Comment on I Was A Teenage Jekyll - An Updated Shilling Shocker

  1. Justice237 on Chapter 1 Mon 25 Mar 2024 05:20PM UTC

    Oh man, I was not expecting something like this!

    First of all, I love the names, I love how Gabriel(la) Utterson is the only one that's a direct expy of the character from the original Jekyll and Hyde, and that's lampshaded, while almost everyone else's names and character details are just similar enough that you can extrapolate who they're meant to be, like Holly being called Holly rather than Henrietta Jekyll, and Harrison Lanwell being a stand-in for Hastie Lanyon. Also in-character is how both Uttersons still like, respect, and want to protect Henry/Holly's reputation even after everything that happened and knowing what they know now - though in Gabriella's case, given that she's a teenage girl, she could just be fearful of speaking ill of her dead friend who's also a suicide victim.

    Casey Peyton both having a ragebait account and BEING an IRL ragebait account is very in-keeping with the original story too, keeping the fantastical element while updating it to modern values - also with the punny names, since Hyde was literally what Jekyll was hyde-ing behind, and Casey's last name "Peyton" i.e. pey-ing to keep people's mouths shut. I gotta love how Holly chose the most spoiled, bratty name possible for her ragebait alter ego, as if she's a real-life caricature of all of Holly's worst parts. The way to tie the trimmed-up £50 note that Casey bribes the family with back to Holly was also really creative. Given how Gabriella speaks of how nice Holly is, I'm guessing if she thought that Holly was trying to help the local bitch Casey by bring friendly with her - side note, when I first read the original J&H, I tried to put myself in the shoes of someone who didn't know anything at all about the story or the twist, and concluded that had I not known the truth, I would've thought that Hyde was a troubled young man, possibly a longtime patient of Jekyll's, that Jekyll took under his wing and was trying to give him a leg up in life since no one else had given him the chance. One wonders if Holly's friends merely thought that Holly was trying to bring out the best of a rage baiter.

    And the crystals! God only knows (or I guess you also know) how they're gonna tie in with this, since they're obviously a stand-in for the all-important chemical salt that turned out to be more vital than Jekyll originally believed. Is Holly making them into a draught like her spiritual predecessor, or just snorting them outright? They've gotta be potent stuff for Allison to be hospitalised under their effects for 3 months, and she sneezed them out which would've caused them to lose some of their potency at least. I'm assuming they're just dissolved in a drink like they tried for food tech originally, and that makes their effect easier to handle?

    And much like the original Jekyll and Hyde, it's all so compelling and well-written that even if you know the big twist, even if you know everything that's about to happen, you still enjoy the ride and still want to keep reading. That's the mark of quality for any story with a big surprise or twist, and I dare say you have the knack.

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