#nevermore analysis

[alwaysless]

You know what. Let it be. Let Annabel betray Lenore at the altar. Let her get cold feet. It still fits into the overall concept.

We talked a lot about how Lenore and Annabel switched places after death. One day, Lenore had nothing to lose, so she faked her death, set fire to a mansion, put a lot of people in danger and threw the whole world at Annabel's feet, suggesting that she give up material wealth, a stable position in society and confidence in the future for the sake of a beautiful fairy tale about the escape of forbidden lovers.

But Annabel chickened out. Annabel was not ready to lose her whole life for the sake of a ghostly hope for a better future with a reckless renegade. After all when Lenore first asked to run away together Annabel calls her mad.

Because Annabel in life is different from Annabel in Nevermore, just like Lenore. I think a lot of people forget about this because we hardly saw Annabel's position in flashbacks. However, what little we have shows Annabel as a gambling yet very trapped girl, ready to make concessions to society. Remember the quarrel at the Finger Lakes: nevermore!Annabel would arrange a whole scheme with secret correspondence and fake names just to keep in touch with Lenore, but this Annabel just leaves because apparently it is not appropriate for a married woman to be friends with a madwoman.

It had never occurred to Annabel that you can deceive social norms. She was ready to play by the rules all her life, accept the inevitable, and not go beyond what was allowed. She chose her father, her reputation, and the golden cage. And then it all disappeared, and Annabel died along with Lenore, despite their efforts.

However there is not a single priority in Nevermore that Annabel once put above Lenore. She has no confidence in the future, she has no family, she has no alternative. But she still has Lenore. Now Annabel is the one with nothing to lose, now she is ready to take the risks she feared during her life. Because what difference does it make? Once she got cold feet and lost anyway dragging Lenore down with her, so now she can try the exact opposite strategy. In the end the only alternative is death. Or oblivion, if they become spheres. Yes, in that case Annabel's desperate loyalty is largely dictated not only by guilt but also by the lack of any other choice. She clings to Lenore because she has nothing else to cling to.

And although it's bitter and doesn't really look like beautiful love story, Lenore did the same. For Lenore, there was only one road–the attic and the suffocating loneliness that was gradually driving her crazy. The only way out is to escape and in that case why not invite Annabel with her? Why not take a chance? The worst that can happen is a prison or an asylum, which are hardly different from an attic in the long run.

But in Nevermore, Lenore suddenly has something to lose–friends. People who don't judge her for not conforming to the norms, people who find her recklessness inspiring, and even Annabel couldn't give her acceptance like this. So when Annabel says that they could sacrifice the world to their love and run away, ignoring the feelings of others, it's Lenore's turn to call her mad.

How can Annabel compete with her beloved`s new priorities? After all at the crucial moment Annabel herself did not choose Lenore. Now that Lenore has to make a choice, she has no good reason to choose Annabel either.

As much as I wish Annabel had some kind of ace up her sleeve at the wedding, if she just got cold feet, it's completely in keeping with her character.

[lenoresun]

ouch…

[littlekandiclown]

Thinking about the very specific kind of grief lenore was feeling here

This might get a little rambly because I'm going to relate it to my own experience with grief over the past year.

Last year shortly after my friend died my mom cut my hair to look like theirs. Almost the whole time she was cutting it I was crying. I look at myself in the mirror sometimes and see a glimpse of them and it hurts because I know I'll never get to see them again.

Lenore's hair is honoring Theo's life in one of the only ways she can and I find that so beautiful. When Lenore "killed" herself to become Leo she cut her hair to honor Theo. To everyone else she was joining him amongst the dead, and now she looks like him. I don't really know what I'm saying I just think it's neat.

[mellemorose]

defending lenore’s spectre. this was gonna be a reblog but it became so long that i figured it should be its own post. please don’t start wars!

i think the idea that it’s a design based on things one just feels like is cool, not a design mainly based on thought isn’t saying much since i feel like that can be applied to most if not every spectre we’ve seen. 

berenice wears a minidress with a bunch of cut outs and fishnet tights

montresor literally has his abs out and has piercings on his nipples

duke’s whole jester look having the chest belts

even arguably the heart shaped hole in annabel’s chest (not to mention the recent panels of her lmao)

lenore’s is actually less, for lack of a better term, fanservicey / gratuitous than those, especially considering there hasn’t been any special emphasis she gets on particular elements, nor additional detail or lack thereof which is in keeping with the rest of the cast. also, the design was  gonna be something the creators like no matter what the lore was.

on the contrary, it's not like lenore’s spectre is an exception when it comes to design principles, symbolism and how much of the story was taken into account. aside from the clever detail of there being a chance Bloody Mary shows you a skull to hint that you will die before you get married and a lady in red being a jilted lover (which has been wonderfully detailed by @royallyturbulentmist in this post!)

like many of them it reflects how she died (shot in the head while meant to be the groom to annabel’s wife, so there’s a crack where she was shot with an inner cavity similar to annabel’s one in her chest, plus the red crystal halo that points to the wound and signifies the direction of blood splatter, matching the red crystal dangling in the center of annabel, and the clothes being more or less the same just loosely modified like annabel’s wedding dress, the blood on the top coming from embracing her). 

who she was before she died (she used to have long hair before she cut it off in pursuit of being with annabel, and the scissor-ish blades also fit with that as that's what she used to do that before looking in the mirror—which can be said to show futures—and burning the building down. in the last section of the wikipedia on it, the bloody mary may be named after women who burnt people/got burnt at the stake, which can be symbolic of madness perceived or not). side note i don’t like the idea that it clashes with her androgyny or how she presents her appearance gender-wise, long hair isn’t inherently feminine and can be seen as masculine. additionally that wasn’t the primary reason her hair was cut or why she styled herself the way she did, it was to pass as a man for the aforementioned goal. she was never shown having a problem with the dresses she wore in life and even wore some feminine stuff in dreamland. there’s also how it makes her not resemble theo, which was actually on purpose.

and the emotions she felt as she died (annabel can be said to have died feeling grief, and has a giant hole in her chest where her heart was alluding to lost and unfulfilled love. lenore died feeling vengeful, and her seemingly hollow head and bloodied eyes means she’s “seeing red” i.e cannot see reason anymore, as well as bringing to mind the phrases “blood for blood”, “blood feud” and so on. there’s also how blood is not just associated with death, but it’s also a sign of being warm and alive. obviously no one at nevermore that isn’t named pluto wanted to die, but lenore clearly had a strong will to live and keep fighting as well as has some fire imagery. note how annabel is chronically cold in her spectre form just like a corpse, and had very little resolve in their final moments). the other spectres can have just as many things about them inferred.

also i get that it gives creepypasta (which i dont see the problem with), but: 

she’s a Bloody Mary, a figure from an old horror legend portrayed a lot as being, well, bloody, and creepypasta are essentially just horror legends but from the internet. they fundamentally have the same tropes, it was kinda inevitable.

a gunshot to the head damages blood vessels which are also in your eyes and i can’t think of another way other than more broken glass-like cracks on the forehead to imply the head wound. 

a quick search shows that red eyes really aren’t that common in creepypasta characters. plus, the story is already dark and horror-adjacent to begin with, a few elements that come off as “edgy” are to be expected, this isn’t even the first nor will it be the last lol.

edgy things are a guilty pleasure for me i can’t lie lmao, don’t kill me pls 

and on whether or not it’s monstery enough, annabel, morella, eulalie and duke all have pretty human-like spectres or designs, along with to a lesser extent monty, prospero and berenice. that’s most members of the main cast already. the Bloody Mary is ultimately just a ghost woman, and most ghosts will resemble people with extra sauce for self explanatory reasons.

i also think some of this has to do with the fact that lenore was for so long the only one without a spectre, which led to tons of speculation on what it would it be, combined with stretched out pacing made it so that it would likely never match the reality of what the creators had in mind. 

unless you get deep in theorizing (like me admittedly lmao), was there really ever an indication that her spectre would warrant any more significance than other spectre reveals? if annabel’s was revealed to us much later and lenore’s revealed first i think people would've also gave hers more scrutiny (i had to go back and check to see how detailed annabel’s dress was, it has nothing other than some frills at the ends guys lol). the expectation of more elements related to ravens might also have been from this. beyond the subject being mourned in the poem "the raven" being all but stated to be the same lenore in the poem "lenore" both that lenore and this lenore didn't have a tie to ravens the way pluto has a tie to black cats. 

i admit that i'm heavily biased in favor of defending her spectre. that being said within what the story’s identity is it serves its purpose pretty well.

addendum - as someone mentioned, her blades not only reference the scissors she used to cut her hair, but also the raven wings in the series' logo and slightly resemble her wheelchair, and this can be seen as turning what gave her hardship into a mode of revenge seeking!

[straightasaaro]

Updated Nevermore Episode Map

Day One: episodes 1-7 (seven episodes) 

Day Two: episodes 8-29 (twenty two episodes)

Day Three: episodes 30-43 (fourteen episodes)

Day Four: episodes 44-77 (thirty four episodes) 

Day Five: episodes 78-105 (twenty eight episodes)

Day Six: episodes 106-152 (forty seven episodes)

Episode count goes from the start of a day to the end. If it goes dream to morning mid-episode, then it counts as the next day. Previous dream episodes go to the previous day.

Mean episodes for a full day to pass: 25 and a third 

I’ll likely come back after my reread (for the essay 💀) about the average amount of flashbacks per day.

Also reminder that day 6 is not over! We just got to the dawn of the day, all the episodes I counted are from midnight onward. But if you want to get specific, 105-152 (forty eight episodes) are a single night (twelve hours).

[kknyght]

Something about Morella taking Berenice’s knife doesn’t seem right to me. Why does she suddenly want it ? For « safekeeping » ?? Girl you have no reason to think that that knife is safer with you than it is with her.

I have two theories :

1) she’s suspicious of Berenice. It seems a bit odd considering how trusting she’s been so far, even being friends with Annabel’s group for a while despite some of them being the opposite of trustworthy. Unless she’s pretending to be « naive » ?

2) she wants the knife for herself. Perhaps she’s not suspicious of Berenice, but she still takes the knife cause she’s planning to use it. For what ? It could either be self defense, perhaps she feels threatened in some way, but again, she doesn’t seem like it. Or, she’s planning to hurt someone, which seems unlike her but you never know.

I don’t know why but these two panels make it seem like she isn’t gonna give that knife back anytime soon.

Also.. she was panicking a minute ago, why is she suddenly so happy. It might be relief, but still.

I DON’T KNOW I CAN JUST TELL SOMETHING ISNT RIGHT

[dishonorable-poet]

how egaeus caused berenice’s death

let’s start off with the simple, there’s a theory that everyone in nevermore was betrayed and it led to their death.

now, if we compare the flashbacks, berenice’s outfits are pretty similar. they’re not the exact same but very close. the color and pearl necklace look the same so therefore it makes sense to assume that she died after the party.

when egaeus killed sterling, berenice was in disbelief, but knowing her she did not stay silent. berenice is not the type of person to stay quiet because she fears what would happen to her and she would not want to be an accomplice.

my theory is that she ran away to tell the police and that egaeus chased her. directly or not, he led to her death. he either pushed her onto the road, chased her until she ran into the busy road or paid someone to run her over (i’ve seen people theorize this but i don’t think it’s that, just thought i would mention it).

then, when a guy is recounting what happened to the police, we do not get to see his face. it could just be a random person but i have reason to believe it’s egaeus making a story up.

if berenice were going directly to the police, it wouldn’t be logical for her to walk with someone else and “dart all of a sudden” as she would probably be running the whole time.

but the biggest thing for me is that when berenice died, the creators make it a point to show berenice’s bloody teeth. it could just be a stylistic choice but if we go off of edgar allan poe’s story, egaeus had a strange obsession with berenice’s teeth.

for this reason, i think the bloody teeth are a way of showing his relation to her death. the teeth being out of her mouth is him winning because he got what he wanted from her.

[jayktoralldaylong]

And this particular moment is so wholesome to me, because Duke doesn’t get vulnerable and he doesn’t get scared, at least not where people can see, and he’s fallen silent faced with the finality of the reality that was his life. He remembers how he died, how for the first time he was not fast enough or smooth enough. Worse still, he’d been killed.

Duke was drowned doing the thing that he loved the most, by the person he trusted the most. He didn’t just drown in water, he drowned in the noise of adoration that drowned out his cries for help.

Drowned by the weight of the eyes that watched as he died and drowned by the smile he’d once trusted to always be there for him. It’s an awful way to die.

He’s so wet puppy coded when he remembered how he died, and then sinks into a despair that lasts for the scenes that follows until Lenore proves to him that they will survive.

That’s when Duke is reinvigorated. That’s when he begins to live again. 🥹❤️