Lesser Evils: How The Shadow Self Subverts Gaslighting
This Might Be What My Audience Wants More
So here I am doing a small analysis on the basic look on a comic that stuck with me. Because honestly, anything else just felt like work while doing this feels pretty good.
Lesser Evils: Outline
Lesser Evils is a vertically scrolling comic/webtoon by the Resistance’s AWA in its own imprint. But compared to the Upshot Universe full of Reborns, this title is a paranormal depiction of a breakup.
The main character Lydia is a ceramic artist living her best life. Her job leaves her with fulfillment and has a good boyfriend. Until said boyfriend breaks up with her for a looser woman.
Lydia does not take their breakup well after he leaves with his new squeeze. Tragically, the reader might see the point of her boyfriend breaking up with her. She has mood swings that we haven’t seen before the breakup but apparently the boyfriend did.
Readers don’t even see Lydia with friends except the one she accidentally made. But we’ll come back to Emmett. Her dialogue and mood swings suggest Lydia has repressed emotions and desires even she doesn’t know about. She genuinely wants to fit in to the world and have the things just about everyone wants. But it looks like Lydia had a few unresolved issues that prevented her from noticing certain cues.
The Golem Grants Your Inner Most Wishes
Which is where Emmett, our narrator comes in. He is a golem Lydia accidentally created during her post-breakup breakdown. Golems can mean a lot of things depending on what the maker puts into them. In this case, Lydia put into Emmett all of her repressed emotions and desires. From the simple things she always wanted to do like make a Bloody Mary to a few pranks on her ex-boyfriend.
But that antagonism also goes into pretty dark places. Not just when Emmett tries to murder her ex when he comes to confront Lydia either. But when it looks like the ex can’t see Emmett at first, Lydia starts to remembers all of the things she did with Emmett as just herself. Especially when she didn’t even remember the more dire parts. It was like Lydia tried to find a way to blame her worst traits on something else.
Yet one of the more interesting things comes from an innuendo scene between Emmett and Lydia. It’s a scene meant to be about self-love and acceptance.
What This Golem Means
This more or less aligns with a psychological concept called the Shadow Self. It’s an emotional blind spot in the psyche projected outwards that a person denies about themselves. Even the way Lydia encounters Emmett mirrors the stages of treating a shadow.
As an artist, Lydia’s active imagination allows for the encounter in order for her to become aware of what she’s always had.
Lydia’s bonding journey with Emmett is the merging stage. This naturally includes that libido stage between them and confronting that imbalance of reality and perspective. Because you gotta learn to love yourself including the parts that you don’t like.
Finally the assimilation stage where thanks to her ex providing reality testing, Lydia keeps her ego under control. She now knows what she wants and now has a stronger consciousness.
Unfortunately the same can’t be said for Emmett. He’s still driven by Lydia’s desires and has to act on them entirely. Until Lydia had to fire him. It’s a clay ceramic term.
Why Lesser Evils Stood Out
Lesser Evils also confronts a trend that’s been going around in social lives, gaslighting.
When the reader empathetically connects with Lydia, they naturally assume the worst out of her ex. By their perspective Lydia did nothing wrong and it seems he’s just shallow. When he confronts Lydia about the harm her sabotage caused him and his new squeeze, it can seem like a sensitive woman is blaming herself for an abusive relationship. Like the ex is filling in the blanks of someone with a troubled mind.
But thanks to Emmett, we see that Lydia is responsible for her decisions. After defeating Emmett, she comes to terms with her breakup. While she accepts her part in the process, Lydia won’t let her ex be the controlling factor. Because he really was pretty shallow.
Meaning, this isn’t gaslighting at all, just getting out of self-delusion.
…
Something that Emmett also gets as he walks away from Lydia on the last panels. How? Dunno nothing came after this.
Be Good Studios Successful Experiment
In all consideration, Lesser Evils is more of an experiment in vertical storytelling. The more stylized art helps give emotions like most of South Korea’s webtoons. That and the suspense factor from the infinite scrolling really plays into it. All of which follow an outline from a simple story to a great payoff. And there are more of them all around including a hard drinking genie.
The only problem, the imprint it was under was let go from AWA. Now the man behind it Bill Jemas has to start his own company. But that’s a post for another time.