#my files...

[walteningmyfiles]

The Walten Files is a horror story about how avoiding conflict will fuck up your life, kill your loved ones and then kill you

[walteningmyfiles]

Susan and Charles are so absent from Rosemary's story leading up to her death, that I wonder if they were moreso Jack's friends than her friends. Like, it's interesting how she used to be the popular one back in school, yet her life is so isolated and revolves around her husband as a married woman. She works for Jack's company and they have all the same friends. She doesn't appear to have made any genuine connections outside her family and BSI, since the only people who attempt to reach out to her that knew her personally are her estranged sister and another employee of BSI. She waited outside the restaurant for Jack to get off of work, and it seems like most of what she designed for the company was done from a make-shift office space at home; she showed the early concept art for Bon to Jack first, before any of the others were present. Wouldn't be surprised if she was a little overlooked and sometimes forgotten to even be a part of the company, at the least by new employees or partnering businesses. Not to mention how much of her time must've been devoted to parenting three kids while her husband spent most of his time at the restaurant. It really is no wonder why she felt so alone and dependent on her family. Maybe the reason Chris and Rosemary seem to have made a connection was because, despite Rosemary having been there from the beginning, she felt just as disconnected and out-of-place among the early BSI employees as someone who had joined fairly recently.

[walteningmyfiles]

Rosemary and Jack have one of those marriages that everyone says is perfect because they never argue, when that is not in fact A Good Thing. Like both of them set the impossible high standard for themselves that it makes them terrified of communicating. Jack feels such pressure to be this strong, stoic protector all the time that he can't even admit to his daughter that he's hurting after the death of her siblings. Rosemary can't even bring herself to contradict her husband in her own diary. She won't even argue with him about pressing charges against the man responsible for the deaths of their two children. They never learned how to deal with normal problems aside from sweeping them under the rug, of course they implode when something genuinely horrific happens.

[walteningmyfiles]

On a first name basis with his former boss' wife. Repeatedly refers to her by a nickname. Refers to Felix as "Mr. Kranken." Earnestly attempts to reach out to her while asking her to leave so she doesn't cause a scene. Wants to help her but still works for the man who killed her children and is filing a restraining order against her. The last time he speaks to her, he calls her Mrs. Walten. Pats her arm to comfort her but leaves her at the restaurant alone where his coworkers went missing. The hell is their relationship man.

[walteningmyfiles]

I think Rosemary sees herself as a 'wolf in sheep's clothing', but a more accurate metaphor for her is a black sheep who's dyed her wool white. She's not being deceptive or ill-intentioned in hiding parts of herself from others, she does it out of a desire to feel loved. And she doesn't believe herself to be lovable as she is, like a lot of children who grow up in broken homes.

When showing off her work for the first time, she feels the need to put herself down and downplay her skills. Whether or not others will like it is what gives it value in her mind. Her self worth is dependent on external approval. When she's getting to know Jack, she takes it as a sign her life is finally turning around for the better. She attaches herself to him, starts to build her life and identity around him, idolizes him and stops herself from contradicting him even in the privacy of her own diary because she's that afraid of losing him. Part of that has to do with the social pressures of being a midcentury woman, but another part is that she's been so deprived of people who love and value her in her life that the thought of doing anything to lose him feels catastrophic.

She's also deeply afraid of failing her own children the way her mother failed her, and part of that is because she sees the world in binary. There are only ever Good Mothers and Bad Mothers and they are static, unchanging labels. There is what she's supposed to be and what she will become if she fails to live up to it. After the crash, she depicts Felix as a wolf; a malevolent and foreboding figure—a boogey man. Something much grander and competently evil than he actually is. Logically, she understands that he's an irresponsible coward, a sad pathetic worm of a man. But something inside her can't accept the discongruity between what she's lost and what's caused it. In the search for a wolf, she turns inward, latching onto insecurities already present from before the accident.

She demands Chris call her a bad mother, perhaps almost as a mercy to herself. To rip the bandaid off and to no longer live in fear of becoming something she already is. Maybe she wants the person sent to turn her away to stop pretending to be her friend, maybe it's to push away yet another person that doesn'tknow how to help her. Or maybe she needs someone to acknowledge that this isn't the way she should be living.

Felix isn't the only subject of her bloody paintings, so are Jack and Sophie. She never really got confirmation Jack was dead and seems to switch between thinking he is or that he's alive somewhere after abandonning her. Sophie she knows to be very much alive, her only living family still under the same roof. She isn't speculateling on their deaths like Ed and Molly, but she isn't wishing death upon them like Felix, either. It's something more nuanced, a messy kind of hurt that scares her. She mentions how she's hurt Sophie, how she doesn't know how to do anything but push her away. She feels like she's failing her living daughter and it's not an entirely baseless fear. Hearing someone parrot the phrase that she's not a bad mother just makes it feel like no one's really listening to her or taking her distress seriously.

But taking that to mean she's a bad mother, removed from any nuance or oppurtunity for growth, also doesn't help her. When Sophie tries to speak honestly to her mother about how she's been feeling while not backing down, she still does it in the gentlest and most empathetic way she can. However, Rosemary can't bear to hear it, because she's not really listening to Sophie's words. She's listening to her own perception of them. A confirmation that she's a bad mother. She's been so wrapped up in this one fear that it consumes her, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

She sees the past as perfect, despite her diary entries telling us that isn't the full picture. She was happy, but she still had the same anxieties and insecurities as she did back then. They just weren't as pronounced as they are after the accident. The vision of Ed and Molly she has while drowning herself in the river, real or not, feeds back into this black-and white-thinking. Instead, giving her a false sense of comfort in a way. Like she can only be perfect when she's dead, and doesn't have to risk making another wrong choice or continue to suffer. Ed and Molly appearing just as she's about to give up on her own life, is suspicious convient for Bon. But they don't seem to share the same goals as him. They don't want their mother to die. Of course they wouldn't blame her. Of course they'd want her to forgive herself for something that wasn't even her fault. Of course they'd want her to move on and live a good life. She doesn'thave to worry aboutwhetheror not she failed Ed and Molly, because there was nothing she could've done that she would've been aware of that could save them.

But Sophie is still alive, still needs her and she needs her to recognize that she's hurting. But after she's saved from drowning, Rosemary doesn't say 'how could I have done that to her when she loves me.' Instead, she says 'how could I have done that to her when she loved me.' Something more final and permanent. As if it's a mistake she can never recover from. Something she can never win back. The ways she hurts Sophie, she views as confirmation of her own inner badness rather than a sign she can't keep living like this.

But of course she would view it that way when changing for the better feels impossible in her situation. When she's already drowning in grief and feels so cut off from the rest of the world. How can she help her daughter when she doesn't even know how to help herself? Her death is something her community condemns her to through inaction and an inability to truly empathize with her, yet it's also something she condemns herself to out of a belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with her. That her mother was right, that she deserved the pain she endured during her childhood. That she's always been a wolf in sheep's clothing. She can hide from it and try to put it behind her all she wants. But it won't change her nature.

[walteningmyfiles]

"Go-getter" is a really funny word for a guy who had 70% of his coworkers die gruesomely within a span of a few months and is likely implicated in their murders.

[walteningmyfiles]

Fascinated that Rosemary kept her maiden name after she got married, despite having a bad relationship with her family. It's like she never truly moved on, no matter how much she tried. Even after she married a man she loved, started a family with him, aspired to be the mother she wished she had, pursued a career she was passionate about, formed new friendships and did as much as she could to build a life full of the love she'd been denied growing up— she still held onto this tether to her previous life. Either because a part of her clung to the hope of reconciling and finally being accepted by her estranged family. Or, despite as much as Jack had given her in terms of a fresh start with everything she yearned for, she still refused to fork over this one aspect of her identity entirely independent from him.

[walteningmyfiles]

They should make a Bon's Burgers in real life next