VOODU!!

Holt and Jackson’s relationship with their moms isn’t that fleshed out in the stories from what I can tell but what we do have is that their moms are where their Jekyll and Hyde genes come from.

We also know (from Holt’s diary) that he thinks that their moms preferred if he wasn’t a monster at all. We don’t know if it’s true or not but for the sake of angst I’ll say that despite how much their moms try, there’s a clear bias for Jackson. Sorry kid Holt, but what you thought was somewhat true.

In the first drawing I wanted to draw the parallels between them. In my hc Holt’s a mamas boy, and in his kid brain he made the connection quick that if he was more human their moms would like him better. Being more human meant his mom would love him more. Additionally, he might’ve thought that maybe if he was more human their moms wouldn’t have to keep moving and switching jobs so often (because maybe he thought that because of his looks being around normie towns became dangerous? Or maybe because of his looks it’s safer for them to live in monster towns but that caused stress for their moms because they look relatively human; getting jobs in a predominantly monster neighborhood looking like a normie doesn’t seem easy)

On the other hand, Jackson wants to be more monster to fit in with his peers. In his diaries he writes that he gets bullied and in the show his first ever appearance was him getting bullied. And as a kid, I don’t think the bullying was never not present (Jackson wrote in his diary that he was getting beat up at age FIVE) In his mind, if he was more monster he would’ve fit in more and maybe he’d feel less “othered”

For their moms, we never actually got a clear name for them. Sometimes it’s Sydney Jekyll or Henrietta Jekyll but we never got a name for the hyde of their mom so I just named her Henrietta and left Sydney for the Jekyll half.

We know that they’re extremely protective over their sons, and that they can transform because of it. However their trigger isn’t as fleshed out as their sons. We also don’t have anything about their dad other than he’s a fire elemental, so it’s all really ambiguous.

Jackson and Holt’s childhood to me is pretty interesting because their trigger was night and day for majority of it. Maybe the reason Holt cares so heavily about his moms’ opinions is because that he never got to see her much? Hear me out

Their mom’s trigger isn’t day and night. And taking care of a kid is one thing, but to take care of a kid every day and night? Especially when said kid doesn’t sleep (from what I understand they transform when the sun comes up and down and don’t seem? To be tired when they swap so ig they don’t “sleep” in the normal sense?) That’s a handful, there’s no break time in between. Of course they tried their best to be there for Holt but other than their Jekyll-Hyde lineage, they’re human. They can’t stay up day and night for their sons no matter how hard they try. (Again, sorry Holt)