~Insert words here~C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A LJ E S S I C A C A M P B E L L J O N E S ♦ F U N C T I O N A L A L C O H O L I C ♦ N E W Y O R K, N E W Y O R K ♦ A L I A S I N V E S T I G A T I O N SC H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:"I told you when you hired me-- These things-- These things rarely end well. "Well, except for some tweaking of the backstory this is the general run-of-the-mill Jessica. Namely she didn’t get hospitalized by the Avengers during her time with Kilgrave for obvious reason. I recently rewatched You Were Never Really Here and had a chance to play Disco Elysium, so I’ve been thinking a lot about Trauma lately and its relation to the thriller/detective genre. I guess, fundamentally the biggest thing I went to do with Jessica is explore that trauma. As someone who personally deals with Post Traumatic Stress Order for reasons not unlike Jessica’s and who ended up coping with it in similar ways for a long while, so the idea speaks to me in a real core way. (Write what you know and all that, I guess.) Jessica is going to be struggling and I’ll put content warning stuff out there right now about things like self-harm and suicide if people would rather want to avoid that. I don’t want to glorify trauma in anyway, but I also don’t want to pull any punches either and I feel that the identity at the core of Jessica is good at handling that. I also want to juxtapose this core idea of trauma and helplessness with another about control and how those in power manifest different kinds of control. To that end, I want to take Jessica out of New York’s mean streets and into its penthouses with me also taking inspiration from a lot of Gibson’s post-cyberpunk works especially the “Bigend cycle”.C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:To quote the youtuber Screened on his piece about You Were Never Really Here "This is a Story of an Exhausted Woman... trying to find a Reason to Stay." Jessica Jones is a broken woman. She spends almost all the money she makes on her alcoholism and she tries to kill herself at least once a week. The unaddressed trauma of her life, particularly the death of her family and a horrid encounter with Kilgrave early in her detective career has left in dire straits in terms of her mental health. But even though Jones is broken she is still a strong woman both literally due to her super strength and metaphorically due to her tenacity. Jessica throws herself completely at her detective work in order to avoid her own problems. As a result, Alias Investigations has a growing reputation for its track record and more and more powerful people have begun to ask after Jessica. This season will primarily follow Jessica as she is dunked headfirst into the darker side of New York’s rich and famous and how she deals with it. I also aim to focus on more smaller vignettes this time around guided by an overarching plot instead of doing the usually long-form style that I usually work with.C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:Supporting Characters:
Detective Zoe Kim - Contact for Jessica in the NYPD.
Patsy Walker - an old friend of Jessica's and secretly the vigilante known as Hellcat.
Mercedes "Misty" Knight - Owner of Knightwing Restorations Ltd, a security consulting firm with her partner
Colleen Wing. Knight was a cop who turned P.I during New York's crime boom in the 1980s due to her disillusionment with the force. Serves as an impromptu mentor to Jessica from time to time.
Mohsin Chadha - NYC'S Commissioner for Cultural Affairs and rising up and comer in the Democratic Party. Hired Jessica to find his daughter Sahiba who has gone missing.
Kilgrave - The one they call the purple man. Used his mind control powers to make Jessica his own personal slave for the better half of a year without her even knowing.
S A M P L E P O S T:The last few nights had been hard on Jessica Jones. Sleep avoided her like the plague replaced only with waking hallucinations that felt more real than anything else she had felt for the last three days. Whenever she closed her eyes to try and sleep, she saw the color purple and heard laughing. That laughing followed her everywhere: at the grocery store, on her daily run, and especially in the shower. Getting rid of the bathroom mirror by putting a fist sized hole through it had helped initially, but the laughter crept back into her head soon enough. She finished all the booze she had, and then she spent the last of her tucked away rent money stuffed underneath her mattress on more. The booze didn’t even help her sleep anymore, but it still thankfully worked as a mental anesthetic. But now even that booze was running low and she feared that a dry spell would send her over the edge. That’s why when Jessica got a text from an old friend to meet her on the Coney Island Boardwalk, she jumped at the opportunity and took the Q as far as it would take her.
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Jessica flicked her lighter on and off. It was a tick that she did when she was anxious, agitated, or waiting like she was now. She cupped the flame with her free hand to shield it from the sea breeze that habituated the boardwalk. Sitting there with the fur lined collar of her trucker jacket pulled up against her neck making it look like a priest’s habit, Jessica couldn't help but feel like she belonged in a Tarkovsky film. Unfortunately, the mere mention of Tarkovsky triggered a primordial gag reflex in her. She dated a film critic once and they collectively decided to do a marathon viewing of the Russian's work while slamming down several bottles of $15 Georgian vodka; she vomited for a week after that. Now the mere mention of Avant Garde Slavic filmmakers made her stomach do somersaults.
"Stomach disagreeing with you?"
Detective Zoe Kim sat down next to her. A solid streak of grey hair along her left temple made her look older than her mid-thirties. Dressed in all black with a matching leather jacket torn at the left shoulder and patched with duct tape, Zoe looked more like Lou Reed than a cop. But, the way she walked, like she owned the city, like she knew it like the back of her hand could have only been acquired by someone who had walked the beat.
"Cause you look like you're about to throw up your lunch Jones."
"Shut it Kim," Jessica croaked forcing down a rising current of bile "it's just a psychological reaction."
"Sure looks like a psychological reaction," Kim replied with a shake of her head "you mind if I borrow a light?"
Jessica raised the open flame of her lighter to a cigarette that Kim produced from her jacket pocket. There was a slight tremble in Kim's outreached hand that neither of them commented on. Permanent nerve damage that occurred on the pair's first outing. Kim took a bullet for her before she knew about the whole gene altering chemicals deal. The bullet luckily didn't go anywhere lethal, but it did fuck with the nerves in her left arm. After that she was shifted up the chain of command where she found detectives spend a lot more time sitting behind a desk than doing actual police work.
"You know," started Kim as she exhaled a cloud of smoke "this was the first place I saw someone die? I was 13 down at the amusement park and this kid had just won a big stuffed polar bear to impress a girl. It was one of those big bears holding a heart, real sappy shit. Turns out though the girl's boyfriend wasn't moved by the suitor's advances and he drove a knife between the kid's ribs. The bear didn't stay too white after that."
"Love hurts." summarized Jessica with a shrug as she stashed her lighter away.
"Ain't that the truth," replied Kim with a philosopher's solemn nod "though I suppose I didn't call you here to bitch about my childhood trauma."
"Yeah," replied Jessica "you usually only do that when you're drunk."
"Haha," Kim answered in a dead monotone "you know I can always offer this gig to somebody else."
"You'll be hard fucking pressed finding somebody better than me."
Silently conceding to Jessica's point, Kim withdrew a Manila folder from inside her jacket pocket and handed it over without comment. The first thing Jessica noticed was the word CONFIDENTIAL written in red permanent marker across the width of the folder. The second thing Jessica noticed was that the folder was very light which signaled to her that the case was either very old or very new, and judging by the fresh marker smell she suspected it was the latter. Jessica reached into the folder and in her digging she caught the edge of something smooth which she withdrew from the envelope.
It was a 4x12 print of a girl standing in front of the library at Bryant park. She was dressed stylishly in the latest trends and with long black hair that fell to about her waist. Young adult in her early twenties, judging by the cut of her clothes came from a wealthy family, and if Jessica had to guess probably Pakistani or Indian. She looked happy, but if she was happy then Jessica wouldn’t have to get involved.
“Who is she?” asked Jessica as she peered closer at the photo as if some hidden secrets would reveal themselves to her.
“Sahiba Chadha,” Kim stated as she ground the stub of her cigarette out into the bench they were sitting on “senior at Columbia, studies Sociology, wants to pursue her PhD, and the daughter of the current Commissioner of Cultural Affairs - Mohsin Chadha.”
“And what’s wrong with her?”
“She’s been missing for a week now.”
“Are you and the good old boys in blue looking into it?” questioned Jessica.
“No investigation has been opened up, and I should let you know Jones,” answered Kim “this call comes straight from the Mayor’s office.”
Jessica raised a brow. She knew that soon after Kim got promoted the Mayor’s office had reached out to her to perform some consulting, but she hadn’t realized Kim had become the Mayor’s hand in the force. It was something that Jessica could never do, she hated politics with a passion and tried her best to keep a respectable distance from any governmental office. But Kim had rent to pay like anyone else and Jessica figured it helped having friends in high places.
“What’s the Mayor’s office have to do with this?” Jessica asked as she slotted the photo back into the envelope.
“Mohsin Chadha is the man that the establishment is grooming to be the next Mayor. A big enough scandal could bring down a mayoral race before it even starts. So, the powers that be want to do everything in their power to solve this problem before the press get their hands on it. So that means no NYPD, and especially no official investigations.”
“Only little old me,” finished Jessica “I hope the “establishment” knows that I don’t come cheap.”
“Check the bottom of the bag.” replied Kim who by this point had turned her gaze away from her companion and towards the water.
Jessica reached further down and felt her hands brush up against a small bundle held together by a binder clip. Pulling the bundle out of the envelope revealed it to be a neat collection of hundred-dollar bills, and if Jessica’s quick tally was right, she was looking at about five grand. Jessica nodded approvingly before she stuffed the bundle back into the envelope and out of public eye. It was enough to pay rent and make sure she didn’t go into withdrawal this month.
“You’ll get another five thousand at the completion of the job with room for potential bonuses.” Kim replied still looking at the outgoing tide.
“Is this excursion taxpayer funded?” asked Jessica.
“That would leave a paper trail.” Kim pointed out and didn’t need to elaborate more than that.
“Last question,” Jessica asked as she ran her free hand through her hair “when do I start?”P O S T C A T A L O G:n/a
1x Thank
5x Thank
