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⚠️This post may/will be edited and updated as time goes on!⚠️
A little under two months ago, I made a post where, in the tags, I said I wanted to make a post cataloguing and analyzing all of the abuse tactics Monstrox uses on Jestro in the series.
Whilst doing that for the entire series at once would be way too big of a post, I've got a better idea: doing one post for two episodes of the show at a time. That way, I'm not trying to shove four seasons of information into one post.
Keeping that in mind:
Season One. Episodes one and two. The Book Of Monsters, part one and part two.
Part one:
Immediately, as soon as Jestro picks him up, Monstrox starts pulling on his insecurities.
"You wanna have everybody laugh at you? You wanna be a joke? Aren't you tired of everyone laughing at you? How many more times do you wanna be the laughingstock of the whole kingdom?"
This isn't random. Monstrox knows that he needs some kind of leverage to get Jestro to comply. What better way than to tug where it hurts?
When Jestro starts thinking about the way people laughed at him earlier in the episode, Monstrox bites him. Immediately afterward, he's buttering him up:
"I can make you somebody! A real bad boy, a guy who's respected. I can make you the most feared guy in all of the kingdom. That's gotta be better than spinning plates, right?"
Monstrox tells him to grab magic books and a magic staff, and Jestro complies because he's been offered a way out of the humiliation he's constantly going through. Clay walks in and Monstrox tells Jestro to conjure a monster. Jestro doesn't want to.
"Bu-bu-but it's Clay. He's, like, my friend."
Monstrox is having none of this.
"Nobody's your friend but me, joke-boy! Remember that!"
He's isolating him. If Jestro has no other friends, he'll have no way out. No support system to run to when things get bad and he regrets going with Monstrox. This is an incredibly common abuse tactic- making sure your victim is completely trapped. He repeats the command for Jestro to summon monsters. Jestro is clearly nervous, but he does it- he summons the monster.
And he regrets it.
"Oh. What have I done?"
Monstrox starts telling him about how he's good at something, at being bad, but Jestro doesn't look happy in the slightest.
A minute or so later, Monstrox tells Jestro he wants him to make more monsters. Jestro complies, smiling this time. It's not far fetched to assume that corruption is starting to set in here. When Jestro runs away from Monstrox at the end of season 2, Merlok mentions checking him for any evil magical influence. All Monstrox had to do was get him to summon just one monster- and now he has him hooked. This can probably be compared to, like, drugs or something. Monstrox intentionally got him to use the dark magic so that he wouldn't be able to look back.
When Merlok appears, Jestro starts looking nervous again. He's definitely having second thoughts, but it's too late to turn back. Merlot performs the spell that blows him and the monsters away.
Now, for part two:
They're walking in the woods and Jestro is carrying Monstrox on his back. Jestro complains and Monstrox calls him delicate. It's only once Jestro calls him fat that he tells Jestro about the Bookkeeper.
....so what was stopping him from telling him that before? They probably would've traveled a lot faster and a lot farther. The answer? Monstrox wanted to exert power over Jestro. He wanted to make Jestro do something painful.
Then, he insults Jestro by calling him a simpleton. He re explains how to summon monsters, slowly, condescendingly. He's treating Jestro like shit, but you know what? He's getting away with it. He knows that Jestro has nobody else anymore. He knows that nobody is coming to save Jestro from him. He has successfully isolated him.
Jestro asks if anybody is going to carry him, and Monstrox threatens to leave if he doesn't stop complaining. Like I said, Jestro has nobody else anymore, so this is a pretty loaded threat- if he does actually leave, then Jestro will be all alone with nobody to go to. Of course, Monstrox can't do anything without Jestro to wave the staff, but does Jestro know that? No. He doesn't.
When Jestro concedes, Monstrox is very happy about it. He's successfully leveraged Jestro's lack of a support system against him.
Monstrox tells him the plan to get the evil books, and mentions that the more books they get, the more evil they'll be. Jestro asks, "the more evil I'll be, right?" and Monstrox gives him a noncommittal response. He, of course, doesn't actually care about Jestro- he just wants his powers back.
They set off into the woods.
When the episode cuts back to them, Jestro is practicing his evil faces and Monstrox calls him annoying. He tells him that he needs to be ready to call forth monsters and Jestro does another face at him. In the driest, most sarcastic tone ever, he mocks him and tells him that he makes him want to cry for his mommy. Jestro doesn't really pick up on the insult and comments on how Jestro the Evil is a name he likes the sound of.
Not much else happens here aside from that- so let's move on to the next scenes with them.
Jestro picks up the Book of Evil and is immediately fully corrupted. Monstrox orders him to feed him, and so he throws the book into his mouth.
The next scene.
Jestro summons Burnzie and Sparkks and they say they're ready to serve him. Jestro, whose brain is probably super scrambled from the Book of Evil, starts listing off what I assume is his usual order for a tuna sandwich. Monstrox cuts him off and they set off towards Knightonia.
Next scene.
They're approaching the gates and Jestro expresses that he's nervous. Monstrox tells him that this is his chance to get back at the people who laughed at him. Once again, he's digging at Jestro's insecurities to get him to comply.
Jestro has what looks to be a vivid memory/hallucination that he's being laughed at again, complete with visuals. This reminder seems to get him more willing to do (?) baddie stuff (?) again, and upon seeing that he's no longer hesitant, Monstrox says that it's time to attack the castle. Monstrox already knows he can weaponize Jestro's insecurities to get him to cooperate, and that's exactly what he did.
Jestro is distressed that the knights are getting hurt by the attack, and Monstrox proclaims that they're nothing.
Jestro says that Clay was always good to him, and Monstrox does not like this.
"Don't go soft on me. He still let people laugh and laugh. They all laughed at you."
Monstrox is once again isolating Jestro. He's trying to keep him far, far away from the people who might be able to help him. Any second thoughts Jestro might have are being shut down before they can take hold.
Scene change again, Monstrox says he told Jestro they'd be no match for him and his monsters. Jestro says he is good at something- he's good at being bad. These are the same words that Monstrox first said to him after he summoned that first monster. When he was having second thoughts.
After Merlok sends out that first Nexo Power and the Lava Monsters are getting defeated, Monstrox and Jestro retreat. Afterwards, Monstrox reassures Jestro that nobody's good at being bad right away.
And this is the part of the post where I get into the fact that Monstrox has to be projecting onto Jestro.
He's pushing him into doing what he wants. He's coercing him into taking his negative emotions about being treated the way he is to an insane extreme. In the Book of Monstrox, Monstrox mentions that he was exploring dark magic that seemed so much more powerful than the stuff that could benefit mankind, but in the illustration? He's showing it to the council. He's showing it to Merlok. I'm willing to bet that Monstrox felt lesser compared to the other wizards, so he took the actions he did in an attempt to feel more powerful. To feel like he was good at something.
To be good at being bad.
This doesn't excuse anything, of course, but it does explain a lot of Monstrox's behavior towards Jestro. It explains how Monstrox can be so horrible and manipulative one moment, and then in the next, reassure him calmly that he's just got a long way to go before he'll be good at it.
Of course, considering how Monstrox fully plans on using him as a vessel once all the books have been collected, this isn't really genuine. It's another manipulation. Still, though. The way he says it tells me that there is a part of him that does believe in solving your problems by hurting the people around you.
And, hey, isn't that what he's doing? Solving his problems by hurting Jestro?
That concludes this post. At some point, I'll make a post for episodes three and four.
i complained about this before but it needed to be its own fleshed out post: no one should have to read supplementary books or twitters just to understand the characters, setting, or world building. but especially not kids watching shows aimed at their demographic.
no child should have to beg their parents to buy them a book just to be more familiar with a newly introduced side character who would have been more plot relevant had the series not been cancelled. fletcher bowman should not have had the majority of his story exist in the forbidden power. frankly, the only kids who would have been interested in the book would be kids who are already watching the tv series because it's not the most friendly story for newcomers, and most would rather books about one of the main characters rather than newly introduced characters who appear maybe twice at best in what would be the final season because it was cancelled.
no child should have to download and play the merlok 2.0 app just to be able to access and watch an exclusive two-part episode about the knights' backstories. especially considering the fact that it almost became lost media - i'm grateful that it didn't and is preserved on web archive, but it dangerously came close. and its something that almost happened because they never had plans to air it on tv with the rest of the series at some point. but even then - the fact that the rest of the series is on tubi and knights of the realm isn't?
AND NO CHILD SHOULD HAVE TO BUY SUPPLEMENTARY BOOKS TO KNOW ANYTHING MEANINGFUL ABOUT ONE OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS. OH MY GOD. i love axl so much, he's usually framed primarily as the food-obsessed comedic relief but he's observant and quick witted. he is NOT the dumb muscle character! he's just underutilized in comparison to tommy andreasen's favorites clay or aaron. and though hes extremely emotional and hotheaded he can also be the most down to earth and mature of the knights. and... he's the most artistic, creatively driven of the knights. you could potentially deduce that from his lute playing, but it's really understated in comparison to making him obsessed with food. but what if i told you he loves pottery? that he is skilled at still life sketches? what if i told you he reads the in-universe equivalent of shakespeare? and his favorite play is a parody of titus andronicus? what if i told you he's in a band???
you wouldn't believe me, would you? its all true - but you'd only know that if you are able to get your hands on a copy of one of the books - the knights code, potentially also the character encyclopedia - and read them. but you shouldn't have to. information about one of the main characters should just be in the text of the series. in fact, i think more people would probably appreciate if a lot of the jokes about his gluttony were replaced with more thought-out jokes about his other interests. in fact, a lot more people would be appreciative and amenable to axl's presence as a character if his other attributes were given as much focus.
but then again the writers play favorites, and it shows. you can tell they've all got biases and they for sure do not like or respect some of the main characters (lance and axl) as much as others (clay and aaron) and it shows in how they're treated in the narrative and by other characters. as it stands, we're just lucky that eclair exists to humanize axl and his love of food by transforming it into another facet of his creativity. it doesn't completely solve the issue of making so much of axl's character about food without showcasing his other interests, or with underutilizing him as a knight or as a friend to the other knights. but at least eclair treats axl as a fleshed out person with more to him than gluttony.
he would not fucking say that, but with disability.. he would not fucking be able bodied. sick n tired of characters walking away from multiple life changing injuries without a scratch. let’s get some natural consequences in here.
give that knife/sword fight survivor nerve damage. give the character who was shot in the gut a stoma. give that fire survivor lung damage and an oxygen cannula. give that leg injury survivor a cane. give that starvation survivor gastroparesis. give that spinal injury survivor a manual chair or powerchair.
while we’re at it, give your characters congenital disabilities too, just because. give them intellectual and development disabilities. give them acquired and postviral illnesses. dare to make somebody bedbound. for me.
