Montresor (and Willtresor) are the Bad Ending of White Raven III: now it is personal
Well, after realizing that I have like (check the list) two unfinished "sagas" of essays, I remembered that I had this 80% done and I told myself that maybe it was an excellent time to get on with this shit to keep kicking the archetypes and gothic tragedy essay under the rug
When I thought about this ("hey, if Montresor has so many similarities to Lenore and Annabel, where does that leave Will?"), my first thought was that the parallel would be this:
We have a charming blondie charlatan who arrives just in time to offer their "friendship" (wink, wink) to a poor individual who couldn't be hungrier for affection and validation. A deal sealed with a handshake, otherwise.
Here the parallel between Will and Lenore is drawn in that they are both rather reactive people: they don't take the initiative to do things, they react to things that happen around them. For example, Will wasn't the one who came up with the idea of putting Duke behind the wall, just as Lenore didn't come up with this whole fake rivalry scheme.
But neither of them refuse to participate, either because they think they can get away with it, or because they don't stop to think about the consequences of the things they get into. And, in general, they tend to panic when things don't go their way and immediately back off (even when that's not possible).
But this is where the parallel ends, because their personalities and approaches are completely different: Will tends to curl up in a ball and look for excuses not to get hurt, while Lenore is an extremely blunt weapon capable of taking whatever is thrown at her.
So you can imagine the look on my face when, after thinking it over, I realized that the person Will has the most in common with is not Lenore.
Because if we had a nickel for every time we saw a character in Nevermoreβ¦
Be willing to tolerate physical harm to protect an object of affection whose game has backfired.
Idealizing that object of affection to obsessive levels.
Taking harmful attitudes out of a desire to be accommodating because they think that's what that person expects of them.
And putting up with it even though it is tearing them apart inside...
We would have two nickels. It's not much, but it's interesting that it happened twice.
With that, I could up the ante and point out something else that Annabel and Will have in common: they're both invisible people. Will is someone no one gives a second glance to, while Annabel is seen more as an object or an idea than an individual (a pretty accessory in life, an unbeatable queen in death). They don't really matter to anyone.
Except for one person. One person for whom they are willing to give absolutely everything. Their lives, their physical integrity, their identity.
This creates an enormous fear of being abandoned by that person, when they have given them such an important part of their self-construction, who are they without them?
Then there is the particular way in which they both understand relationships. Annabel has openly stated that she sees social relationships as commercial exchanges. It is not known whether Will has a similar view, but in practice he behaves much like Annabel in this respect: they see themselves as important to the extent that they can be useful to their particular person. Tools to be used, rather than individuals deserving some form of appreciation, care, or even affection for simply being them.
Under that premise, it's to be expected that Montresor or Lenore will discard them the moment something more useful or better comes along, because that's what you do with tools. If some of them end up in the trash, it's because Annabel or Will have failed to remain useful, and they need to make amends for their mistakes in order to be considered worthy of a second look.
Which makes it tremendously ironic that Lenore says this to Willβ¦
When in the midst of a panic attack, this is one of the first concerns Annabel has to express.
At this point, the difference between the two situations jumps out: Lenore cares about Annabel. Where Montresor is more than happy to use Will's complexes to keep him chained to him, Lenore is far from being comfortable with all that crap. Again, what draws the lines in the end is that there are people who have their hearts in the right place and there are people who don't.
But I think there's one thing that's a little darker: please watch Montresor's face when he realizes that the person he's choking is Will.
And watch his complete lack of reaction when Lenore pulls it out of his face.
I think the fucked up thing about the situation is that Montresor seems to care about Will. At least enough to feel a certain amount of remorse. But in a world where there are winners and losers (a perspective he shares with Annabel), where it doesn't pay to care about the losers if you're a winner, Montresor doesn't have the resources to treat Will any better. Even if he wanted to, he's too deep into toxic patterns of behavior to show him any degree of kindness, because the only way this man is able to relate is through abuse, control, and manipulation.
This is extremely fucked up when you consider that this is the fuzzy line that separates Lenore and Montresor in the roles they have within the relationship with Annabel and Will.
At the end of the day, the Willtresor is a dark reflection of the White Raven, because that's the consequence of instrumentalizing the relationship in this way: you have one party who benefits from what the other is willing to do for them -and no matter how much they care, it still relegates them to the role of tools- and another person desperately picking up crumbs of validation because they don't think they deserve any better.
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