Jessica Lockwood - Tumblr Posts

Idk if anyone has already said this, but if Jessica had lived I could totally see her going out with Kipps.

Lockwood was in the playroom when he heard Jessica's scream. He had to run through the basement, up the stairs, the length of the kitchen, the hallway, the first flight of stairs that takes you to the landing George's room is on, and the second flight of stairs to get to Jessica's landing.

That is almost the entire house.

There is no where Lockwood can set foot that is not an echo of the worst day of his life. The path he ran to get to his sister (too late) goes straight through the heart of the house.

Interesting note, the Library (where he spends the most time) is not one of the places he had to run through that day.

Lockwood/Kipps rivalry analysis:

In the show and the books Kipps mentions something along the lines of how “everyone leaves him in the end”. In the books we get the added note of Lucy hearing something in his tone that she “couldn’t quite understand” or something like that. As well as in the show Kipps’ comment about Lockwood in that “big empty house”.

I think they were close as kids, but given that he was closer in age to Jessica he was probably closer with her. Maybe they were dating. Regardless, I bet Kipps was on good terms with all the Lockwood’s. Anthony Lockwood probably even looked up to him. He might have even wanted to join Fittes because of him.

So (spoilers), when Jessica died although he was older, Kipps was still a kid himself. Again, if Jessica and Kipps were dating, I doubt they broke up. Not that I know what it’s like, but not being in a relationship anymore, not because of anything you or the other person decided, but because one of them died, well, I’m sure that sucks.

Basically in his grief I don’t think Kipps knew how to handle everything. Especially his anger. So he took his misplaced anger and directed it on Lockwood. Kind of messed up, but people are like that sometimes.

As for Lockwood I’m sure he didn’t know how to handle it either. What could he do?

But I’m sure what makes it hurt even more is that after losing his parents and now his sister what would probably have been good for him is having someone to talk to. Or check up on him.

That could have been Kipps. They both lost someone, but grief isn’t fair. And if Kipps was there for Lockwood, who would be there for Kipps? They could lean on each other for support, but given the age difference it would be on Kipps to be the strong one. But that didn’t happen. And the way they both handled it probably made them hurt more.

I imagine that over time, Lockwood started to feel angry towards Kipps too. That he felt like death took his family from him, but Kipps just left.

So when Kipps shows up in the library and says “everyone leaves him in the end.” I think that if Lockwood was a different type of angry he could’ve said “what? Like you?” Cause he was the only one who actually left. Everyone else died.

I think over time they worked through it on their own and maybe they have yet to have a proper conversation about it, but I think they’re doing better with room for growth.

I also think their rivalry has nothing to do with Lockwood poking Kipps in the butt with a rapier.

Love this analysis and that I helped inspire it

Ok, saw a post by @hernameslucy, and it activated alll the Kipps brainworms. Turns out that I have a loooot of thoughts about the idea that Kipps had a relationship with the Lockwoods/Jessica and at least in part blamed Lockwood for Jessica's death. I find it compelling, but also when you draw out all of the implications it is so incredibly, utterly devastating. Anyway here's my very long analysis of how the Lockwood and Kipps rivalry might have come about (in addition to the cannon poke to the bum with a fencing foil...). After Jessica's death, I could see Kipps in the moment as a grieving teenager blaming Lockwood, and that would be painful for Lockwood on multiple levels. He’s losing out on whatever support Kipps might have offered him otherwise, and it reinforces Lockwood’s own shame around his culpability in Jessica's death. That brings this really complicated edge to Lockwood’s feelings towards Kipps because you have both a very real and very deep grievance (he would be very rightfully angry at Kipps for blaming him for something that really wasn't in his control) and also a reminder of his biggest regret (not being present when Jessica broke the vase).

This second point is where you have Lockwood projecting some of his own emotions onto Kipps. At the beginning of the series Lockwood does blame himself, and he's also very much running away from that feeling. When he finally shows Jessica's room to Lucy and George he lies about where exactly he was at the time because he's not ready to confront that shame, and there's likely a small part of him that is convinced that they will blame him as well (since there's a part of him that believes they rightfully should). Before Lockwood tells Lucy his full account of the day and in part acknowledges his own feelings of culpability, he's still very much trying to bury and push away those emotions. If Kipps really did blame him, that would make Kipps a very difficult person to be around because his very presence reminds Lockwood of the shame he's been avoiding.

On top of that, I think at that point in Lockwood's emotional arc there's likely a part of him that sees Kipps as the person that has the most clear-eyed view of him. The fact that Lockwood blames himself for Jessica's death and has acknowledged that fact to no-one would likely leave him with this feeling that he's actually lying to the important people in his life (among other things, this is supported in the show by Lockwood's line to Lucy that "there are things that I haven't told you about myself that are probably for your own good").

With Kipps being the only person who knows what Lockwood believes to be a terrible truth about himself, he could very easily become a place for Lockwood to externalize his own shame. Any attempts to prove Kipps wrong could be read as just as much an attempt to prove wrong his own worst judgments of himself. As for Kipps, I think an initial response of anger towards Lockwood is difficult to take but understandable. What's harder for me to reconcile is that over the years Kipps would continue to hold onto the belief that Lockwood really was at fault for Jessica's death. He's enough older that I think after the initial intensity of the grief passed, he would likely feel a bit ashamed for having blamed a child for something so clearly out of their control. As for why he would continue to antagonize Lockwood years later, I can think of a few possibilities.

The saddest of them is that he simply allowed his shame to curdle. Instead of acknowledging his fault, he doubled down on externalizing his emotions onto Lockwood. Clearly Lockwood had to be at fault because otherwise Kipps would need to fully acknowledge what he had done in placing the weight of blame onto a grieving child. I don't like this explanation as much because 1. I think Kipps is more compassionate than that even from the beginning (we stan one (1) Quill Kipps in this house) and 2. I don't think that this is a kind of hurt that could just be gradually smoothed over without some kind of reckoning between the two of them.

I think what's more likely is that sometime before the events of the series, Kipps did try to repair his wrong and Lockwood lashed out at him. Again, I think that Kipps would still be in the wrong in this situation both as the older of the two and as the party that added insult to injury. However, Kipps is also still a grieving teenager too, and in this instance he's coming to Lockwood with some vulnerability, admitting wrong and also likely seeking out company and commiseration in his grief. He's doing a difficult thing while also nursing his own grief, and he's met with coldness and anger. That would be hard to take.

This kind of hurt I could see slowly fading over time as they develop a relationship, since it places them on something closer to level footing. I still think they would have to acknowledge it at some point, but it also seems possible that that's just something Lucy was never privy to.

not to be insane about her on main but you know I never stopped thinking about jessica right. you know I never stopped thinking about jess lockwood

shes like. she's JESS.

shes haunting the narrative. she's haunting lockwood. shes haunting nothing at all, in the literal sense, which is rather strange. shes in Lucy's face and the way she stands at the door. shes got lockwoods eyes, or maybe hes got hers. she's burned into her bedset. she's burned into her house. she's burned into wood. she's a broken pot. she's a clumsy rapier. she's waiting at the apple tree. shes sleeping under her covers. she likes stickers. she's a kid, she's a guardian, she's not going to take off the baby wallpaper in her bedroom. she's clung to youth. she's forced to grow up. she's younger than her baby brother. she's the world. shes important enough to die for. she's important enough to live because of. she's blue and swollen and on the floor and dead. she's pale and smiling and holding her brother in her lap, immortalized, shoved in a dresser drawer because somebody couldnt handle seeing her face.

she's that important. she's that important.

she's a lockwood, she's a mirror, she's lucy joan carlyle and anthony john lockwood and a reminder and a child and doomed, doomed, doomed in such a way that she could save everyone else.

she's the boxes lockwood couldn't open. she's the right time. she's warm feathers and stitches purposefully undone.

in her childishly wallpapered room, she is sitting, watching, cross legged on her bed.

In a world where Jessica lives...

Jessica: You, Kipps, are the most insufferable man I have ever met and you know that it quite an achievement because my younger brother is Anthony Lockwood.

Lockwood: I don't like coming second to Kipps but in this case I will happily accept silver.

And I noticed too that while Jessica’s stone was set in the center of this space, and the parents’ stone was to the left, there was an empty area on the right-handside. I looked at this bare patch of grass. And when I did so, everything faded out—the beating of my heart, the whispering of the wind as it worked its way through the holes and hollows of the ivy, the sound of distant Night Cabs on the Marylebone Road. I gazed at it. At the unobtrusive patch of ground. At the empty, waiting grave.

- Lucy Carlyle, The Empty Grave

The bridge between life and death