#{{ Anyways-- somebody get jervis furious enough to say “ You rotten misbegotten abomination ” I beg you lmao }}

[alicesought]

{{ --OKAY But it's the CONTRAST you knOW--

There's so many parallels and contrasts like Being set in modern day instead of literally victorian london, but the way jervis perceives the gutters of Gotham parallels precisely with the rotten underbelly of London in the era his mind is always pretending to be in anyhow, and he would distort through his eyes just as Liddel does and see Gotham as this colorless, smog filled, ugly and mean reality where everyone is either malicious or apathetic. He can easily go into Wonderland and come to reality accidentally in the company of human traffickers and violent drunks much the same as Liddel in modern Gotham, I have no doubt.

And then the fact that he doesn't resent his lost innocence, he resents whats trying to tarnish what's left of it, and thoroughly believes, probably even subconsciously, that the good and just thing to do is to restore the innocence of his Wonderland-- not grow and mature in the same way Alice does. and I think that part comes from not being a teenager as well-- he's not coming of age, he's nostalgic, and he has much more experience with control over his Wonderland. So his Wonderland likely wouldn't antagonize him in that way naturally, if it does, it might even be guilt for failing to save them, seeing his imaginary friends as victims of... whatever it is that's invading his brain. it would only be oppressive toward him if the story needed him to go against his own delusions. ( Then, it very well could begin tearing his self worth down, I'm sure lol ) But I feel like that wouldn't be his end goal, he wouldn't kill any Wonderland character besides maybe some card guards or a bandersnatch. Jervis loves the characters of Wonderland, Alice Liddel is... apathetic to them often times, sometimes outright hates them. That's one major difference. If Jervis is driven to kill or hurt a Wonderland character something is very wrong. And maybe that's his conflict...

You see, he must be the lesser of two evils, because he's not a good person, and I don't feel like this story would be aiming to make him so. No, if you're going to root for him, he needs to be in the right enough to empathize but still in character. So his growth would involve being resolute, able to act on his own strange moral code in a way that gives him self respect. AND I SAW someone mention Dr. Strange could take the place of Dr. Bumby in the story-- and I am shocked I did not consider that lmao,, That could really be it tbh, a more complicated spin on what Arkham Jervis went through. A fascist scientist, intent on exterminating the mentally ill, twists jervis' perspective in a way that turns him against his fellow mad men in some feigned promise of safety and happiness in his delusions, as if something is keeping him complacent, but he feels this itch of wrongness from it and just can't be happy, and he has to realize that his desire for escapism and avoidant personality has nearly driven him to acting exactly opposite to his own principles as someone who sees madness as a virtue. So he isn't unravelling his Wonderland delusion, he's solving the mystery that all the conflict he's imagining is a distraction-- or worse, maybe some characters of Wonderland represent other rogues and he's accidentally doing Strange's dirty work and harming-- and so he has to find out who he actually needs to fight.

Rambling rambling rambling, throwing out random thoughts, this has been one long run on sentence, only barely coherent, but I'm done-- }}