"And yet I have felt ... apart from the others." (Jocasta)

"And yet I have felt ... apart from the others."

"Our Constructs, Ourselves..." was the original title of this piece.  That was where I started.  

But I should explain how I got there.

I should explain why the main character shown in the various pictures in this article is so very important to me.

Let me elaborate on my thought process, then, as follows:

There's a growing observation among people who study the phenomenon of transgendered physically-male-identifying-female children that many of them have a particular fascination with mermaids.  Theories abound as to why this is the case, but one of the more common opinions centers around the essential characteristic of a mermaid as being two different beings at the same time.

They are described as creature torn between two worlds - often, in the fairy tales about mermaids, identifying with one world while being forced to live in another.

I, however, never shared in this fascination. 

I actually found mermaids to be a little dull, because they tended to be limited creatures in the fairy tales. 

Now, I know there are plenty of stories today featuring mermaids of the "man-eater" variety as seen in the most recent PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movie. 

But back in the 70s and 80s, I wasn't aware of that kind of mermaid.  The only mermaids I knew about were the kind who flirted with Peter Pan or swooned endlessly over princes before throwing themselves off of ships committing suicide as part of some magical ritual or the other.  Needless to say, but said anyway, this wasn't exactly an appealing model for someone trying to figure themselves out in life. 

However, there was a different type of "fantasy creature" through which I did find inspiration, albeit a different kind of inspiration.

Robots.

In case you're not familiar with this character, her name is Jocasta.  

She's my favorite character out of all those who have been AVENGERS.  

Without going into an endless description of the up-and-down life of Jocasta, I'll summarize her origin thusly:  Jocasta is to Janet Van Dyne as Ultron is to Hank Pym - sortakinda.  

Her first appearance was in AVENGERS (Vol. 1) #162, for the collection-minded folks out there reading this.  Jocasta's origin is also tied in with a plotline about her being Ultron's bride. 

However, that's not how I came to know Jocasta.  I wasn't an AVENGERS reader at that time.  

I came in later, after she herself was actually a member of the AVENGERS instead of an antagonist. 

True, the character meandered through most story-lines and was woefully underused and underdeveloped.

Being a female Marvel character, she still is underdeveloped to this day - when she's brought up at all.

But to me, she was incredibly brave and an incredibly important character.  Heck, she spent her formative years dealing with Ultron.

In Jocasta, I saw a version of myself.  I saw in her someone who had been created one way by fate, chance or the whim of the universe. 

In her case, that creation was based on the idea of her being born to be a bride for Ultron.  But I certainly understood the idea that she was an active rebel against her very essence, eventually coming to reject the labels placed upon her. 

She also rejected the expectations of others by insisting, after much struggling, on being her own person, on refusing to be defined by Ultron - or even by the AVENGERS, and instead on being recognized as an independent being who chose justice and nobility and self-designation and self-identity as an active component of herself based on her own choice.  

Of course, Marvel is full of characters who feel somehow "different" from everyone else, as Thor points out in the panel above this paragraph.  However, there's more to Jocasta than that in my opinion. 

To me, Jocasta represents someone whose very structure was created without regard to how she would one day see herself. 

She is forced every day to prove to herself and everyone else who and what she really is because her every physical aspect is based on an origin she eventually came to want no part of, set up in the universe to "serve" a purpose she didn't ask for nor want. 

I understood that feeling very well and felt tremendous empathy for Jocasta.

I understood that she not only felt different because of who she is, but also because of what she ISN'T, and that resonated with me. 

Her differences are also right there on the surface, at least in the incarnation that inspired me.  She is instantly recognizable to both the reader and the public of the Marvel Universe when she appears in public as "what" she "is." 

People see her and, most of the time, their minds will simply identify her as "robot" or "machine."  But she is sentient, has a "soul," as it were - and has proved that over her various appearances.

But she has to PROVE it to everyone, over and over, because her physical appearance is one thing and her mind is something different.

She's not a cold, unfeeling machine.  She's a being of intense will and determination.  And she knows when she's being manipulated or tricked - which has happened to her quite often in her life.

She doesn't put up with it.

That recognition is an undercurrent of the best appearances of Jocasta.

She's someone who struggles with knowing that she's going to be fighting to be recognized as a living, human being every day - the same way a lot of people like me have to struggle to be "seen" as who we are in the inside versus some sort of basic "book by its cover" mentality.

Likewise, there was always a sense with Jocasta that - given her origin as an antagonist - she understood that she was never fully going to be trusted, being based as she was on the "designs" (in two senses of the word) of Ultron, one of the AVENGERS' most dangerous enemies. 

And this tended - again, with the best writers - to create an empathy with the character where she tended to notice and be aware of the outcasts by her very nature, taking the task of being protective of people who are "different" even as she has to deal with the traumas of that life herself - perhaps BECAUSE of those traumas. 

That inspired me, too, as a young person.  The metaphor in the image above this paragraph could be applied to any number of outsider groups - but it is a truism of Jocasta as much as it's a truism of my own life:  being different is dangerous on its own, but being publicly different and mingling with others of "your own kind" can make a person a target for all kinds of hostility and violence by a society that refuses to understand or have sympathy for people who are different.

As comic books have evolved away from mass-market appeal and into the shadowy corners of the direct market universe, characters like Jocasta have gone with it.  Misunderstood souls who retain their nobility have mostly given way to gritted-toothed vigilante bristling with weapons, even in THE AVENGERS, even amidst the so-called "Heroic Age of Marvel."  

There was a time when a comic could last for years featuring THE THING as the main character and could feature a whole comic with JOCASTA as the "special guest star."  I include the image above of MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE because it illustrates, to me, how much comics have changed. 

Would a character like Jocasta even get ANY billing in today's world where every book has to feature Wolverine or Spider-Man?  Is there any room for characters to inspire the "outsiders" who might be reading if every comic has to feature the most broadly-appealing and inclusive characters?  I submit not.  Furthermore, hearing people talk about "fake nerd girls" lately got me thinking back to Jocasta. 

Telling someone they're "gross" because they're different from your understanding is the ultimate in snap-judgment mini-hysteria, and in a way is very much in keeping with the anti-mutant mistrust found in old issues of X-MEN (now vanished in the comics, despite flourishing in real life with people other than "mutants" - take your choice of metaphors, again).

Can you imagine someone looking at Jocasta in the comics and saying "You're not the same as the people I'm used to being around and you seem like you're just artificial.  You're not really a person; you're gross!"  How disheartening that would be to someone like my young self who gained so much inspiration from Jocasta. 

Imagine how you'd feel if the type of people who inspire you the most were demeaned and degraded instead of celebrated for their differences.

Perhaps, instead of judging people you don't "like" or understand, maybe a better tactic is to ask questions - to TRY to understand, to reach out to someone who confuses you because of how they present themselves, to try to bridge barriers of misunderstanding and cross those lines.  Why is it that the people attacking "fake nerd girls" have not once, to my knowledge, started that discourse with QUESTIONS, like asking these so-called "fake nerd girls" what they love about nerd culture, what their favorite characters have in common with the characters these questioners love, where the common ground might lie, how to avoid misunderstandings, how to be seen as not merely the Bride of Ultron but as Jocasta, a being with her own mind and her own unique way of inspiring readers like myself?

After all, I figure that's what Jocasta would do.

And she's a robot.