#anti trr writers

[lizzybeth1986]

opinions on lena rys? (sorry if this has already been asked LOL! I'm just interested to see your take)

Thank you for that question @elusetta! It's a pleasant and lovely surprise to get a question like this one... though idk if you'll actually like what I have to say here.

(Also lmao half the fandom will probably hate me for this essay, but everything I've written here is the truth. If y'all want to cling to your biases instead, fandom, be my guest and skip this essay)

I have two kinds of opinions regarding Lena - Lena as an individual character, and Lena in terms of what the writers wanted narratively.

As an individual character...eh. She's okay. On paper she could be promising, but on the whole she starts from one tangent and lands somewhere else altogether midway (and while one can say this of any character in the series, the fact is that, in her case, those inconsistencies all co-exist in the same book!).

Lena is an incredibly self-contained character. Sure, she is both the key to the VI's takeover of Cordonia and the weak link that facilitates their downfall - but there is very little she has to give the story or the other characters, and far more that they are constantly expected to give her. She is first presented to us as more of a loyal soldier to the VI, but mid-story she would have us believe that she'd be a better monarch and had always wanted to be queen. She is part of a cult that claims to be anti-monarchy, yet decides she must be queen and operates under a cult filled with monarchs. And there isn't enough pushback against the notion that a glorified puppet to a murderous cult would make a good monarch, and Lena gets away far too easily with her own crimes at the end (thanks to the brother she had spent the whole book mocking). Most of our time is spent coddling her and pampering her and convincing her that we genuinely like her, and very little on her actually self-evaluating. Like Olivia before her, she's there simply to be cosetted by us (by her brother Liam in particular) before she can afford us even a tenth of the grace she's been given.

And while I'm sure a horde of Lena stans may land on this ask to bleat about her tragic childhood and Sigrid's brainwashing, I'd like them to ask themselves one thing. Even the most conditioned person will find themselves questioning beliefs they grew up with from time to time. (Hana had done that on her own - several times - during the original TRR series, and this same fandom had no problem calling her "weak"). It takes Lena forever to even question Sigrid's weird logic. Yet I'm supposed to believe she'll make a great queen just because she's got military skills? Even though her critical thinking is...barely there? (And believe me, enough people in fandom were celebrating the notion of Lena replacing Liam and what the VI were doing for a portion of the story).

There are possibilities to make such a character compelling - someone who believes they have agency and independence only to realize they are lowly pawns can make for a good inner conflict, and could provide the core group with a good contrast as well - but not with this team, or this fandom. Not with a head writer who will simp for the Val Greaves/Olivia Nevrakis character type against all logic, not with a fandom that is forever desperate to make Liam their personal scapegoat. Not with a team and fandom who are uncomfortable with acknowledging their own favourites' actual flaws. Both of these groups only saw her armor, snark, gun skills and hatred of Liam, and decided she was a great character based solely on that.

Personally and out of the larger context of this story, I don't particularly mind Lena as a character. In a better story that had more balance, I'd probably be more sympathetic. I prefer some of the sweeter and softer female characters, or the characters that represent diplomacy in a series like this. I'm a lot more protective of them nowadays because they tend to be looked down upon most of the time (especially if they are default WOC!). And that happens more often than not with this series!

--

On a narrative level...well. Buckle up coz I have a real bone to pick with the writing team and the fandom on this specific issue.

Narratively, Lena is the most obvious sign of the TRR writing team's cravenness and shamelessness, and the biggest sign of their disdain for the character that gave them the whole premise of this series.

Mind you, I cannot blame solely Lena for this. She is just a culmination of what the team was already doing to Liam. Kneecapping Liam was a process that began early and went on for six books, with fandom encouragement. Liam, contrary to the fandom's claims (and the Drake stans - whose favourite was himself eating up other characters' space on the regular - complain about this the loudest), was already being disadvantaged in several ways.

Here are just a few ways that events that happened to Liam (or storylines that should have been his) but were instead centered on other people, including the MC:

1. Traumatic events:

The assassination attempt that left Liam so traumatized that he could barely eat, and made him shut himself off to everyone, was never incorporated for his benefit. He never gets to talk about it, the MC herself never bothers to ask him about it. It only exists so Drake can sound less whiny about staying in a place that he hates.

The assassination attempt that kills Constantine? At a time when Liam had to grapple with questions about his own rule? Guess what Liam gets. A solitary tear at the finale, and a small scene for the Heir about growing apple trees two books later.

We find out in TRH1 that Godfrey was involved in the plot to kill Eleanor, and in TRH3 that Bartie Sr was his partner in the crime. We center the children of the murderers for the rest. Liam gets barely 10 seconds to attempt to banish Godfrey (the book ends on the latter's successful escape, and the MC conveniently goes into labour at that moment), the next two books require us to pamper the everloving shit out of Madeleine, and Maxwell - who, might I remind you, emotionally blackmailed his brother into giving Bartie Sr his title as Duke and made his father's coup possible - spends more than half of TRH3 playing the betrayed victim.

What does Liam get? A few seconds of the MC mouthing platitudes when they find out, and one scene where Liam is allowed to gaze sadly at daisies. Maxwell gets to weep about his traitor father ad nauseum while barely acknowledging the friend who lost his mother thanks to the same man, Madeleine gets to spend most of TRH2 and 3 expecting us to treat her with kid gloves otherwise she will help Bartie Sr kidnap your child. Honestly, Drake Walker got way more time to moan and gripe about his sister living safely in Paris on Beaumont money!

Most times we hear about something tragic that happened to Liam, it serves to benefit other people - notably team favourites like Drake, Olivia, Madeleine or Maxwell. The entire base of TRH is the mystery of Queen Eleanor's murder, yet the person whose feelings matter least in this story is Eleanor's own son.

Most times when something horrible happens to Liam, or when he discovers something disturbing about his past, the MC hardly pays much attention to him, while showering whiter characters with sympathy and diamond scene moments for less horrific revelations. The same MC who can tell Olivia that it's okay to seek support, or comfort Drake with a drinking game, or convince Bertrand to go easy on Maxwell...has barely any time or interest to support Liam, even when she's married to him.

A Drake stan I'd spoken to around the time of TRH3, once claimed that the narrative may have been trying to balance things between "prominent" LIs by "giving Liam the plot elements" and "giving Drake the emotional baggage". This is an argument I have seen often in the fandom - that "the story makes sense only with Liam as your spouse" ergo he has the biggest advantage of all the LIs. This is directly related to Liam's role as king. Let's take a minute to explore how that is dealt with in the story.

2. Power and Monarchy.

Often Liam is considered PB/TRR's "golden boy" because he is the "royal" spoken about in the title and featuring in all the covers. The popular argument is that the story makes sense only if you married Liam and became his Queen.

However, this argument misses (perhaps deliberately) one very important thing. Even this is mostly centered around the power Liam gives the MC. Liam's attention or even power doesn't increase within the narrative by giving the MC power - in fact it is pushed so far back the narrative often seems to forget who he is, and tosses his role to the MC, Queen Consort or not. His being king hardly seems to benefit him narratively - it is only used to benefit the MC.

People forget that even on a level of being Queen Consort, she shouldn't be having the kind of power she's been given in the narrative, or replace the king. Yet that is exactly what the narrative does.

One of the arcs that was promised for Liam was about the kind of king he hopes to be. As a Crown Prince he grapples with this question, and as a King he faces constant doubt and fear over his capability to rule. When he discovers that his father masterminded the plot against the MC, that moment was written as if it could be a turning point in how he views ruling. At the TRR2 finale he vows to never let fear overpower him the way it did Constantine, and before that in NY he tells the MC that she inspired him to take the reins and have more belief in what he wanted to achieve.

In TRR3, the writers barely bothered to address this conflict at all, besides a line (said in passing, only in his playthrough) about his plans for compensating the Applewood farmers until the new crop could harvest, and a couple lessons on diplomacy for the MC's benefit. Even his role as a king was viewed more in terms of how the MC could use his knowledge, not really as an important aspect of his character. The writers spent far more time forcing Liam to look sadly at the MC that wasn't marrying him, just to appease certain nonLiam stans who missed the love triangle. He was essentially given no real plot of his own in TRR3. This definitely didn't track with the promises made for his storyline in the TRR2 finale in any way or form.

TRH is far more brazen in this respect. From the point that the MC becomes Champion of the Realm/prospective Mother of the Heir, the narrative cedes so much power to her...that it almost treats Liam as a noble rather than the literal King of that country! The royals at the first Ball she hosts in Valtoria address her as if she's the only "monarch" that counts. Isabella questions her about Eleanor rather than Eleanor's actual son. Amalas stalks her constantly. Nobles directly address her as if she's the only one ruling (eg: Kiara's comment about "reactive ruling" elicits a response from the MC, rather than from Liam who is actually standing there).

Even if the MC was the consort ruling alongside the rightfully-appointed King, it still didn't make sense for the narrative to replace him with her in discussions that were meant for the actual person in power. In addition, the narrative itself views her - across playthroughs - more as the Duchess of Valtoria than the Queen of Cordonia - we see her duchy more often than we do the Capitol, there is very little reference to what she does as Queen Consort or any duty she may have to perform on that score, and King Liam himself is made to behave more like a Duke (eg. The only time he's allowed to push back independently against Bradshaw and Isabella in TRH2, is a ballroom duel that is proven pointless by the Auvernese drone attack that they framed Monterisso for).

Most of the power to make decisions is taken out of Liam's hands and given to the nobles who run the Royal Council - and once those decisions turn out to be bad ones, the blame is placed solely on his shoulders even though it was made jointly. Half the characters talk over Liam and directly to the MC about "her rule", even though she is a Queen Consort at best and a random new Duchess at worst.

The MC - who is never really shown doing any actual work for the country or thinking about her people. The MC - whose only political act outside of the shenanigans she gets into with her friends, is a line about contributing to charities. This woman has a wholeass library in her duchy and access to endless resources before that...and still needs to be spoonfed information about neighbouring places by the likes of Hana Lee. This woman started out working in a bar close to a rat-infested dumpster yet never shows a lick of concern for the average commoner in her duchy - forget her kingdom if she is the Queen. She is literally given all of Liam's power, while hardly having to do any of Liam's work (and if you're going to pretend he doesn't do any work? I suggest you read this essay to see what you missed!). And all that is fine - but if this fandom is alright dragging Liam for "being a sucky king" and "partying all the time", I'd better see you guys hold everyone else - including your favourite characters who rule over entire provinces, and your darling MCs - to the same parameters.

By the time we get to TRF, this is the amount of power the narrative gives to the MC:

Not only is Liam's role nerfed to that of a Duke, the narrative itself has no qualms saying the quiet part out loud: Liam isn't the one that matters, the MC is. Liam's decisions and opinions mean nothing, the MC's does.

And this isn't something the MC herself is against, canonically. She enjoys having that power. She revels in it. No matter how badly the fandom wants to make a victim out of her and a Rumpelstiltskin out of Laim - this is a role she accepted wholeheartedly and enjoyed, while not having to work much for it. As a reader you may assume that your vision of the MC wouldn't be comfortable with this role, but canon in no way depicts your assumption as true. So it's not even as if - contrary to fandom's claims - these were roles Liam forced on her.

To revert to what I said at the beginning of this section - the plot runs because Liam is the king of the country and was the reason we came to Cordonia. But in a context like this, that is not at all an advantage. The farther into the story you go, the clearer it is that Liam's role benefits the story more than the story will ever benefit him.

3. Family

Another thread that runs through all the LIs' stories is that of their families. Most of the mystery surrounding the past revolves around Liam's, Drake's, Maxwell's, Olivia's (and briefly, Hana's) parents and their histories - but it would be helpful for once to look at how the narrative frames these stories, and how these characters benefit from them. Are the LIs' themes explored adequately through the inclusion of these stories? Does the LI's feelings get validated by the group, or dismissed? Does the narrative try to downplay the pain they may have endured in childhood, depending on which LI/prominent character the writers preferred?

A prime example of how the narrative uses the family background to their character's advantage is the Drake-Savannah story. Savannah is constantly viewed from Drake's lens, even when it is revealed that she's actually living a comfortable life thanks to a pair of nobles. Drake is STILL allowed to use her "experience" as an example of the "bad, no-good, dastardly nobles", is allowed to look down on the one noblewoman who befriended Savannah, and is allowed to punish Bertrand all the way into TRR3 for perceived slights.

While Savannah likes Bertrand enough to want to marry him, it is Drake's judgement of him that is centered - Savannah brings what he said about Bertrand up whenever she wants to badger him into doing her bidding, and Drake himself is allowed to humiliate Bertrand just to give his agreement to their match. Savannah's wedding is literally the wedding Drake described in a TRR3 diamond scene as his dream wedding (Ice Palace, TRR3 Ch 11), even though canon had her aspire more to the noble life than her brother. That wedding lasted half the book, and involved Bertrand being further humiliated by Drake's family. Despite her many flaws, canon chooses to view Savannah as "perfect" primarily because that's how Drake views her...and Drake can never be proven wrong on anything (even if the team has to do a retcon to make it so). This extends to the rest of his family as well. Canon attempted to create Leona out of whole cloth so that Bianca could appear less of an asshole (an attempt that failed), and Jackson is depicted as a close friend who Queen Eleanor trusted with the news of her pregnancy, yet somehow he never did anything nor asked any questions after she was dead and there was a potential child out there. His father is still the innocent among innocents, the best person and friend that ever existed. Drake is centered in most stories surrounding his family, and so is his perspective.

Maxwell gets something similar to this treatment later on in the story, specifically with the way Bartie Sr's coup and Bertrand's perceived betrayal is handled. The coup itself begins with Bertrand handing over his title and responsibilities to his father - a move facilitated directly due to Maxwell's lies and retcons about Bertrand in his book. Maxwell spends more than half the book clinging to some weak hope that the man - who is literally staging a coup of Maxwell's friend's throne, and later kidnaps a child - is a good man. His tirade against Bartie Sr being a bad parent, in Valtoria, hardly acknowledges what Bertrand had to suffer. As mentioned earlier, when Bartie's treason was revealed Maxwell centers that truth around himself even though the son of the woman Bartie killed is right in front of him (there's a vague promise about how he'll do anything to bring his father to justice, but that's about as far as his communication with Liam on this goes). And finally, even after it's been made clear that Bertrand was secretly supporting the core group, Maxwell and the group still behave like he did something wrong and continue to mistrust him, to the point of expecting him to apologise and suspecting him in the next book to be in the VI (though Maxwell does initially stage a weak protest to this). All this, while never having to acknowledge Maxwell's own role in getting Bartie Sr closer to power!

The team pretends to do something similar for Hana, but with egregious retcons. While in TRR her parents' motives are tied to Hana having a beneficial marriage and furthering their fortune - and they come close to disowning her for wanting to follow her own path - in TRH the narrative aggressively retcons their story so that their motives are attributed to affectionate worry and protection, rather than control. While it is great that Hana still isn't required to forgive her mother, the narrative forces her to soften Lorelai's motives in a way that is insulting to her original story. I won't speak more on how Hana's story was handled, as I do so in detail here. Olivia, while not an LI, was given far more grace from the narrative; she was given an entire holiday book to ruminate over what to do with her traitor aunt's necklace. Throughout TRH, she is involved in and heartily lauded for various "spy missions", most of which culminate in nothing because all she does is sit on that information and not tell anyone (with very few exceptions, like the reveal about Bartie's murder of Eleanor). That story is wholly centered around Olivia and her comfort. Ergo, even a side character can get plenty of space for their story if their writers actually give a damn.

Which brings me to Liam.

There were problems already in the way Liam and his family issues were explored, even before Lena came along. Stoicism and the pressure to show a sense of calm at all times was an accepted trait of Liam's, and it was one that his fans had hoped he would emerge out of as the story progressed. Yet the narrative only allowed him to show strong emotions when it was centered around protecting the MC (see: Liam's confrontation of his father in TRR2 Ch12, or fighting Anton in TRR3 Ch 21). The MC was far, far less proactive in this respect, even as she acted as counselor and teacher and guide and angel of mercy to numerous white characters in the same book.

When Liam's father dies right in front of him, the narrative forces Liam to deflect and keep it moving, only allowing him to shed a single tear at the end of the book. TRH finds Liam hit with reveal after painful reveal of the plots behind his mother's death, and he is allowed barely seconds to even show an emotional response to this - much less be comforted. In each case he is meant to move ahead as if this wouldn't affect him, as if the next mystery is more important, as if he didn't deserve support.

A support that the MC doesn't mind lavishing on Drake, Maxwell, Olivia, Madeleine, Penelope, White Noble no. 1, 2, 3, 4...the list is endless.

Into this already-skewed situation, enters his sister Lena, who hates him. She spends half the book verbally shitting on him and the group, calling Liam weak, claiming without any actual experience (besides heading a company) that she could do a better job leading and fending off coups and plots that he and his friends already managed to thwart. The narrative uses Liam's love for family and need to reconnect to this unknown sister to make sure Lena is centered in whatever reveal comes forth about their mother.

This wouldn't even have been as big of an issue if every other instance where Liam bore immense loss wasn't pushed aside as less important. If they didn't restrict the MC's concern to lukewarm platitudes and the occasional causal question. Lena getting this moment all to herself wouldn't have mattered as much if Liam wasn't constantly forced by the narrative to push his hurt, pain or anger aside when he discovered his father's illness...or when his kingdom was under attack...or when his father died...or when he discovered his mother had hidden a pregnancy...or when he discovered his mother's first attacker...or his mother's second attacker...or the King Guard who betrayed his family...or the cult that clearly wanted to kill his mother and keep him away from his sister...you get the picture.

In fact, the lack of care extends to the way the core group deals with the Lena situation as well. When Lena is first revealed to be both The Fist of the VI and Liam's long-lost sister, the core group callously scoffs at Liam's suggestions to communicate with her, rather than trying to comfort him. Even Hana, who has to sympathize and speak positively about the likes of Madeleine and Olivia - women who have harmed her and have regularly undermined her - is made to sound like she has no patience for Liam's obvious internal conflict. If anyone could understand how hard it would be to let go of family whose motives can be harmful for you, it would be Hana. Yet the team has her place timelines on Liam's emotions in a way the group never bothered to do to Maxwell in a somewhat similar situation, in the previous book.

Of course, once the MC decides it would be a good idea to win Lena's trust, the group magically sees this aim as legitimate. For the rest of the book, Lena is pampered, cosetted, coddled, shown around Cordonia and treated with kid gloves, all while trashing on Liam without much significant pushback. The entire story revolves around her journey from a skeptic of the group to realizing they are genuinely good people. All while her brother who gave us this series languishes in the background - his own power snatched from his hands and passed to the MC, his own traumas and tragedies forgotten, his own emotional baggage thrown away so Lena and Drake can take centerstage.

At the end of the book, when the group gets closure from Sigrid over VI and her multiple betrayals, it is Drake who gets the most space to react out of the group alone. The book begins with his discovery of Bastien's involvement in the VI, and allows Drake ample space to grieve and ruminate over it (btw, let's forget entirely that Bastien has been King Guard this entire time, and that meant that for all five years of his rule and for many many years before that, Liam and his family had a walking talking security risk "protecting" them. Coz who cares if the King of Cordonia dies, amirite?) When it is discovered that Jackson died while working undercover to expose the VI, it is Drake who gets the most time among the group to confront Sigrid, and it is Drake who gets to give a lengthy monologue to his dead parent, for which the MC and Liam are required to stand there and comfort him. In contrast, Liam gets just one line in a scene about the person who masterminded his mother's death. It is Lena instead, who gets to react emotionally to that - because the Sigrid story itself was created specifically to pander to this one just-created character.

Lena wasn't created to add to Liam's story like Savannah was. She wasn't meant to share their joint history like Bertrand and Maxwell initially were, or sidelined for the sake of another side character related to another LI like Bertrand was. Lena was created to replace Liam as the center of a tragedy that happened to him, that affected him, that haunted him for years, that had repercussions on his life...that he was never given any real space to emotionally explore.

Drake's story benefitted from Liam's trauma, to the point where only he was allowed to talk about it and where his perspective was the only one given value. The MC's story benefitted from Liam's power, to the point where she damn near replaced him narratively in that role despite never doing the work, while the fandom laid the entire blame on Liam ad nauseum and not her. Over and over, in plots and coups and murders that hurt his family, other people were allowed to talk, allowed to think, allowed to feel...while Liam got maybe one teardrop per parent.

In the same trajectory, one can clearly see why they developed a character like Lena in the first place. The writers spent 6 whole books heartlessly picking at parts of Liam's story and giving those bits away to their actual favourite characters. Bit by bit, from his experiences to his work to his role, they whittled away Liam as a character until he was left with practically nothing. Do you think they would seriously just stop that process with TRH3? I mean, the head writer is someone who likes "mean characters who speak their mind" and her disdain for characters who represent diplomacy and peace isn't even thinly veiled. Of course they'd go further!!

Lena was created with the sole purpose of ensuring Liam never got adequate closure for himself. They simply passed on that luxury to her, and the fandom who hid behind "Liam gets everything!!111" while never speaking up once about the gross favouritism directed towards their own beloved LIs and side characters, cheered the same team on in this.

I can say this with complete confidence: had Liam been a default white man, like Drake and Maxwell were (or like Ethan Ramsey in OH or Ernest Sinclaire in D&D were), Lena's story would have looked very, very different. In fact, I highly doubt she would even exist.

#the royal romance #king liam #princess lena #anti drake walker #anti maxwell beaumont #anti lena rys #if i ever write an essay series on liam i will call it 'king liam and the single sexy tear' #that's all he's ever allowed to shed #one tear per parent 🥲

[grapecaseschoices]

1, 10, 22 for the salty asks

1. What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?

Not to be the one. But I’m gonna be that person. But Drake x MC. I don’t get Priya x MC as anything romantic. Or, rather, not as anything fluffy and romantic. I could be into as a kind of fraught, tense thing. But where MC has some sort of power. I’m not into power imbalance. Mark x MC. Caleb (Hero) x MC. I feel a bit weird saying I don’t get MC ship choices, because it feels like telling people what to ship with their OC. (Or I guess, themselves or wte). But these are tropes that I’m not into. So. 

Sebastian x Chris. MADELIENE X HANA! I’m sure there are more.

10.  Most disliked arc? Why?

That’s difficult to pick. LOL. I think a lot of them stem from TRR, I will say. Because TRR was really bad at follow through or digging deeper. I feel even Drake was a victim of this. Fandom likes to call him marshmallow but thinking on a conversation I recently had, his arc really was this. The TRR writers spread him everywhere and yet it was shallow, lacking substance. And, often, it wasn’t with just Drake. I call him out because his storylines overshadowed /over took a lot of other people’s (his argument with Maxwell - where HANA, if I recall right, had to step in during a storyline that should’ve been about HER). Maxwell / the Beaumont’s development was dropped or off screen for Savannah. 

Yet TRR consistently introducing heavy topics and not following through or giving depth. Liam’s trauma (he got one tear? rofl). Hana’s trauma and her situation with her parents. Fuck, even Drake’s trauma – DUDE WAS SHOT. He lost his dad, his sister, his mom. Bastian betrayed him. And his mom apparently pops back in? And that is that? 

However, I feel nothing displayed their lack of care for digging deeper in any of their characters as their treatment of MCs background. And also her growth. They dropped the ball. So. Many. Times. I feel this entire rant is like TRR. I keep going back and half starting thoughts because I keep thinking of shit that they just didn’t finish.

If I had to pick one in TRR it would be Hana’s everything. I LOVE HER. But they treated her like shit. They paid her dust. LIKE WOW. I have never seen PB disrespect a character so fucking much and I shipped my MCs with Leah and Victoria. LOL. I feel this stands out more because with them we figured out early where they were going (paywall). But PB tried it with Hana. They tried to pull look this is about her but continuously treated her as a last second afterthought. 

22.  Popular character you hate?

This rant aside. I actually don’t HATE any of them. Though fandom does try me. I hate how certain characters (white males [and in Damien’s  - for a time, Zig too - case, ambiguously brown male])  are given an unfair advantage in fandom and PB. I hate that how it can be impossible to find content for a character I enjoy. Not even always because it isn’t made but because the popular LI takes up the tag. I hate that I have to pay to spend money for my preferred LI or else THEY WILL BARELY BE IN THE BOOK while people get free fucking content. Or  free dialogue dedicated to their fave even when they’re not in the chapter. But there is no popular character that I hate.  

Actually, I could do without Mark. But I didn’t hate him

Salty Asks

#grapecase answers #salty asks #1 / #2 / #3 / #anti drake #anti drake walker #anti trr #anti the royal romance #anti trr writers #sighs #long post #massivelysilentchaos #thank you for asking! #put that here bc i really rant on lol

[imseriousirius]

Sometimes I think about how much better my life would’ve been if Drake had just done us all a favour and died in book two but noooo. The writers let him live and now I can’t do basic maths and I have depression 😒

#coincidence?? i dont think so #playchoices #choices #choices trr #thanks alot trr writers #i also work in retail and im blaming them for that as well #anti drake walker #AU where drake dies and i know long division

[karahalloway]

20 Questions

Thanks so much for the tag @bebepac! I love stuff like this!  🤩

Nickname: Kati (Kara is a pen name). Alternatively, I go by ‘Bunny’ (husband) and ‘Mommy’ (my son).

Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius and proud! 😊

Height: 170cm, which is approx. 5′ 6′’ (I used to be 168cm but I ended up grown 2cm while I was pregnant... weird, huh)

Last Movie I saw: Erm... I think it was Snatch. We definitely watched Snatch last weekend, but I can’t remember if we’ve watched another movie since then... Unless it’s to do with my fics, my memory is terrible... 😅

Last thing I Googled: Italian swearwords (you will understand when I post Chapter 2 of Sleepless in New York!)

Favourite Musician: Eugh... I have no idea! What music I listen to depends on what mood I’m in. But at the moment it’s a bit of a four-way tie between Luke Bryan, Jeremy Renner and Ed Sheeran (previously it was Chris Stapleton and Mikolas Josef).

Song Stuck in my head: Bad Habits by Ed Sheeran (my new favourite song!) Did I mention I like Ed Sheeran at the moment...? 😅

Other Blogs: https://yycwalkies.wordpress.com/ Haven’t updated it since I started writing fanfic though...

Blogs Following: Mostly TRR writers, but some art, photography and movies/TV shows as well

Sleep Patterns: A lot 😆 I love sleep! I got to bed between 9:30pm and 10:00pm usually as I need to be up by 7:00am to take my son to pre-school and I need at least 9 hours of sleep a night to be functional the next day.

Lucky Numbers: 2, 7, 14, 72

What am I wearing: Cosy sweatpants, t-shirt and an oversized cardigan (it’s winter where I am - as in cold + snow). When I’m at home, I wear ‘home’ clothes.

What would I do if capitalism didn’t exist: Guess it kind of depends on what we’d have instead... Would it be communism (in which case I’d probably be writing for some kind of underground anti-establishment publication), or something more idealistic like a hippie commune (in which case I’d be reconnecting with nature and doing a lot of yoga)

Dream Trip: Oh, my God... so many! I want to go see the Pyramids, Machu Pichu, the Great Wall of China, Japan, New Zealand, Yellowstone, go on safari in Kenya, cruise around the Med, Istanbul, Ireland, Scotland, Montana, Texas, explore all of Canada... The list goes on!

Favourite Food: Again... This is a hard question. Depends on what mood I’m in. But I will very rarely turn down Asian-fusion, sushi, Indian, burgers, Italian- or New York-style pizza (I like the thin crust). And cake. I love cake! 🍰

Instruments I play: None at the moment... I used to play the piano in elementary school and flute in middle school, but I’ve totally forgotten these skills now!

Languages I speak: English, Hungarian and some French. I used to be able to speak Danish (spent a year abroad there and took a month-long Danish language course). I can also read and get the gist of Spanish based on French. Just don’t ask me to say anything!

Favourite Songs: Oh, so many! Some of them include: 

Ed Sheeran - Shivers, Bad Habits, Stop the Rain, Sing, Shape of You, Galway Girl

Luke Bryan - Move, My Kind of Night, Driving This Thing, Knockin’ Boots, Country Girl (Shake It For Me)

Jeremy Renner - Nomad, Just My Type, She’s a Fire, Main Attraction

Chris Stapleton - Parachute, Tennessee Whiskey

Bryan Adams - Open Road, Run to You, The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me is You

Mikolas Jozef - Lie to Me, Colorado, Me Gusta

Other - Good Times Roll (Jimmie Allen & Brad Plaisley), Old Town Road (Lil Nas X & Bill Ray Cyrus), Honky Tonk On (Hayden Haddock), All Eyes on Us (Jon Langston), Must Be the Whiskey (Cody Jinks), High Horse (Nelly, Breland & Blanco Brown), Throw it Back (Breland & Keith Urban), Hard to Leave (Riley Green), Lit in the Sticks (Ryan Langdon), Chasing After You (Ryan Hurd & Maren Morris), She Drives Me Crazy (Brad Kissel), Take My Breath (The Weeknd)

Random facts about me: I’ve lived in 7 countries so far; when I was young (like a toddler) I was ambidextrous and really good a drawing (according to my mom, at any rate!); I’ve been writing since high school; I’ve loved reading since elementary school; I’m a total introvert and need to spend some alone time each day, or I get massively grouchy; we have two doggos and a catto; I love horse riding and hiking; I love chocolate!

Tagging @aussiegurl1234 @angelasscribbles @nestledonthaveone @petiteboheme @walkerdrakewalker @kingliam2019 @lovingchoices14 @peonierose​ and anyone else who wants to share some info about themselves!

#kara halloway #this is me #20 questions

[blackkingliamstan]

I used to find Poppy interesting but I can't forgive her after what she did to Zoey. I romanced Becca but she never went beyond harmless sabotage and you could see how much she regreted causing Madison pain. What frustrates me is the way PB and the fans treat black women. There's a different standard.

Aurora moved in with MC just like Becca did. We could flirt with her. We could dance with her. We could make her blush and tell her new old friends that we're dating. Now, the writers pay her dust and nobody seems bothered by that. When the spoilers about the Zoey's scene got out many stans were concerned about Poppy's story but they couldn't care less about Zoey. Some blamed it all on Zoey's ambition. The fandom allows PB to treat black characters like shit.

I definitely agree with you. I remember when Queen B first came out and people were clamoring for Poppy to be a LI before all of the racist crap. And I didn’t mind that they wanted her, but I saw a lot of people putting Zoey down to lift up Poppy and that made me hope she never became one. Because I knew if she did, Zoey would cease to exist. 

And people use the excuse as variety, but you don’t have to bring Zoey down to make your point. And I saw that as being very anti-black.

And I feel like that’s a pattern when there are black female LI in a book with another female LI. They always come second. Like Lily and Kamillah, and how Lily was made expendable and got so much hate from the fandom. People went as far as to call her forced. Like when is a female character ever forced on MC. Or Sloane and Alana. Or look how people in TRR wanted Olivia and Madeline to be LI, but I see very few wanting Kiara to be one. PB treats the black characters like crap and the fandom does also.

I thought after we went to the reunion with Aurora, that we would be able to romance her.  I just feel like PB is basically giving us false hope. Which I don’t get. Aurora has been very popular since Oph came out, people have been asking for her to be a LI, and PB stays silent. Unless they are making her a Li in book 3 because if not, why all of that flirting and nothing comes from it. It seems like they are just baiting the fans right now. That had the perfect opportunity to build feelings and maybe give them a kissing scene.

I kind of went off-topic and I’m no expert in anything, but I feel you anon. I feel like this fandom is very anti-black and so is PB. I have so many thoughts about a lot of things, but I won’t get into that.

#playchoices #thanks for the ask #Anonymous

[dispactke]

Infrarealism Manifesto

Manifesto of Infrarealism

——-

GIVE IT ALL UP AGAIN

first infrarealist manifesto

“It’s four light hours to the confines of the solar system; to the closest star, four light years. A disproportionate ocean of emptiness. But are we really sure there is only a void? We only know that there are no stars shining in that space. If they existed, would they be visible? And if there existed bodies that are neither luminous nor dark? Could it not be that on the celestial maps, the same as on those of Earth, the star-cities are indicated and the star-villages are omitted?”

— Soviet science fiction writers scratching their faces at midnight.

— The infrasuns (Drummond would say the happy proletarian fellows).

— Peguero and Boris alone in a lumpen room having premonitions of the wonder behind the door.

— Free money.

*

Who has crossed the city and had, as the only music, the whistles of his fellow man, his own words of wonder and rage?

The handsome guy who didn’t know

that chicks’ orgasms are clitoral

(Look around, shit isn’t just in museums.) (A process of individual museumification.) (Certainty that everything is named, revealed.) (Fear of discovering.) (Fear of unforeseen imbalances.)

*

Our closest relatives:

snipers, country boys who smash up cheap cafés in Latin America, people who fall apart in supermarkets in their tremendous individuo-collective dilemmas; the impotence of action and the search (on individual levels or good and muddy with aesthetic contradictions) for poetic action.

*

Little bright stars eternally winking an eye at us from a place in the universe called Labyrinths.

— Nightclub of misery.

— Pepito Tequila sobbing his love for Lisa Underground.

— I suck it, you suck it, we suck it.

— And the Horror.

*

Curtains of water, cement or tin separate a cultural machinery that serves as the conscience or the ass of the dominant class from a living, annoying cultural happening, in constant death and birth, ignorant of the greater part of history and the fine arts (everyday creator of its insane history and its hallucinatory fine artz), body that suddenly feels new sensations in itself, product of an epoch in which we approach the shithouse or the revolution at 200 kph.

“New forms, strange forms,” as old Bertolt said, half curious, half cheerful.

*

Sensations don’t arise from nothingness (the obvious of obviousnesses) but from conditioned reality, in a thousand ways, as a constant flow.

— Multiple reality, you make us sick!

So it is possible that on the one hand one is born and on the other hand we’re in the front row for the death throes. Forms of life and forms of death pass daily through the retina. The constant crash gives life to infrarealist forms: THE EYE OF TRANSITION

*

They put the whole city in the nuthouse. Sweet sister, tank howls, hermaphrodite songs, diamond deserts, we’ll live only once and the visions, more complicated and slippery every day. Sweet sister, hitchhiking to Monte Albán[i]. Unbuckling their belts to water the corpses. It’s something at least.

*

And the good bourgeois culture? And academia and the arsonists? And the vanguard and its rearguard? And certain conceptions of love, nice scenery, the precise multinational Colt sidearm?

Like Saint-Just[ii] said to me in a dream I had a while ago: Even the heads of aristocrats can be our weapons.

*

— A good part of the world is being born and the other part is dying and we all know that we all have to live and we all die: in this there is no middle road.

Chirico[iii] says: thought needs to move away from everything called logic and common sense, to move away from all human obstacles in such a way that things take on a new look, as though illuminated by a constellation appearing for the first time. The infrarealists say: We’re going to stick our noses into all human obstacles, in such a way that things begin to move inside of us, a hallucinatory vision of mankind.

— The Constellation of the Beautiful Bird.

— The infrarealists propose Indianism to the world: a crazy, timid Indian.

— A new lyricism that’s beginning to grow in Latin America sustains itself in ways that never cease to amaze us. The entrance to the work is the entrance to adventure: the poem as a journey and the poet as a hero who reveals heroes. Tenderness as an exercise in speed. Respiration and heat. Experience shot, structures that devour themselves, insane contradictions.

The poet is interfering, the reader will have to interfere for himself.

“erotic books full of misspellings”

*

The THOUSAND DRAWN-AND-QUARTERED VANGUARDS OF THE SEVENTIES are our ancestors

99 flowers open like an open head

Slaughters, new concentration camps

White subterranean rivers, violet winds

These are hard times for poetry, some say, sipping tea, listening to music in their apartments, talking (listening) to the old masters. These are hard times for mankind, we say, coming back to the barricades after a workday full of shit and tear gas, discovering/creating music even in apartments, spending all day watching the cemeteries-that-expand, where they hopelessly drink a cup of tea or get drunk on pure rage or the inertia of the old masters.

HORA ZERO[iv] are our ancestors

((Raise arsonist kids, get burned))

We’re still in the Quaternary Period. We’re still in the Quaternary Period?

Pepito Tequila kisses the phosphorescent nipples of Lisa Underground and heads off for a beach where black pyramids sprout up.

*

I repeat:

The poet as a hero who reveals heroes, like the fallen red tree that announces the start of a forest.

— Attempts at an ethic-aesthetic are paved with betrayals or pathetic survivals.

— And it is the individual who could walk a thousand kilometers but inevitably the road will eat him.

— Our ethic is the Revolution, our aesthetic is Life: one-and-the-same.

*

For the bourgeoisie and the petite-bourgeoisie, life is a party. They have one every weekend. The proletariat doesn’t have parties. Just funerals with rhythm. That’s going to change. The exploited are going to throw a big party. Memory and guillotines. Sensing it, acting it out on certain nights, inventing edges and humid corners for it, like caressing the acid eyes of the new spirit.

*

Movement of the poem through the seasons of rebellion: poetry producing poets producing poems producing poetry. No electric alley/the poet with his arms separated from his body/the poem moving slowly from his Vision to his Revolution. The alley is a complex point. “We’re going to invent it so as to discover its contradiction, its invisible forms of negation, even to clarify it.” A journey of the act of writing through zones not at all favorable to the act of writing.

Rimbaud, come home!

Subvert the everyday reality of modern poetry. The chains that lead to the poem’s circular reality. A good reference: Kurt Schwitters. Lanke trr gll, or, upa kupa arggg, happens in the official line, phonetic investigators encoding the howl. The bridges of Nova Express are anti-codifying: let him scream, let him scream (please don’t go pulling out pencils or little notebooks, don’t record it, if you want to participate scream along), so let him scream, to see the look on his face when it’s over, what incredible thing happen to us.

Our bridges to unknown seasons. The poem interrelating reality and unreality.

*

Convulsively.

*

What can I ask of present-day Latin American painting? What can I ask of the theater?

It is more revealing and more evocative to stand in a park devastated by smog and watch people cross the avenues in groups (that contract and expand), the avenues, where drivers as much as pedestrians feel the urge to return to their hovels, when the murderers come out and the victims stalk them.

What stories are painters really telling me?

The interesting void, fixed form and color, at best a parody of movement. Canvases that will serve only as bright advertisements in the rooms of engineers and doctors who collect them.

The painter adapts to a society that is every day more of a “painter” than he is, and there he finds himself disarmed and registers as clown.

If painting X is found in some street by Mara, that painting acquires the status of an amusing, communicative thing; in a salon it’s as decorative as bourgeois wrought iron garden chairs/a question of the retina?/yes and no/but it’d be better to find (and systematize according to chance for awhile) the unleashing factor, class-conscious, a one hundred percent deliberate deed, in juxtaposition to the values of “work” which both precede and condition it.

The painter gives up his studio and ANY status quo and fills his head with wonder/or takes up chess like Duchamp/a self-taught painting/And a painting of poverty, free or rather cheap, unfinished, collaborative, of questioning participation, physically extended and spiritually unlimited.

The best Latin American painting is that which is still being made at unconscious levels, the game, the party, the experiment that gives us a real vision of what we are and opens us to what we can be; the best Latin American painting is what we paint in the greens, reds, and blues on our faces, to recognize ourselves in the incessant creation of the group.

*

Try daily to leave everything behind.

May architects give up the building of inward-looking scenes and open their hands (or make fists, depending on the place) toward that outer space. A wall and a roof acquire utility not when they’re used just for sleeping or avoiding rain, but rather when they establish, for example, from the everyday act of dreaming, conscious bridges between man and his creations or the momentary impossibility of these.

In architecture and sculpture the infrarealists start from two points: the barricade and the bed.

*

The true imagination is that which destroys, elucidates, injects emerald microbes into other imaginations. In poetry and in whatever else, the entrance into the work has to already be the way into adventure. Create the tools for everyday subversion. The human being’s subjective seasons, with their gigantic, beautiful, obscene trees like experimental laboratories. Watch, glimpse parallel and heart-rending situations as a giant scratch on your chest, on your face. Endless analogy of gestures. There are so many that when new ones appear we don’t even notice, even though we’re making/watching them in front of a mirror. Stormy nights. Perception opens by means of an ethic-aesthetic carried to the limit.

*

— Galaxies of love are appearing in the palms of our hands.

— Poets, let down your hair (if you have any)

— Burn your nonsense and start loving until you come up with priceless poems

— We don’t want kinetic paintings but enormous kinetic sunsets

— Horses running 500 kilometers an hour

— Squirrels of fire hopping through trees of fire

— A bet to see who blinks first, between the nerve and the sleeping pill.

*

Risk is always somewhere else. The true poet is the one who’s always letting go of himself. Never too much time in the same place, like guerrillas, like UFOs, like the white eyes of prisoners serving life sentences.

*

Fusion and explosion from two shores: creation like a decisive and open graffiti by a crazy kid.

Not at all mechanical. Scales of amazement. Somebody, maybe Bosch, smashes the aquarium of love. Free money. Sweet sister. Visions frivolous like corpses. Little boys jerking off from kisses until December.

*

At two in the morning, after having been at Mara’s house, we (Mario Santiago and some of us) heard laughter coming from the penthouse of a 9 story building. They didn’t stop, they kept laughing and laughing while below we slept propped up in various phone booths. There came a moment when only Mario was still paying attention to the laughter (the penthouse is a gay bar or something and Darío Galicia had told us that it’s always watched by the cops). We made phone calls but our coins turned into water. The laughter continued. After we left that neighborhood Mario told me that actually no one had been laughing, that it was recorded laughter, and up there in that penthouse, some stragglers or maybe a single homosexual had silently listened to that record and made us listen to it.

— The death of the swan, the swan song, the last song of the black swan, IS NOT in the Bolshoi but in the intolerable pain and beauty of the streets.

— A rainbow that starts in a grindhouse theater and ends in a factory on strike.

— May amnesia never kiss us on the mouth. May it never kiss us.

— We dreamed of utopia and woke up screaming.

— A poor lonely cowboy that comes back home, what a wonder.

*

Make new sensations appear—Subvert daily life.

O.K.

GIVE IT ALL UP AGAIN

HIT THE ROAD

—Roberto Bolaño, Mexico, 1976

(translation by Tim Pilcher – [email protected])

#Infrarealism Manifesto #roberto bolaño #infrarealism

[trr-fangirl]

alrighty, time to talk out of the side of my ass!

firstly, perfect match ending or getting cancelled (idk which one) has really rubbed me the wrong way like i love everything about pm. the mc, his/her li's, even the crazy shit with eros but i'd rather them end it early than drag it out like the freshman series or have a third book and it only have 12-13 chapters i.e endless summer. but i do wish that it wasn't ending in two chapters, there's way too much plot for it to be completed in two chapters. i'd say maybe three or four? or even go all the way to 19 or 20 chapters. i say if you're going to end a good ass book like this, give it the ending it deserves, including the time and effort bc it seems rushed.

secondly, the anti trr shit? jesus lord. okay, i have a love hate relationship with this because as much as i love my trr gang (um my user anyone?) the ending was pretty sweet and simple, i loved it. i cried... more than someone should have about pixels. so it doesn't necessarily need a follow up series. but beyond the whole story and plot in itself, between the twitter and instagram fandoms (i check both from time to time) each time pb posts something someone always asks about hero 2, mw2 and now trr. a lot of people loved it within and outside of the tumblr fandom.. that's probably why they're bringing it back because besides the normal questions about the two forgotten books (rip 😥) trr is being asked for a lot. plus the writers said that they weren't done with trr gang when they did their live stream at the end of book 3, so it was always going to come back-- i just wasn't expecting it to come back this damn early.

and thirdly, if you can pick to be male or female in a book, the li's are bisexual ;)

edit: also, this isn't a fourth book. if i'm thinking about it correctly. this is a completely different series. yes it is still within the same universe as trr but it's a new series. so, trr books 1-3 are over. that's why it's in its own section. the new series will most likely be in its own thing too.. if that makes sense.

this is just my opinion, we're all allowed to agree to disagree!

#perfect match #the royal romance #trr #pm #choices #playchoices

[feisty-mary]

A King and a Duchess: Thoughts on TRR Book 3, Chapter 2

I don’t usually write detailed reviews of TRR chapters aside from screenshots of my playthrough with some comments. But I’ve had tons of feelings since the lackluster pilot and now even chapter two is a disappointment, so I decided I might as well summarize what I think and get it off my chest once and for all.

Note that this post will be peppered with links to my other posts, since I usually write down my thoughts immediately after finishing a chapter so I don’t forget them. It won’t be necessary to open the links to follow what I say here (unless otherwise noted), but please feel free to visit them for screenshots and additional insights.

1.    We finally have the names of the likely enemies of the Crown!

It’s always frustrated me how Liam dances around the issue and says absolutely nothing to his future bride and Queen about the enemies of the monarchy. I understand he can’t (especially if you’re not romancing him), but that doesn’t make it less annoying. It’s a relief to finally get some clues about who they might actually be in this chapter.

According to Bastien, there are three suspects:

    a. Liberation Core. Anti-monarchists, have grown more outspoken in their criticisms against the Crown.

    b. Sons of Earth. Newer faction. Pro-trade, in favor of bigger concessions.

    c. Nevrakis Family. Olivia’s parents were part of an attempted coup.

I reckon Francesco (the Italian ambassador) is part of the Sons of Earth, since he’s been pushing for Cordonia to grant Italian artists more access to Cordonian market. I don’t think they necessarily want to overthrow the government; I imagine they’re mostly businessmen who want a big share of the market for their own benefit. If this is the case, I think we can conclude that they will be the last people who will want instability in Cordonia, since an uncertain environment is bad for business.

Liberation Core sounds the most obvious culprit at the moment, since the videos from the assassin explicitly say that they want to shift the power from the monarchs to the citizens. I wonder if this is a call to change the form of government from monarchy to democracy?

I’ve already said that I have some faith in Olivia’s friendship with Liam. However, it’s her Aunt Lucretia that I’m very wary of (the one who left her to fend for herself after her parents passed away). In this chapter Olivia seems fiercely determined to support Liam, but that’s not necessarily true for the rest of her family, is it? Where has Aunt Lucretia been all these years?

Coup d’état is defined as “a sudden and decisive action in politics, especially one resulting in a change of government illegally or by force” (Dictionary.com, 2018). It’s interesting that this was what Olivia’s parents were involved in, and this is also in part what the assassin in the video threatens to do if Liam doesn’t abdicate the throne (“the palace halls will flow with the blood of tyrants”).

I’m not drawing conclusions from the points above yet, though I admit I’m frustrated that Constantine never dealt with the potential threat in Olivia. If I remember right, Olivia’s parents died when she was around 6 or 7, so this coup d’état must have happened some twenty years ago by this time in canon. The fact that this problem still haunts Liam now that he’s already king is… well, very disappointing.

2.   The enemies of the Crown publicly threaten Liam’s life again in this chapter, but everyone pretends everything is okay. 

Everyone includes but is not limited to Ana and Donnie (the media), Bertrand (who calls the entire thing “a PR miracle” if you don’t botch it up), and even Liam himself, who doesn’t discuss the assassin’s video with MC, but invites her to soak in goddamn bathtub instead (if you’re romancing him). I personally bought Liam’s diamond scene, and except for the two lines where Liam asks MC how she feels after what happened, they don’t dwell much on the video message from the enemies and then continue acting as if it’s really not that important.

Excuse my French but, uhm, what the fuck?

3.   To Ana’s and Donnie’s credit, they don’t pull their punches when they ask Liam what he plans on doing following the demands of the enemies of the Crown. (You might want to open this link in another tab for context.)

“And what about their demands, King Liam? Given everything that’s happened over the past few days, are you thinking of stepping down?”

They go right for the jugular with this question. And Liam, oh my dear Liam disappoints spectacularly in this one. Here he “pauses to gather his thoughts”, and then it’s basically MC who takes over and sends a message on Liam’s behalf.

My question is: Why? Why does it have to be MC who has to do all the talking, when the question is very clearly addressed to Liam, the actual King of Cordonia? Granted, in my playthrough my MC is romancing Liam and is thus his future wife and future Queen of Cordonia. ‘Future’ being the operative term. Why does she get to speak on his behalf, and why are we given the impression that her words instead of the King’s are enough to assuage the fears of the media and the public? Who the hell even is she? If I were a citizen of Cordonia, why would I believe this person in the first place?

I’m incredibly upset by this sequence, because we’ve been told since Book 2 that Liam has to earn his reign in order to regain his kingdom. In this scene, though, after he supposedly pauses to gather his thoughts, his only words are:

“She’s right. I have no intention of giving in to their demands.”

It gets even worse when you remember how much they’ve been emphasizing that there needs to be a display of strength following the assassination attempt during the Homecoming Ball. And like we’ve been told since Book 1, appearances are everything. In this scene, Liam is supposed to show that he isn’t unruffled by the assassination attempt. He’s supposed to show his constituents that he’s a leader they can look to for guidance, a pillar they can lean on in times of chaos and confusion. It’s supposed to be an opportunity for him to start proving himself to the public.

But no. Instead the writers give the spotlight to MC, and it’s her who gives a strong message that appears enough to alleviate the worries of the public (based at least on the reaction of the media).

This just didn’t work for me. I understand that the writers must have wanted for players to have some input in the direction the dialogues are supposed to take, but to me this greatly undermined Liam as the King. This guy was brought up to be a prince, and then eventually the ruler of his own kingdom. His reign has just been threatened publicly, twice, in the span of barely a week. Is this really all he has to say about the matter? “She’s right. I have no intention of giving in to their demands”?

Wouldn’t it have worked better if Liam, as King of Cordonia, had taken the lead and sent a message to bring his people together, assure them that all is well? That’s literally his job. Ana’s and Donnie’s question isn’t something that should have caught him by surprise – not after that botched up assassination attempt. Couldn’t MC have just rallied behind him, said something in support of his statement, as a Duchess and/or future queen? 

This entire scene was just ridiculous. I know the entire premise of TRR banks on a lot of suspension of disbelief, but they really did Liam’s character dirty with this one. 

4.   Madeleine will be our new press secretary! 

I’m surprised but at the same time I’m not? Back in Book 2, even Justin himself remarked that Madeleine was really good at handling the press. Which was when I started lowkey shipping them. I still do; you can fight me. 

I know a lot of people dislike Madeleine, but I’ve grown to really like her. Like I’ve said here, I think she will be perfect for this role, considering her upbringing and her knowledge about Cordonia. I’m not sure how we will convince her to help us, though. I know she does want power, so maybe we’ll make some concessions? A higher position? I for one am not entirely opposed to the idea. You can hate her guts all you want, but even Liam and her mother Adelaide have both acknowledged that Madeleine will make a good queen.

I’m also thankful and happy that they decided to take this route with respect to her character development. I wholeheartedly acknowledge that Madeleine hasn’t been the most pleasant person since we first met her in Book 1. But in making her MC’s press secretary and thus an ally, the writers will have more room to explore who she is: what her motivations are, how she has dealt with Leo’s abdication and her being cast aside, her relationship with her mother and Regina, what she feels about Liam and his decision to choose MC in her place, etc. The writers will add more depth to her character instead of simply writing her off as another evil, power- hungry woman. I for one am keenly looking forward to what she’ll bring to the table once she becomes our ally.

=================================

I’ve never done this ‘thoughts on a TRR chapter’ thing before so my ideas are divided between several posts. I’m adding links to those related to this one. I have already mentioned some of them in the text above.

Enemies of the Crown | Truth behind the Death of Olivia’s Parents | Questions We Need to Ask Ourselves Post-TRR Book 3, Chapter 2 | King Liam, MC, and Answering the Press | Madeleine as MC’s Press Secretary

#the royal romance #playchoices #king liam #madeleine #liam x mc #king constantine #i have feelings #oops #chapter thoughts