Above all else, Jess wants to tell a good story. She prefers to use a female perspective and fantastical elements. Even in 2019, Jess feels like the lives, emotions, and challenges of women are shrouded in mystery or intentionally misrepresented. She hopes to shine a light and spark discussion through a fictional work.
Jessica is dazzled by magic and the history of magic in humanity’s culture. She finds it a wonderful academic and creative challenge to take the old mythic structure and modernize it. She had a professor once who assigned the class to write an epic poem borrowing on the structure and themes of works like “The Odyssey.” Jess wrote a poem on Mario Kart. She was scolded for the “transient, fleeting nature” of her epic poem. To his mind, she’d done the letter but not the spirit of the assignment. Jess thought then, and believes now, that humanity lacks the ability to name what story will last the test of time and become part of the larger mythic structure. All twenty of Jess’s classmates knew from the first line that her poem referenced Mario Kart. Perhaps the professor is the one who doesn’t understand what is culturally relevant for an epic poem.
Are Mario Kart and stories like “The Odyssey” comparable? Minimally, Jess believes “The Odyssey” would make a great video game platform and Odysseus would have many fun power-ups and fighting moves much like the modern Mario.
Courting controversy and discussion when exploring the evolution of magic and myth over time is something Jess welcomes and wishes there was more of in the world. She embraces a diversity of thought and seeks a world where expressing difference is welcome.
