Virtue and Sin

After the last Jake/Jamal image I made (theunisonreturns.deviantart.co…), I decided to make another to further hammer home how the ironic devil/saint contrast so perfectly illustrates the awkward relationship between me and my serpentine comrade. As I stated with the other piece, Jake and I are conflicted in that he lives for virtue and is motivated by altruism while I live for vice and let egotism guide my every action; yet in spite of these polar differences we are still the best of friends; albeit with some not-so occasional disagreements and conflicting approaches to moral conundrums. In fact, the satirical theme of how flexible and stretchy the fiber of morality can really be is a pretty prevalent element played for comedic effect throughout the series in the episodes where my and Jake's ideologies clash.

Another fun point to note is that regardless of your most apparent observations, there is further still a deep dark secret that Jamal hides (even from himself). In reality, in spite of all his ill transgressions and self-centered motivations, Jamal is actually every bit as nice and well-meaning as Jake. However where Jake is sweet all the way through, Jamal is a diamond in the rough. He's got a heart of gold with a soul of Lapis, but he'll never admit it in a million years. For the hidden truth about Jamal is that he's actually a Philophobic. For those of you non-Latin scholars out there, "Philophobia" is literally the "fear of love". Philophobics, like Jamal, are people who are terrified by the mere thought of intimacy, commitment, and sentiment. For Jamal, saying "I love you" (and meaning it) is more terrifying than any ghost, goblin, or bogeyman. This is of course the root reason for his constant string self-obsessed misanthropic delinquency. He purposely acts like a dick in order to force people to hate him; preventing anybody from ever having legitimate feelings of tenderness or respect for him; as well as removing the need to reciprocate such emotions. Jake is the only person who seems unaffected by this as his pure well-meaning unoffensive and truly supporting nature is such that even Jamal can't bring himself to invest acting like an asshole toward him. He's just too damn nice!

This also points out another thematic conundrum that Jamal's phobia-induced vice creates, for even though his desire is to make people hate him the fact that he more-or-less spares Jake from this on the terms that he's too altruistic reveals that there is a part of him which retains some shred of moral decency, as he does not wish to bring harm to those who are truly innocent. Archetypically-speaking, this makes Jamal both a devil figure with the essentially good heart as well as something of a reluctant villain. He's obsessed with himself and is most comfortable behaving like selfish prick, but still has just enough good will and conscience as to not want go too far. "You never go full bad guy" as Jamal likes to state. "That's when evil stops being fun".