#all of this was on my mind when i wrote unbecoming jordan hennessy over four (!!!) years ago

[crimeronan]

thank u for tagging me. i am always and will always be on my hennessy bullshit no matter how long it's been since i read cdth. (and i am still into trc, just blog about it less often!)

i think about DID system jordan hennessy ALL THE TIIIIIIME. i have for YEARS.

actually, when the books were coming out, she was so strongly DID-coded that i was worried the plot resolution would hinge on an "integration" of "one true jordan hennessy," the way a lot of long-term """cure""" plans for DID do. whether through one version of jordan hennessy dying or through all the dream bodies being morphed back together.

that possibility freaked me out, Especially because it felt like it would probably be achieved through jordan supplanting a dead hennessy as the "real" jordan hennessy.

my irritation with some of greywaren's plot resolutions aside, thank god for jordan and hennessy's separate-but-convergent storylines. a less skilled writer WOULD have killed hennessy off so jordan could take her place, and would have treated that as the "happy ending." THANK U STIEF FOR HENNESSY'S LIFE!! 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

yes yes yes re: the lace as a metaphor for trauma. that hennessy's first split comes on the night her mum kills herself is So Significant. so too are the following splits. the other girls as new alters who have a lot in common with hennessy but who nonetheless have grown to be their own people..... and each of them serving their own purpose in the System of jordan hennessy. june as the one who cares about the system's future and can see a way out of being jordan hennessy, madox as the one who's righteously furious about what happened to them, farrah as the one who wants to be saved, brooklyn as the hypersexual party girl who just wants to feel good, trinity as all of the system's sadness and hopelessness and emptiness, octavia and alba and jay as more destructive alters who all want themselves or the larger system dead for their own purposes....

and jordan and hennessy as the most fully-realized POV characters have their archetypes, too. hennessy as the system's protector and jordan as the system's caretaker.... their tumultuous relationship and their character arcs slot SO well into these archetypes that it's hard to believe it isn't intentional. (i don't know if stief thought at all about DID writing them, but if not, she sure had her finger on the pulse!)

jordan as the one who's keeping the system alive by having hope for the future, by taking care of the girls, by trying so hard to keep them safe. hennessy as the one who's keeping the system alive by safeguarding the memories of their mother's abuse, by sacrificing all of her well-being to shield the girls, by staying alive thru substance abuse and violence and anger and self-destruction because it's the only way she CAN stay alive.

jordan's anger over hennessy having made her without their mother's memories, hennessy's inability to explain that the lack of those memories is WHY jordan is such a complete person when hennessy herself feels like she isn't. hennessy's inability to explain that everything she is and could be is built on a bedrock of trauma. jordan's inability to understand why hennessy has taken all of this onto herself and won't let jordan help her. jordan as someone who was created to help and who is fucking Collapsing under that pressure....

i don't know how much else i can say, i just. i think about it all the time. i think about it All The Time.

jordan hennessy, guys. Waow.

do u ever think about how plural/system henessy comes across in cdth. because it haunts me

hmm for sure I always felt like the multiple henesseys were a narrative representation of DID if it makes sense? the lace as a vessel for trauma and the hennesseys branching off as a result of it - with the dreaming kind of intervening and changing how it might have manifested otherwise. but I really am not thee person for Hennessey deepdiving💔the td3 characters really didn't stick the same to me as trc did .. that said @crimeronan would probably offer better input !