#And it complete ignores the function and structure of a story

[amtrak12]

The idea that a god-like character with (supposedly) unlimited powers should snap their fingers at the end of a TV series and remove all pain and terrible things in the world so humans no longer had any suffering is the most BAFFLING thing I have ever heard. WHY DID THE SHOW EVER EXIST IF FIXING THINGS WAS THAT EASY??????

[literaryvein-reblogs]

How do you write a positive character slowly being more and more pessimistic? Example: Character is a sunshine at the beginning of the series but after something happened, they became less and less positive. How does the process look like?

Writing Notes: Negative Character Arc

Character Arc - the path a character takes over the course of a story.

A character’s arc involves adversity and challenges, as well as some changes to the character, and ultimately leads to resolution.

Character arcs generally progress in tandem with traditional three-act story structure.

Most protagonist character arcs start with the inciting incident that sets up the stakes and central conflict facing this character.

The way the arc progresses from there depends on what sort of story you are telling and how the character functions.

Negative Change Arc: As the name implies, a negative change arc involves a character starting out as good or benevolent and descending into evil or ill fortune over the course of a story.

Some Related Tropes

Face–Heel Turn: A good guy turns bad.

Fallen Hero: Not all villains are born. Some are made, and none are more tragic than this trope. As the name implies, the Fallen Hero used to be a hero before turning bad. They may even have been an Ideal Hero or another equally optimistic archetype, up until the moment when they suffered something bad enough for them to lose all faith in good and idealism, be it the loss of a loved one, too many good deeds coming back to bite them hard, betrayal by someone they trusted the most, too much distrust from those who should have been allies, or some other faith-shattering event. It might even be a drawn out process of seduction to The Dark Side or fall from grace. What they choose to do about it determines what they become:

If they retreat into themselves and fight evil mercilessly to dull the pain, they become an Anti-Hero, though if this fight is motivated by vengeance, they may run the risk of becoming like the very monsters they have sworn to destroy.

If the loss of faith with humanity and/or society and government makes them decide to do something drastic to "fix" it, they become an Anti-Villain, most commonly a Knight Templar or Dark Messiah.

Alternately, if they just jump off the slippery slope and embrace chaos and the destruction of humanity as the only solution to their pain, they'll become a straight up cackling Card-Carrying Villain. Especially those who only became a hero for fame and glory, rather than for any good cause.

Or they'll be a fusion of the second and third examples and decide that killing/destroying everything is the ONLY way to save EVERYONE from the pain/pointlessness of existence, often becoming a Straw Nihilist and an Omnicidal Maniac.

They might withdraw from society, become a hermit or drunkard, and ignore the ongoing state of the world. If the current generation of heroes meets them, the fallen hero will mock how their deeds are useless. Most likely, however, they will help the new heroes in the hopes that they won't suffer the same fate.

Or they can ditch all of their once good qualities and become a Complete Monster.

The Tragic Hero: A longstanding literary concept, a character with a Fatal Flaw (like Pride, for example) who is doomed to fail in search of a Tragic Dream despite their best efforts and good intentions. This trope can work as a protagonist or an antagonist. As an antagonist, their goals are opposed to the protagonist's, but the audience still feels sympathetic towards them.

The Protagonist's Journey to Villain: A plot in which the protagonist, who starts out well-intentioned, turns into a monster.

Used to Be a Sweet Kid: This applies when a villain or other dark and troubled/troubling character was not so as a child.

Examples

The Shining. It starts off with Jack being a happy family man, albeit with a dark past, until the influence of the hotel drives him to madness and monstrosity.

The Lorax (2012): A good portion of the movie sees the Once-ler telling Ted his backstory, how he went from a kind-hearted, free-spirited inventor to a Corrupt Corporate Executive character trope who causes the extinction of trees due to his greed. However, the Once-ler in the present day really regrets his actions and sincerly helps Ted to restore the trees.

The title character in Carrie (1974, and its film adaptations) is a kind-hearted, but socially outcast teenage girl who spends the first half of the book getting slowly beaten down and pushed to her Rage Breaking Point by her classmates, the school faculty, and even her own mother. The second half is about the massacre she commits as a result when what happens at the Senior Prom makes her snap.

Alexandre Cabanel's The Fallen Angel: Lucifer, once God's brightest angel, lies defeated and resentful after his jealousy toward human beings and power-hungry tendencies drove him to fight (and lose) a war against Heaven.

Arguably the central plot of Breaking Bad, which follows the journey of Walter White across five seasons from sympathetic, kindhearted chemistry teacher and family man suffering from cancer to a fairly loathsome Villain Protagonist. Gets briefly paused halfway through the fifth season when Walt, having reached the top of his empire, having taken his operation global realizes that he has made more money than he could ever hope to spend and far more than he even set out for initially. This leads him to decide he is out of the game, make amends with his former business partner by giving him the money he's owed and try to start over fresh with his family. Then his DEA agent brother-in-law finally figures out he's a drug dealer, causing him to slip back into his criminal ways and his moral degradation resumes. Even if he won't physically harm them, he's perfectly willing to throw his family under the bus to save his own skin like making a false confession tape implicating Hank or in Jesse's case, teaming up with skinheads to have him killed when he becomes too much of a hassle.

The Favourite (2018): Arguably the case for Abigail. She starts out a kind-natured Fallen Princess after her father gambled away both the entire family fortune and herself, so she sets out to join her cousin Sarah at Queen Anne's court in hopes of getting it back. However, as she is sucked into the world of politics and abused consistently by everyone around her, Abigail adapts to their cruel, underhanded ways alarmingly quickly, playing nice around Queen Anne as an antidote to Sarah's personality, faking tears when people push her too far, drugging Sarah's tea, seducing a Lord, marrying him and then all but dumping him once she gets her title back. Her cruelty finally culminates in getting Sarah officially banished from Court and intercepting her letters to the Queen, leaving Anne heartbroken, blatantly cheating on her husband in front of him, and finally stomping on one of Queen Anne's beloved pet bunnies (whom she views as surrogate children) until she nearly kills it. Queen Anne is not amused.

Les Misérables: Inspector Javert is on the side of good and law, but he is so inflated with extreme self-righteousness that, when confronted with Valjean's nobility, he has no choice but to kill himself.

In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Archdeacon Claude Frollo is a compassionate man in the beginning, but after seeing Esmerelda, he goes mad with lust and slowly becomes evil, desiring to either have her for his own or kill her if she won't become his.

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians short story "The Diary of Luke Castellan" shows this off with the titular Luke, a villain-turned-hero who used to be a very sweet kid. Or, as in this chapter of history, a sweet teenager. He's brave, protective, and caring towards his little adopted family, to the point that he closely resembles the later hero of the series, Percy.

In The Witcher as seen by the flashbacks to his childhood with his "Ma" Visenna in the finale episode of Season 1, Geralt was once an adorable little Momma's Boy full of optimism. Completely unlike The Stoic Deadpan Snarker Knight in Sour Armor character trope he is in the present.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 ⚜ More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

There are so many possible causes as well as directions you can take your story in with this idea. Choose which of these tropes you would like to incorporate into your writing, and also found some examples for inspiration. More information and examples in the links above, hope this helps!

[electric-ocean-explorer]

Law x Vegapunk!Oc

 "Second Chance"

Warnings: SFW, Angst, Fluff, Past trauma, Law is bad with fellings.

Word count: ~1.700

Synopsis: A story of found family, emotional healing, and a dangerously carefree robot who tries to challenge Law's emotional walls in very odd ways.

Notes: Yanno I can't hold myself. Again.

   Everything was going smoothly aboard the Polar Tang that morning. It was nearly time to surface to refresh the air when the sonar picked up something unusual.

“Captain! We’ve detected a strange object on sonar. Something very dense near the surface,” Bepo announced, turning to Law with a hint of nervousness. “Should we investigate?”

    Adjusting the periscope, Penguin blinked at the sight. “Looks like a capsule… but it’s kind of dented,” he commented, frowning. His expression quickly shifted to concern. “Captain, you need to see this.”

    What Law saw made his stomach tighten. Etched on the side of the capsule were the words: “Dr. Vegapunk – Punk 7.”

    He had to decide quickly: ignore it and carry on with the mission, or take a gamble on this strange artifact. At best, it could hold valuable information against the Marines; at worst, a trap that could endanger everyone on board. He had to tread carefully.

“Surface,” Law commanded, the corner of his mouth twitching into a faint smirk. It was a high-stakes bet — and he was willing to take it.

    The Polar Tang rose to the surface in seconds. Its decompression systems, designed for strategic retreats amidst Grand Line chaos, functioned flawlessly. As soon as they emerged, they spotted the strange metallic sphere floating in the distance. Law was already standing by the hatch.

“Room. Shambles.” In a blink, the capsule appeared on deck.

“Solid ground detected. Emergency protocol initiated" announced a metallic voice as the object began to open automatically.

    From inside emerged a small, humanoid-looking girl (insert your imagined features here). One side of her face was marked by what resembled a crack. Slowly, she opened her eyes, pupils adjusting to the light.

“Are you… Dr. Vegapunk?” she asked in an innocent tone, tilting her head as if she genuinely didn’t know what to expect.

    Law didn’t answer right away. He’d expected a weapon, a machine, classified documents, maybe even a dangerous chemical… but a girl? That wasn’t part of any calculation.

“Mochi mochi?” She waved her hand in front of his face, making him flinch slightly.

“I’m not Vegapunk. I’m Trafalgar D. Water Law. Identify yourself immediately.”

“Punk 7, at your service!”

    Law kept a stern expression, but his eyes were already scanning every inch of her. His internal diagnostic instincts kicked in: vitals, structure, threat level. But before he could speak again, the girl hopped nimbly out of the capsule and stretched her arms like she’d just woken up from a nap.

“Ahhh, it feels good to be out of that awful thing! How long was I asleep? No wait… did I sleep for years?” She looked around with childlike curiosity, approaching the ship’s railing with wide eyes. “Wow, this is the real ocean?! Amazing! I’ve only seen simulations! Hey, do you guys have turtles? They still exist, right? Oh no—what if they went extinct while I was sleeping?!”

    Law frowned, completely thrown off. It’s not every day a potential World Government weapon emerges from an experimental capsule asking about turtle extinction.

Bepo, equally baffled, leaned closer to whisper, “Captain… what now?”

    Meanwhile, the girl, blissfully unaware of the tension around her, turned to the crew, hands on her hips and beaming like a cheerful radio host. “Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, mystery crew! Pleased to meet you! You can call me Punk 7… or just Nana! It’s friendlier, right?”

“Captain, can we keep her?” Ikaku was already hugging her, teary-eyed.

“Enough!” Law cut in. “First, I need to know who — or what — you are, where you came from, and why you were in that capsule.”

    Nana paused, raised a finger as if about to give an excellent explanation… then made a thoughtful face. “Hmm… good question, Mr. D. Water Serious,” she said, then gave herself a playful bonk on the head and laughed sheepishly. “Hehe, I kind of… broke?”

    Law arched an eyebrow. “What do you mean, ‘broke’?”

“Oh, you know. Classic existential glitch, maybe a few corrupted files here and there, some missing data. Totally normal after being locked in a capsule on standby mode with probable head trauma.” She shrugged with an overly calm grin. “I don’t fully remember my purpose. But I do have a great sense of humor and an updated joke database!”

“That… is not at all reassuring.”

“And it shouldn’t be!” she declared, throwing her arms out dramatically. “Because if there’s one thing humanity fears, it’s when their creation develops its own opinions.”

Law stepped closer, cautious. “Do you remember anything useful?”

    Nana placed a hand on her chin, thoughtful.

“Hmm… I remember lights. Lots of lights. And a voice—probably Vegapunk’s—saying, ‘This should work.’ Which, you know, sounds sort of hopeful. I also remember a lab… and music. They used to play a song to calm me when tests went wrong. Oh, and a banana bread recipe! Though that one might’ve come from a pirated cooking program…”

    Law crossed his arms, his brain aching from trying to process her nonsense. She was worse than the damn Straw Hat. “So you have no idea what your real purpose is?”

“None! But hey, maybe the universe sent me to you guys for a reason!” She pointed to the sky excitedly, then shrank a little. “Or maybe I just hit the wrong button in the capsule. Both options are equally likely.”

    Law sighed. She was a walking enigma, possibly one of Vegapunk’s secret projects, but oddly… she didn’t feel threatening. At least, not yet.

“We’ll monitor you closely. Until we understand more about who — or what — you are, you’ll be under observation. And don’t go snooping around the submarine.”

“Understood, Captain Grumpy!” She saluted dramatically, nearly slipping. “Punk 7, official mascot of the Polar Tang, reporting for duty!”

Penguin chuckled to Shachi. “I give her three days before she touches the main engine.”

Shachi replied without looking away from Nana, who was now mimicking Bepo’s gestures.

“Three? That’s optimistic.”

. . .

    Silence ruled Law’s lab, broken only by the sound of instruments and pages turning. The room was sterile, precise, like the man himself — everything in order, nothing out of control.

Until…

“Captain, have you considered that if this place had a bit more color, patients might feel more comfortable?”

Law didn’t look up. “No. And stop putting glitter in my workspace.”

Nana, hanging upside down from the ceiling pipes (for some reason), made a dramatic pout.

“Aww… you never let me add personality to things! This place looks like a depressed dentist's office.”

    Law finally looked up, glaring as if he could teleport her across the ocean. “This is a submarine operating room, not an amusement park.”

“And that’s exactly why it needs a touch of life!” she said, flipping down with an unnecessarily acrobatic and loud landing. “By the way, when was the last time you slept more than three hours?”

“None of your business.”

“Aha!” She pointed at him like she’d just solved a mystery. “I knew it! You’re one of those self-sabotaging leaders!” She started mimicking him. "I'm too strong to need rest! Caffeine is my only friend!’”

    Law rubbed his face in frustration. “I never said that.”

“And I never said you did.”

    Whether he liked it or not, Law was aware: Nana had completely disrupted his routine. She invaded his space, challenged his logic, made up wild theories about the crew (“Bepo’s probably a Revolutionary spy disguised as a mascot!”) and, worst of all… she asked questions. About him. About how he felt. About what he wanted.

    And that was dangerous.

    Not because she was malicious, on the contrary. Nana was like a ray of sunlight wrapped in cracked metal, still determined to shine. She laughed easily, spread chaos like it was confetti, and somehow… she was filling parts of Law he didn’t know were empty.

    She reminded him of Corazon.

    Not in looks, not exactly in behavior. Corazon was clumsy in a quiet way, always trying to put out fires — while Nana loved to start them. But there was something… a similar light. A spark that refused to die, even in darkness.

    Law hated it.

    Because every time she smiled at him like he deserved it, something inside him hurt. An old pain, deep and lingering. As if the universe was testing whether he could lose another light. “Not again” his mind whispered every time she made a joke at his expense or bumped into him just to get a reaction. “Don’t get attached.” He couldn’t afford it. Not anymore.

    But Nana didn’t understand those boundaries. She kept cracking his armor. And worst of all — she made him laugh. Something he hadn’t done, not truly, since…

    Since he saw Corazon’s body bleeding on the ground.

    Law closed his eyes briefly, still sitting on deck, ocean sounds in the background, Nana beside him staring up at the stars.

"You remind me of someone I can’t forget", he wanted to say. "You make me want to protect someone again. And that terrifies me." But he didn’t.

“Hey,” Nana broke the silence, gently nudging his arm. “If you could change something about your past… would you?”

    He took a while to answer. “I don’t know,” he said at last, voice low. “Sometimes I think yes. Other times… I think it made me who I am.”

“You know, I don’t have a past. But sometimes I think that just means I can be whoever I want. A mess in progress,” she joked, but her smile was smaller.

    Law looked at her. For the first time, not through the lens of caution or logic — just with quiet humanity. “You’re not a mess. Just… under different circumstances.”

    She turned to him, surprised by the quiet confession. “You’re really getting soft, Captain.”

“Shut up, Nana.”

    She smiled, not mocking this time. A small, grateful smile. Almost reverent. And for once, Law allowed the silence to exist between them, not as discomfort, but as something necessary. As if maybe, just maybe, her presence wasn’t a threat.

    But a second chance.

[ominoose]

𝐎𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐫 𝐈𝐬𝐚𝐚𝐜 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫'𝐬 𝐀𝐬 𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬

Characters: Steven Grant, Nathan Bateman, Llewyn Davis, Jake Lockley, Blue Jones Summary: Oscar Characters characters teaching subjects at school. Warnings: None WC: 1.7k

𝗦𝘁𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘁 - 𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆

His natural passion and accidental ability to hyper-fixate on things means he can teach all the required topics with ridiculous detail, but we all know which subject he dominates best.

The vast majority of the students adore him. Mr Grant’s lessons are always fun, he lets the class make posters (that include all nine members of the Ennead), do Kahoot quizzes, create live re-enactments of historical events. Even when he’s just talking off a power point, his voice, mannerisms and tendency to act things out has the children engrossed and giggling. 

The classroom walls are absolutely littered with posters, some bought and some done by students. There's inspiring quotes, positivity kittens and Egyptian puns.

Not only is he a good teacher, but a good mentor. Being autistic himself, he notices any neurodivergent or “othered” kids and makes it a point to find what they’re passionate about and working it into their curriculum. If someones struggling he’ll arrange one-on-one time, asking them what they’re strengths are not just to help figure out how to work with them, but to remind them they have strengths.

While most students do love him, the few troublemakers know he’s not the strictest and thus will absolutely take the piss. Feigning ignorance and struggles as an excuse to why they missed a deadline or didn’t do the homework. Steven, the optimist he is, is always happy to give second, third and fourth chances. It does take that long for him to realise they’re not genuine, and yet he’ll still try, convincing himself that he’ll be able to turn them straight with the magic of friendship.

𝗡𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗕𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻 - 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗻��� 𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲

It would be like finding a needle in a haystack trying to find a single student in the many years Nathan had been teaching that didn’t, at least at one point, absolutely despise him. Mr Bateman was far from the friendliest, lax teacher to his students, bordering on a bit of an asshole really. He had an absolute zero tolerance policy for time wasting, messing around and not giving 100%. All students were expected to keep up, get the work done on time and spend time studying and completing exercises at home. If you didn’t do that, you weren’t trying hard enough.

The common conception of a hard-ass wasn’t ill fitting, but it wasn’t without reason. Mr Bateman was a hard-ass because he wanted his students to grasp every opportunity at their disposal and stretch their potential. Some people were born smarter, some learned quicker from a young age but every single person could better themselves regardless of whether they started at Level 10 or Level 0. 

It also shouldn’t be said that he wanted students that simply obeyed. It was a story passed down to students about the time a student, in a fit of frustration and defiance to the teacher that always pushed them, completely disregarded the set code structure and wrote their own entirely new one that completed the aim function. While everyone would expect them to be given weeks worth of detention and a reaming, but Mr Bateman simply smiled, said well done and moved on with the lesson. Apparently the kid managed to get a full paid scholarship into top university, but that was just hearsay. Rumour has it his middle name is Hamlet too, snickering students will whisper.

Besides his rigid teaching style, not much is known about him. The classroom is minimalist, only a coffee flask and a pot of three black ballpoints sit on his desk. The walls are sparse beyond a handful of posters about common coding knowledge.

𝗟𝗹𝗲𝘄𝘆𝗻 𝗗𝗮𝘃𝗶𝘀 - 𝗠𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗰

The beginning of every new school year followed the same routine. Kids would hear their music teacher was a published artist, get insanely excited, go to class then realise published was not synonymous with success and wither with disappointment. Mr Davis gave up caring years ago, at least he finally had a steady gig, albeit at the cost of his soul.

Classes were average. Sometimes students were treated to his natural singing voice, something that always sparked smiles and attention from the kids, but usually lessons were Llewyn bearing through kids bashing piano keys and drum pads as he wandered around and did his best to tutor them through it.

To kids that were required to take the class, it was alright. Mr Davis wasn’t a hard ass, although it did drain his soul to see kids blind to the brilliance and potential of music. His homework mostly consisted of practicing at home or listening to different genres. To kids that genuinely enjoyed music, it was bliss. Mr Davis was no dream mentor for sure, he was quite stubborn about what he thought “good music” sounded like, but when he sat with someone he could share the passion with, the kid would feel like an equal. 

The classroom was always open to kids that wanted time to practice, he knew what an escape music could be, and would never hesitate to sit and work out a song or even add his guitar to whatever a student was playing.

The room was a riot on a good day. All sorts of instruments littered and surrounded the desks, posters of musicians and notes and the different types of brass instruments lined the walls and there was always something playing in the background. A basket of fruit and cereal bars was always sat fully stocked next to the door, with a “Help Yourself” sign stuck to it. No one knew why, and no one ever thought to question it.

𝗝𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗟𝗼𝗰𝗸𝗹𝗲𝘆 - 𝗦𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗵

Spanish was always a full class, no matter what year or whether the students actually cared about Spanish. Students either swooned over him or wanted to be his friend. Mr Lockley knew, although had no clue why, but who cares as long as he was able to spread some Spanish around. The point is, Mr Lockley had no enemies at school.

Like a typical Spanish teacher, the register was taken in Spanish, if you wanted to ask to go to the toilet it had to be Spanish and if you wanted to pass notes in class they had better be in Spanish. He wasn’t the most forgiving, the man expected homework to be in on time and god help you if it was google translate. Mr Lockley would call you out, make you re-do it in his class at lunch or give detention to repeat offenders.

If students had been doing reasonably well he’d bring in some traditional Latin American foods for students to try, turn on a Spanish movie or even treat them to a little story about his past. Remember the Chef in Ratatouille that killed a guy with one thumb? That's the type of nonsense he talked about, albeit a bit more kid friendly. Most of the stories were embellished tales of him saving a grannies purse from being stolen, but some students always wondered about that hardened, broody looking teacher.

Mr Lockley prefers to keep his help to class time, long past learning his lesson about the very obvious students that came to him giggling and blushing behind their hands. On a rare occasion however, he will accept a student that comes knocking, overly apologetic and pleading for just a little help on their assignment, especially if the student is a quiet one. His lunch is set aside and he gestures for the student to take a seat before going over it with them, helping them with pronunciation, never shaming them or getting annoyed if they make a basic mistake. At the end he’ll even teach them how to say shit in Spanish, if they can keep it a little secret.

The classroom has posters of different Latin American countries, verbs and nouns, the different gendered terms. His desk was a little cluttered, a ‘Mejor Profesor’ mug, papers half marked and some drawings done by students hung nearby.

𝗕𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝗝𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘀 - 𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆

No one's favourite teacher but everyone knew him and had something to say. If a student had him later in the day they’d need to pray the morning classes were well behaved or pray they knew someone in said classes that could give a heads up on his moods. It didn’t matter either way, you could walk in one him sucking on his lower lip and glaring the entire class down and walk away with him smiling and patting backs. It was every student for themselves in that class. The only consistency was the white lab coat he wore. 

There were obvious favourites, usually people who found a good balance of kissing his ass but not too overtly, asking for help while still expressing basic knowledge. If you asked too many questions, he would openly sigh or ignore you for someone else. If you gave an answer he thought was stupid, he wouldn’t hide the hands raking over his face in annoyance. If you were quiet and kept to yourself, you’d skirt by okay until one day in the middle of a lesson he calls your name with a faux chirp, predatory smile and ask a question. Answer correctly and you can rest assured he'll (probably) leave you alone for the next few lessons, answer wrong and enjoy doing exam questions as practice.

Detention for even a hint of a Breaking Bad reference. Openly hated a student named Jessie. Weirdly, students notice it's not the chemistry part that annoys him, it's the inaccurate portrayal of drug transactions and the costs. No one has dared ask why he knows so much about that.

Mr Jones’ door is usually locked at lunch and after class, he'll blatantly ignore any student that knocks and continue eating. On the stray chance a rare student manages to find him outside the class and has the balls to stop him, with his trademark sigh he'll begrudgingly set up a day and time to help them. It'll be a one-on-one session filled with eyerolls and being talked down to, but you'll get lots of extra knowledge and he'll even throw some of his old textbooks at you for free. Weirdly, he won't bother you in class anymore, just giving you a little smile out the corner of his eye.

The classroom has old periodic table posters from the teacher that retired years before him, and classroom rules about remembering to wear goggles or you'll go blind. The only thing on his desk besides several piles of paper is teacher mugs with variations of chemistry puns he pretends to hate.

[a-court-of-moonlight-and-ire]

I just finished ACOMAF! And it only took me over a year and motivating myself with classical german novel about a guy who fumbles a girl so badly he kills himself to do it

This book fundamentally had the same issues as the first one while not having any of its few redeeming qualities and also having new some new issues. Like, it had basically the same story structure: starts off with a few chapters of Feyres miserable life, then a hot fae guy swoops in and gets her the hell out of there without her consent, she initially struggles against the guy but quickly falls in love with him, then its just a whole bunch of nothing with the occasional magical threat or sweet moment between Feyre and her new man happens, then it all ends with an epic high fantasy finale that lowkey comes out of nowhere and clashes with the rest of the book. The only improvement here is that the section taking place in Hybern's castle didnt take up like a fourth of the book the way the UTM section did, but it still dragged. I just kept thinking to myself "godddddd Rhys just take her sisters and gtfo, listen to the love of your life just this ONE time im begging you". Also, that random Rhysand POV chapter did nothing except further drag the book out and mess with the flow. I guess its there to tell us that Feyre is officially the High Lady of the Night Court now so that the final line of the book can hit harder, but I feel like SJM couldve just written out the High Lady ceremony instead of treating it as some twist. Like, this entire book is basically Feyre telling the audience about everything shes doing, no matter how banal and stupid, in painstaking detail but shes gonna leave her becoming high lady out? what?

One thing that I noticed in the final few chapters was that action/tense scenes felt way more cringe than I remember them being in ACOTAR. Its probably because Feyre was a human with no magic so she wasnt constantly going "And I reached for the power at the center of my being and I grasped it in my hands that longed for nothing more than to hold those of my Mate—my Mate—and I became mist and shadow and flame and light and night and sky and

But those are basically just my issues with the final few chapters, lets get into the rest of this, which I admittedly dont remember too well right now, but I'll do my best

Most of this is about the romance which takes up most of the book and is just so incredibly unpleasant. One of the main things that was. well, I hesitate to call it 'good', but one of the main things that worked well enough and that made it understandable for me why so many people liked the first book, was the romance. Not really because the romance itself was well-developed (because I dont think it was) but because it, and Tamlin as a character, functioned well enough as a vehicle for Feyre healing from her trauma. Yknow, she had this awful childhood that she just couldnt get away from because she didnt have the means to and even if she did have them, she felt that it was her duty to be with her family as their only provider even though she pretty much hated them, and Tamlin came in to take her away and completely absolve her of her self-imposed duties so she could really focus on herself for once. Hes also someone who is very much an outsider to Feyres external issues, so hes able to emphasize with her without any sort of baggage. And that was pretty nice; her development could have been less clunky and the worldbuilding better and UTM kindof ruins it at the end, but it works.

ACOMAF is trying to do the same thing except instead of healing from her childhood/early teen trauma shes healing from her UTM trauma, and instead of having her healing journey be fascillitated by a guy unrelated to her painful past, its fascilliated by the guy who caused most of her (new) trauma, and thats what I was never able to forget or get past, no matter how much the book tried to ignore or shift the blame onto Tamlin and Amarantha. Its really no wonder that so many people recommend just skipping the first book because if you just read this with no context you'd probably be like "okay, Feyre is a traumatized noblewoman whos unhappy in her marriage bc her husband is bad at handling her trauma, but then this guy who Gets It swoops in and helps her, thats nice" when its like, bro, Rhysand is THE REASON shes so unhappy and needs help! Granted, hes not the only reason, but still

Another thing about the romance that many other people have talked about but it bears repeating: Tamlin was made for Feyre and his only goal was to get her to love him and his only purpose as a character was her healing and self-actualization, which is not great because the best romances are ones were both characters are their own well-developed people with their own shit goin on, but it works well enough for the kind of wish fulfillment that (most of) the first book was. By contrast, Rhysand has his own nefarious goals that he wants Feyre to be a part of, and her personality noticeably shifts to compliment his the more she spends time with him, and it doesnt feel like its her moving past her trauma and being able to finally be her true self now that shes in a better enviroment, the way it did in ACOTAR, it just feels like Rhysand is molding her into whatever he wants (the fact that he has mind control powers and is thus theoretically fully able to do that really doesnt help in this regard)

Theres also the fact that we dont really get a lot of cute and romantic moments for Feyre and Rhysand, which was also an issue with Feyre and Tamlin in the first book, most of their interactions were told to the readers in passing rather than actually shown, but we atleast got to see a few of them and they were generally pretty cute. Yknow, that one moment were Tamlins hanging upside down and she pets him and he purrs, him writing those poems after her little list of words, the summer solstice etc. Really, the main issue was that Feyre seemed to spend way more actual page-time with Lucien (and the fact that Lucien was way more interesting). However, in ACOMAF she definitely spends most of her page-time with Rhysand and literally the only kindof sweet and romantic thing that I can remember is Star Fall, and if youve been following along with my liveblogs you'll remember how joyless and hollow I found that chapter. Other than that basically the only things that stick out in mind as stuff theyve done together are basically saw traps that Rhysand put Feyre through, like her getting the ring from the weaver's cottage, or the UTM reeanactment in the hewn city. I guess they flirted a lot but idk. I thought was annoying more than anything, and the sexual nature of it, as well as all the sex Rhysand and Feyre were having in general just made it feel cheap and hollow. And I dont think its because sex inherently cheapens romantic stories, I think SJM is simply not good at writing sex-heavy romantic relationship development while also conveying that the characters have a connection besides mutual attraction and good sex (which she is SO clearly trying to do (like via having Feyre constantly talk about how Rhys is als her friend on top of everything else) which just makes it so much worse tbh)

I think a big part of it is also that Rhysand has no real personality (which is to say he does have one, but that seems to be kindof an accident bc you can really only make sense of him if you look at him as the most mentally ill men in the world, as opposed to looking at him as the daddiest dommiest daddy dom ever like youre supposed to), so its like, what else is there?

Theres also the fact that the flirting is mostly just this insufferable negging dirty talk banter-combination, which requires absolutely no sincerity or vulnerability from either party

The last thing that I wanted to talk about it not really a complaint, its just a question to people who have already read ACOWAR: does Lucien seeming to be suspicious of Feyre and her whole oh-i-was-brainwashed act ever come up or matter in the next book? Because from everything Ive heard, Lucien ends up being really loyal to Feyre there , which doesnt really gell with his behaviour from the end of this book

Anyway, thats it! I havent decided when Im gonna start with acowar yet, but it may already be next week bc I ran out of data on my phone, so I cant kill time listening to music or audiobooks while on my way to work. I hope you enjoyed it and sorry for taking so long to finish this book

[maxdibert]

It’s like when people say ‘oh but we only see two interactions between James and Severus, we don’t know if Snape was cursing him in the corridors the rest of the time’ and I just goggle because…it’s a book! This is how books work! They don’t exist outside of the interactions that are written, and we get all the context we need to extrapolate their dynamic from that. The characters aren’t wandering around off the page acting entirely differently to how they do on that page. They act like these are real people with real 24/7 lives and JKR just happened to forget to tell us those extra details lmao

They don’t realize that if we don’t know it, it’s because it didn’t happen—because if it had happened or been relevant, Rowling would have told us. That’s how plots work, that’s how narrative functions. The author discards information that doesn’t contribute to the story or is irrelevant. If we were supposed to interpret James’s actions as some kind of act of justice, vengeance, or payment for Severus’s actions, then it would have been shown to us.

But no, Rowling doesn’t do that. Rowling makes it abundantly clear that James was a bully. And if the reader still has doubts, she ensures not only that Harry is horrified but also that he compares James to the person he considers his primary bully—the one who has tormented him the most since childhood: Dudley. He doesn’t compare him to Draco; He doesn’t compare him to Draco; he compares him to Dudley. Why? Because Harry doesn’t see Draco as a bully but as an annoying idiot he can stand up to or fight against, knowing Ron and Hermione would gladly help him.

It’s Dudley who tormented him as a child. It’s Dudley who cornered him, Dudley who had power over him with the Dursleys’ protection and approval, with a group of friends backing him to make Harry’s life miserable, and who was bigger and stronger. It’s Dudley who was his bully, not Draco. And it’s Dudley whom Harry compares to James for that very reason.

Deliberately ignoring those details, overlooking or questioning them, is basically crapping all over the narrative structure just because you don’t want to accept that the character you write fanfics about, the one you’ve given a completely invented personality to treat as a queer social justice warrior, was actually a rich, privileged, white, straight kid who ganged up on people in weaker positions.

.

[radicalafterdark]

“They hate the idea of fix fics like they haven’t been around forever.”

Strawman alert. Nobody hates the idea of fix fics. People hate bad fix fics—especially ones that claim to “fix” the story while rewriting characters into grotesque caricatures and injecting the author’s pet obsessions into the narrative like it’s a fanboy manifesto.

Fix fics have indeed been around forever. So have terrible ones. Longevity doesn’t mean quality, and this reeks of someone who thinks being early and long-running equals authority.

“It’s just that this one was among the first big fanfics for RWBY and its been ongoing for years while slowly becoming more of its own beast over time.”

So you’re admitting that it no longer even functions as a fix and has mutated into an AU with only superficial resemblance to RWBY? Cool. Then stop hiding behind the “it’s a fix” defense when people criticize how it guts canon characters, overwrites themes, and prioritizes Raymond’s favorites over Team RWBY.

Also: “first big fanfic” is not an argument. Twilight had “My Immortal.” Longevity + popularity =/= merit.

“A lot of the criticisms also reek of emotional immaturity.”

Translation: “People are mad at the racism dial being turned up and the girls being sidelined, so they must just be babies!”

You know what reeks of emotional immaturity? Dismissing every critic as a whiner instead of addressing legitimate points. Rampant misogyny, character derailment, and narrative incoherence aren’t petty gripes—they’re structural issues.

Claiming you’re more “mature” because you like edgier racism and trauma doesn’t make you smart. It makes you an apologist for narrative rot with a superiority complex.

“Among the worst is ‘they made Weiss even more racist, that’s so problematic’”

No. That’s not the worst criticism. It’s one of the most accurate.

Because when you take a character who was already flawed and exaggerate that flaw into grotesque territory without meaningful structural context or consequences, it’s not “better.” It’s fanfic extremism.

Turning Weiss into a white supremacist caricature who believes Faunus are biologically inferior is not “expanding on canon”—it’s a tone-deaf overcorrection that destroys her relatability and function in the team dynamic. You’re not fixing her—you’re turning her into a monster and acting like it’s character development.

“Which…no, it was problematic in the original when she never even fucking apologized for it and just completely dropped it offscreen going into Volume 2…”

You’re right: the canon dropped the ball. But you know what’s worse than a dropped ball? Lighting the field on fire. The answer to poor resolution isn’t doubling down and making it worse, especially when the rewrite clearly has no plan for genuinely rehabilitating her beyond surface pushback and lip service.

Also, if you’re going to claim that “canon Weiss never apologized,” maybe don’t ignore the fact that her growth was gradual, subtle, and reflected in her behavior shift—not a blunt-force PSA.

“Here, we have a harsher, even more detailed racist Weiss who is also met with way more pushback from Ruby and even Pyrrha…”

Congratulations—you made Weiss more evil and then had her friends yell at her. That’s not nuance. That’s shock writing.

You think throwing slurs in her mouth and surrounding her with wagging fingers is deep? No. It’s lazy dramatics in place of subtle moral growth. There’s no finesse. Just cartoon racism and half-assed backlash so the author can claim they’re “tackling hard topics.”

What you’re describing is a Twitter thread masquerading as character development. Real writing shows transformation over time—it doesn’t just dump racism in the text and point at it screaming “See! Development!”

“And V2 does show that she had to make an effort to shed it and would slip up along the way.”

Oh, you mean like…canon Weiss did? Except without turning her into a mouthpiece for 4chan-tier race science?

Canon Weiss was flawed and needed more screentime, sure. But FRWBY’s version is so far removed from a human being that any growth she shows feels like an author pivoting from a Frankenstein monster back to “waifu material” without earning it.

You don’t get points for making her worse just so you can pretend the rehabilitation is more meaningful.

“At that point, a non-apology ‘I drop the White Fang stuff, we teamsies, trust’, is a bit less iffy than in canon…”

You’re bending over backwards to pretend that the author’s exaggerated racism and off-brand redemption arc is somehow deeper than canon just because it screams louder. It’s not “less iffy”—it’s just more abrasive and equally shallow.

No amount of retroactive patching or “actually she slipped up later too!” excuses the fact that FRWBY sacrificed coherence and tone for the sake of pointless edge. And you call that growth?

“Woulda still liked a whole apology but still, they do way more with it than canon.”

More ≠ better.

FRWBY does more with everything—more blood, more yelling, more trauma, more moralizing, more Torchwick. But almost none of it is more effective.

Quantity of “development” doesn’t matter when the quality is manipulative, excessive, and tone-deaf.

You turned Weiss from a flawed young woman into a pseudo-eugenicist and want applause because she eventually stops being quite that evil. That’s not redemption. That’s an authorial kink being walked back to save face.

Conclusion:

This thread reeks of desperate rationalization, dressed up in smug dismissal and half-assed moral superiority. It claims to defend bold character writing, but really just excuses over-the-top bastardization in the name of “fixing” a story it clearly doesn’t respect.

FRWBY doesn’t fix Weiss—it defiles her and then performs a shallow cleanup job. You don’t get points for smashing a character with a hammer and gluing her back together with duct tape and Reddit posts about racism.

If this is your idea of improvement, your bar is so low it’s kissing the earth’s core.

[athena-the-undestructible]

An actual problem I have with Genderbend AUs is that often they're made for a story where the patriarchy very much exists and can't be written around, there's two solutions to this and neither are great

Either you ignore it entirely and watch the plot break apart as characters who previously benefitted from the patriarchy and vice versa now have the reverse and are supposed to remain the same characters, which shows a poor understanding of patriarchal structures

Or you Genderbend the patriarchy into a matriarchy which is technically functional but is completely uninteresting and often shows that you want to act like Men are opressed

[applethieves]

My Love For The Abandoned Villa Savoye. The Rotten Point.

An admittedly nicher interest of mine is abandoned (modern) architecture. I find something romantic, even erotic about it. My greatest love in this category, is the Villa Savoye. (which I will briefly give you some background on before getting to my real point) (and include some yummy photos)

Built around 1930 by Le Corbusier on the outskirts of Paris for the Savoye couple, The Villa Savoye is widely renowned as one of the great modernist buildings. But my love for the building really comes from the 20 odd years it spent abandoned.

The building was only inhabited for 9 years before the Savoyes evacuated Paris at the start of World War Two. During the war, the building was occupied by first German, then American soldiers. During this time the house was completely looted and defaced.

After the war, The Savoyes were billed for the repairs needed to make the home habitable again, and maybe because the home was bordering uninhabitable before the war (that's another story) the family never did repair it, and left the building to ruin.

Post war The Villa Savoye was used as hay storage by the town, later it was almost demolished to make way for the school nearby - but this project failed. It mostly just sat - peeling and rotting, covered in graffiti and piss. Until eventually in 1965, after campaigns from Corbusier, it became France's first modernist listed building, and was then restored over the next couple decades.

(okay real points now)

The Villa Savoye is beautiful in its intended state, but I find something so entrancing about its lifespan from the 40s-60s. A church to modern technology, left for dead.

On my deep dives into the building in this state I found an article by Tschumi, that spoke to me like a diary. In 'Architecture and Transgression' Tschumi talks about a lot of things rather cryptically, but in brief - the nature of architecture, it's reflection to humanity, the taboo of life and death, and even links architecture to the erotic as I had felt. All of which is encapsulated in the Villa Savoye.

Tschumi mentions his visit to the Villa Savoye in it's derelict state in the 60's, saying: "The Villa Savoye was never so moving as when the plaster fell off it's concrete blocks."

And I think hes right. There is something so emotional, so visceral about a building that rots. Especially modernist buildings - that were so scared of showing the passage of time. Of course, modernism was in part a response to the first world war - a want, a need for a new Utopian world. There is thus an underlying fear of death in modernism that is un-ignorable in the strive for hygienic perfection in it's architecture. Seeing the Villa Savoye in a state of rot and disrepair highlights for me, mankind's futile effort to ignore death, war comes again, we inevitably deface what is in front of us. Time passes.

But even this emotional weight aside. It is absolutely beautiful. Tschumi refers to 'eROTisicm' (I found this pun quite funny.) And in a sense, this is talking about how there is eroticism in death. And many philosophers (like Bataille) have noted that. But Tschumi links this to architecture. How architecture is an erotic act, indulging in the art, the pleasure beyond the initial function of a space. And when a building begins to rot, that doesn't diminish. If anything, it makes it more powerful. Your reaction to the space becomes something so different when there is evidence of time, when the space around you lives because it dies. There is, for me, a sense of god in that. To feel the presence of something so much bigger in a structure man made, taken over by natural cause. (I want to mention I am using sections of Tschumi's arcticle, and blending his thoughts with mine. He writes about a lot of other topics as well, and I have reached my own conclusion based on my thoughts and his. I encourage you to read it yourself!) It is difficult to put into words. But there is just something about the derelict Villa Savoye that is undoubtedly beautiful, erotic, terrifying, and godly. It creates something for me that nothing else has ever come close to.

and it only existed for 20 years. im so sad ill never meet my abandoned-occupied-haystorage-concrete boyfriend </3

[seldaryne]

"Wyll's quest regarding the Wyrmway is now a subquest instead of part of his main quest."

"Wyll's quest regarding Ravengard will now more reliably and frequently receive updates in Act III."

so mechanically speaking then, was the demotion of quest status in the first point required for them to implement the functionality of the second or??? because i genuinely don't understand why it became a subquest, especially when the game's structure already allows you to just ignore quests & move on to the next area if you want. most of the patch notes that directly mention wyll are bug-related or scripting flow, which i don't have a problem with (bug fixes are great, we love those). i'd love to hear any thoughts about this, though, because i really can't think of a reason why it had to become a subquest?

i also initially read that second point as planning for future updates to wyll's content but at a second glance i think it may just be referring to journal updates? i don't know, i'd like to believe my initial reaction was the correct one but... yknow. anyway i maintain that this is yet Another example of some really goddamn weird choices on the developmental end of things. if the companion quests exist on a sliding scale of 'most related to current main storyline to least,' wyll is very much at the top end of things. optimistic thought is that a lot of his scrapped content existed in the parts of act 3 that were cut, but i would think that as a studio you'd see that & make an effort to level things out with how much screentime the other companions have. at the bare minimum, your player base shouldn't be able to clock so many weird holes in his story arc where it's clear that something else was supposed to be offered.

i'm also not saying that the other companion arcs weren't clunky in some areas & didn't need a bit of help, but the disparity here makes deprioritizing those edits seem like a more logical course of action. like there's a difference between some slightly unpolished scenes vs. something that feels fundamentally lacking in a lot of structural ways, especially when you get into the finer points of the comparisons. act 3 imo is the one that feels the most bare-bones to me. like yes, there's Stuff there visually and quests too but it doesn't feel as lived-in as acts 1 & 2. i would say that the underdark to ketheric section feels the most dense, content-wise, and i don't think it's a coincidence that it's the bracket of the game i enjoy the most. i maintain that giving wyll's storyline the attention it needs would not only help with the character arc itself, but also pad out the quieter stretches of act 3. at this point i don't really see how they'd be able to add in the upper city without either completely changing the trajectory of the third act (so like, almost definitely something we Will Not See Happen & understandably so from a production standpoint. weird post-release editing aside, it is still a finished game.) & i'm also not sure what a DLC would look like here because the main story feels pretty complete too. off the top of my head, maybe one where you follow wyll & karlach into avernus would work, but that's worldstate dependent & probably wouldn't get made for that reason.

all that to say, from where i'm standing it really seems like giving wyll the same respect other companions are offered would by extension fix some of the act 3 issues, without having to release an entirely new area of the game (i'd love it i just don't think it's realistic lmao). like i know why/what the factors are that led to wyll getting the short end of the stick, it's bullshit but it's not the first time we've seen black characters handled unfairly by devs (& fans), but beyond that it's literally just. so confusing to me on the basis of writing alone. why wouldn't you use the character with that many ties to the titular city of the game more? why isn't he more integral to the story when it really seems like he has every reason to take the spotlight in certain areas?? like that's a fantastic resource of a character to use to move the narrative along and Yet.

idk. this started off as just a reaction to patch notes but it's so unbelievably frustrating to watch it keep happening every patch.

[emotionally-charged-arson]

A Very, Very Unfinished Pile of Theory of Everything Headcanons (Ayreon)

Last semester, my English final was a presentation relating the overall theme of the Forever saga to that of the more popular works of H.G. Wells. Details of that argument aside, the thesis was that Ayreon’s emotional core was the presence of small-scale acts of love juxtaposed against large-scale existential tragedy, balanced in their individual power. That we are messy and self-destructive, and in the grand scheme of things we mean very little in the universe, but we are resilient and alive and human and that has to be worth something.

I really like this aspect of the main story, and it got me a perfect score on that assignment. It had a ten minute time limit and I was fighting for my life to stay under it. While I was downsizing the script, I couldn’t help but think of an earlier idea I had drafted about how The Theory of Everything on its own was a really incredible example of the mad scientist archetype turned completely on its head (it was a science-fiction analysis class). Specifically how that script was almost three times longer than the original H.G. Wells one, that took me a solid twenty minutes to read aloud. 

I literally wrote an hour long lecture about The Theory of Everything. No headcanons. No extra theories. Literally just picking apart its canon plot. 

I think this is why I have so little extra writing for it. The story as its given is airtight and just…fucking incredible. Arjen wrote it with a very clear theme in mind like he did with Transitus, but TToE isn’t missing half of its story because he couldn’t pull in the cash to make a movie out of it. You can feel the intention behind every single character, they feel like real people, it has so many layers to it and it is literally, objectively, the greatest prog album ever made. Fight me. 

But anyways: For lack of better phrasing, there isn’t much to “fix” in that sense. Almost all the headcanons I have for The Source or Transitus boil down to a few things:

I was being self-indulgent with a favorite character and it snowballed into a genuinely informative trait/subplot that informs the main story (a certain hc I have where Henry just fucking shoots Daniel in the back by mistake sometime between Two Worlds and Talk of the Town, turning into this weirdly effective commentary of how Daniel is conditioned to his brother’s shitty behavior and Abby hauling ass to get him out of that headspace)

I am curious about aspects of an album’s worldbuilding and get a little excited while filling in the blanks that were perfectly fine being left alone (doing mental gymnastics trying to build a version of The Source where these five academics, three politicians, two religious figures, one robot and one random spaceman viably know each other)

The rarer option that I am genuinely disappointed by how a part of the story was handled and completely ignore this small part of canon to make the overall story be more effective. Or attempt it, at least (Lavinia’s entire character undermining Transitus’ themes and her contradicting her own motivations, and me, in turn, just writing her character from scratch while keeping with the basic story beats [her seeing ghosts, doing shady shit with Henry, etc.])

But with TToE I’ve felt very little need to do any of these. If I were to really dive into it with intention I think I would start building off of the whole bank robbery plot in Phase III (just a slightly weirdly framed plot point for me), but I haven’t thought about it. It’s not that glaring of an issue and there’s few other places in the story where I think adding anything would make it more effective. 

This isn’t to say that Transitus and The Source are objectively worse in any sense, but they leave a lot more up to interpretation, allowing me to write so many add ons that they become structured and essential to each other’s function. 

It’s fun with those two albums. With TToE I really have to look for cracks to fill and it’s kind of useless. 

Not entirely, though. I’ve got a few hcs, and maybe they’ll warrant dozens of google doc pages of context one day like the other two albums: 

Two central things sparked curiosity. Setting, and how the parent characters came to hate each other that much. Naturally. 

This started four-ish years ago when I was pacing around my parents’ house with TToE on the mind (as it often is), and my brother put on this show called His Dark Materials. I watched the intro to it all of one time and just…knew this was the aesthetic TToE should have.🔗 At least combined with dark academia. It’s an album about physics and ghosts, that seems reasonable enough. 

…funnily enough, as I later found out, His Dark Materials itself has a very dark-academia-esque vibe, and the plot is entirely based upon the intersectionality between science and mysticism and trivial human attempts to make sense of it. 

So. Pretty fitting. 

This really stuck with me, and a handful of the characteristics of the show and books became the basis for the way I picture The Theory of Everything. Mainly the visual aesthetic, like I said, but also the fact that the story starts at a parallel version of Oxford University. I don’t have some giant case study for this like with Transitus/New England. I just think it’d be a cool and vibey setting. Maybe it’s the American in me but there’s something about a thousand-year-old college with a campus made of literal goddamn castles that borders on the fantastic. 

From there, you have a decent excuse for The Prodigy to run off to Ireland, where you can choose from one of like 200 different pretty little isolated lighthouses for him to lose his mind in, far enough away for him not to be found as long as he did. Not to mention it lowkey matches with the overt Celtic influence of the music. Or Scotland, if you want some weather symbolism from the North Sea. 

Solid setting, if I say so myself, and it actually influenced the family’s whole situation. Here, The Father (Mike) is a physics professor at Oxford, and The Mother (Cristina) is the director of the Bodleian Library. It’s how and where they meet in 1991 (though the mother is in an attendant position at the time), as shown by the only part of this I have drawn out:

They hit it off, and marry in 1993. Their first and only child is born two years later and they love him half to death. Everything is more or less nice and normal. 

In 1996, Mike stumbles into “proof,” more or less, of the theory of everything being a singular, solvable equation through his work, practically by accident, and begins focused work on it with enthusiastic support from his wife. Life is going great, Cristina is promoted and the two are balancing things well enough. 

The boy shows little to no social development into his toddler years, but his parents don’t think much of it. His father was similar at his age; they’re not worried. They even go as far to say he’ll turn out just as ambitious and smart as his dad and relatives, coworkers and family friends go along with it, setting insanely high expectations for this literal three year old. Mike keeps working on his theory. 

The boy enters preschool at age four; still no improvement. Just isolates himself and draws indiscernible patterns on everything you put in front of him. His parents finally try to intervene to some degree, hiring private instructors and talking with some other psych/child development people they know through the university, to no avail. Nothing changes. He just stares off into space, doesn’t interact with any of them and supposedly doesn’t pay attention to lessons. He still isn’t speaking. Cristina is finally concerned

Around the same time, Mike makes a significant breakthrough in his work, gaining worldwide attention. He receives massive grants from in and outside of Oxford to continue his work, and quits his teaching job to make more time for the endeavor. Cristina is left as the family’s sole provider. She understands and is in agreement on that decision, that’s not the problem yet. The problem is that Mike is becoming more or less indifferent to their son hits five, not seeing any previously projected greatness he was supposed to have in his father’s footsteps. Cristina, much more conscious of balance in her life and how having kids works, isn’t sure what to make of that. Their relationship starts to strain. 

From there, as Mike keeps working, Cristina takes the kid to all sorts of specialists around England but none of them can pinpoint what’s “wrong” with him. She tries much more actively to connect with him like they’re telling her to (though she still enrolls him in the university’s affiliated primary school program, against their suggestions), bringing him everywhere. Buys him little memory games since that’s all that seems to hold his attention. She’s past any belief of him being some secret genius like his dad, not that her opinion of her husband is super positive at this point anyway. She’s just dead-set on her son having some sense of normal in his life. 

By 2002, Mike has completely secluded himself and works nearly constantly. He has made no progress on his theory since 1999 and the fame garnered from his breakthrough has faded. The family is running out of money and Cristina is exhausted. The boy is ostracized at school and still (almost) totally nonverbal. Her coworkers keep suggesting these weird holistic remedies that she refuses. She knows better than to fall for all that new age, pyramid scheme bullshit. 

The son’s condition, whatever it is, worsens until mom, desperate, puts her foot down in 2008 (or “gives up,” if you wanna put it like that) and drags her husband and son to this private practice in Scotland she was told about by a friend, suspicious but ready to put up with anything at this point. 

😐👍

[hourglassfish]

On Season 1, Episode 7 : Part One : I Expect More: Syd and Carmy's Relationship

So I think this is gonna end up being in a few chunks - I think I want to talk about context leading up to the episode:

I Expect More: Syd and Carmy's relationship,

I know you'll be listening: Marcus, McDonald's and Freedom

Risottogate

Hiring New Fucking Broads: Syd, Richie and conflict;

"That's Not You" The Moment Syd Walks Out

So I'm late on this obvs - and I'm sure the whole world and his dog has already said what needs to be said about this episode, but I wanted to think about it anyway. There's a post on here somewhere that says that episode 7 doesn't have a three act structure, that it captures a moment of stress and tension, and that's it - but this isn't quite how I read it, I believe that it does both. How obvious this is all depends on how you frame it.

There's a central feint to The Bear that I come back to often - that you think 'a stranger comes to town' and that that stranger is the return of Carmy, made strange by his time away. Nah! The stranger is Sydney. The show doesn't really start until she arrives, (we know that Carmy's been in Chicago for two weeks, but our story doesn’t start there. There's a reason for this!) she is a force that is shaking things up and providing dynamism. This is not to say Carmy isn't the protagonist, obvs, nor that he is passive, very much not. But it is often her presence, her drive and determination and belief in Carmy, a belief she is unafraid to unabashedly express, which moves him, and moves everyone around him. When she is around, and Carmy lets himself lean into their connection, he is able to articulate - and action - what he wants, to ‘let it rip’.

I say this in relation to episode 7, cus if your focus is Carmy, then it's one minute in time, a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. But if you focus in on Sydney, it is the story of how she came to quit. Whenever someone is like 'She's a brat! She's arrogant! it was her fault!' - I'm like OK sure - if you want to completely identify with Carmy at his worst, we can do that, and if you want to ignore how the rest of the staff respond to what happens, sure, we can do that too. We can do that. But the show is really clear on the framing of what happens.

So let's begin with the context of where this day comes from.

There is an ambiguity to Carmy and Sydney's working relationship which very much works in his favour. Very much.

In the week that she staged, Syd quickly finds herself as sous, because she has to. The kitchen is not functioning, and Carmy does not have the emotional skills, or at least the emotional bandwidth, to navigate the grief and anger and dysfunction they are all engaged in, to get the kitchen to a place where it can work. There was a reason Kitchen Nightmares made such compelling TV, and it was because behind bad food, ugly decor and terrible profit margins were almost always a bunch of people that were hurting. Carmy may be Gordon Ramsay here, but its Syd who's the hard working, behind the scenes producer, doing the actual graft that pulls it all back together.

She then spent her time away from work essentially formulating a business plan (she proposes first! way before 1:8) to make the restaurant profitable. We know Carmy is bad at this. Richie articulates as much ; 'you've been here two weeks and we've had money problems for two weeks'. Sydney's able to not only see the problems in a week but also suggest practical fixes. This is where they overspend i.e. its the delivery on the flour, not the material itself - and this is how to fix it - Marcus drives to pick it up. Instantly actionable. She has skills from Sheridan that are better suited to running a business like the Beef than the skills and tastes that Carm has from being Chef De Carmy* at Eleven Madison Park or Noma. It will never not be funny to me that she presents this to him in episode 2, and that in episode 3 he says 'I'll dial business, you do everything else' - my guy she has already done it!!! You are not slick!

She's does a lot of the emotional labour of getting the brigade into shape: the shitty, endless nagging, being the bad (or at least annoying) guy over and over again, despite clearly being one of the youngest there, and the newest member of staff. She does this without the authority of being an owner, or a member of the family. I'm gonna try and avoid referring to gender and race explicitly here - like the show does, LOL - but like... it's there. We all know it's there.

We know she is brilliant in a crisis: in Sheridan Carmy tells her they can't afford to lose a single service, so when the electricity goes and the gas goes, she sets up a fucking BBQ from found building materials outside. It's kind of incredible, and they all know and acknowledge it. (Sheridan, Review and The Bear are three different stories of crisis management, and thinking about them that way is really useful)

She is in! 100%. All of her energy and creativity and care and patience have gone into The Bear, it flourishes under the love that is still looking for a home following Sheridan Road’s demise. They are fucking so lucky to have her, and to have her at this specific moment in time.

What exactly does she get back from Carmy for that? There's her wage, of course. She's working well beyond what she's being paid, but you know, it's her job. There's a bunch of stuff we could say about the satisfaction of doing a job well - but that's not what she gets from him.

She supposedly gets a boss that listens to her, she gets to not have some psycho stood behind her pushing and screaming. But this is conditional. He may not scream at her (up until episode 7) but he'll 'cut her down to size' if he needs to - the conversation about stock/jus/demi-glace in episode 3, mentioning that he sought out references and slapping her with a bunch of unanticipated feedback from all her former employers when he essentially wants her to shut up about the risotto/short rib, lots of co-ercive 'are we good chef?' business (straight out of the Donna playbook, I am not, and I cannot emphasise this enough, a fan).

The main thing she gets is to be close to him and learn from him, which we know was really important for her. I think he knows it too. JAW plays it as though he knows she lied about coming to the Beef every Sunday. She’s up front on knowing who he is, so it’s not a stretch to believe that he also knows that she's there for him. She plays her cards close to her chest on all this for a reason: that same admiration has the potential to set up a very specific power dynamic, one where she simply wants to be in the presence of his 'greatness'. ***

That's the exchange, for so, so, so much labour. It's not really equitable, and I think this is a tension throughout the show**, and why I'm never fully on board with sydcarmy stuff, even whilst being able to see the vision. Like... you should be staring at her with adoration, fam, and you should be fucking terrified that she’ll leave! She's carrying a lot of this shit! Carmy knows that, even if you don’t! You don’t make an offer like the one at the end of S1 unless you really want to hold on to that person - be that romantic, platonic, or purely pragmatic (she’s a good worker). In Hands he explicitly tells her that it’s much more work than he can pay her for.

(I'm still quietly horrified by the fact that Syd is deferring her wages for six months... but not getting a profit share? fam. FAM! Looked at through a race and gender lens? In Chicago? It is no coincidence that the people that most explicitly tells her to be cautious are her father and another Black woman)

I want to make sure I've clearly said that none of this is intended as a blistering criticism of Carmy. I feel immense sympathy for him. He is grieving, and having arrived late*****, he has missed much of the communal grieving processes, like funerals, and sorting through people's stuff, that people really need to do together. He's absolutely burnt out and the role he is in requires a skill set he does not yet have (it is poignant that Syd is like ‘why are you buying farmer’s market produce?’ - Tina is right to point out that it’s not Noma, Richie and Michael’s system will have had its strengths). I'm not sure if anyone at The Beef truly knows the extent of his panic/anxiety, nor do I think he is getting treatment. I imagine he must be in flight/fight mode 24 hours a day, which, as anyone who has experienced this knows, feels like you're literally about to die. Always. Always. We are not designed to feel like that for so long.

I don't think he's some machiavellian mastermind extracting her labour from her. I think she is a lifeline and he clings. She offers, and he takes. We know from 2:9 's panic attack, that her seeing him, really, truly, *seeing* him was a deeply meaningful moment for him, that her making the choice to be at the Beef with him before she truly knew him was affirmative and transformative, and her staying, even after watching Richie bully and undermine him, even more so. I rewatched Hands today, and when she hands him the portfolio and tells him he needs help… his little face! Carmy is moving from crisis to crisis, but Syd’s head is just a little bit above the parapet, and she can think differently. He needs that, and no one deserves to feel alone with all the problems he is carrying with The Beef.

That said, I also think he can buy into his own hype, (it’s a good thing, that your sister doesn’t think you’re a genius fam), enjoys when Syd buys into it too and struggles when she does not. This is understandable. The only other person who really understands his success is Pete, who is bottom of the pecking order. He got very successful, very young. He worked hard for that but he also has the expected ego (we’ll return to this!) regardless of the fact that he is a decent guy. Syd is often negotiating this ego. He listens to her, depends on her and needs her, but he also gets to hold her to his unspecific 'higher standard',**** and 'expect more' when they clash or disagree, to wield small mistakes over her like a thunderstorm, to remind her that they both come from a cooking world where abuse is casual and accepted in pursuit of excellence.

This lack of clarity is such a fertile breeding ground for abuse. When you live in a society that is built on abusive dynamics, abuse isn't something that only evil monsters do, it's a clear and constant danger that anyone can slip into at any moment in time. That is why clear, well communicated boundaries are so important.

Everything that happens in episode 7 is a result of this messiness that has been coalescing around The Beef from the start of the series. The ambiguity of this specific dynamic, so central to the restaurant and the show itself, is one of the cornerstones of that.

Carmy can change up the dynamic of their relationship at any moment. He can be her 'mentor' when he wants to cut her down to size, he can be her 'partner' when he needs work from her, he can be a romantic and sensitive 'friend' (that looks like Jeremy Allen White) when he needs her to stay. She can never quite find her feet.

In episode 7, their dynamic changes multiple times. Are they going to be partners that solve this problem together? She tries for that, but she is swiftly, and brutally, ejected from the expo, a role that she has been in pretty much consistently, since the moment she gets the job. The team defers to her, as they've become used to, right up until the moment he screams at her to move. As in Brigade, with the stock, she is being humiliated again.

Will he be her friend, with their connection being the motor for everything else? Ehhhhn, she tries twice to talk about his clear frustration about the risotto review, he is it not having it!

Perhaps he will be her mentor here, who will model best practice in the face of a crisis they deal with together? Well… he certainly models something.

The pre order option being left on is a small mistake. Easily done, a box was ticked or unticked. Small, like leaving a packet of cigarettes near a burner while you scrub the floor, or spilling a bottle of Xanax in a children’s drinks cooler. Much less dangerous too. An easy mistake to make, and the show as a whole is very permissive about mistake making. A huge part of Uncle Jimmy’s narrative role is to make it so that mistakes don’t really stick! The show does not punish fucking up.

Maybe if they had gotten Richie set up on the tablet earlier, they'd have noticed it then. Maybe if Carmy, who was ‘dialling business’ while Syd did everything else had been training Richie, he would have clocked it instead. We’ll never know. What we do know is that there is no perspective around this, Syd’s mistake, and that when the time comes to solve it, both men ignores the skills that they know she has, and dismiss the good faith she should have accrued from months of dedication. Any warmth, respect, gratitude and care that Carmy has had for Syd up until this point dissipates, almost instantly. It's a deeply destabilising moment for the whole kitchen, but for their relationship especially.

It's hard to say much more without referring to the next sections. So...

More next time!

*I know it's Chef De Cuisine, but Chef De Carmy or Carmy De Cusine is more fun to say

**and in a bunch of work places, tbh, where a white male 'genius' is surrounded by a group of POC and women working their arses off while him and his mates dip in and out... OH NO I WENT THERE

*** I think this drives a lot of Carmy's absenteeism as well. It's weird to watch season one post season two, and see how often the team is split, for good and bad reasons. In Hands, Syd and Richie are both doing Carmy's head in, and he jumps at the chance to send them to get caulk. There’s the infamous Al Anon run in Brigade, followed by him sort of lolling about in the office (I know he’s bookkeeping), in Sheridan he does the meat run to Nat/Pete's, in Dogs they're doing the kids bday party, in Ceres for a large chunk of the day he's in the office... it's not the same as his abandoning of Syd with the menu, but you can see how scattered he is from day one, between the demands of the Beef and the demands of his family. I dunno how Michael did it, tbh. Well he couldn't, could he. That's the tragedy.

**** truly cringe to listen to a white man tell a Black woman he holds her to a different standard, as though the world is not already doing that to her. I remain, a sydcarmy safe space but ooooof. I dunno. Like I don’t need or want the Shonda ‘twice as hard, half as much’ speech to be in the show, but the women, especially the WOC, in this show don’t half put up with some shit.

***** convinced this will be a plot point next season, btw. There will be a reason why he wasn’t there and it’ll come up around Marcus’s mom’s funeral, or palliative care.

[aheathen-conceivably]

how do you go about planning your storyline? :) especially for your decades challenge

Hello there dearest! I’m sorry this took me a while. It’s a bit of a difficult one and I wanted to take some time to sort out the chaotic process in my brain before I tried to type it out 😅

This is just a rough outline of what works for me specifically in writing a historical story on simblr. I can’t speak to writing advice in general because it’s not something I have experience with; nor do I think this will be helpful for everyone. So please feel free to pick and choose whatever suits your fancy or ignore it all completely.

Of course, it’s time to take this below the cut, since you know it’s going to get a bit long 😉

1. Find Inspiration (Nonfiction books, Blogs, TV shows, YouTube videos, Period Pieces, etc etc…)

For a decades challenge/history based story I think this is really the starting point for me. Whether it be styles of architecture, clothing trends, a historical fact, or an individual’s story, there’s so much real life inspiration to be found for this type of story. It can often seem small, but sometimes pinpointing what you know you want to include and working it in there can be the crux of so much of a story.

I’ve said this before but one of the very first things I knew I wanted to include was the Titanic, since it was the first historical event I ever became interested in. Other examples are New Orleans as a setting, the inclusion of Storyville, and even something as small as the axe man that I included in this post.

When I find these moments of inspiration, I try to immediately transform them into tangible scenes or plot points rather than simply jot them down as a note or like a “maybe for later”. This keeps me from getting mired in too many ideas or overwhelmed with things I like, but that don’t necessarily have a place in the story.

However, sometimes it also means I will need to tweak ideas as the plot develops, such as changing the original storyline of Rosella and Lord Harrington to Rosella and Georgiana; but even with these edits, this process still creates a sort of scaffolding structure for the story as a whole. It gives me plot points or small, specific scenes that I am working and writing toward. I’m then able to allude to the eventual outcome beforehand as well as weave a larger narrative around it while still having clear points of guidance for where I want to go. 2. Connect the Dots

The “dots” here are the aforementioned scenes and/or plot points that I have written well in advance. I have dozens and dozens of these, and I’m basically constantly adding to the document where I keep my writing. This is all kept in chronological order so I can see the progression as well as where I need more narrative to fill out a decade. I generally look at this structure and ask myself: how do I realistically reach that point?

To use the example of the Titanic again: this meant somehow getting the oldest daughter of a relatively poor and close knit family aboard a ship bound for America. It meant not only putting her in contact with someone who would have access to these tickets, but also giving her a reason to leave the people she loved. Then once those larger dots are connected, I continue to focus on smaller and smaller threads, like the details of Georgiana herself or Rosella’s relationship to Zelda, until the storyline feels fully fleshed out and a character’s motivations are coming through. 3. Character Consistency

That last bit is very important to me, and I always try and think about how the characters are functioning within the framework of what I’ve written and the historical landscape. Sometimes this comes into play before connecting the dots, but often it is actually what finally puts the puzzle pieces in place. Something sim-specific here is that I really do use sims traits as guidance on who the characters are, how they interact with the world, and how the world has affected them. So often when I am referencing a prewritten plot point or scene I will ask myself, how would that character get to this point? What may have happened that would lead them here? How does their personality interact with this historical event or point of inspiration?

Many scenes have often come from more outward facing questions, like, is this trait clear to everyone reading as well as me? Has this visibly impacted their life and done so in a sensible way? This is in part responsible for many extra scenes we saw at the end of the 1920s when a few of my best simblr babes pointed out to me that Antoine’s motivations weren’t very clear. It also helps me to fill in and round out that base storyline structure with more small, real-life scenes that showcase and develop certain traits as characters grow and interact with the world around them.

—

With all that said, this is often a very long process that involves reading or watching historical content, going over my own writing again and again, and just waiting for the day when my brain suddenly writes 5-6 scenes unprompted. Other times I’m flying by the tip of my boots, watching y’all feedback and incorporating it or reading through scenes with friends for their help.

So the process has looked very different at various points in the narrative and through the many months I’ve been writing this story. But overall, having those points to write toward as well as tangible character traits have guided the process throughout.

[geese-in-a-frock-coat]

Contraversial take: the wicked movie should not have been a musical.

Its already been established that the general public do not like movie musicals like they used to and because of that so many movie musicals try so hard not to be musicals despite the fact that they are. Like the marketing is ignoring the fact that they have songs in this thing so hard and its infuriating.

They have expanded the story out so much that its TWO FILMS but they're keeping the songs for some reason. Yeah the musical has a big ass time jump but the whole structure of the stage show functions around the songs. The credits should not roll after two hours at defying gravity with half the story still to go. I'm not gonna go into how cutting this thing in to is a complete disaster (unless asked, someone ask) but just cut the songs because it will not work.

Unless they're going to add more songs (personally i think they're going to cut some), these things are going to be pretty spread out so by the time you actually get to a song you've forgotten that its a musical you're watching. This happened with mean girls because they cut the musical numbers down to the bare bones and its going to happen again.

The two act structure is not a reason to make a double-feature. I am exceedingly mad about this. Also someone fix the colour grading please.

[notwantedonthemoon]

THE HANNAH RAMBLE

This rapidly spirals into me plotting fanfiction. PRELUDE:

Gotta be honest. Hannah completely blindsided me. Her character did not go the direction that I thought it was going to go.

When I was studying Not Wanted on the Voyage in class, she was given a super impressive introduction: “the most intelligent character in the cast” (which I will respectfully disagree with. I think it’s Crowe, because my love for that bird is immense and unending) and her scenes in book one were stellar. I am most fond of book one Hannah. She had poise and ambition, she was menacing and mysterious. I liked that! I liked that a lot! I think she has a future in politics or perhaps as an extremely cutthroat lawyer. Unfortunately her talents keep being wasted in middle management at Applebee’s (the Upper Decks).

I was envisioning her throwing a coup and taking Dr. Noyes’ place as the main antagonist of the book. I feel like she had potential to be an even more terrifying villain than Dr. Noyes because she’d not only be cruel and ruthless like him, but she’d be smart, too. Noah was kind of an idiot. 

The message that I was expecting from Hannah's coup is a commentary on how systemic issues by getting rid of the bad people in power; the entire structure that they were functioning under needs to be overhauled. I was expecting a story in which Noah was killed off and everyone breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that the root of evil was done with… only to discover that Noah was never the root of the evil in the first place, but rather, a product of it. His ideas are infectious; they didn’t start with him and they certainly won’t die with him. 

And now that he's dead, there are some people who are very interested in continuing his legacy. 

The environment that these characters were raised in is very, very flawed and we see a lot of what the culture expects from people very early on: formalities and borders are encouraged, power imbalances are essential for the structure of this society, obedience to one’s superiors is equivalent to love, differences should be eliminated, and questioning your superiors is dangerous and insulting. Noah is terrible and has committed so many atrocities that he should definitely be held accountable for, but I refuse to believe that there is anything inherently evil about him. I refuse to discount a character like him as ‘just a bad apple’ because people are products of their environment and these guys are living in a world that has a tendency to produce tyrants. You can’t say someone is ‘just a bad apple’ and ignore the same rotting barrel that all of them are showing up in and Not Wanted on the Voyage is very good at showing how all its characters are impacted by their environment

I think a lot of Noah’s strength as a character lies in his simplicity. I vaguely remember read an academic article somewhere that describes him as more like a force of nature or a strawman than an actual person, and I disagree. I think that he is painfully human. He doesn’t want to take any responsibility for his actions, because he doesn’t want to be the villain (no one does!) and he always has to be the victim. He throws his authority around and mistreats everyone around him because it feels good to be powerful and to get what you want. He’s so human and that makes him scarier because he’s the type of villain that you could realistically become by giving into your worst impulses.

I suppose that's why Mottyl was so tentative in calling him evil.

What I’m saying is: if it wasn’t Noah, it would have been someone else. Someone like him is inevitable (but so too are the people who stand up to him).

This world has a tendency to create tyrants and Hannah has been primed to be Noah’s replacement. Even the victim in a harmful system can internalize its values and they can end up becoming the perpetrator. We do see that with Hannah in the book (her treatment of Emma, for example), but on a much smaller scale than what I was expecting. 

But what exactly was I expecting?

THE PART WHERE I RAPIDLY SPIRAL INTO PLANNING FANFICTION:

I was expecting Noah to die somehow (don't think too hard about how, because I sure didn't), leaving behind a power vacuum that multiple candidates would be vying to fill aboard the ark.

There’d be Noah’s sons: Shem, who’s the oldest and should be expected to replace his father… actually who am I kidding, he’s not going to be involved in this. 

There’d be Japeth, who, at the core of his character, is scared; he learned, abruptly and in one of the most traumatizing ways possible, that powerful people can do whatever they want to you; but you know who never had to beg for his life and bend and bargain around the whims of stronger people? His father. If Japeth inherited that kind of power, he’d never have to be scared and powerless again. 

And then there’s Lucy; yes, she wants a better world for herself and her loved ones. Yes, she has good intentions and has always done what she thinks is right, but Lucy grew up in the trigger happy, might-makes-right culture of Heaven that produced her battle-obsessed brother. We already know that Lucy has a ruthless streak:

So I want to see how far she’d be willing to go to achieve her goals. I think Lucy should commit some murders, actually. I cannot believe that her kill count during the book is a solid zero.

Friendly reminder that Lucy is basically a disgraced war general from Heaven. She has canonically led armies. So why on earth is her kill count the same as Ham’s????

Is my frustration, perhaps, anything like what Lady Macbeth felt when she was trying to get her husband to commit regicide. Actually what I said about Lucy applies to Lady Macbeth too, I want Lady Macbeth to commit a murder or two.

And finally there's Hannah, who’s ambitious and clinical and calculating and wants to carry on Noah’s legacy not out of love or loyalty to him, but because she wants the respect she’s owed. She wants to have her words spoken and heard and appreciated, she wants to be Yaweh’s new prophet, she wants the security and prestige of Noah’s position. 

We'd be viewing this disaster of a succession crisis through Mrs Noyes and Mottyl's increasingly distressed narration.

Can I just say, though: Mottyl would make a fantastic diplomat. She’s comfortable talking with both humans and animals, she’s very frank but very considerate at the same time, and her greatest strength is making allies by being friendly and dependable. 

‘LOCAL NEWS. Exhausted 97-year-old mother of six desperately drafts peace treaty: more at nine. Also she’s a cat.’

I think it's clear you're screwed when all your hopes are riding on the negotiation skills of a 20-year-old cat.

Anyways, this entire plot was inspired by this song:

[emptymanuscript]

I have a new...

Ok, plot bunny isn't the right term but I need something LIKE plot bunny.

That thing where a story "idea" (It's never a complete idea -_- no it's just enough to say, yeah, this has some real merit >_< you should obsess over this) pops into your head and demands that you should make it. And bits and pieces of it scatter themselves through your conscience and your dreams... before scampering off with the others who are like: 'write us EM." "We're gonna be such amazing stories EM." "Ignore your current projects EM." "Just forget about all the rest of us hiding over in this corner, too." "Write us" "Oooooo we're haunting you because we're so awesome." "You can't ignore us, EM, we're in your head. Always in your head." And, yeah, they breed too quickly like bunnies and muck up the cleanliness of the mind like dust bunnies. Phhbbbt :p

Some are stickier than others.

But that makes the new ones even more obnoxious. Like, I haven't figured out the last sticky one yet. And now I've got a NEW one. That won't shut up about how awesome it is.

My new one has decided its working title is "The Escrologist" and that it is (of course) the potential first book in a series (you damn things know I have to FINISH a book before I can write the next book, ugh) about Legalistic Magic.

And it wants to be a very "hard magic" (ugh, I hate that term but it is accurate) Legal Thriller.

Essentially magic works by contracts and pretty much only by contracts. Like, something akin to Contract Law, is the actual basis for reality, more or less. And so, if you want to do any magic of any kind, which you do because society is run on magic (it's the tech and power structure, etc.), you need to write up a contract for the magic.

So, the really important high status profession is the equivalent of Lawyer. Someone with a doctorate in Magiprudence (instead of Jurisprudence because my brain is oh so clever - *eyeroll*). They're the ones trained to write up a Conspell (instead of Contract - total genius, right?! *eyerolling so hard I'm giving myself a headache*). And the person who acts as their own counsel in such matters has a fool for a client, of course (what, nothing clever for lawyer, yet, where's your cleverness, now, you dumb brain :p)

My brain has divided up magic-user, which can be pretty much anybody, and Mage, the people who actually know how to deal with the Conspells and Magical Laws. And has spit up so far at least 5 types of Mages:

Lawyers. What my MC actually is. They can be subdivided culturally into Firm Lawyers like himself and Independent Lawyers who work on their own. He, and the general culture, have a definite bias toward Lawyers who work at firms. Because a coven is better than an individual witch I guess.

Researchers. Essentially the equivalent of the mad scientist trying to back engineer alien / angelic / fairy tech mixed with Law Clerks AND translators. They're the people trying to figure out what the actual basic LAWS of the universe are and how they underpin how the universe works. And then writing them out for themselves and (ideally) for everyone else, so Conspellery will be more accurate and functional.

Legislators. The people that write human laws and human magical law to form precedents for their culture and make hooks for their societies magic to work with and hang on. They rely on the researchers to tell them the real LAW and then they write "new" law to reassign values and institutions and other changes. Then they rely on the Lawyers to use that stuff to make everyone adhere to the standards they've set.

Anarchists. People who make their own Conspells according to their own personal understanding of how contractual magic and the universe works to give themselves power. My MC is his Firm's specialist in fixing the damage that Anarchists do from their mess ups in their Conspells. Which can have nasty effects on their surroundings but can also often have very nasty effects on the Anarchists themselves because they usually don't have a very good idea of what they're doing.

The titular Escrologists. A type that is assumed at this point to be mythological and confined to stories. People with the godlike power to actually make new original LAW that (re)defines how the universe works, which everything else has to work with from then on.

And the vague idea for the plot is that someone has stumbled onto what may actually be an attempted work of an Escrologist and my MC is hired (bullied) to investigate it and work with it.

Which all sounds cool.

But there is a giant red folder next to me.

And many other ideas racing around in my head.

And I just really don't have the time for this.

Especially since I would probably have to actually exercise some real preliminary research into law and legal codes to get things right. Not to mention probably a good deal of legal thrillers to see what works since that is not at all in my top favorite genres.

And just ugh.

Please shut up already brain.

But it does sound cool