Recently I was thinking about Plagueroud once again, because it honestly never sat right with me how unnecessarily brutal certain aspects of their world and also St. Churnley's are. like. Why are we sending 11 yos to fight for their lives?? And what do you mean Thompson got stuck as a monster in the plagueround, because he didn't graduate??

And I feel like I finally came up with an explanation that satisfies me, so I wanted to share it!

To start off, the boys who don't graduate are not permanently 'stuck' there. What happens is, if they fail to pass Control, Respect and Understanding, or by their graduation are still deemed not ready to live with their curses and reenter society as curse-bearers, the heads of school quite literally rip them away from the boys. The very essence of their curse is being ripped away from their being and becomes it's own entity, that then inhabits and haunts plagueround. Because the curses are a part of you, the boys often loose some of their memories in the process, and the freed curses then seem to cling onto the warped image of who they "were", even though there's nothing human about them.

This is inevitable to happen with every curse and curse-bearer, unless a boy learns how to control it, which is the reason why St. Churnley's exists in the first place - to prevent curses from wrecking havoc in the outside world, or at the very least contain them within plagueround...

Okay.

I NEED to talk about Jack The S**ipper, cause I've been thinking about it a lot while drawing recently.

First of all, as per usual, I think that much much more time has passed between the beginning of the longform and its end, than we would expect. In this time, the relationship between Annette and Inspector, which started out as an informat-detective one, had blossomed into something increasingly romantic. Though calling Annette an informant would be a stretch. She knew that Longcorridor wouldn't be happy if she found out, and knew that it was best not to anger her, but at the same time she was immediately smitten with Inspector and decided to jump on the ocassion.

She agreed to be his informat and then later a witness, but she cleverly danced around and circled any uncomfortable subjects. Sometimes she would slip up and say bit too much, but all in all she rarely said anything of real importance. Inspector, however, didn't mind. All he wanted was an excuse to keep meeting up with Annette, as their relationship kept growing romantic and serious.

However before Inspector came along, there was Frankie. Despite finding him blunt and gruff in the beginning, Annette quickly found a best friend in the older man, who also couldn't remain forever immune to her charisma and cheerful personality. They grew incredibly close incredibly fast, and had it not been for Frankie's sexuality, the two would most likely get together and run away. They were actually still planning to run away, until the Inspector came along. Frankie didn't like nor trust the Inspector, and definitely didn't like it how he put their plans on a back burner. But he also saw how happy Inspector made Annette, so he decided to wait and see how it will unravel, because he didn't want to take it away from her or make her choose.

The feeling between Frankie and Inspector wasn't mutual tho. Upon learning from Annette about Frankie's preferences, as well as who most of his clients were, for the first time in his life Inspector felt not only intrigued, but also finally free to maybe question some things about himself. Even if all his sheepish advances fell flat and remained unreciprocated.

He could only feel betrayal and rage after Annette's death, who seemingly died on the hands of Frankie himself.

The reason why she died, was because Longcorridor overhead her and Frankie talk about Inspector and her relationship with him. Jacqueline feared that if it goes on for any longer she might reveal other services provided by her establishment, as well as who the majority of Frankie's clientele was. All very illegal at the time, lol.

So she killed Annette and pinned it on Frankie, who was already a serious suspect. Frankie knew she did that, but also knew that he was completely helpless in the situation, so in his frustration he blamed Annette's death on Inspector.

The last, most important step in ensuring her establishment's safety was getting Inspector to kill Frankie and get himself incarcerated. Improsoned, or ever better yet – hung – he would't be able to use any information he managed to acquire from Annette before her death.

You're very welcome, anon! :) to me there's no doubt that Frankie is a bear and he deserves all the curves.