There Is An Astounding Lack Of Stanford Angst Content Out Here..

Only Gravity Falls fans with media literacy interact with this post pls ok ok ok so do you think some of Ford’s resentment towards Stanley was in part because he felt like he had to “protect” him from Filbrick as the golden child? Like can you imagine if everytime you got mad at your brother, no matter how justified, your dad would verbally abuse him at best and kick him out of the house at worst? How much that fear would weigh on a kid? He loves Stanley, of course he does, and OBVIOUSLY Stanley isn’t the one at fault, he’s a victim, but what is a little boy supposed to do when he’s stuck being “the good twin” and any strike against his brother, no matter how small, could result in him getting hurt? How much anger did he bottle up? How many times did he force himself to turn the other cheek just to keep him safe? How horrible that night must have been, when everything he’d spent his entire life trying to prevent ended up happening anyway? How his dreams were crushed, a promising future was snatched from him, and the one time he actually lets himself get angry about it his brother is permanently disowned? Imagine how he must have felt looking down from that window. How angry at himself he must have been. How ashamed. Man I’d close the curtains too. Torn in half between feeling responsible for the suffering of someone you care so much about and feeling rage at them for being the reason you had to stifle yourself for so long. He probably let himself believe Filbrick’s words just to bring himself comfort. Anyway I love nuance I love analysis I love when characters are flawed in ways that aren’t excused but are still tragic and understandable I love critical thinking

the fact that hyde is short because jekyll didnt let him grow. that hyde is rail-thin and underdeveloped because jekyll never fed him. that hyde is unhealthily pale because jekyll never allowed for him to see the light.

jekyll spent all of his life shunning a side of himself that had he let it develop naturally would have become fully part of him. but he didn't because as an upper class man without a nobility background, it's his reputation what keeps him at the top.

what happens when you lock a part of yourself up, forever in darkness?

the darkness won't let you see how ugly it has gotten.

hyde is an entire lifetime's worth of all the evil jekyll could have gotten away with. the desires he has to keep locked. all the things he's done and later recalled in shame, like a vicious circle. hyde is this vicious circle, once again, only this time jekyll doesnt need to cover up after himself, because who could ever trace a straight line from the gentleman scientist to the monstrous gentleman?

and so, precisely because jekyll wants to live this contradictory life, he suffers a contratictory fate. he gets further and further away from humanity, but at the same time, he comes to embody that humanity in the most twisted ways. so, then, is hyde more or less human than he ever was?

does it matter? hyde is jekyll, anyway.

no wonder he was so hungry; he had been starving himself.

Hyde as a metaphysical anomaly. He shouldn’t exist. Hyde as an infohazard. You will never understand him or describe him. Hyde as a hole ripped into the fabric of reality, a bending of physics and biology. He carries outliers with him. Coins fall on their edge. Cats hiss. Milk curdles. Hyde as a supernatural entity in all but name, making you doubt what the true limits of science are. A fae of the modern era, a spirit of the laboratory, a spell conjured not by magic but reason. Jekyll as a willing vessel of a knowledge so troubling it’s corrosive, the poisonous influence of Hyde and the distortion he brings onto natural law seeping out of him and peeking out not with life of its own but a mockery of it. His fingers brush the Bible, and the paper withers.

(Dr Jekyll voice) nothing a nap and a cigarette and a glass of wine and a line of coke and a joint and a lobotomy and the scary potion and murdering someone and killing myself can’t fix

“Hyde is the innocence of evil. He stands for the truth (attested by a hundred tales of hypocrites and secret sins) that there is in evil, though not in good, this power of self-isolation, this hardening of the whole exterior, so that a man becomes blind to moral beauties or deaf to pathetic appeals. A man in pursuit of some immoral mania does attain an abominable simplicity of soul; he does act from one motive alone. Therefore he does become like Hyde, or like that blood-curdling figure in Grimm’s fairy-tales, ‘a little man made of iron’. But the whole of Stevenson’s point would have been lost if Jekyll had exhibited the same horrible homogeneity.

Precisely because Jekyll, with all his faults, possesses goodness, he possesses also the consciousness of sin, humility. He knows all about Hyde, as angels know about devils. And Stevenson specially points out that this contrast between the blind swiftness of evil and the almost bewildered omniscience of good is not a peculiarity of this strange case, but is true of the permanent problem of your conscience and mine. If I get drunk I shall forget dignity; but if I keep sober I may still desire drink. Virtue has the heavy burden of knowledge; sin has often something of the levity of sinlessness.”

— G.K. Chesterton: “Tricks of Memory”

Twins in a boat

thinking about Dr. Jekyll and the war he’s fighting within himself and how he’ll always lose because all he can do is desire the lack of desire. Anyway.

Honestly i don’t like it when people are like “oh Jekyll is the Good One” because the point is he IS. Complex. He struggles with his addiction with his anger and hatred and with so much shit. He represses stuff and he lies and he is so full of fear. He hurts himself in the most twisted ways he can think of. He believes he’s always being watched. He’s depressed and has an unspecified dissociative disorder that fucks over how he perceives his own humanity and the way he sees himself. He has good intentions, but misguided ones; and there’s arrogance at his core. He is mean, but he is nice, but he is cruel, but he is trying his best and LISTEN Jekyll has got so many layers and he admits that. He says that. So it also kills me when people are like “oh Jekyll is Evil” well. Yes but actually no but actually yes and you Know what? If you try to assign moral alignments to Strange Case characters then you didn’t read the book properly. You’ve missed the point. He deserves a slap in the face and a blanket. He has to get his shit together because if he doesn’t people die. Do you Understand.

🦋👁️