but he still built it from nothing. he’s all penthouses and expensive suits and servants while Sallinger is all small (if nice) apartment he worked for and practical plain clothing. Kilgrave is about showing off power and being surrounded by people to support his ego, but Sallinger is about gaining and earning power in his own mind and flying below the radar.
2.
speaking of, motivation. Kilgrave literally just wants to get what he wants. he has no goals, no aspirations, no grand schemes. he’s a hedonist with the perfect power to support that, and everything he does in season 1 is either on a whim or to stop the only person who can tell him no, first by wooing Jessica and manipulating people around her, then by just sending people in the vicinity to kill her (up to and including a hospital patient who can barely move) while he forces other people to handle the problem while he moans on the balcony about not getting what he wants. his arc is about obsession and control, but it’s short sighted and coiled around the singular fact that Jess has gained the ability to say no.
Sallinger, the crusty sock. he’s got goals, and as warped as they are from literally everyone else’s perspective, from his’ they’re actually well meaning. life isnt fair, he’s making it fair. not just for him, for those who don’t have Gifts and who also have to work just to get second place (iirc he’s got a lot of trophies and awards but most of them say second). he doesn’t want the prestige, the glamour. he wants to right a wrong. all of that is a lie of course, Jess calls him out on it while she’s playing his game.
sidebar, can we talk about how he accused her of playing the victim, going after him for being a straight white male to the press, and she takes him down by LITERALLY playing his victim, pretending to be paralyzed while he’s strapped her down? thats called good writing, my friend
3.
back to the point. Kilgrave doesn’t care about anyone but himself but has deluded himself into thinking woe is him, the universe is against him/he was given powers he cant control/he never knows if someone’s under his thumb/waah. Sallinger seems to care about society but in a selfish way, oh these kids need a role model, someone who won’t show them its ok to cheat, they need ME.
Sallinger blew up at Jess accusing him of getting off on the power he has over his victims, as she’s posing as one. His sense of nobility, of honor is ripped apart and his lust for power and control is exposed for it is, versus his insistence that his complicated and elaborate ‘exterminations’ are anything but a disgusting perversion.
Kilgrave pretty much admitted he loves how it feels to be in control as Jess tried to compel him to compel her in the black site. He blows up as his sense of control is stripped away to reveal simple obsession, murdering more and more people in what he thinks are grand schemes and gestures while in reality he only gets them to work by mind control. he presents with all the trappings of an intelligent super-villain a la the comics, but he rarely thinks anything through.
4.
btw, names. Mr Murdercorpse not only wanted to distance himself from his parents since they’d left him, he chose a single moniker that sounds exactly like what you’d expect a sad entitled teenager to name himself. he’s going for the ominous and foreboding, but lands on awkward and Edgy. he’s hiding who he really is, and ultimately kills Reva Connors to maintain this persona.
(idk if its said when he stopped going by Kevin Thompson but i’d bet money he was 13-14, though he never grew up anyway so)
Gregory Sallinger is his real name and it’s so scholarly sounding of course he’s the villain. he’s got all his awards and trophies on display and has no problem flaunting his accomplishments, he worked hard for them. he’s hiding his past as well, but instead of create a new persona he builds around what he has to present as a contribution to society, a good man who volunteers and even supports that couple who lost their son! just don’t look under the gazebo he helped build and you’ll be hard pressed to find any real incriminating evidence.
5.
then, probably the thing that made me think of the duality here, Kilgrave is a sexual predator and Sallinger has no shown attraction to anyone. some poor chef mistakes the bound and gagged routine as foreplay and Sallinger is genuinely shocked, the chef says he seems like he’s never kissed anyone before. they both run on power but a completely different kind of lust.
6.
no shade to Jeremy Bobb, but Sallinger is intentionally dressed down and made to be unattractive to help with not drawing attention. he looks like a normal guy, he can’t seem to turn on the charm but he does a fantastic victim voice.
Kilgrave is played by a ridiculously popular and charismatic actor. you know this. he’s also British in New York so he sticks out more, as if he was really hiding in the first place.
7.
sidebar, i really love how the theme of trauma and responsibility is handled in the show. none of the heroes are paragons, and are struggling with their own trauma and reinforce the message that while you shouldn’t have gone through what you did, it doesn’t ever justify your abuse of others. you shouldn’t have to carry this pain, but you are and you don’t get to take it out on others and spread it.
Kilgrave claims he cant be held accountable for his actions because he was abused medically and he cant shut off his powers, they’re inherently a part of him now. disregarding how both Jess and Luke clearly reign in their strength despite that also not being a power you can switch off, and both of them being medically abused as well and shockingly not coping with r///pe and murder.
Sallinger is almost directly stated to have no empathy, since Erik assumes his powers work by detecting the lack of it. Sallinger can’t- and since the whole empathy thing is speculation from other characters, doesn’t seem to try to - lean on what would be a legitimate condition in the real world to excuse his crimes, instead he himself decides he’s just right. he tells himself this is accountability, he can stomach doing disgusting things that others can’t so he must right the world.
he’s shown actively choosing to murder another child for upstaging him (makes those second place trophies grim eh?) as a teen and then justifying it retroactively with the delusion that he’s just weeding out the cheaters in the world. he keeps going and going because he’s not a murderer he’s a hero.
8.
they both attack someone close to the heroes just to rub it in, as well. Luke is made to fight Jess and survives albeit with a severe head injury that could’ve killed him, and Erik is captured and survives albeit with a migraine that legitimately could’ve killed him.
so Kilgrave used his powers on someone and Sallinger used someone’s powers against him, basically.
9.
Kilgrave is responsible for oh, so many deaths but the turning point is Hope, who was the only reason Jess hadn’t taken him out yet. he doesn’t mean for her to take her own life, ironically, but she hits a point of despair and realizes she’s his last thread and well, snaps.
so Jess tracks him down and snaps his neck.
Sallinger kidnaps and murders Dorothy, whom the heroes are tenuously working a lot of things out with. she’s not the innocent bystander, the sacrificial lamb that Hope was - she’s a (debatably) reformed abusive mother. they make it clear that Trish loves her but hates her for what she did, and it’s heartbreakingly realistic and messy.
so is her neck wound, damn.
so it’s no shock that Trish goes off the deep end, hero complex throwing her into overdrive.
10.
but its not the same as Jess killing Kilgrave. Kevin Thompson was a whiny entitled brat, but one with a power that could not be tamed or controlled and who would never change his ways. Gregory Sallinger was a whiny entitled brat with no powers, but a wicked intelligence. He could be stopped without killing him, it wasnt necessary. He was only human, after all.
Kilgrave dies in a moment of vigilante justice, the last opportunity the only immune person in New York would probably ever have to stop him. it’s quick and poetic, he doesn’t get to beg or plead. no theatrics, like so much of his crimes were.
Sallinger dies in police custody, his freedom gone and helpless. his guards ripped away from him and crowded into the corner of the basement elevator, beat and stomped to death in a moment of vigilante fury.
and their killers both face justice. Jess is shown in interrogation willing to pay for what she did, while the case is made that it was not only self defense, but the defense of the 50+ people he’d surrounded himself with on the dock. Trish tries to run but is ultimately brought back by Jess and is read the list of what she’d done with little to no thought behind impulsive righteous anger, including multiple accounts of assault that didnt need to happen.
(Trish’s story is a whole post on its own)
11.
this may be a stretch, but in a way the impact on the story are mirrored too. it’s skewed by Sallinger appearing in the last season and therefore less oppurtunity, but even just comparing s1 to s3 Kilgrave stays a force to be reckoned with up to and after his lifeless body hits the dock. he’s a walking metaphor for r//pe culture, which won’t be stopped by the death of one man. that’s a big part of the point of r/pe culture and the discussion around it, so of course he dies late into the last episode and still has defenders afterwards. season 3 is less about Sallinger as a representative of privilege and toxic masculinity, though it’s there, and is instead more about Trish and Jess’ relationship and how they view their own places in the world.
again, another post, but it’s a cool thing in my mind that this show made the point that Jess is not defined by her abuser, nor anyone she faces but her own choices and relationships.
and i’m still crying over Trish okay but that is something i’m not prepared to breach right now
Ufalıp cebimize giren o yıldızların ışığıyla aydınlatılan yazılar
Susması gerektiğini söyledim ona, zaten o saatten sonra bir daha hiç konuşmadı. Bir Temmuz ayıydı, zor zamanlar geçirdiğini biliyordum ama zaman bizi o kadar uzaklaştırmıştı ki bizden, ikimizden, biliyordum bir daha asla olmayacaktı. Bir daha asla yaşanmayacak, bir daha asla hissedilmeyecekti, zaten buna ne zaman izin verdi... Ne de biz... Zamanın içinde kendimi hep sorgular oldum; konuşsam ne olurdu? Bu soru ne zaman aklıma takılsa o, orada aklımın karanlıklarında yok oluyordu çünkü artık bu imkansızlığın içinde onu kendi ellerimle boğuyordum. Geceleri rüyaların içinde sonsuz yolculuklara çıkabiliyordum aslında, içimde de eh işte yaşayacak kadar bir kıpırtı vardı ama bir boşluk vardı, bir kara delik ve öyle ki bir kez kapıldınız mı ona, zulümat-ı ademe merhaba diyordunuz. Ben de artık ne yapacağımı şaşırmıştım. Bakın hayatta kalmayı, yaşamayı deniyordum. Günlük olarak rutin hayatıma devam ediyordum işte. Bir şey yapmadan duramıyordum, durduğumda bilirdim boşluğun beni içine çekeceğini. Kelebeğin kanatları arasında ezilip gideceğimi. Saatlerce düşündüğümü bilirim, sadece bakarak pek hissetmeden, yani zamanın durması gibi biraz belki de kalp atışımın durması gibi bilemiyorum ki...Geçmişteki insanları düşünürdüm, sahneler gözümün önüne öyle canlı gelirlerdi ki inanın o anı yaşıyor gibi olurdum ama biri gelse sabah ne yediğimi sorsa inanın hatırlayamazdım. Sonra kendimi sorgulamaya başlardım, neden böyle dedim, neden öyle dedi, böyle deseydim ne olurdu? Aman bunların hepsi fasa fiso. Bilmiyorum belki de insanları unutmamak için anılarımda yaşatmaya çalışıyordum. Biliyordum zordu, birini anılarda yaşatmak zordu.
"Don't ever tell anybody anything, if you do, you start missing everybody."
- J.D. Sallinger, Catcher in the Rye
I just finished Jessica Jones season 3 and it was so good! I’ll miss Krysten Ritter’s effortless portrayal of this character a lot... shout out to Rachael Taylor for a stand out performance as Trish Waker too, this show was one of the greats 💜
