So I Have A Theory That Jackson's Diary Is Less Of A Supernatural And More Of A Story About Two Mentally

stop what you’re doing and watch this

What about a top 10?

What's your favorite song?

Too hard to choose.

Me: YOU'RE FREE!! YOU CAN'T LET YOUR BODY CONTROL YOU, YOU CONTROL IT. SHOW ME YOUR FREEDOM AND CUT YOUR GENITALIA OFF!

My friend(who's questioning/fighting their gender): ON IT

Me: (SIKE. SIKE😨)

I'll try to talk with you more about my theories/thoughts (and jackela will breakup IK IT😡)

credit to @pidgefudge for this template

Montresor (and Willtresor) are the Bad Ending of White Raven III: now it is personal

Well, after realizing that I have like (check the list) two unfinished "sagas" of essays, I remembered that I had this 80% done and I told myself that maybe it was an excellent time to get on with this shit to keep kicking the archetypes and gothic tragedy essay under the rug

When I thought about this ("hey, if Montresor has so many similarities to Lenore and Annabel, where does that leave Will?"), my first thought was that the parallel would be this:

We have a charming blondie charlatan who arrives just in time to offer their "friendship" (wink, wink) to a poor individual who couldn't be hungrier for affection and validation. A deal sealed with a handshake, otherwise.

Here the parallel between Will and Lenore is drawn in that they are both rather reactive people: they don't take the initiative to do things, they react to things that happen around them. For example, Will wasn't the one who came up with the idea of putting Duke behind the wall, just as Lenore didn't come up with this whole fake rivalry scheme.

But neither of them refuse to participate, either because they think they can get away with it, or because they don't stop to think about the consequences of the things they get into. And, in general, they tend to panic when things don't go their way and immediately back off (even when that's not possible).

But this is where the parallel ends, because their personalities and approaches are completely different: Will tends to curl up in a ball and look for excuses not to get hurt, while Lenore is an extremely blunt weapon capable of taking whatever is thrown at her.

So you can imagine the look on my face when, after thinking it over, I realized that the person Will has the most in common with is not Lenore.

It's Annabel.

Because if we had a nickel for every time we saw a character in Nevermore…

Be willing to tolerate physical harm to protect an object of affection whose game has backfired.

Idealizing that object of affection to obsessive levels.

Taking harmful attitudes out of a desire to be accommodating because they think that's what that person expects of them.

And putting up with it even though it is tearing them apart inside...

We would have two nickels. It's not much, but it's interesting that it happened twice.

With that, I could up the ante and point out something else that Annabel and Will have in common: they're both invisible people. Will is someone no one gives a second glance to, while Annabel is seen more as an object or an idea than an individual (a pretty accessory in life, an unbeatable queen in death). They don't really matter to anyone.

Except for one person. One person for whom they are willing to give absolutely everything. Their lives, their physical integrity, their identity.

This creates an enormous fear of being abandoned by that person, when they have given them such an important part of their self-construction, who are they without them?

Then there is the particular way in which they both understand relationships. Annabel has openly stated that she sees social relationships as commercial exchanges. It is not known whether Will has a similar view, but in practice he behaves much like Annabel in this respect: they see themselves as important to the extent that they can be useful to their particular person. Tools to be used, rather than individuals deserving some form of appreciation, care, or even affection for simply being them.

Under that premise, it's to be expected that Montresor or Lenore will discard them the moment something more useful or better comes along, because that's what you do with tools. If some of them end up in the trash, it's because Annabel or Will have failed to remain useful, and they need to make amends for their mistakes in order to be considered worthy of a second look.

Which makes it tremendously ironic that Lenore says this to Will…

When in the midst of a panic attack, this is one of the first concerns Annabel has to express.

At this point, the difference between the two situations jumps out: Lenore cares about Annabel. Where Montresor is more than happy to use Will's complexes to keep him chained to him, Lenore is far from being comfortable with all that crap. Again, what draws the lines in the end is that there are people who have their hearts in the right place and there are people who don't.

But I think there's one thing that's a little darker: please watch Montresor's face when he realizes that the person he's choking is Will.

And watch his complete lack of reaction when Lenore pulls it out of his face.

I think the fucked up thing about the situation is that Montresor seems to care about Will. At least enough to feel a certain amount of remorse. But in a world where there are winners and losers (a perspective he shares with Annabel), where it doesn't pay to care about the losers if you're a winner, Montresor doesn't have the resources to treat Will any better. Even if he wanted to, he's too deep into toxic patterns of behavior to show him any degree of kindness, because the only way this man is able to relate is through abuse, control, and manipulation.

This is extremely fucked up when you consider that this is the fuzzy line that separates Lenore and Montresor in the roles they have within the relationship with Annabel and Will.

At the end of the day, the Willtresor is a dark reflection of the White Raven, because that's the consequence of instrumentalizing the relationship in this way: you have one party who benefits from what the other is willing to do for them -and no matter how much they care, it still relegates them to the role of tools- and another person desperately picking up crumbs of validation because they don't think they deserve any better.

My girl Somyung is being manipulative but OMG she's cute af😭

REBLOG IF YOU WOULD BE LITERALLY 100% OKAY WITH FAN ART ABOUT YOU EVEN IF IT WAS JUST STICK MEN

We're always talking about Annabel's crazy devotion but not half as much of Ada who is also helplessly devoted;

Ada was a maid who fell inlove with a man who couldn't care less for her and she knew it

And yet? She still fell inlove with this man; enough to fall for the first guy who resembles him even though she didn't have her memories

Even though he doesn't like her at all; not even in a sexual way like Thomas did

And when she does get some of her memories back?

She all too easily fall for Montresor who -unlike Prospero- acts so much like Thomas did

Shot out to @lovelyn06 post

So Ada is still inlove with Thomas

The man who killed her (and maybe her unborn baby if she was actually pregnant like another theory -which I don't know where the source of is- suggested)

The man who mercilessly cut her to pieces like Lovelyn06 came to the conclusion of

And she died deep down hopelessly praying he'd come back for her

After everything she still wanted that scum of a man to come back for her. Despite what he's done to her; despite him cutting her to pieces and taking her life

She still wanted him then; and she still wants him now

It's dumb and awfully so very tragic

Ada isn't just helplessly devoted like Annabel; she might just be more devoted than her!

And isn't it ironic that she doesn't have any idea that her queen is not too different from her?

Both of them are so inlove with the very same people who ended up killing them

Hell, perhaps that's the reason on why Annabel both belittled and saved Ada in the chapters 71 and 113; Because she understands what Ada feels all too well

In conclusion: Ada is more devoted than Annabel to a shitty man who brutally killed her and would never give a fuck about her and it makes me feel almost like crying

So I have a theory that Jackson's Diary is less of a supernatural and more of a story about two mentally ill people with magic involved and I decided to reread it and keep notes on anything and everything that supports that theory

PS:much easier if you read the chapter after or while reading these notes

Chap1 notes:

•notice how cheery baby Jackson is and acting too understanding and good for a child so young like him but when his mom leaves his eyes start to tear up right away. he's repulsing his negative emotions to gain his mom's love and attention through being a good boy despite being seemingly left alone quite alot

•Jackson being formal with his adopted parents despite later on learning they have adopted him since he was a child sounds like a sign on previous negative things

•Jackson being frustrated by being called cute is a positive sign that he feels allowed to be frustrated. also notice how his (and maybe exer's) theme seem to be the sky and stars

•Jackson having eye bugs tells you he haven't been sleeping all that much and his comments about how ever since they moved he have been haunted by these nightmares about his mom tells that the whole town seem to be trigger for his trauma

•his words about himself being a sad little kid lost in the middle of nowhere is acknowledging he wasn't happy in his childhood, he will later on in s3 say the exact opposite and call himself a happy child with creative imagination

•his tio&tia seem to think they're doing the right thing but they're unaware that being here is hurting Jackson inside and Jackson himself seem to be hiding this from them

•'I just need to get out of my head' this sounds very innocent at first but once considering his repulsed behavior it sounds like a very subtle way to tell himself to pretend the negativity away

•the way Jackson looked at exer when he looked beside him and his expression tells that he might have sensed something strange in exer's behavior and the way he carrys himself to others but he decided to brush it away right after exer got out of his eye sight because knowing what's up with exer could very much make it harder for him to act

•Jackson stopping at his track before it looks like exer and David will handle it but staying to see how it will go before thinking that Rick and Morty need to pay for the way they're acting- Jackson had green on the close-up to his eyes panel before exer uses his own magic- it's not clear but personally talking I feel like they were thinking the exact same thing at that moment and it's why Jackson had green

•Jackson's reaction to the shoes but not the green is a sign he couldn't see the color of the magic then it's only when exer looks him in the eyes and holds his gaze that he shows sign of seeing it even more there's green in his eyes too- that could be a sign that they're both seeing right through each other's facades and that caused Jackson to see the green

Good point. I can see it go both ways tbh, but I'm still going to stick with my point because it makes more sense to me personally with how Jackson would delay telling the truth to pamela looked like he was concerned with what exer did more than how it effected pamela on a deeper level

Something that's almost never acknowledged by jd readers (yes this is a character study)

A popular belief from s1 is that Jackson beat up exer because of what he did to pamela, however that's not actually right

If you go back to read prior to the fight you'll realize that Jackson was never really pissed off about what exer did until he realized that exer been sabotaging him too, that's when he gets angry.

Of course he acknowledges that's what exer did to pamela and yes it upset him and he believes pam should know; but the thing is that it doesn't upset him enough to beat exer up

Do you know what upsets him enough?

Pamela's makeover and joining the reds

This is what upsets him enough to beat exer up

Why?

Because looking at this from a different perspective; it looks like exer is still trying to sabotage Jackson's life and isolate him.

The only people on Jackson's side are pamela and brenda, but brenda is more of with both sides and with David being her brother and she obviously regaining her crush on exer; that would leave Jackson with only one person he can absolutely trust won't leave him: Pamela

So seeing Pamela with the reds felt like everything was crumbling for him; that exer was manipulating pam to join him and his friends and then exer would continue his cat and mouse game that Jackson now knows of.

So really it wasn't about pamela as a person as much as it was about pamela as Jackson's last remaining companion in that rivalry thing