affections | Tʜᴇ Dɪᴠɪᴅᴇ: Hᴜᴍᴀɴɪᴛʏ & Mᴏɴsᴛʀᴏsɪᴛʏ

Apologies for going on about hybrids and Jules' parents, here, but it is important to understand what she was surrounded with when she was younger, because her parents played a crucial role in shaping how she coped.

Hybrids are beings typically despised by humans and monsters alike, trusted by no one. They are the lowest of creatures, and many die shortly after birth. Their conception is not, for the most part, consensual, and are almost always born of a human mother and a monster father (female monsters capable of conceiving, aside from the Mother Monster, are extremely rare). If they manage to survive, it's either through luck, or because their mothers loved them and were able to protect them or conceal what they were despite the abomination of what happened to them.

The situation for Jules and her brother is different; they are half-hybrid and half-human, and so they had two role models with strong beliefs, in a better position to protect them and prepare them for the reality of what they were. Walter, their father, was a present and forceful factor in their life

Jules father embraces an ideology where hybrids are the in-between, in a singular position where they can fight and protect. More importantly, even if they love humans, they are apart from them; they are in a position to act as jury and pass judgement in a world where no systems of law exist. That is how Walter justifies their position as beings with moral conscience that have the burden of needing human flesh to survive. Past that, they actually need to indulge that need for violence and eat human flesh in order to retain their sanity and conscience.

This belief is one that Jules' mother follows, as well. She's human, but has given up a life among humans in order to be with the person that she fell in love with despite his monster parentage. While she adores her own kind, she is well aware of the cruelty they are capable of. Jules mother copes with the world around her with a kind of desperate need to be cheerful in the face of everything, always smiling. It kind of fulfils the Stepford Smiler trope, really, but in quite an extreme way. The basic idea of the trope is that no matter how sad and depressed a character might be, they continue with a facade, often making themselves appear shallow or really emotionally disconnected.

In Charlotte's case, she is very damaged by the world's bleakness and violence, but she is utterly invested in the wellbeing of their children and wanted to raise them to accept themselves. A big part of that was supporting Walter's idea that hybrids have a purpose to serve, and that despite the potential for danger with hybrids if they give too much into their monster urges. As a result, Jules was raised to treasure human life and had love and affection lavished on her in a manner quite apart from most hybrids. In a sense, she was very lucky, to have as much stability as she could from having both parents present in her life, loved for what she was - not despite it. She was even taught that she had a purpose and could be useful.

For all that, though, it's not easy to stay in a bubble. She wasn't kept away from humans, either, because Charlotte felt that isolating them from humans conflicted with the love Jules and Freddie needed to develop for them. That exposure meant that she had some friends, but it also meant that she got to learn about the violently negative views people had about hybrids, even if they believed (for a while) her to be human. What bubble Jules might have had was burst from her interactions with people, and yet it did have the effort Charlotte wanted of giving her a window to make friends and start coming to appreciate people for herself.

This is all important to keep in mind, because these factors contributed to how Jules developed her coping mechanisms and how she manages the violent extremes of humanity and the monster urges. It does have to shift and adapt from time to time, depending what kind of situation she's in. Jules does her utmost to veer as far away from the monster as possible; some other hybrids allow themselves to come closer to the monster, with some even deliberately embracing those urges and claiming a new name for themselves as they reject their more human life.

Walter's ideology is, to a degree, a coping method. It's a way to justify what they are and carve a place for herself in the world outside the human perception of hybrids as a danger and menace and the monster view of them as dirty, inferior pests. Jules does have her doubts about the view, but it's still something she clings to. If she can limit her feeding onto to those that are a danger, only attack those that have done irredeemable things (or other hybrids, who might not hold true to those same ideals as herself), then she is making the world a better place instead of being something else people have to fear.

In terms of making sure she remains separate from the monster and it doesn't conquer her, Jules always errs on the side of caution. She doesn't fight if she doesn't have to, so that she doesn't feed its lust for violence. She tries not to get angry or lash out, keeping calm as she can and even going to the same unhealthy extreme of her mother with trying to convince the world and even herself that she's happy, even if she's miserable. (This is not always helpful, because having those negative emotions gnawing away at you is exhausting. ) Trying always to be human, stick to those positive human virtues like love and optimism, generosity, charity, those are her ways of trying to cope and try to preserve her humanity and keep it strong enough that the monster side won't ever have a chance of getting a permanent hold on her. She tries to forget bad things that happen to her, because holding onto them can only make her bitter, stir thoughts of revenge or anger, and that could stir the monster as well. What she does isn't healthy by a long shot because she doesn't allow herself a chance to come to terms with things all the time, but it's a method she's held to for a long time. Being around humans helps her be more human, in her own eyes.

The monster part of her is there, but it's carefully contained, through her own diligence. She feeds, but only to stave off the hunger, never for pleasure. She fights, draws on the monster strength, but only when it's necessary to survive; it is kept on a tight leash, and never indulged. The times when it has presented itself past her control could be counted on one hand with a few digits still free, and her force of will and belief in her own humanity can force the monster back into submission, even if she momentarily loses herself. One occasion when she tried to put off feeding for too long because she didn't want to, an occasion when she was abused and held captive by humans and sulfur slaves as a teenager are the only times she has really bone berserk and been in the depths to that more dangerous side in her psychology. One time when she came close to it through sheer misery and desperation was when Em was taken away and she was manipulated by the sulfur slave Levi, mentally and physically. She was so physically spent, though, that the monster side couldn't assert itself. It was weak. If she hadn't been found by Balthazar after Levi had disposed of her, she might have given into the monster, and that dread is something that she will still be holding close.

Essentially, she functions with the psychological split by doing her utmost to contain the negative side and constantly assert her humanity over it, and tries to cope emotionally (usually not successfully, this girl is wretched about what she is, for all her smiles) by simply masking it and pretending everything is fine as much as possible. The person she is behind the split is someone conflicted by what she wants to be and what she is, but her time with Em (despite severe backsliding at Levi's hands) and Balthazar might have proven more valuable than most of what her father told her. Jules, if she could, would try to destroy any aspect of the monster within her, would probably do anything to achieve that end. Her belief in the hybrids place in the world is limited by her fear of the monster, which is part of her desperate need to control it at every turn. Balthazar has told her before that hybrids have their part to play, and more than being a means to judge humans and fight monsters, hybrids could be the key to helping humans claim the world back for themselves and expel monsters completely. It's something that's going to help her more in time as she has more of a chance to reflect on it, but it is something that helps her come to be more at peace (eventually) and thus keep the monster further at bay than it is in her current state of trying to mask everything.