Normalize Showing Appreciation To Children's Ideas Even If They Are Stupid

@jacksonsmithforreal tell him to do something

Admit that you and Marty are Jackson's slave and would do anything he tells you to do

what n-n-no🫣

David: I think the guy is nuts

Jackson: YES I AM! Thanks for noticing David!:D

Awww that's so sweet- he knows he's going to push them away and keep lying to them because that's how he is

He'll never be honest. He'll never show them the same love and trust they show him

Yesterday I read the best jd fanfict EVER and I'm in love

I am here to causally remind ya'll that the Reds are completely oblivious to the fact that the Detention Kids found out about exer's magic

Jackson's Diary: Oneshot: Inspired by chapter 131-132: Jackson centric: Angst: Hurt no comfort: No beta we die like exer: Jaxer(?): Could be read as platonic

And My Blood Will Freeze For You

Jackson has always been used to the cold, ever since his mother died alongside the emptiness he always felt winter had made a home in his heart.

Today was different, today the usually quiet winter raged a storm. He can feel the frost spreading from his ribcage and through the rest of his body ever so patient yet quick, his blood turning into icicles that would cut his skin from the inside to make it's way outside of his body leaving a bloody mess in the painful process.

The rain was pouring outside, the sound of each drop like a song that rhythm with his storm; quiet and almost unheard to the outsiders yet rining in his ears loud enough he can drown in it, and there will be nobody to save him.

Nobody to reach their hand to him, to chase him down a hallway or constantly ask him if he's feeling ok even though he won't talk and he would deserve it

He would deserve drowning for the entire night because he fucked up and hurt Exer

Jackson grinds his teeth and without even knowing it, soft tears start forming in his eyes.

Jackson had spent a long time wishing that he could go back in time to his childhood and do something anything to save his mother, now he wishes more than anything that if only he could go back and change the results of what had happened for Exer.

His mind scrambled at all the things he could've done. If only he never picked up that dairy. If only he never reached out to Exer again. If only he had told the truth. If only he never went to the forest earlier today. If only he ran after David instead,

(If only he never warned David about that rock. A cruel part in him whispers)

Jackson pushes the possibilities away, now only focusing on replaying the events in his head again and again and again and again until the scenes crash together and he can see himself in Exer's place.

He focuses his thoughts on that imagine, his cold blood spilling out. His body laying beneath the rock, his breath shallow as he breathes out cold smoke. Maybe if he tries hard enough he could believe that this is what had happened, that he's the one in the hospital bed and Exer is waiting out with Pamela and David,

Because that's what should have been. That's the reality they should be living in, not the real one he's forced to face right now.

He should've been the one hurt, not Exer. Never Exer

And the worst part is that this won't be the last of it.

-------------

THAT'S ALL FOLKS!

Keep dreaming!

VOTE YES!!

@devious-devious

Nevermore is a gothic tragedy. Part II: Supernatural Brides

I had set out to finish this saga of essays before Nevermore came back. And then I realized that all the fucking references I have on hand were going to require at least one essay for each. Which means a total of…at least four parts.

So I made it my goal to finish at least one. And since we're talking about tragedy, it seemed logical to continue with the gothic novel.

Before I start, I have to make a little disclaimer: most of my sources come from Spanish material that I'm not sure I have an English translation because they are loose essays I have from my college days and prologues to books from different publishers that are dedicated to publishing gothic novels. If you understand Spanish, I'll be happy to pass the material on to you if this interests you. But if you only understand English, I'm afraid I only have two sources for you: Supernatural Horror in Literature, an essay by H.P. Lovecraft on the foundations of cosmic horror that reviews the history of horror in fiction and The gothic quest a book of about 400 pages that describes in detail the history of the gothic novel, I hope the density of that work compensates for not being able to deliver more finished information.

Brief (seriously VERY brief) history of the gothic novel

Here is something a bit tangled, because the Gothic novel goes hand in hand with many of the topics of the literature of romanticism (literary movement with which it shares time) and it is also necessary to understand some historical and architectural issues.

Let's go by part: Romanticism is a literary and artistic movement that formally emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century (it is estimated that the first works of the same are dated from 1770, approximately) consisting of three parts: the so-called pre-romanticism, romanticism as such and late romanticism.

Anyway, even from its beginnings, this movement emerges as a series of anti-classical ideas that sought to recover folkloric and medieval elements, were obsessed with the inviduality of creativity, nostalgia for nature (something that would later become nostalgia for the time before the industrial revolution), considered passion and sentimentality as the creative axis and in general were looking to Greek tragedies and other fantastic tales as a source of inspiration.

This clashed with the strong Christian values of the time and the rise of technological advances. A contradiction that is present in the works of this literary movement.

Another important historical fact that is necessary to understand is that this kind of novel gets its name directly from Gothic architecture. These works were intended to take place in castles, monasteries, mansions belonging to ancient families and medieval cemeteries. The reason is simple: the Goths were considered shitty architects and many of these buildings had been abandoned for decades if not centuries by 1700, so you could walk down a path and simply find an ominous monastery or the remains of a mansion and if you asked someone where it had come from, they would probably tell you about 15 different versions, but all involving dead people and ghosts living there. As you may have gathered from the above, the writers of this period were eating this stuff up with fries.

It is with the convergence of all these elements that Horace Walpole's novel The Castle of Otranto was published in 1764. A text born from a nightmare that this man had in the castle of Strawberry Hill, a neo-Gothic property that belonged to him. The novel is mediocre at best, but it lays all the groundwork needed going forward: ominous ancient places full of legends where the crumbling architecture is a reflection of the moral and emotional corruption of the characters.

Feminine entities

One thing in which the Romantics differ from the Gothics is their view of love. In this era, love is perceived as a kind of force that is above the characters, something so beautiful that it is capable of making them completely lose their minds (this is tied to the concept of the sublime. And where the romantics embrace this concept as something beautiful, the goths say “this is fucking disturbing”.

For this reason many gothic stories are up to their necks in supernatural brides: beautiful ghosts dressed in white, beings that we consider references to nymphs who only need to whisper in the ears of their victims to become obsessed with them and, above all, vampires. Vampires whose description you will have in detail because the narrators of these stories spare no words to point out how beautiful they are.

Because these supernatural brides are there for one thing and one thing only: to make our sad male hero lose his mind with the power of their impractically long eyelashes. Sometimes they love them honestly and deeply, sometimes they are insidious, evil and lying; on more than one occasion both alternatives are true at the same time. But the reality of things is that, in the end, the love of these supernatural brides ends up completely destroying the unfortunate object of their affection.

If this seems a bit sexist to you, that's because it is. There's no argument here and it's not worth delving into any further.

I've talked about Annabel as a vampire before, but this time I want to talk more in detail about two issues: how supernatural brides work and the consequences for the protagonist of having a relationship with her and the similarities this story presents to a particular job.

Love and death

What is a ghost? A terrible event doomed to repeat itself over and over again. An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead that seems at times still alive. A feeling, suspended in time, like a blurred photograph, like an insect trapped in amber. El espinazo del diablo, Guillermo del Toro (original quote in Spanish)

One interesting thing about this whole thing is, too, that while the attitudes of many of these supernatural brides may remind you of variations of a succubus (you know, a female entity that is there for and to seduce), the reality is that the gothic novel is steeped in religious puritanism, so these ladies (most of the time) don't usually need to be sexual with their love interest/victim to get their attention. They usually only need a single glance.

If you think I'm exaggerating:

Never gaze upon a woman, and walk abroad only with eyes ever fixed upon the ground; for however chaste and watchful one may be, the error of a single moment is enough to make one lose eternity. 

The dead women in love, Théophile Gautier

Another thing is that these supernatural brides are usually here at just the right time to skillfully grope the weaknesses of their beloved lover and victim: Are you a feisty guy who thinks he's not afraid of anything? Well, the spirit of the water that will end up bewitching you dwells in a mysterious fountain that no one dares to visit out of fear (Ojos Verdes, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer ESP/ENG), Have you just obtained eternal life by making a pact with the devil but are a little terrified of what might await you in the solitude of immortality? The beautiful young girl just revived by your own hand has opened her eyes and both you and she know in this one look that you will spend eternity together (The Skeleton Count, or The Vampire Mistress, Elizabeth Caroline Grey), Have you just moved here from Naples and are feeling incredibly lonely? Well, it turns out you have a beautiful neighbor who also seems interested in you. By the way, she's practically a poisonous plant (Rappaccini's Daughter, Nathaniel Hawthorne).

Examples like these are plentiful and most end in three ways for the victim of their affections:

Death.

Madness.

Or eternal mourning for having lost her despite having been a victim of deceit or manipulation.

In Lenore's case, her “supernatural bride” appears after the incident in which she rips the wallpaper off the wall: if flowers symbolize feeling alive, she doesn't need them. There is no need for flowers because she is irreversibly withering away.

And when all seems lost, she receives a visitor.

Annabel is a ghost in Lenore's life. The fuzzy silhouette that represents the one thing that made her happy during her confinement, her last glimmer of sanity in a situation where she could no longer hold on without breaking. A specter whose shadow Lenore has been obsessively chasing since a previous life. And every time she manages to reach her, something snatches her away: Annabel goes back to a place where Lenore cannot reach her with her hands.

This is the sad fate of supernatural bride lovers. Because for the gothic novel, when love transcends death it is not a reason to rejoice: the character's life has been permanently disrupted and all that remains is a feeling that is beyond reason. Love becomes the cruelest and most terrible of punishments.

Carmilla

If you're still here with me and you haven't read Carmilla yet, I highly recommend that you do because if you like goth lesbians, this is exactly your shit.

But just so we're on the same page: Carmilla is a short vampire novel published in 1872 by Sheridan Le Fanu in his collection In a Glass Darkly. The plot is about Laura, a young woman who lives in a proper gothic castle located in Austria and her life will be disrupted with the arrival of a beautiful young woman her age named Carmilla.

Both Lenore and Laura live in almost complete isolation barely accompanied by maids (And, in Laura's case, her father) in a huge estate that is surrounded by an appropriately dense and slightly terrifying forest. Now, the reason they are both here is different: where Lenore is locked up against her will, Laura simply lives in a place that is difficult to access.

But let's make a slightly insidious reading here.

One of the first things we know about Laura is that the maids she lives with, despite being fond of her, consider her “a bit touched in the head” and the incident where Carmilla enters the room when Laura is a little girl is completely dismissed for this reason.

Laura is 19 years old when all this happens and at no point in the play is it mentioned that she has any suitors or intentions of getting married, a bit strange for the time in which it occurs. One would assume that the reason for keeping her so isolated is precisely that Laura's father doesn't think his daughter is particularly sane in the head.

As does Lenore.

Add to that the fact that they are both grieving. Lenore for Theo's death and, in Laura's case, for learning that the daughter of a dear friend of her father's has died in strange circumstances and, although she did not get to know her, this fact affected her a lot.

Anyway, sooner rather than later this almost supernaturally beautiful young lady of her own age shows up and kicks in the door saying she wants to be friends. Carmilla through a carriage “accident” near the property and Annabel requesting a meeting to get to know her.

In both cases, the dynamic established is the same.

On the one hand, we have a young lady who looks completely ecstatic at this pompous and definitely somewhat deranged creature. Laura spares no words in explaining to the reader how fucking beautiful Carmilla is, how important she is to her and how much she loves her. And Lenore, well, Lenore does this:

On the other side, the supernatural (girl)friend returns her affection with the subtlety of a kick in the teeth:

Annabel is a little more subtle than Carmilla was before she and Lenore were a thing, but we still see her get super physically close (something she doesn't usually do with other characters in Nevermore, so this is something she only does with Lenore).

Fun fact: that gesture with the fan means “I'm shy, but I'm interested.”

Unfortunately for our comphet-filled protagonist (because she watches THIS and still thinks they're “good friends”) her days in the company of this girl end in tragedy. Carmilla is eventually unveiled as a vampire and killed, while Lenore sees Annabel leave and, taking into account that they are both in Nevermore, subsequently sees her die.

In both cases, the protagonist's life has been scarred by her supernatural (girl)friend: neither a year-long trip abroad nor a new group of friends can take Laura or Lenore away from the memory of those happy days that are now irretrievably tainted.

Conclusions

I think one thing that has happened to me writing this now that I seriously pulled the rug out from under me regarding the amount of references in this comic and it has been non-stop bullshit. They're all still framed within the genres of tragedy and gothic novel, but even with this essay I've fallen short on some topics.

I don't know when I'll continue with this saga because it really involves going through an awful lot of material, but I can at least say one thing for sure: the amount of detail it has is, honestly, quite impressive.

It's the moooost wonderfuul tiiime... IT'S THE MOOOST WONDERFULL TIIIIME... OF THE YEEEEAAAAARR!

New sona variant unlocked!

Virto the Festive!

I love Christmas! :>

FROM 1990 TO 1989

these are the vibes for chapter 1 💯: Tuesday's Gone

(jackson’s pov):

AHHHHHH I AM BEYOND EXITED FOR THIS FIC! only 1 chap is currently out (16.2k words) and it’s a Jaxer/Jexer endgame!

Summary:

“The day Exer turned 19 is when it all went bad. Real fucking bad.

An earthquake set forth the catastrophe. No one in town thought anything of it, as they had become more and more used to their frequentness thanks to Exer’s little…accidents.

Okay, putting it that way makes it sound as if the boy still wets his pants. A better word would be ‘outbursts’.

Anyway, not the point.

Even Jackson didn’t freak out during the first few minutes of the trembling. He knew Exer had a good support group and it would all calm down in due time.

It didn’t.”