Alter Ego Joey And Self-Projection

I have had a very strong alter-ego since I was a child. My "default self" is simply too introverted to function in the outside world, so when I was young, being highly creative and writing my still-ongoing comic Swamp City, I developed another me. 

My initial alter-ego began easily as Joey, a name I picked for my female comic character taken from the name originally chosen for me which was Josephine. Joey functions as the "military" of the four friends, which is what I functioned as at school with friends and in the neighborhood [where, true to the comic, I only had male friends and was treated as a male.] 

So, in the initial "episode," called Killer Frogs, Joey wants the group nerd to help her turn tadpoles into frog-piranha hybrids to work as a little army. This isn't a far cry from something I did do as a child. Anyway, Joey is a relatively violent tomboy who carries a grappling hook and hides her horrible crush on William (the male character above and below who is scared to death of Joey. He isn't based on anyone, just a composite male I made up as a kid.) 

 [Everybody Hurts, Joey/William, when Joey begins lashing out at William more than usual in an attempt to lie to herself about her feelings.]

Joey is very proud Tomboy and thinks of herself as a male, although she has moments when she can't seem to live up to her internalized ideal of a male. These things usually involve William or when she gets PMS which she hysterically denies having. She denies having any feelings at all other than anger. Being an 12 year old girl, she has a lot of frustration with what she is known as and what she thinks she should be VS what she is becoming physically and romantically. 

She is so adamant about fighting her gender, she shocks everyone when she finally stop swimming in trunks and a tank top and buys a "sissy suit" aka a bikini. She further shocks the group, other than the *probably* gay Hunter who helps her prepare for a middle school dance in Joey's Lament, when she shows up looking better than the cheerleaders.

In my thoughts about the creation of Erika [my darkness personified] and Candice [me as an adult which I am in real life] I have been forced to look at Joey, the original alter-ego. Erika is basically Joey on a really bad day as a teenager, and Candice is Joey emotionally destroyed and in her 20's. Those two characters are simply variations of Joey. 

It is very interesting to me that I was using this as a coping mechanism as a nine-year-old. What is more interesting to me is the very few differences between my actual 12-year-old self and the alter-ego Joey I used to function with the Extroverted World. 

There are very few. My actual self was more introverted, obviously, which is how Joey even came into be. My actual self had [has] a lot of paranoia which I projected through the Joey personality as aggression. If you knew me as a pre-tee and teenager...well, you would know I was extremely aggressive and still am in many instances. I may have been less violent than the Joey personality, seeing as I never actually assaulted anyone with my grappling hooks [I still love those] and if I had been in as many fights as Joey or burned down buildings or a regular basis I would be locked up somewhere, but I was definitely aggressive. My actual self spent a lot of time....drawing and reading and writing, obviously, and Joey is shown mostly as being outside in the wild [what I did when I wasn't being a geek], hiding her artistic abilities and intelligence in favor of looking like a badass. 

 [Such a Time As This]

The main theme of Swamp City is that these four misfits are constantly harassed by the Duck Mafia [a thing that actually happened at my highschool, basically angry intolerant rednecks] and when they are united as friends in the above scene by the leader of the Duck Mafia, who happens to be William's older brother, kidnaps them for questioning about their "not being right." William's intelligence makes him a target because he refuses to participate or fit into the redneck agenda. Joey is a target because she has single handedly taken on each member of the Duck Mafia after they beat her up for being a "he-she" when she was younger. Colt is Creole and therefore looks odd, being basically black with red hair. Hunter is flamboyantly pretending to not be gay, but everyone knows he is, which rednecks obviously hate. You get the picture. This is a decent representation of how my pre-teen years were well into college. 

[Joey planning an attack alone in Such a Time as This]

Outwardly, there are no differences between my actual self and Joey in looks or behavior other than things that limit me because she's a cartoon and I am not. And the more I look into this and the concept of alter-egos, I realize that as she developed in Swamp City over the years, there aren't many internal differences, either. 

[Everybody Hurts.]

You're not getting away this time, Jupiter. You've been using emotions I don't even have to gain information on my people, and let me get this straight and let me tell you a thing, you don't fuck with my people and you don't fuck with emotions I don't have. - Joey, "Burn It Down."

Dizzy.