Jackson Jekyll and Holt Hyde Rant
I've mentioned this post in one of my Tyler Galpin posts before and i've finally gone and made it.
Jackson Jekyll is... I have beef with this character.
Let me roll it back a little. My beef is the fact that Jekyll and Hyde was meant to be the duality, good and evil - Hyde was literally Jekyll's evil side given sentience in his own mind... Tyler follows a similar structure with the Hyde being a literal monster while he is able to appear human and normal.
This isn't about Jackson's story, this is purely about what he is and my annoyance with how he's written. I think he's a fine character but in my opinion, if you're writing a jeckyll and Hyde style character, you should have one side be morally bad and the other morally good - whatever that means to that character.
instead Jackson is a nerd who plays sports by day, and a DJ with impulse control issues by night sorta thing... there isn't really much in terms of a start difference really other than one being an extroverted fire guy and one being introverted human.
Also I get that his dad is a fire elemental thingy but they could have used that to make him a bad guy. have him be a terror, a bully who burns people books or scares people with his fire... a shy nerd/asshole bully switch swap would work so much better for Jackson than what he is currently...
also just reading the wiki about him, they need to get his family tree straight, the only constant is his mom is the jekyll-hyde and dad is a fire elemental with grandpa og jekyll-hyde on one of their sides, heath is his cousin but in some versions its on his moms side and other versions its on his dads... its like deciphering the Addams family all over again, who is fester related to? which side is Grandmama from? does Pubert exist? is Pubert just Pugsley in another universe... my poor brain.
In all honesty, the only reason this post is here is because I remembered Jackson exists while writing a Tyler post at one point and had some beef after reading his wiki and being reminded about his dumbass alter ego...
don't take this too seriously, I don't actually care but it is a little stupid... :)
That's because Jackson and Holt base their existence on versions of the J&H book.. Which is the original version. Not in the interpretations of musicals or popular culture.
In the book, Hyde is not the "bad side" of Jekyll. It is merely a kind of mask and pseudonym that Jekyll uses to commit morally dubious acts. (for the time) It was a way for Jekyll to pretend that it wasn't him, but some other person, who was a "criminal". That's why Jackson and Holt aren't a "good side and bad side".
It is also important to remember that they are their own people. The characters in MH are not a copy and paste of their original monsters. They are their own people. Draculaura is a vegetarian, she doesn't drink blood like her father (nor does she have his powers). Frankie is not made of corpses like the original version of Frankenstein's monster; she is made with artificial materials. And so it goes with each one. So trying to make them identical to their original versions... Well... I think you lose sight of the point of "being yourself".
