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FYI your account got me rereading stravaganza yet again 😍 I love all these world-hopping kids so much

this has been my goal all along 🙏🙏😔 to get people to (re)read (let's be real nobody new cares about this series so people rereading are my only hope) and talk to me about these books

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I finished rereading City of Swords today. And Wow. They truly Did Not Care. Rodolfo walks into the wedding like "hey some trouble out here but don't worry about this :) all good :)" and then they go on to have the wedding and the feast as if the fucking pope didn't just die?????

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And now she has me googling slurs???

Started reading Mary Hoffman's Troubadour and I sighed deep when within the first chaper there was a 13-year-old crushing on a 30+-year-old man

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"William Dethridge was in his new laboratory in his wife's house in Bellezza. He was still working on the difficult question of why talismans brought Stravaganti from the other world only to the city that the talismans came from."

I bet he just sits on a chair and thinks really hard.

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I saw someone do this a while ago, and I finally got around to making my own list. Enjoy.

Favourite parent-child relationship Even though I love Rodolfo and Arianna as much as the next girl, I have a weak spot for the way Leonora just takes Luciano in without question and loves him like her son. This strange kid who comes from another world and has died (?!!).

Favourite sibling relationship I think Egidio and Fiorentino are criminally underrated. They took bros before hoes very literally and just spent their lives together. Like they live so close that they literally have a bridge from one house to another. That's the definition of sibling goals.

Favourite family relation (other) I love Arianna and her relations on the islands, so I'm gonna say Arianna and Valeria

Favourite friendship between 2 people I love my unproblematic king Cesare, so I'll say Cesare and Luciano's friendship

Favourite friendship between a group I love the little gang that is formed in Padavia with Luciano, Ludo, Enrico, Matt, Cesare, Marco, Arianna and Dethridge. It's such a random concoction of people.

Favourite mentorship Definitely Rodolfo/Luciano, although I also have a soft spot for Sulien/Sandro

Favourite rivalry Not sure if I'd call it a rivalry, but I do enjoy Nick's jealousy regarding Luciano (esp when Georgia is concerned)

Favourite hatred/antipathy Fabrizio's never-ending hate for Luciano

Favourite potential relationship between characters who never talk in canon I think Mortimer Goldsmith and Dethridge would have an absolute ball together

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Anyone ever read the Stravaganza series by Mary Hoffman? Teens get transported to alternate universe Renaissance Italy when they fall asleep near or with items originally from that universe? I recall quite enjoying it, though I recall my opinion being the quality declined somewhat as it progressed after the third book….and really disliked the main Romantic Subplot in the last. But also remember my favorite character without a doubt was Lucian/Luciano.

Would recommend giving it a shot. First book really fun from what I remember. Need to reread it some time.

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Mary Hoffman was really just speedrunning the weirdest shit in Stravaganza in one book here

Started reading Mary Hoffman's Troubadour and I sighed deep when within the first chaper there was a 13-year-old crushing on a 30+-year-old man

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Something something being a stravaganza fan makes you insane something something

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I also bought the German (paperback) edition and that one is truly awful like what the hell is that fuckass pixelated font and ugly map

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Maybe I am just a little insane

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Started reading Mary Hoffman's Troubadour and I sighed deep when within the first chaper there was a 13-year-old crushing on a 30+-year-old man

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he's got a lot on his mind

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Like I mentioned in my previous post, my brain associates the Stravaganza characters with colors/color palettes. The books themselves and the cities in them also have specific colors in my head, and a lot of the character's palettes are based on the cities' they're most associated with.

Anyway last night I thought of this stupid and useless idea to take these colors out of my head so here's how I wasted my time today:

Behold, character color palettes I guess???

I grouped the characters kind of randomly, kind of based on location/category. First the teens from England. I'm not super happy with all of these (Mainly Nick, his color are more muted in my head and a bit more brown but I was too lazy to fix this.) These are pretty strongly influenced by the (Finnish) book covers, and a lot of characters that are associated together end up having similar colors.

Bellezza and its characters have the strongest color association (purple). Pretty much the entire first book is just different shades of purple to me, even Enrico (some characters change colors as the story goes on, I made these palettes based on what I most strongly associate with them). To me Silvia is a lot of dark shades of purple, and Arianna is lighter and more red/pink. Rodolfo could have even more black than shown here (does he ever even wear anything except black).

I grouped the characters from Giglia together (so that's Filippo Nucci). Camillo and Carlo have very similar colors in my head. Giglia's main colors are dark reds, burgundy etc, but for some reason Fabrizio is very green in my head. I guess I associate Gaetano with Remora more than Giglia, which is why he's mainly blue. I didn't include Davide here but his palette is close to Filippo's, probably a bit lighter.

The di Chimici cousins. The city colors affect some these a lot, some more than others. The cities go basically like this:

Bellezza: A lot of purples, mainly dark ones, a bit of silver/grey

Remora: Dark blues, some slightly purple-ish, sparkling with holographic little specs

Giglia: Mahogany, burgundy, dark reds and oranges, some browns, hints of purple

Padavia: Greens (lighter than Bellona but not super vivid), browns, a hint of blue, a tiny speck of orange

Classe: Light blues, whites, a hint of dark blue

Fortezza: Oranges, reds, browns, a bit of grey somewhere in there, maybe even a hint of blue??

Volana: Aquamarine, light blue, turquoise, cerulean, dark cyan

Moresco: Yellow

Bellona: Dark greens, a bit of black

Thoughts??? Enjoy my synesthesia I guess???

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Wasting company time at work by making color palettes I associate my brain associates with Stravaganza characters

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back in the stravaganza brainrot, this time with money I can spend

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imagine an AU where Arianna does die during the battle, but Silvia, the girlboss she is, decides that Barbara must continue to impersonate Arianna for the time being so that they can plan their political moves. There would obviously be a new election if Arianna dies, and since she didn't have anyone in mind to take over from her, it would provide the di Chimici a chance to install a puppet in Bellezza.

So Barbara has to pretend to be Arianna and no-one can grieve her publically. For more tragedy, Luciano does survive, so he has to marry Barbara-disguised-as-Arianna and pretend everything is normal.

And to add fuel to this drama, Barbara gets pregnant (though obviously with Marco's child) so now they have to fake a death for the fake Arianna before the child is born because otherwise this circus will never end. And then Luciano has to publically grieve Arianna long after she is already dead and a child that never existed.

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Enrico sighed. People who were in love were no fun. They took themselves too seriously and forgot all the rules of the spying game.

City of Ships, chapter 4