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e-adlirez · 18 days

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Treasure Seekers 2 go brrrrr

So this sequel... exists :D

Welcome to the second entry in the Treasure Seekers trilogy that I'm gonna ramble about for the next six hours (in me time, in you time it's probably gonna be like thirty minutes or less), if you wanna read it yourself before reading this ramble, here's an Archive copy. Otherwise, enjoy the ride :D

So our story begins with the Thea Sisters locked in a basement in the dark, with Russia's penchant for matches (and the basement's lack of a smoke alarm) coming in clutch. Seems like another vacation's gone awry for them :3 How could it have possibly turned out this way?

Flashback: so the girls are vibing in Moscow, visiting all the cool sights and all that, Pam is wanting to try some Russian cuisine, when they spot this girl that's wearing what appears to be a barrette that used to belong to Aurora's sister Hannah Lane. They follow her a bit, find a THUG JUMPSCARE, follow the girl, Cassidy and co into the building they're heading into, and oh dear door with passcode is in the way. They find this dood Sergei, explain to him the situation, deal with him being like "who is u, and wth are you on about mate" until they hear a scream and oh dear turns out that girl with the barrette is Sergei's sister Irina and she's in trouble.

Sergei opens the door, they go in, walk in on Cassidy, Stan and Max (who I will from now call SM for simplicity) doing their whole thug jumpscare thing and kidnapping Irina in 4K. SM somehow rolls a high enough strength roll (or the girls roll a low enough initiative) that two roughly intimidating guys successfully trap six people into a basement without breaking a sweat get yourself some self-defense classes girls oml, and that's the end of that.

Luke's up to his shenanigans again, and it seems that he's targeted Irina Lenenko for the same reason the girls double-taked at the sight of her barrette: Irina (and Sergei in conjunction) is a descendant of Hannah Lane, and Hannah Lane may or may not have known a thing or two about one of the seven treasures. It's such a shame tho that Irina doesn't wanna spill any of the tea. What's this about a "queen's jewel"?

Oh also Luke has Aurora's third diary. I would like you to pay attention to this detail in particular. Oh and he's keeping Irina ratgrabbed until she tells them what he wants to know from her. Oh naur

Meanwhile the girls infodump all of the TS 1 LANE LOORRREEEE to Sergei in one whole sitting and finally manage to get around to "what the hell does this have to do with my sister". Sergei thinks it's not really possible for Irina to know anything about great-grandma Hannah's involvement with Aurora, but Irina's still in trouble soooo time to solve this nerdy-ass science trivia keypad puzzle to get outa the basement. Irina's nowhere to be found in the lab itself, so they regroup at Sergei's place to use his phone tracker app on his computer.

Bad news, SM dumped Irina's phone somewhere in the lab so the tracker app is useless; good news, while looking for some Lane Lore™ to get some context about the situation, the girls find some Lane Lore™ :D

Turns out Aurora was looking for one of the seven treasures again, y'know just updating her sister on that, who'd moved to Saint Petersburg with her husband Ivan.

Seems like Aurora's quest at the time involved "the queen's jewel", which Aurora said she was 1000% down to ramble about to Hannah, maybe when she's done finding all seven treasures and hiding them from Jan.

I would like to take this moment to remind you that Aurora is a British Amelia Earhart, and if you dunno what that means, look up what Earhart was famous for and then look at this with that given context :']

With that lead, the girls plus Sergei take a ride on presumably the Krasnaya Strela night train to Saint Petersburg, read some Lane Lore on the way, Peter-Griffin upon realizing that they spent the whole night reading AO3 fanfics Aurora's diaries and it's like 2AM now, land in Saint Petersburg, stop by Nevsky Prospekt Street to have some breakfast (I think they went to Venezia?), and discussion.

(For the rest of this review, please assume when I say "the girls", I'm including Sergei because Sergei tags along with them and helps them out in their entire journey. It's okay, Sergei may be biologically male but he is an honorary female in our hearts /j)

Aurora mentioned the queen's jewel in her diary, and when you're in Russia, the first queen that comes to mind is Catherine II, so maybe something relating to her? Some Lane Lore of Aurora taking interest in Catherine II's Amber Room in her palace specifically confirms their theories, sooooooooo it's time to go to the Amber Room to see if Aurora left any clu--

The girls are about to walk out of the Catherine Palace to Peter Griffin in private when SM JUMPSCARE--

So SM is stalkin' around the Catherine Palace looking for something, so the girls stalk them back and follow them out of the palace, into a car (the girls called a separate taxi to follow them), and to a little gray building in the outskirts of the city. They don't follow SM into the building because it might be dangerous, but Irina's scarf lying around near the premises confirms that Irina was in fact there and possibly being held hostage in the building.

The girls do a little tactic I like to call "the Ding Dong Ditch": Pam and Nicky knock on the door, SM answers it, do a little Metal Gear exclamation point "HOW DID YOU GET HERE", Nicky and Pam book it so SM chases them, and that's literally how the other girls plus Sergei sneak into the building to get Irina out. (You dunno how badly I wanted to make a videogame reference for this but I couldn't find anything so here we are--)

With that, the girls plus the Lenenko siblings book it outa there without SM being none the wiser (seriously it doesn't even cross their mind that there are more than two Thea Sisters, that's how dum they are). Irina books a hotel room at a friend's place and gives them some extra Lane Lore that she never told Klawitz despite the interrogations:

Hannah Lane was once visited by Aurora unexpectedly, a little after Hannah and her husband moved to a house near the Ob River, in Siberia. Possible lead :3c? The girls think maybe, so they decide to head on over to the exact address in Novosibirsk, Siberia.

In Siberia, the girls cross the frozen Ob River in Novosibirsk to this abandoned little house, where they find this little note with a riddle that talks about Cleopatra and an emerald she had at one point, and CASSIDY JUMPSCARE--

Cassidy busts in, snatches the note and books it away on her snowmobile before the girls can even react. You may be wondering, how the hell did Cassidy get there and know where they were? The answer is the same as the reason behind the SM jumpscares in Russia and in book 1, and that is Luke.

Luke Von Klawitz is doing a little segment that I like to call: Luke Touch Grass, where it becomes increasingly clear that Luke's spent way too much time on 4Chan (/j but you'll see what I mean). Luke hears about SM's failure and facepalms. Then he calls his friend Petrovski, who has access to the database of all of Russia's airports, for help tracking down "six mice leaving Saint Petersburg". Petrovski gives him results in minutes: the girls and Sergei are leaving Saint Petersburg and heading for Novosibirsk, Siberia (most likely Tolmachevo Airport). With that intel, Klawitz looks into his own database of Aurora Beatrix Lane, finds a picture of Hannah and Aurora together, and uses his own version of Google Lens to figure out the exact coordinates where the picture was taken, which happens to be in Novosibirsk, Siberia.

No this man does not in fact canonically touch grass on the regular, who's asking

Anyway so he sent Cassidy the coords, instructions and Aurora's diary to go, and that's how Cassidy walked in on the girls in that little abandoned hut next to Ob River. Only thing is uh, she dropped her purse on the way out. A purse that just so happened to contain Aurora's diary that Luke gave her.

So the girls scoop that puppy up and assume that the treasure is Cleopatra's emerald, thus they think it's in Egypt.

So the girls go to Egypt :D (29 and a half hour flight there good god no wonder they conked out in the plane--)

The girls read some Lane Lore, something about Aurora finding the treasure and hiding it somewhere in a desert, in an "expanse pure and white" that a star compass will lead to. First thing the girls think of at the desert bit is the White Desert (Sahara el Beyda), specifically a spot near Cleopatra's pool, so they leave the airport (not realizing Cassidy is following them now) and head over to a market to buy some supplies because might I remind you, they initially went to Moscow, Russia for vacation.

While in the market, Pam meets a guy named Omar. Pam tells him a little bit about them going to Cleopatra's pool in Sahara el Beyda, and she finds out that Omar just so happens to be an Archaeology major in Oxford University who's here on his summer vacation and works as a guide for Sahara el Beyda, and is more than down to give the girls a tour. Talk about lucky :D

The next day the girls take the scenic route and after a while make it to Siwa, where Omar books a room in a hotel for them, and the girls find this interesting myth there about Cleopatra that I will summarize here:

Cleopatra was once given a jewel that maxes out the owner's rizz and the effect is supposedly indefinite. Cleopatra liked the jewel so much that she wore it on her crown at all times... until she grew a bit self-conscious about the gem's maxxed rizz effect and how everyone kept eyeing the emerald a second too long for comfort, so she decided to hide away said rizz in a spot where none of her rivals could get to it. Oh and uh Cleopatra wrote up a dedication to Ra that's hella cryptic too.

One long rest later, the girls go to Cleopatra's pool on a donkey cart. Yes, a donkey cart. It was Omar's idea. Speaking of Omar, prepare yourself buddy because the girls have dubiously decided to give you some Lane Lore to chew on. O-oh you like it a lot. A lot a lot. Well okay cool, maybe you can help out, cool.

The girls manage to figure out the riddle in Cleopatra's dedication, find a little stone coffer that has the queen's treasure and-- SM JUMPSCARE

With a donkey as the girls' only escape method and Omar having suddenly disappeared, a scuffle ensues where the girls play hot potato with the box until SM gets their hands on it and opens it, and here we get a very accurate depiction of what SM and the girls found in the box once it was actually opened.

Description: a hand made of salt shaped in an upside-down "ok" symbol, circa 1920s-30s.

The sheer whiplash of this leaves both sides of the conflict losing enough HP that they're all on red-- SM is blaming the girls for this (how dare >:[) and dip. Omar is gone, and all the girls get as compensation is the empty box and a letter from Aurora telling them that they'll know to read the hidden clues. The girls head back feeling very hollow and dead inside, and this is the one time one of the girls questions how the hell did SM know they were at Siwa. I mean they never get any answer to this (kinda), but it is a milestone! They're aware of it now!

Once they get back to Cairo, they ask around and find that Omar's completely up and vanished, and they decide they'll just head back to Moscow since their investigation has come to a dead end. On the way, Pam comments about the falafel she bought being hella salty, which leads Violet to an epiphany that hey, the Sahara isn't the only desert that exists, let alone the only desert known for how white it is (like how Boracay Beach is known for how white and fine its sand is, but it's not the only white sand beach that exists). A quick Google search (and a long flight (35 HOURS CAIRO TO SUCRE???)) leads them to the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia.

Nicky reserves a room for them at Hotel Luna Salada (a real place you can book a stay at actually :D), and they make a friend by the name of Adriana, a local waitress in the hotel restaurant. Adriana helps them pick out a dessert, fills them in on some stuff about the Salar since the girls came here 100% out of impulse, and talks about possible itinerary locations to go to, like the Isla de Pescado, Tiwanaku (the "Gate of the Sun"), Lake Titiaca, and Laguna Colorada. Y'know, typical tourist stuff, and Adriana was so kind to show them pictures she took when she visited said places herself! :D

Anyway so while the girls long rest, Luke is mulling about in his base waiting for updates. Someone calls him about the whole Egypt thing, and Luke calls the girls incompetent? Rude, oh and something about the caller being Luke's "secret weapon". Cassidy calls him on a theory she has about the gemstone being in Cleopatra's palace, and since the girls are currently long-resting (which means they aren't doing anything), Luke figures that a little diving trip in Alexandria to search for the gem with Cassidy won't hurt. Besides, he still has his secret weapon.

Oh yeah and he knows the girls are long resting because he has a drone in Bolivia spying on them and showing him their every move. Touch grass, Luke. No, going on a diving trip in Alexandria doesn't count, there's barely any grass there /j

Morning comes in Bolivia, and the girls head out early to search the Salar as much as they can. They look around the flat white desert, eat some late breakfast, toy around with forced perspective camera shenanigans for a bit, and read up on some LANE LOOORREEEEE

So Aurora's been to Pumapunku and Tiwanaku which is cool, she paid a visit to the archaeological site probably and that's really cool. She says something about hiding the queen's treasure in a fish's stomach covered in very fine thorns. Sergei ends up having an epiphany, and that leads the girls to Isla de Pescado, which just so happens to be "Fish Island" in Spanish, and has cacti on it, it's all coming together :D

Oh and the fish drawing Aurora made is coords to the treasure seemingly so that's cool-- OMAR JUMPSCARE

The girls are very surprised to find Omar joining them, and Omar explains that he booked it when SM came over and lost his cellphone as a result. However, he managed to figure out that Aurora's riddle was about salt and not sand, and decided to head on over to Bolivia since he assumed that's where the girls are going. How did he find them? It was just out of pure coincidence, and also the fact that the girls are extremely recognizable. Hm.

Anyway, Paulina plugs the coordinates into her GPS and leads the girls plus Omar to a little cave at the bottom of a little embankment. The girls find that, lo and behold, there's an old tin box containing a bright green emerald!

Meanwhile Luke is not finding anything in Alexandria haha L, LVK L get dunked on Luke, Cassidy girlie that's not a man to simp for find someone else gurl-- oh dear Luke is alerted that the treasure has been found and now he's planning on heading over to Bolivia? Now how could he possibly know that?

In the meantime, I dunno what's up in the air or if it's the Archaeology major speaking in him but Omar's really invested in this treasure, even more so than the girls to the degree that the girls are a little freaked out by it-- RHEA JUMPSCARE-- Paulina calms the big bord down and gets it to not trample Omar please, he's still a friend of theirs. Colette picks up this blue notebook Omar seems to have dropped.

The girls plus Omar head back to the SUVs, and Omar is really trying to persuade the girls that he should bring it back to Cairo. The girls are not jazzed at the idea because Omar bringing it back alone will be too unsafe, y'know with Luke and Cassidy and SM and all. They gotta think about this rationally-- WHOA OKAY OMAR calm your man tits buddy why are you demanding they trust you like you automatically deserve your trust-- ohh that's how Klawitz has known about the girls' whereabouts, Omar was working as a double agent.

So yeah Omar snatches the box from Colette and drives off in his SUV, leaving the girls in the dust. The girls freak out and are feeling that EMOTIONAL DAMAGE, but Colette for some reason is very calm about Omar booking it with the emerald. And that's because SHE HAS IT :D she did a lil' switcheroo so now the emerald's with her while the box is with Omar.

For context about how Colette knew about this, remember the blue notebook Omar dropped? Yeah that notebook was a company LVK notebook, straight from Luke himself. Then after Colette saw it, everything about Omar became incredibly sus, so she performed this precautionary measure.

So now the girls talk to the local authorities about how the whole thing with the emerald is gonna go down, and soon the girls are waiting for a plane back to Moscow.

As for Omar, well, he goes over to Luke's super-fancy hotel in La Paz, Bolivia, and he hands the box to Luke, explicitly stating that he decided he'd let Luke open it before he himself can appreciate it.

Luke opens the box, and here we see an accurate depiction of what Luke sees.

Description: an upside-down "ok" symbol drawn in strawberry pink lip balm, signed Colette [insert last name], circa 2018.

Luke punts the box (prolly with the lip balm still inside it) into the swimming pool, tells Omar to get out, and that's the end of that. Haha Omar L Luke L

The girls head back to Moscow to drop Sergei off when SURPRISE PARTY BY IRINA'S SQUAD :DDD

Then the girls are about to return to Whale Island to presumably Peter Griffin in their dorms, when Colette suggests they make a journal a la Aurora Beatrix Lane, and they do. In a pink notebook because it was Colette's idea so we might as well give her that

And they take a black-and-white group picture of them wearing adventurer clothes like Aurora would've done. The brainrot is real, these girls are mentally ill /j

And that's the book :D

... Honestly it's the most meh out of the trilogy besides the big-brain bits in the middle and the end imo

The writing was so much more stilted in this one, even for Scholastic standards, and everything feels pretty..... kid's book. Even more so than the usual in the book's English translations. I do readings for the books in some of my Discords, and this book did not read well at aaallll. And I haven't even mentioned the typos in the book (they're not a lot, but they exist, and they're kinda egregious :D) and some grammar errors if I'm remembering things correctly. It might just be a translation thing-- I worry a bit for the translator who had to put this together.

Luke's character here is also kinda wonk? For one we see him directly contradict his anti-friendship spiel in TS 1 since he literally greets Petrovski like a friend (maybe it's a "friendship doesn't exist except in 4Chan" thing, I dunno). Then in the middle of the book, he gets... very Disney villain-y. The most egregious example here is the chapter "Lurking in the Shadows", where as you can see

I am confusion?? Luke has been described as a to-the-point brat who hardly cares for the means to his end (unless it will impact his ability to achieve the end) and is so fixated on his goal that he doesn't touch grass. Is this not-touching-grass behavior? Yeah, definitely, but this??? This is too Disney villain???? Why does the man break into an evil cackle in front of Cassidy???? I understood it in book 1 because man thinks he's doing a "You may think you have outsmarted me but I have OUTSMARTED YOUR OUTSMARTING", but this one?? Maybe it's my personal taste, but it's too cartoonish and too... deviated from what we know of him up to this point.

ALSO TWIRLING HIS MUSTACHE? WHAT MUSTACHE IS HE TWIRLING THAT THING IS NOT TWIRL-ABLE

Also time to address the one big plot hole in this book: Aurora's diary.

So in this book there's only one diary, which is infinitely simpler than the two we got in the first book. This diary supposedly contains Aurora's records of her mission in hiding Cleopatra's Rizzmerald, and the details are supposedly vague enough that Luke felt the need to kidnap and interrogate Irina, a Hannah Lane descendant, to fill in the blanks. However, when you look at the contents of the diary itself (which lord knows how many times Luke himself has looked through it), there's hardly any blanks that need to be filled, at least if you're Luke.

The diary itself is mostly in the background-- like I said, not as much Lane Lore here as the previous book, the girls mostly rely on Aurora's letters to Hannah here-- but there's one specific entry the girls read in the latter half of the book that explicitly mentions Pumapunku and Tiwanaku, and how Aurora is there for her mission to hide the emerald. Complete with coordinates hidden in a little drawing! My one question I have for Luke is, why didn't he go straight to Bolivia and started searching there? Why did he go through all the effort of kidnapping Irina, tailing the girls around Sahara el Beyda, letting SM fall for the salt replica gambit, left his base to touch grass and go on a dive with Cassidy in Egypt; all if he could've just gone straight to Bolivia to look for the treasure there? Sure, Aurora did a good job hiding the coordinates in the fish doodle, but someone as observant and as obsessed about the outcome instead of the journey like Luke would rather have sidestepped all the Aurora shenanigans and beelined straight to the goal if he was able to.

Luke hardly has an excuse here because he owned the diary at the start of the book, and most definitely read through it many times (and we know he's the type to do this, see TS 1). The plot hole is plot hole-ing, it seems :/

Maybe it was just an excuse for the girls to get a giant glowing arrow pointing in the direction of the treasure? It certainly feels like it.

Anyway, the things that carry this book and made it memorable when I first read it (and allowed me to ignore the iffy bits) are the gottems and Omar as a character. Aurora setting up a salt replica of the Rizzmerald as a gottem in a time capsule, only to be opened almost a hundred years later to still be as potent as intended when it was made so long ago? That is amazing, like c'mon, pure comedy material.

Even funnier is Colette doing the exact same thing, only with her lip balm. Luke is quaking in his bougie-ass leather boots.

Now for Omar. This may be a hot take of mine here, but Omar's sus-ness is actually at a decent level compared to the girls and what they usually deal with. On one hand, Omar is incredibly suspicious with how incredibly lucky the girls are to find an Archaeology Oxford major working as a Sahara el Beyda tour guide; but on the other hand, the girls had almost the exact same situation with Diego in Mexico (I didn't mention him in the first review, but he came in clutch in TS 1).

The girls met Diego in Merida, Mexico, and he helped them with their research into "the invisible place", which happened to be Uxmal, along the Puuc Route. Diego also just so happened to be a tour-guide-in-training for the Puuc Route, which was the place the girls just so happened to need to go to find Aurora's second journal.

In comparison, the girls meet Omar in Khan El-Khalili while they were looking for supplies for their trip to the Siwa Oasis. It comes up in conversation that the girls are headed to Siwa, and Omar just so happened to be a tour guide for Sahara el Beyda, which was where the Siwa Oasis is, and it just so happened to be where the girls needed to go. When you stack them up together, it made perfect sense that the girls thought they could trust him-- Diego didn't know much about their trip and helped them the best he could (which was a lot), so why wouldn't Omar do the same? He's an Oxford Archaeology major, too, for crying out loud, the girls struck gold in the end!

Gold that was too shiny and too good to be true. Gold that was, in the end, nothing more than pyrite, fool's gold.

Omar is a good case for why you should be careful with who you trust, and when you should start thinking a little bit when you're getting a little too lucky with the people you meet. When the girls got to know him a little more and decided to trust him and tell him the deal with their trip, he got way invested in the gem-- too invested to not be a little bit suspicious. Maybe the girls mistook it for his passion for his archaeology major, maybe they mistook it for something else-- but whatever the case, Omar pulled the cheesecloth over the girls' eyes and really only fell apart near the end, when his alibis and behavior started becoming more and more suspicious; and by then, Omar didn't need to be as inconspicuous, and the girls had gotten to know him too much to readily say to him "okay buddy can you kindly f%ck off, your vibes are not vibing here".

The girls probably should've been suspicious when Omar reappeared in Bolivia out of nowhere, but I guess his alibi was just good enough (and the girls at this point were probably running on adrenaline, caffeine and a brain on 70% capacity at most) to pass the Deception check.

Fr tho there were some bits where the girls should've found him sus but they didn't (him accidentally saying "I did it" when they uncovered the emerald, and also him handling the emerald the way he did), so shrugs. It could be a translation thing, but it could also be something else.

Anyway, kinda meh for a sequel, but it does have its standouts that allow it to somewhat stand on the same level as the first and third books. Kinda.

Hey, at least it's not as bad as Crystal Fairies-- that's the bar of bad-ness I'm setting. It's not as bad as Crystal Fairies and that's what matters--

Also special thanks to @ishmeowwow (it won't let me ping you for some reason bestie <:[) for making the lil' artworks haha

#geronimo stilton #thea sisters #thea stilton #book review #book rambles #book rant #thank you ishmeow for making the gottems for me :D #you came in clutch while my ipad is still dieded thank you bestie <3 #in the book it's just the lip balm but ishmeow decided to go all-out with the gottem gag and i can't be more grateful lmao #same goes with the gemstone in aurora's gottem (it's just the fake tiara plus fake gem) but hey the more salt the merrier :D #book 2 luke is so jarringly different from his other depictions but at the same time #he does not in fact touch grass and he does crack an evil cackle at least once a book so #i dunno how i feel about it . .#on one hand it adds to him not touching grass #but on the other hand it doesn't connect with his “this villain is supposed to make you shnit your pants at how intimidating he is”#he's intimidating because of his connections his ability to basically spy on the entire world and control everything from his base #and y'know he can tell his goons to do whatever and they'll literally wreak havoc to fulfill said requests #he was so intimidating in concept that they had to nerf him with incompetent goons lmao #after doing last minute research i am deeply concerned for the girls' wallets and their mental and physical health :D #like good god i thought a ten hour flight was unbearable and made your body stiff but holy damn #i'm not complaining too much about the timeline tho because this is hilarious and makes the girls look so neurodivergent #“what do you mean we flew a total of 64 hours by plane feels like it's only been a day to m--”#*dies*

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vt-scribbles · 3 months

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Please RB for bigger sample size!

#writing #writing advice #polls #I'll go first:#I was reading a book and the prose and dialogue were tonally dissonant.#The villain's dialogue was very flippant and silly and childish but then they would stab someone through the head on the next page.#And then we'd go between silly antics and then someone being decapitated or ripped in half with decent detail.#The subject of the story and the tone of the prose did not match #and it took me right out of the story.#On top of this the pacing was very unsatisfactory. Through the whole book there were only two settings.#We escape setting 1 about halfway through the book. Then we IMMEDIATELY get stuck in setting 2 for most of the rest.#Wait no there was a third but it barely has a presence.#If I were to change it I would adjust the prose to match the tone or adjust the subject matter to match the prose #Either make the subject matter sillier or make the prose more serious and grounded #It took me out of it so hard that I refused to read another book in the series

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camping-with-monsters · 9 months

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top ten guys who would uhhhhhhhh never hurt a fly. yeah we’ll go with that.

Rant incoming hee hoo

Uhhh not too much on him but his name is Archibald. Archie for short. Sometimes referred to as “The Finchman.” He gets a cool badass nickname why? Because all good serial killers get one yeah?

Sorry I meant uh. He’s so nice to you just as long as he doesn’t seem you weak. He’s got a weird “Survival of the Fittest” complex going on. Deems people weak based on an assortment of things and tries to eradicate the world of the weak cause uh. Yeah he’s just. He’s like that for some reason. Huh.

Also he’s like. One of the very few people who’ve managed to outlast that of Cuckoo. Yeah he’s a Bliss character.

(Special thanks to @pazam for helping me out with his face— I was having a little trouble with it initially!)

#like I said. man’s Bliss related #he only has any relevance in act 2 and act 3 though #a very minuscule part to act 2 and then more in act 3 #he’s actually like. kinda decent if he doesn’t see you as “weak” which could mean anything in his book #but it’s hard to get around that he’s literally killed people before #ah. kiwi is actually creating her first irredeemable scum that isn’t a sympathetic villain ! wowie !#yeah daisy-mae is technically irredeemable but like.#her whole deal in my approach is to make her a character you feel bad for feeling bad for y’know #it’ll make sense one day #but yeah. Archie is kinda uh. he kinda sucks major ass y’know #The Beaks is also part of a band he used to be in. idk what happened there tbh #he got uh. malicious ig #fun fact his design takes after the very very first concept of Rupert before he became the character we know and love #I will color him one day. it will happen.#Archibald #The Finchman #Bliss #ocs #original characters #original stories #WIPs #The Kiwi Draws

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agoddamnrayofsunshine · 5 months

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I’m sure someone has talked about this before but one thing I absolutely love about tbosas is how Snow’s descent into villainy is never once presented as something that was inevitable

So many villain origin stories portray this idea of a person who tries incredibly hard to be a good person, who takes every opportunity to be kind and to better themselves, but are ultimately doomed to fail by the narrative. Their environment and their circumstances make it impossible for them to be a good person, and while this is effective from a storytelling point of view it’s not exactly accurate to real life

In real life there is always a point where a bad person makes the decision to do something bad, they make the decision to prioritise themselves, their own power, money or desires over someone else. That’s how real life dictators are made, they are presented with every opportunity to be good, and they purposefully choose to not take it

This makes Snow’s storyline so effective because he is given so many opportunities to do the right thing and yet, at every single turn, he chooses to serve himself instead, exactly like how real dictators are made

Snow, unlike most people we see in the capitol, is in a unique position where he could genuinely have the chance to understand and relate to the people from the districts. He, unlike his classmates, is poor and spends most nights going hungry, he witnessed firsthand the cruelty of the capitol when Clemensia was bitten by the snakes for nothing more than lying about doing her homework, when his sister was forced to sell herself on the streets in order to feed the both of them

Throughout his book, the three people he is closest to are Tigris (who dislikes the hunger games, is a rebel, and a victim of the capitol forced to turn to prostitution), Sejanus (who is originally from district 2, dislikes the capitol and knows he will never be accepted there, and also a rebel) and Lucy Gray (who is a victim of the hunger games, from district 12, and is also treated horribly by the capitol). These are all people who gave him an opportunity to realise the cruelty of the system he was in, a chance to directly confront his prejudices and see that people from the districts are just the same as him, and yet he still refuses to take the chance to change

He is given every opportunity, he’s sent away from the capitol to be a peacekeeper in the districts, he forms personal connections with people from the districts, he helps Sejanus perform funeral rites, and yet at every moral crossroads he comes to he makes the wrong decision. He didn’t have to become a villain, and yet he made the choice to do so anyway, despite every chance he was given

I think it’s a really effective portrayal of Snow as a character, and it’s a very effective villain origin story for the type of villain that Snow is. It never once excuses him from his actions because it highlights just how accountable he was for his actions

#the hunger games #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #coriolanus snow #lucy gray baird #sejanus plinth #tigris snow #tbosas #thg #katniss everdeen #peeta mellark

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denimbex1986 · 4 months

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'...“It’s fun playing bad, but actually he’s not,” the actor says, smiling as he reflects on his character, Crowley. “He’s a villain with a heart. The amount of really evil things he does are vanishingly small.”

...As it always has, “Good Omens” dissects the view of good and evil as absolutes, showing viewers that they are not as separate as we were led to believe growing up. Aziraphale and Crowley’s long-standing union is proof of this. The show also urges people to look at what defines our own humanity. For Tennant — who opted to wear a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Leave trans kids alone you absolute freaks” during a photocall for Season 2 — these themes are more important now than ever before.

“In this society that we’re currently living in, where polarization seems ever more present, fierce and difficult to navigate. Negotiation feels like a dirty word at times,” he says, earnestly. “This is a show about negotiation. Two extremes finding common ground and making their world a better place through it. Making life easier, kinder and better. If that’s the sort of super objective of the show, then I can’t think of anything more timely, relevant or apt for the rather fractious times we’re living in.”

“Good Omens” is back by popular demand for another season. How does it feel?

It’s lovely. Whenever you send something out into the world, you never quite know how it will land. Especially with this, because it was this beloved book that existed, and that creates an extra tension that you might break some dreams. But it really exploded. I guess we were helped by the fact that we had Neil Gaiman with us, so you couldn’t really quibble too much with the decisions that were being made. The reception was, and continues to be, overwhelming.

Now that you’re no longer bound by the original material that people did, perhaps, feel a sense of ownership over, does the new content for Season 2 come with a sense of freedom for you? This is uncharted territory, of sorts.

That’s an interesting point. I didn’t know the book when I got the script. It was only after that I discovered the worlds of passion that this book had incited. Because I came to it that way, perhaps it was easier. I found liberation from that, to an extent. For me, it was always a character that existed in a script. At first, I didn’t have that extra baggage of expectation, but I acquired it in the run-up to Season 1 being released… the sense that suddenly we were carrying a ming vase across a minefield.

In Season 2, we still have Neil and we also have some of the ideas that he and Terry had discussed. During the filming of the first one, Neil would drop little hints about the notions they had for a prospective sequel, the title of which would have been “668: The Neighbour of the Beast,” which is a pretty solid gag to base a book around. Indeed there were elements like Gabriel and the Angels, who don’t feature in the book, that were going to feature in a sequel. They were brought forward into Season 1. So, even in the new episodes, we’re not entirely leaving behind the Terry Pratchett-ness of it all.

It’s great to see yourself and Michael Sheen reunited on screen as these characters. Fans will have also watched you pair up for Season 3 of “Staged.” You’re quite the dynamic duo. What do you think is the magic ingredient that makes the two of you such a good match?

It’s a slightly alchemical thing. We knew each other in passing before, but not well. We were in a film together [“Bright Young Things,” 1993] but we’d never shared a scene. It was a bit of a roll of the dice when we turned up at the read-through for “Good Omens.” I think a lot comes from the writing, as we were both given some pretty juicy material to work with. Those characters are beloved for a reason because there’s something magical about them and the way they complete each other. Also, I think we’re quite similar actors in the way we like to work and how we bounce off each other.

Does the shorthand and trust the two of you have built up now enable you to take more risks on-screen?

Yes, probably. I suppose the more you know someone, the more you trust someone. You don’t have to worry about how an idea might be received and you can help each other out with a more honest opinion than might be the case if you were, you know, dancing around each other’s nervous egos. Enjoying being in someone’s orbit and company is a positive experience. It makes going to work feel pleasant, productive, and creative. The more creative you can be, the better the work is. I don’t think it’s necessarily a given that an off-screen relationship will feed into an on-screen one in a positive or negative way. You can play some very intimate moments with someone you barely know. Acting is a peculiar little contract, in that respect. But it’s disproportionately pleasurable going to work when it’s with a mate.

Fans have long discussed the nature of Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship. In Season 2, we see several of the characters debate whether the two are an item, prompting them to look at their union and decipher what it is. How would you describe their relationship?

They are utterly co-dependent. There’s no one else having the experience that they are having and they’ve only got each other to empathize with. It’s a very specific set of circumstances they’ve been dealt. In this season, we see them way back at the creation of everything. They’ve known each other a long time and they’ve had to rely on each other more and more. They can’t really exist one without the other and are bound together through eternity. Crowley and Aziraphale definitely come at the relationship with different perspectives, in terms of what they’re willing to admit to the relationship being. I don’t think we can entirely interpret it in human terms, I think that’s fair to say.

Yet fans are trying to do just that. Do you view it as beyond romantic or any other labels, in the sense that it’s an eternal force?

It’s lovely [that fans discuss it] but you think, be careful what you wish for. If you’re willing for a relationship to go in a certain way or for characters to end up in some sort of utopian future, then the story is over. Remember what happened to “Moonlighting,” that’s all I’m saying! [Laughs]

Your father-in-law, Peter Davison, and your son, Ty Tennant, play biblical father-and-son duo Job and Ennon in Episode 2. In a Tumblr Q&A, Neil Gaiman said that he didn’t know who Ty’s family was when he cast him. When did you become aware that Ty had auditioned?

I don’t know how that happened. I do a bunch of self-tapes with Ty, but I don’t think I did this one with him because I was out of town filming “Good Omens.” He certainly wasn’t cast before we started shooting. There were two moments during filming where Neil bowled up to me and said, “Guess, who we’ve cast?” Ty definitely auditioned and, as I understand it, they would tell me, he was the best. I certainly imagine he could only possibly have been the best person for the job. He is really good in it, so I don’t doubt that’s true. And then my father-in-law showed up, as well, which was another delicious treat. In the same episode and the same family! It was pretty weird. I have worked with both of them on other projects, but never altogether.

There’s a “Doctor Who” cameo, of sorts, in Episode 5, when Aziraphale uses a rare annual about the series as a bartering tool. In reality, you’ll be reprising your Time Lord role on screen later this year in three special episodes to mark the 60th anniversary. Did you always feel you’d return to “Doctor Who” at some point?

There’s a precedent for people who have been in the series to return for a multi-doctor show, which is lovely. I did it myself for the 50th anniversary in 2013, and I had a wonderful time with Matt [Smith]. Then, to have John Hurt with us, as well, was a little treat. But I certainly would never have imagined that I’d be back in “Doctor Who” full-time, as it were, and sort of back doing the same job I did all those years ago. It was like being given this delightful, surprise present. Russell T Davies was back as showrunner, Catherine Tate [former on-screen companion] was back, and it was sort of like the last decade and a half hadn’t happened.

Going forward, Ncuti Gatwa will be taking over as the new Doctor. Have you given him any advice while passing the baton?

Oh God, what a force of nature. I’ve caught a little bit of him at work and it’s pretty exciting. I mean, what advice would you give someone? You can see Ncuti has so much talent and energy. He’s so inspired and charismatic. The thing about something like this is: it’s the peripherals, it’s not the job. It’s the other stuff that comes with it, that I didn’t see coming. It’s a show that has so much focus and enthusiasm on it. It’s not like Ncuti hasn’t been in a massive Netflix series [“Sex Education,”] but “Doctor Who” is on a slightly different level. It’s cross-generational, international, and has so much history, that it feels like it belongs to everyone.

To be at the center of the show is wonderful and humbling, but also a bit overwhelming and terrifying. It doesn’t come without some difficulties, such as the immediate loss of anonymity. It takes a bit of getting used to if that’s not been your life up to that point. I was very lucky that when I joined, Billie Piper [who portrayed on-screen companion, Rose] was still there. She’d lived in a glare of publicity since she was 14, so she was a great guide for how to live life under that kind of scrutiny. I owe a degree of sanity to Billie.

Your characters are revered by a few different fandoms. Sci-fi fandoms are especially passionate and loyal. What is it like being on the end of that? I imagine it’s a lot to hold.

Yes, certainly. Having been a fan of “Doctor Who” since I was a tiny kid, you’re aware of how much it means because you’re aware of how much it meant to you. My now father-in-law [who portrayed Doctor Who in the 80s] is someone I used to draw in comic strips when I was a kid. That’s quite peculiar! It’s a difficult balance because on one end, you have to protect your own space, and there aren’t really any lessons in that. That does take a bit of trial and error, to an extent, and it’s something that you’re sometimes having to do quite publicly. But, it is an honor and a privilege, without a doubt. As you’ve said, it means so much to people and you want to be worthy of that. You have to acknowledge that and be careful with it. Some days that’s tough, if you’re not in the mood.

I know you’re returning to the stage later this year to portray Macbeth. You’ve previously voiced the role for BBC Sounds, but how are you feeling about taking on the character in the theater?

I’m really excited about it. It’s been a while since I’ve done Shakespeare. It’s very thrilling but equally — and this analogy probably doesn’t stretch — it’s like when someone prepares for an Olympic event. It does feel like a bit of a mountain and, yeah, you’re daring to set yourself up against some fairly worthy competition from down the years. That’s both the challenge and the horror of doing these types of things. We’ve got a great director, Max Webster, who recently did “Life of Pi.” He’s full of big ideas. It’s going to be exciting, thrilling, and a little bit scary. I’m just going to take a deep breath.

Before we part ways, let’s discuss the future of “Good Omens.” Gaiman has said that he already has ideas for Season 3, should it happen. If you were to do another season, is there anyone in particular you’d love to work with next time around or anything specific you’d like to see happen for Crowley?

Oh, Neil Gaiman knows exactly where he wants to take it. If you’re working with people like Gaiman, I wouldn’t try to tamper with that creative void. Were he to ask my opinion, that would be a different thing, but I can’t imagine he would. He’s known these characters longer than me and what’s interesting is what he does with them. That’s the bit that I’m desperate to know. I do know where Crowley might end up next, but it would be very wrong if I told you.

[At this point, Tennant picks up a pencil and starts writing on a hotel pad of paper.]

I thought you were going to write it down for me then. Perhaps like a clandestine meeting on a bench in St James’ Park, but instead you’d write the information down and slide it across the table…

I should have done! I was drawing a line, which obviously, psychologically, I was thinking, “Say no more. You’re too tempted to reveal a secret!” It was my subconscious going “Shut the fuck up!”

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phantasmicfish · 2 months

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So I saw Dune Part 2 yesterday and I was initially super crushed because of the deviation from book canon but the more I think about it the more I sorta like it…

So without further ado here’s a list of stuff I liked about Dune Part 2:

- all the scenes initially of Paul growing closer to the Fremen. You can clearly see that they become friends, accept him as a Feydakin, that they’re laughing, joking, hanging out. (And contrast that to the end of the movie, where Paul has no more Fremen friends, only followers. In the book, this is echoed, where Paul recognizes that he has lost his friends to the Muad’Dib religion. Take book Stilgar, who truly embodies this… by the end of the book, Paul says: “I have seen a friend [Stilgar] become a worshipper.”

- giving Chani explicit rejection of Paul’s messiah status was an interesting choice. Chani’s main thought over part 2 is that they don’t need religion to save them, that through Fremen power and desert power, the Fremen can save themselves. She recognizes that this fanatical worship can be a vehicle to control and enslave her people, and I sorta wish we saw Paul lean into that more… that they found a way to stay together and ‘fight’ the prophecy together based on Chani’s ideals…

- also, I love how engrained this rejection of religion and prophecy is in her character. Book Chani takes no issue with her Fremen name, Sihaya (desert spring), but movie Chani hates it “because it’s part of some prophecy.” Later, we see that despite her rejection of prophecy and religion, that the prophecy does indeed come to pass— the tears of desert spring save Himx aka, Chani saving Paul after he drinks The Water of Life. (Interesting how Jessica has to force Chani to save Paul using the Voice… another example of Jessica explicitly forcing Paul to become the messiah).

- adding more depth to Fremen culture— the South being the more religious fundamentalist tribes vs the North being more secular. Early on, the movie paints this immediate divide between the tribes of Fremen who accept Paul and Jessica versus those who treat them as offworlders (who murdered Jamis). In the books everyone accepts Paul and Jessica after Paul bests Jamis and Jessica quotes some scripture, but I think it makes more logical sense that there’s be friction over these two random offworlders coming in

- I love love loved Paul speaking at the meeting of the Fremen tribe leaders in the South. He fully accepts his messiah status, exercises his power of the Voice + his prescience as a way to command all the Fremen under his name

- I’m a big fan of omitting the two-year time skip, so with that I’m glad Leto II was skipped over entirely. I always felt that Leto II was an unnecessary character addition to the book, especially when he just dies and everyone sort of goes “oh well” and moves on, so I’m glad it’s omitted.

- another interesting choice was to paint Jessica as a straight up villain in comparison to her book counterpart was. The Jessica we see here is seemingly corrupted by the Water of Life: she walks around talking to herself (Alia) and scheming Paul’s ascent to Lisan-Al Gaib. She knows about the Holy War, which is the very thing Paul is trying to prevent, yet she expresses no concern about bringing it to fruition. (Probably because Jessica knows it’s impossible to prevent, but still.) The very last line of the movie, where Alia asks Jessica what’s going on and Jessica says “The Holy War has begun” is just total villain in my mind— explicit acceptance of the Holy War, like it’s just another stepping stone in her plan. Plus, the fact that Paul has visions of Jessica leading him into this period of great starvation totally cements her as a villian.

- going off of that, I like that we see Jessica undergoing actual agony when she takes The Water of Life. When book Jessica and Paul take The Water of Life they accept it calmly and without obvious pain (book Jessica was sitting with her eyes closed, as if sleeping), so this physical reaction that Jessica has to the poison adds to the idea that The Water of Life did change her in a negative way.

- I feel like so far we’ve been introduced to Alia as just a weird talking fetus who’s been consorting with Jessica, so Paul’s vision where Alia says “I love you” really strikes home, that she really does care for Paul which we might not have understood otherwise

#I should probably add something about Feyd-Rautha bc I thought his scenes were really cool so that’s a TBC of this post #also I can’t believe they skipped over Count Fenring! The one person who could defeat Paul in battle… I’m crushed #dune #dune book #dune part two #dune part 2 #chani kynes #paul atreides #jessica atreides #alia atreides #dune spoilers

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david-talks-sw · 8 months

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Dooku didn't leave because of the Jedi.

At least, if you're going by George Lucas' word.

In deleted scenes of Attack of the Clones, when we learn about Dooku's departure and his values, there's no mention of the Jedi or "the Jedi Order as an institution".

And every time Lucas refers to Dooku's disenchantment and reason for falling, he doesn't mention the Jedi.

"When you realize that Dooku is Darth Tyranus, it explains what Darth Sidious did after Darth Maul was killed: he seduced a Jedi who had become disenchanted with the Republic. He preyed on that disenchantment and converted him to the dark side, which is also a setup for what happens with Anakin." - Mythmaking: Behind the Scenes of Attack of the Clones, 2002

"[Dooku is] one of the few Jedi who became disenchanted with the Republic and left the order and he is leading a separatist movement." - Vanity Fair, 2002

"I wanted a more sophisticated kind of villain. Dooku’s disenchantment with the corruption in the Empire is actually valid. It’s all valid. So, Chris plays it as, 'Is he really a villain or is he just someone who is disenchanted and trying to make things right?'" - Starlog Magazine #300, 2002

He probably meant the Republic/Senate in that last one, but you get the point. And you're seeing the pattern, right?

Dooku's problem isn't the Jedi, it's the Republic.

He's become disenchanted with a system that - according to Lucas' prologue in the 2004 book Shatterpoint - worked for 1,000 years...

"For a thousand years, the Old Republic prospered and grew under the wise rule of the Senate and the protection of the venerable Jedi Knights."

... but has been rendered ineffective because of 1) senators becoming corrupt and 2) corporations gaining political power.

"But as often happens when wealth and power grow beyond all reasonable proportion, an evil fueled by greed arose. The massive organs of commerce mushroomed in power, the Senate became corrupt, and an ambitious named Palpatine was voted Supreme Chancellor."

That's the message Dooku runs on, when he rallies the systems to form the Separatist Alliance.

"By promising an alternative to the corruption and greed that was rotting the Republic from within, Dooku was able to persuade thousands of star systems to secede from the Republic."

The Jedi aren't really a factor in his decision to leave.

Why would they be? Their political status isn't very high, they're virtually powerless, as illustrated by the film's narrative and stated repeatedly by Lucas.

On the contrary, as we already established in this post, Lucas full-on confirmed that Dooku actually carries the sympathies of most of the Jedi. Again:

Most Jedi agree with Dooku, ideologically.

As far as the Jedi are concerned, the politicians are effing up the Republic, and it sucks because the Jedi see this but aren't allowed to interfere in the political process. They have to resort to looking for loopholes in their mandates to actually get stuff done.

That's what that whole "she's a politician" scene is meant to hint at. In the commentary of Attack of the Clones, Lucas uses a similar turn of phrase as he does with Dooku.

"[This scene gives us] a chance to talk a little bit about politics and the Jedi’s disenchantment with the political process, due to the corruption and the ineffectiveness of the Senate." - Attack of the Clones, Director’s Commentary, 2002

Considering all this, it becomes clear that the intended narrative surrounding Dooku's decision to leave the Order is not:

"The Jedi are dogmatic and asleep at the wheel except for Dooku, who is ahead of the curb and sees the system is flawed, so he left."

It's actually:

"ALL Jedi see the system is flawed, Dooku's the only Jedi who decided to take it a step further and leave the Order so he can try to get into politics himself and change things."

That's why they hesitate to accuse him of murder.

That's why in an earlier draft of the Attack of the Clones script, by the end of the second act, Mace STILL has his doubts that Dooku would sign a treaty with the Trade Federation to attack the Republic.

As far as the Jedi are concerned, Dooku is out there fighting the good fight, making noise because whenever they try to protest it falls on deaf ears... until his betrayal on Geonosis.

After all, let's not get it twisted: the Dooku we're introduced to in the films and The Clone Wars, isn't really just Dooku anymore.

He's Darth Tyranus.

A point Lucas makes sure to highlight in his Shatterpoint prologue:

"Unbeknownst to most of his followers, Dooku was himself a Dark Lord of the Sith, acting in collusion with his master, Darth Sidious, who, over the years, had struck an unholy alliance with the greater forces of commerce and their private droid armies."

It's not about doing the selfless thing for Dooku, anymore. He's knowingly part of the problem.

He's all about ambition, now. His personal goals are things like overthrowing Sidious and becoming the most powerful Jedi.

"[Anakin's] ambition and his dialogue here is the same as Dooku’s. He says “I will become more powerful than every Jedi.” And you’ll hear later on Dooku will say “I have become more powerful than any Jedi.” [...] It is possible for a Jedi to want to become more powerful, and control things." - Attack of the Clones, Director’s Commentary, 2002

"If you put two Sith together, they try to get others to join them to get rid of the other Sith. [When revealing the truth to Obi-Wan], Dooku's ambition is really to get rid of Darth Sidious. He's trying to get Obi-Wan's assistance in that and help in that, so that he and Obi-Wan could overthrow Sidious and take over." - Attack of the Clones, Commentary Track 2, 2002

Y'know? Selfish things.

Dooku - like all other Sith, and like the very corporations and Senators he had sworn to destroy - is consumed by his own greed.

#also functionally-speaking Dooku being a Jedi is done to highlight the ambiguity throughout the investigation on whether or not this is #a scorned ex-Jedi or a straight-up bad guy... you're never sure until the end of AOTC. That and Dooku being a former Jedi shows that #even someone who was once selfless and dutiful can crave power and be selfish #which sets up a precedent for Anakin - who's already struggling with being a selfless Jedi - when HE falls to the Dark Side #Dooku being a former Jedi isn't a plot point meant to narratively criticise of the Order... it's meant to hint at Anakin's downfall.#dooku #george lucas #star wars #attack of the clones #long post #collection of quotes

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chaos0pikachu · 7 months

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"so what is word of honor about"

chepie I don't fucking know, like legit I could not tell you what the Actual Plot as intended is something about a glazed donut that got the whole sword society in a tizzy b/c some dead dude a decade ago tweaked out from mercury poisoning and all his secrets were kept in the burn book locked away in elsa's frozen palace.

the bits that anyone actually cares about are two bottom-4-bottom retired villains, one an ex assassin with martial arts cancer and 8 nipples who wants to drink and die in peace, the other one of the most dramatic men you will ever meet who sprouts corny ass poetry and lines with negative shame cause why be ashamed baby we all die sometime and they become soulmates [censored] raise 3 kids together until one of their ex's comes back for a 2 episode sub plot like a mid-season love interest in a sitcom that got kicked off the show quick b/c everyone hated their ass and then the sword society shows back up b/c the prettiest assassin you will ever meet with the biggest daddy issues you will ever see didn't listen to his fucking lesbian girl gang and drop his broke ass daddy who never ONCE complimented his banging eye makeup and hair decided to Make Plot Shit Happen b/c it's like episode 34 and we gotta wrap! this! shit! up! and then someone sneezes so the show reenacts the scene where Mulan took out the Huns and then our bottom retired villain husbands get to ACTUALLY fucking retire and one of them gets a new sesshomaru wig and it's glorious

#word of honor #woh #shl #wenzhou #chaos pikachu speaks #plot what plot i didn't watch word of honor for the boring plot #I watched for two busted men flip a coin to see which would bottom for the night and adopt murderous children along the way #pikachu's chaotic recaps

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tastywordgasms · 4 days

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#Natasha Knight #The Villains We Make #The Villains We Make Book 2

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bone-and-butterflies · 10 months

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How to hide plot twists from both your readers and your characters in a way that is not frustrating or annoying.

So I was watching a book review for a book that I liked but both loved and hated some of the plot twists. Of course this got me thinking about plot twists and why they work for both readers and the characters that are falling for these plot twists.

Readers

The key is to control the information that your readers have. Your readers aren't going to consider an option unless (1) that twist is really common for your genre and that reader has read that genre a lot and will therefore be expecting it or (2) you have very obviously given them the specific information nessesary to unintentionally figure out the twist before the characters.

Why does this information stand out, you may be wondering. It is because there is nothing else going on to distract away from a piece of information that can seem meaningless with the right context.

Most of the time, if you're not writing a very specific plot line with a very specific genre, your reader isn't going to immediately know where the plot is going so they may not be looking out for the information relevant to a later plot twist, so as long as you justify an informational choice that explains a later plot twist in a way that covers a variety of basis, they're probably not going to pick up on the one piece you left out, aka what is going to make this twist fun.

This piece of information should be something small and unassuming. It can be magical, but if you're writing fantasy that magic has to be hidden really really well. I find that a plot twist works the best when the piece of information that is missing is something you wouldn't really think about, like the reason a prince was able to infiltrate a prison and hide his identity was because he had his cousin standing in for him and we don't know that this cousin existed and knew the limits of that world's magic (this is actually a plot twist that fooled me btw despite how obvious at sounds now).

A good plot twist that fools the reader relies on twisting the information that the reader has and therefore twisting how they think the story will go.

Midway sidenote: not every plot twist needs to exist to fool both the reader and the character, sometimes it is really fun to watch a character fail because of something inherent to that character.

Characters

Remember how I said sometimes it's really fun to watch a character fail. That only works sometimes.

It is more annoying to figure out a plot twist that is really obvious and then have the character miss it because the author said so.

So how does a writer pull this off?

Be intentional. Have an idea in mind of when you want the reader to figure it out and ask your beta readers when they figured out your plot twists to control that as much as you can.

Your character does not know which genre they're in, so you have to both get inside the character's head and take the reader along with you so they understand why this character is making these poor choices and missing the most obvious villain in the room.

Why would a character miss a plot twist?

They are distracted or delusional. Characters have goals and they may ignore their better judgments to achieve these goals based on their personality. Put more emphasis on your character's motives to hide information that may make plot twists more obvious. Also, your characters may use information about their world to explain their motives and this information may also be vital to understanding a later plot twist

The average person does not go around thinking everybody around them is out to get them especially if those people seem incapable of that through the pov character's ego or the other character's demeanor. If your character has known somebody for a really long time or knows a piece of information that is vital to the worldview they're probably not going to immediately discard it. Fun fact: in the real world, when people have their views disputed, even with very good evidence, it can make them more likely to hold on to that old belief.

Expectation of harm. Different characters have different experiences with shape how bad they think things can get. For example, if a character has never experienced something, they may not know what can lead to that thing. (FYI older characters are more likely to know more things so be careful with this one.)

The Twist

For a twist to work, it must make sense with both real world and in world knowledge as well as common sense, so keep this in mind as you plan.

Conclusion

This isn't comprehensive because good plot twists require a lot of information to make them work and that's makes them very specific. While I would love to explain why different plot twists work, part of them working is them fooling you and hindsight bias is kind of a thing.

Keep writing. If a plot twist just isn't working either scrap it or let it sit until you have the information to build reasons why it should work.

#writing #novel #writing advice #writing tips #writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #writing resources

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variousqueerthings · 8 months

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okay I watched good omens s2 yesterday with my partner, and I was genuinely very surprised -- I think if you've grown up through superwholock/merlin/the 100/teen wolf type shows where (with the exception periodically of doctor who) you kind of had to make up the good show that something could have been in your head, that colours a lot of your viewing, and to be honest I thought season 1 of good omens was a fine little piece, honoured the book while modernising it somewhat, it was a nice, fun, low stakes time, with a couple of things I might have wanted a tad different but nothing overall awful.

so I was seeing all this meta and gifsets and discussion, while I was waiting to give s2 a watch with my partner and thought "ah, people have made up the good show in their heads again" not that I assumed s2 was going to be a bad show, but that people were taking extra deep plunges into possibilities, the way fandom does, and that was fine. I knew there was a big ol kiss, I had a sense of some kind of argument at the end, and that it was setting up a s3

I also knew that mainstream reviews were calling it (politely) self-indulgent and dependent on whether or not you enjoy david tennant and michael sheen having a good time for just under 6 hours

all in all, expectations of a somewhat mainstream show without too much to think about, a nice, fun low stakes time, moving on...

(EDIT: AND THEN I WROTE A LOT OF WORDS SO YOU CAN IMAGINE THAT MY REACTION WAS QUITE DIFFERENT)

as it turns out it seems these things that were being written on tumblr were discussing the actual text of the show and not things you could extrapolate if you squinted and tilted your head a little to the left as I'm so used to doing, so in fact there is much to think about!

and my first thought was "this is like when you read early discworld books that ask a question like a joke, only to find that over time the answer to that question becomes very serious (and also can be funny at times of course)." how terry pratchett would pick and pick at tropes and notions and social ideas and go "oh now hold on, this seems strange..." starting way back when he thought it was odd that women warriors always seemed to be dressed in metal bikinis and then realising he hadn't done a good enough job of subverting the trope, simply by depicting it and calling it a bit silly

why do goblins always get treated as the villains? what's with this divine succession of kings business? where are the female dwarfs? who do we treat as disposable?

good omens season one went: "haha what if heaven and hell were intensely incapable, bureaucratic, corrupt, and uncaring of the work they did, and we took an angel and a demon and had them actually care? wouldn't that be... a bit silly?" (and it was)

good omens season two went: "what are the consequences for caring when the people who have power over you are incapable, bureaucratic, corrupt, and uncaring? what are the forces that supersede systems built on fear, ignorance, and violent conformity? can people change and break out of/challenge/break down these structures by caring?"

and this was set up with a neat little sleight of hand (to reference aziraphale's switch-and-bait in the episode with the nazi zombies), because the majority of season 2 does feel a bit indulgent: hey, remember those two wacky angel-and-demon characters? watch some more wacky things they did through the ages, watch them take a sojourn through 1827 Edinburgh and do a magic show during the Blitz, and... stop the death of Job's and Sitis' children (actually maybe that whole segment ought to have been what they call "A Clue")

see them try to figure out a kooky mystery, all the while setting up a cute little same-gender romance on their street. watch as everything points towards a happy ending that's all about the two of them realising what they've been to one another all these thousands and thousands (and thousands and thousands) of years- but hold on. lest we forget - and the show has made this point over and over - there are powerful people who control them, who hurt them, and who plan on hurting others, throughout the whole season, and as it turns out they know what they've been to one another for far far longer, and know how to pull their strings...

season 2 then, has to show us these things, not because they're indulgent (well, maybe occasionally, but the apology dance is still important), but because in order to make the ending a tragedy, we first need to understand, properly, the impact that they have had on each other. we need to understand that Aziraphale relied heavily on Crowley to be his moral compass and leaned on black-and-white thinking in order to deal with things, because if it's all grey then where does he fit and what has it all meant and heaven has to be the good guys, even as Job's and Sitis' children are ordered to be killed, it's all he ever had...

and Crowley was always an anchor, needed to trust that Aziraphale was different, needed to bend to every whim that Aziraphale has, because otherwise what's his worth in all this? After having been already deemed worthless by the heaven that Aziraphale needs to believe in?

and that, simplistically described, is the narrative that we're seeing in s2, and alongside that the ways that the changes they have upon each other are noticed, and monitored, and placed under suspicion, and finally... broken up, not by the clumsy, brute force that's been attempted over and over again, but by a promise to return into a violent, controlling system and to "make it better from within"

and all of this is wrapped up in two queer relationships + a third queered-within-the-text relationship that creates the inverse of how it ends for Aziraphale and Crowley (so far). queer love -- whatever shape that has -- is explicitly the shape of non-conformity within this narrative, including within the symbolism of angel-and-demon love of Gabriel and Beelzebub, which in the context of the systems created is considered queer (and one can argue till the cats come home about casting cis actors, about angel-and-demon notions of gender/romance/sexuality, but the "queerness" comes from building something non-conforming to the systems they exist in), and enforced by the explicitly our-world-definition-of queer romance that Nina and Maggie have going on (which, while less high stakes, still contains the background controlling relationship that Nina initially is in)

all of this to say, that I disagree that s2 meanders, or that plotlines happen for the sake of showcasing Aziraphale and Crowley without purpose, or that characters get sidelined (I'd say it sets up a whole host of interesting characters to further get into actually), or that it's strictly mainstream easy-access narrative that's just an excuse for the main creators and actors to get back together.

the love is the point, and this show takes its time to show the love (and the unequal boundary-setting, and the fact that one of them has an undiscussed tragic backstory, and the desperation to belong again, and the fear instilled by oppressive systems, and and and), so that we understand why those last 15 minutes happen the way that they do

it's sleight of hand, and like all good magic, you don't notice until it's happened

#good omens #go2 #good omens season 2 #neil gaiman #david tennant #michael sheen

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physalian · 4 months

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Pacing your Story (Or, How to Avoid the "Suddenly...!")

Arguably *the* most important lesson all writers need to learn, even for those who don’t give a damn about themes and motifs and a moral soap box: How your story is paced, whether it’s a comic book, a children’s chapter book, a doorstopper, a mini series, a movie, or a full-length season of TV (old school style), pacing is everything.

Pacing determines how long the story *feels* regardless of how long it actually is. It can make a 2 hour movie feel like 90 mins or double the time you’re trapped in your seat.

There’s very little I can say about pacing that hasn’t been said before, but I’m here to condense all that’s out there into a less intimidating mouthful to chew.

So: What is pacing?

Pacing is how a story flows, how quickly or slowly the creator moves through and between scenes, how long they spend on setting, narration, conversation, arguments, internal monologues, fight scenes, journey scenes. It’s also how smoothly tone transitions throughout the story. A fantasy adventure jumping around sporadically between meandering boredom, high-octane combat, humor, grief, and romance is exhausting to read, no matter how much effort you put into your characters.

Anyone who says the following is wrong:

Good pacing is always fast/bad pacing is always slow

Pacing means you are 100% consistent throughout the entire story

It doesn’t matter as much so long as you have a compelling story/characters/lore/etc

Now let me explain why in conveniently numbered points:

1. Pacing is not about consistency, it’s about giving the right amount of time to the right pieces of your story

This is not intuitive and it takes a long time to learn. So let’s look at some examples:

Lord of the Rings: The movies trimmed a *lot* from the books that just weren’t adaptable to screen, namely all the tedious details and quite a bit of the worldbuilding that wasn’t critical to the journey of the Fellowship. That said, with some exceptions, the battles are as long as they need to be, along with every monologue, every battle speech. When Helm’s Deep is raging on, we cut away to Merry and Pippin with the Ents to let ourselves breathe, then dive right back in just before it gets boring.

The Hobbit Trilogy: The exact opposite from LotR, stretching one kids book into 3 massive films, stuffing it full of filler, meandering side quests, pointless exposition, drawing out battles and conflicts to silly extremes, then rushing through the actual desolation of Smaug for… some reason.

Die Hard (cause it’s the Holidays y’all!): The actiony-est of action movies with lots of fisticuffs and guns and explosions still leaves time for our hero to breathe, lick his wounds, and build a relationship with the cop on the ground. We constantly cut between the hero and the villains, all sharing the same radio frequency, constantly antsy about what they know and when they’ll find out the rest, and when they’ll discover the hero’s kryptonite.

2. Make every scene you write do at least two things at once

This is also tricky. Making every scene pull double duty should be left to after you’ve written the first draft, otherwise you’ll never write that first draft. Pulling double duty means that if you’re giving exposition, the scene should also reveal something about the character saying it. If you absolutely must write the boring trip from A to B, give some foreshadowing, some thoughtful insight from one of your characters, a little anecdote along the way.

Develop at least two of the following:

The plot

The backstory

The romance/friendships

The lore

The exposition

The setting

The goals of the cast

Doing this extremely well means your readers won’t have any idea you’re doing it until they go back and read it again. If you have two characters sitting and talking exposition at a table, and then those same two characters doing some important task with filler dialogue to break up the narrative… try combining those two scenes and see what happens.

**This is going to be incredibly difficult if you struggle with making your stories longer. I do not. I constantly need to compress my stories. **

3. Not every scene needs to be crucial to the plot, but every scene must say something

I distinguish plot from story like a square vs a rectangle. Plot is just a piece of the tale you want to tell, and some scenes exist just to be funny, or romantic, or mysterious, plot be damned.

What if you’re writing a character study with very little plot? How do you make sure your story isn’t too slow if 60% of the narrative is introspection?

Avoid repeating information the audience already has, unless a reminder is crucial to understanding the scene

This isn’t 1860 anymore. Every detail must serve a purpose. Keep character and setting descriptions down to absolute need-to-know and spread it out like icing on a cake – enough to coat, but not give you a mouthful of whipped sugar and zero cake.

Avoid describing generic daily routines, unless the existence of said routine is out of ordinary for the character, or will be rudely interrupted by chaos. No one cares about them brushing their teeth and doing their hair.

Make sure your characters move, but not too much. E.g. two characters sitting and talking – do humans just stare at each other with their arms lifeless and bodies utterly motionless during conversation? No? Then neither should your characters. Make them gesture, wave, frown, laugh, cross their legs, their arms, shift around to get comfortable, pound the table, roll their eyes, point, shrug, touch their face, their hair, wring their hands, pick at their nails, yawn, stretch, pout, sneer, smirk, click their tongue, clear their throat, sniff/sniffle, tap their fingers/drum, bounce their feet, doodle, fiddle with buttons or jewelry, scratch an itch, touch their weapons/gadgets/phones, check the time, get up and sit back down, move from chair to table top – the list goes on. Bonus points if these are tics that serve to develop your character, like a nervous fiddler, or if one moves a lot and the other doesn’t – what does that say about the both of them? This is where “show don’t tell” really comes into play.

4. Your entire work should not be paced exactly the same

Just like a paragraph should not be filled with sentences of all the same length and syntax. Some beats deserve more or less time than others. Unfortunately, this is unique to every single story and there is no one size fits all.

General guidelines are as follows:

Action scenes should have short paragraphs and lots of movement. Cut all setting details and descriptors, internal monologues, and the like, unless they service the scene.

Journey/travel scenes must pull double or even triple duty. There’s a reason very few movies are marketed as “single take” and those that are don’t waste time on stuff that doesn’t matter. See 1917.

Romantic scenes are entirely up to you. Make it a thousand words, make it ten thousand, but you must advance either the romantic tension, actual movement of the characters, conversation, or intimacy of the relationship.

Don’t let your conversations run wild. If they start to veer off course, stop, boil it down to its essentials, and cut the rest.

When transitioning between slow to faster pacing and back again, it’s also not one size fits all. Maybe it being jarring is the point – it’s as sudden for the characters as it is for the reader. With that said, try to keep the “suddenly”s to a minimum.

5. Pacing and tone go hand in hand

This means that, generally speaking, the tone of your scene changes with the speed of the narrative. As stated above, a jarring tonal shift usually brings with it a jarring pacing shift.

A character might get in a car crash while speeding away from an abusive relationship. A character who thinks they’re safe from a pursuer might be rudely and terrifyingly proven wrong. An exhausting chase might finally relent when sanctuary is found. A quiet dinner might quickly turn romantic with a look, or confession. Someone casually cleaning up might discover evidence of a lie, a theft, an intruder and begin to panic.

Whatever the case may be, a narrative that is all action all the time suffers from lack of meaningful character moments. A narrative that meanders through the character drama often forgets there is a plot they’re supposed to be following.

#writing advice #writing tips #pacing #writing tools

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silviawrites · 2 years

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Writing romance between characters

A lot of readers like romance, don't they? From romance books to romantic subplots in a fantasy/sci-fi/thriller, we have some sort of romance in the books we read (though not all of them). A lot of times though, we feel the romance is forced and can be extremely unpleasant to watch. Let's discuss some tips about how to write romance properly.

Tension, tension, tension

Tension is key to any romance, whether it be enemies-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, rivals-to-lovers etc. Some examples are longing gazes, hands brushing each other, wistful gazes, hugs that last a little too long and more! Without tension, the romance just feels will be flat and boring and the readers won't be engaged in it. Please note that for the tension part, the things I listed can be platonic as well! What I mean to say is their reactions, such as them realizing they've caught feelings and now acting differently with each other, wistful gazes at someone they know they can't romance etc. All these actions I've listed in the post can happen platonically, especially for queerplatonic friends etc.

2. Give intimacy

Intimacy is not inherently sexual. It can also be emotional, and when portrayed in books properly, it can be marvellous to watch. Intimacy means being vulnerable with another person, being able to show them baring out their souls to one another, showing that they trust one another. Because if two people can't be intimate or vulnerable with each other, then no, we can't expect them to be in a romantic relationship.

3. Make them great individually

If the characters themselves aren't compelling characters, then we can't expect them to be any better in a romance. If one (or both) of the characters is flat and boring and the very embodiment of meh, then they're also going to be very "meh" in their relationship. Make the character engaging and exciting to watch, whether they're a villain or a hero. To gain some tips on how to write characters properly, check out my post on character writing!

TIP!

I have read this somewhere and I feel it's a really good tip! Use the no-kiss rule. Imagine the couple/ship you're writing. Write them but make sure that they don't kiss. Objectively, can you tell they have feelings for each other? If no, then do better or scrap it. If characters need to kiss to tell that they're in love, then they're not in love. Period.

#writer #writing #creative writing #writersadvice #writing advice #writing tips #writing tumblr #writingadvice #writing romance #romance writing #ship writing

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dilatorywriting · 1 year

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Heroes vs. Villains : Octavinelle [Part 2]

Gender Neutral Reader x Octavinelle vs. Rielle Word Count: 2.6k

Summary: Woe to the Ramshackle Prefect, being caught up in the drama between the Disney Villains and their respective heroes. Octavinelle Version, Part 2 ie. Your red-headed hero arrives at Night Raven College and your other aquatic friends are less than enthused.

[PART 1] [PART 2]

The VDC is going to be one of the biggest events in Night Raven College’s history. It’s going to be spectacular, awe-inspiring, one for the history books. And somehow, by the grace of the Gods (or, well, Vil and Professor Crewel) you have tickets.

So naturally, Azul wants you to work through the entire thing.

“I know you don’t like people,” he’d smiled, as if he was offering you salvation on a silver platter. “And just think of it—all those crowds of sweaty, screaming, humans running around. It only seems right that I, as your employer and friend, do my due diligence to keep you safe during all of it, hmm?”

“We’re just thinking of your wellbeing,” Jade had piped in, a gloved hand pressed to his chest all innocent-like. You weren’t fooled for a second.

“And think of all the extra Thaumarks you’ll earn in tips!” Azul chirped. “I know being in a new world has been difficult for you in more ways than one, and that the financial burden in particular has been terribly unpleasant. So really, we’re just doing everything we can to assist you!”

Lies about being considerate for your ‘delicate mental health’ aside, money was good. Money was great. And besides, all you really cared about was the Choral Competition. As long as you could sneak away for that one, camping out in the Lounge didn’t actually seem like the worst idea in the world. The food was excellent, the atmosphere soothing, and the company was—

…Well.

‘Less than desirable’ would probably be an understatement. But Azul always let you take home the leftovers at the end of the night, and sometimes on colder nights Jade would make you a cup of cocoa with no mushrooms in it or anything. So maybe you could excuse a bit of sadism here and there.

So the VDC came and little, poor, you were squirreled away behind the gilded doors of the Mostro Lounge. Aside for the influx of costumers (and subsequent ‘event price hikes’), it was hardly different than any of your other shifts. The one notable difference was how often Azul swapped your station. Normally you were on door duty, or acting as part of the wait staff. But every time a group of RSA students strutted by in their fancy white uniforms, the Octo-Mer would shuffle you off to the kitchens. Or the bar. Or even his office sometimes, demanding assistance with clerical work.

Someone called your name and you lifted your head from your cloud of misery and menial labor—only half paying attention to the people you were ushering in towards the seating area. But instead of another unfamiliar blob waving you down, you actually recognized this guy. Him and his brilliant shock of red hair that you wouldn’t be able to miss from a mile away.

Lo – it was fork dude.

Or, well, Prince Rielle Tidal of Atlantica. But whatever. Man had pushed a utensil into your hands and told you to brush your hair with it. There was no coming back from that.

Your sun-kissed savior swerved through the line to greet you, nearly bowling you over in his enthusiasm. His RSA uniform was a blotch of bleached brightness against the sea of Night Raven’s black ensemble. Normally your rival academics seemed to travel in packs—safety in numbers and all that. But Rielle was weaving through the mass of grumpy NRC faces like he was perfectly at home.

“I decided to pop by to see Azul and his business—because, you know, he was always so smart and pragmatic so I knew it’d probably be really cool and whatever—but wow! It’s really you!”

“It’s really me,” you repeated, fighting to keep the chirp in your customer service voice. “So, would you like a table or—"

“Wait a second—Azul has you working during the festival?!” Rielle gawked, as if he was just realizing that he had stepped into a place a of business, and that you were wearing the uniform of said establishment. “That’s so cruel!”

Yes. Yes it was. But Azul was nothing if not cruel. And if this guy actually knew anything about him at all, he should be perfectly aware of that.

“Someone has to do it,” you shrugged. “Anyways, can I get you something to—”

“Wah, look at this! Shrimpy’s slackin’ on the job!”

Maybe you could put your head through the wall. That would probably be less painful.

Floyd, Jade, and Azul materialized behind you seemingly out of thin air. The terrible trio greeted your dour frown with varying degrees of spiteful glee. And… something else? There was a sort of tension about them that didn’t mesh with their usual haughtiness. It had cropped up for the first time a few weeks ago—that day at the beach. And subsequently the hours after when Jade had pulled Azul into his office to whisper all kinds of nonsense that was apparently ‘too delicate’ for you and whatever tolerance you’d built for these sociopaths.

“Actually, it’s my fault!” Rielle blurted, stepping smoothly in front of you with all the chivalry of a knight. You wanted to warn him that dipping into Floyd’s bite radius was a terrible idea, but at the same time, you were tired, and hungry, and very curious to see how this would all play out. “And I was just wondering—well… I—I mean…”

The young Prince was starting to splutter, his cheeks burning that same, hot, pink that they had all those weeks ago at the beach. He took a moment to clear his throat, compose himself, and then grasped your hands with both of his very neatly manicured ones.

You thought you heard someone gasp. Like in a period novel.

“I actually heard that you were at Night Raven too! And I’ve been looking all over for you! So—I—Would you—” More throat clearing. Floyd’s teeth were grinding together so loudly it almost sounded like a buzzsaw. “Do you want to get something to eat with me?”

There was a deafening crack and you watched as Jade nearly put Floyd through the floor in an attempt to keep him from lurching forward. You observed the scene before you with pleasant sort of surprise as the trio across from you erupted. Or, well, Floyd had erupted. Jade just had that perfectly polite smile on his mouth that let you know he was planning someone’s murder. And Azul looked like he’d just taken physical damage.

Huh. Interesting.

Then again, you’d known they were a proprietary bunch. And you also knew that you were the favorite chew toy around these parts. No one else was sturdy enough for the role, apparently.

“Oi, Princey,” Floyd snarled from behind Jade’s gloved fingers. “What do you think you’re—"

“I—” you interrupted, stepping between the rabid Merfolk and the would-be-mincemeat. “—would love to.”

Silence.

“…What?” Azul squawked.

“I’m due for my break anyways,” you shrugged, enjoying the horrible little surge of satisfaction warming your gut. Take that, you obnoxious fucks. You weren’t sure why Rielle and his crimson-monstrosity of a hairdo had set the three of them off so terribly, but you’d been on your feet for hours now. And missing all the food stalls, and your other friends, and you were going to take this petty revenge where you could.

You turned to Rielle with a polite little smile that you hoped looked more demure than scheming, and his eyes sparkled.

“You don’t mind eating here, do you?” you asked before shooting Azul an award-winning grin. “I’m sure having a Prince dining in would be great advertisement.”

“But of course,” he grit out. “Who would I be to turn down such a ringing endorsement.”

Rielle tossed an amiable arm across your shoulders and laughed that tinkling, church-bell, laugh of his. Floyd’s lip twitched and Azul snagged his arm quicker than a snake could strike. The snarling behemoth was promptly dragged off into the depths of the Lounge—Azul muttering something frantically under his breath that you couldn’t make out. He looked hunched, panicked. And whatever he was saying must have been serious enough to snag Floyd’s fickle attentions, because the too-tall henchman stayed firmly at his boss’s side. The pair of them vanished into the kitchens, the door slamming behind them.

“Just this way then, if you’d please,” Jade beamed, positively glacial.

“This’ll be great!” the Prince preened, keeping a loose grip on you as you both trailed a very stiff Eel through the front parlor. “I get to see all of Azul’s awesome accomplishments and have lunch with you at the same time!”

“The Mostro Lounge is a lovely place to dine,” you chirped, repeating your familiar, scripted, server prompts from memory. “There’s something for everyone.”

“Is that so?” Rielle hummed, as if in deep thought. “That’s very considerate of them.”

Plenty of people at this school liked to insult your intelligence, and you in turn liked to remind certain someones (Ace. Sebek.) that it was best not to throw stones in glass houses. But this was—you may have really found an actual, factual, ditz. Was this how Azul felt all the time? Looking down at you mere mortals with his superior IQ and cunning? Listening to Rielle’s innocent rambling made you feel like Einstein. It was… sort of nice.

My God, you were going to have be responsible for him, weren’t you? Is that was parenthood felt like?

Jade led you to a quiet booth in the back—the one with a direct line of sight to both the kitchens and Azul’s office. The one reserved for problem customers. You folded yourself neatly onto the cushioned bench and Rielle followed, sitting at your side rather than across the table. Something in Jade’s jaw twitched.

“What do you recommend?” Rielle asked you cheerfully, practically radiating enthusiasm. “I’m sure everything is fantastic!”

“Hmm… How about the Mixed Seafood Platter to start I think,” you grinned, turning your polite beam back on your unfortunate server. “With the Unagi, please.”

Beneath all that bubbling irritation, something in those bi-colored eyes gleamed with the barest hint of respect.

“But of course. If you’ll excuse me.”

Once Jade had retreated, Rielle relaxed back into his seat with a theatrical sigh. He brushed his neat swoop of hair off his forehead, like he was wiping away sweat from a workout.

“Phewf! Not that Azul’s friends aren’t nice and all, but they always give me a bit of the heebie-jeebies.”

That was the kindest word for ‘intense murderous aura’ that you’d ever heard.

“A bit, yeah,” you agreed easily enough. “So how do you know Azul?”

“Oh!” he perked right back up. “We were classmates! When we were younger. He was always really quiet, but also really smart! Is he still like that? Quiet—I mean. Reserved.”

A memory struck you then—of standing at Azul’s side in the lobby of the Atlantica Memorial Museum. You remembered his hesitant determination as he replaced his old class photo on the wall. The picture of a tiny, rounder, Azul standing off to the side—hunched, grey, and miserable amidst a sea of laughing faces. You couldn’t remember if there had been a brilliant slash of red mixed in there anywhere. You hadn’t even bothered to check. Because why would you have even deigned to look at the faces of a group of bullies?

Something soured in your gut.

“I wouldn’t say that, no,” your smile sharpening a bit at the edges. “He’s actually very talkative. It’s hard to get him to shut up most of the time.”

“Really?” Rielle gaped. “Wow! That’s awesome!”

Jade slithered by to drop off your appetizers, and if he noticed the slight drop in your mood he didn’t mention it. He was in and out in a flash. You could just see the whisps of his teal hair disappearing back into Azul’s office.

“Enough about Azul though,” Rielle waved off, reaching for the platter. “Tell me about you!”

“Me?” you echoed, bland. “But isn’t Azul your old friend?”

The Prince waved you off once more, cheeks pinkening all over again. “I can talk to him whenever. I’d much rather hear about you! You’re—You’re interesting!”

Now, that was probably a genuine compliment. You doubted Rielle actually meant to slight your friend companion boss by implying that the most ambitious, intelligent, cunning, and well-dressed merman on campus wasn’t interesting enough to converse about—that all of Azul’s efforts to bring himself out of the shadows and onto center stage were still wanting. But that bitter thing in your stomach was raring for a fight.

So you ruffled around in your uniform pocket and pulled out the little notebook you used to tally orders. You shot Rielle the brightest, sweetest, smile you could and watched his stupidly pretty face light up redder than his hair.

“Actually,” you giggled—giggled. Like a freak. “I’d love to hear about you.”

“He’s going to say something!—”

“What doesn’t Shrimpy already know, huh?” Floyd griped. “And I mean, didn’t you steal Ramshackle? You really think bubble-butt out there can do anything to make the Prefect hate you?”

Azul paced. And paced. And paced.

“It’s not about hating me,” he hissed, fighting the urge to wring his hands. “It’s about realizing there are better options out there, and—”

“Bubble-butt is a better option?!” Floyd cackled.

“Stop interrupting me!”

“Then stop whining,” the eel droned, flopping his head back against the couch. “You shoulda just let me squeeze ‘em.”

“We do not need to spark an international incident in my restaurant,” Azul repeated. Though it sounded less like he was trying to convince Floyd than himself. “Rielle Tidal is a Prince—”

“—a shitty, turd, leftover, Prince—”

“—who we must treat,” Azul grit out, “as such.”

There was a firm rap against the door and Jade slipped inside. Azul had to fight the reflex to pounce on him immediately. Instead he took a moment to pause and straighten his suit jacket. His fingers were shaking and he was sure that Jade would have seen, but thankfully there seemed to be a single shred of mercy left in his Vice-Warden’s cold, withered, heart, and the trembling limbs were not mentioned.

Jade cleared his throat and Azul leaned forward, anxious.

“I think you may be overthinking things,” he said, calm as a cucumber, and Azul wanted to scream.

“It’s not paranoia, it’s being prepared,” he snipped. A pause. “But why do you say that? What happened? Did something happen?”

Jade smiled that placid smile of his. “No.”

“No?” Azul repeated, flabbergasted.

“No,” Jade shrugged.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Floyd piped in.

Azul was just about to turn and remind his wonderful subordinate just how terrible he could make his existence when there was another knock at the door—lighter than Jade’s but just as familiar. Not a moment later, your head popped through the crack and you peaked inside wearily.

Azul hastily cleared his throat and Jade’s grin turned smug.

“Pr-Prefect! Can I help you with something?”

Floyd snickered under his breath and Azul mentally added another three hours onto the bastard’s nightly dish duties.

You stepped inside and tossed a tiny notebook down onto his desk.

“Here,” you said, with a grumpy sort of frown on your face. “All of Prince Rielle of Atlantica’s stupid wants, hopes, and dreams. You better be able to put this to good use you stupid mafioso wannabe, because I’ve been listening to this guy ramble on about himself for ages now, and I’d rather get drowned by Jade and Floyd again.”

You turned without another word and slammed the door behind you.

Azul gaped wordlessly at the pile of tiny pages splattered across his desk, and the familiar curl of your handwriting filling each and every one of them.

“Oh,” he breathed.

“Oh indeed,” Jade grinned.

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