#but this particular book is just solidifying things i've noticed for a while

[misscrawfords]

YA/fantasy/romance/romance subplot authors, can you please stop doing this:

Indicating that you have an enemies-to-lovers romance coming up from Chapter 1 by making your protagonists very, very aware of each other and attracted to each other.

I'm looking at:

"My hand accidentally brushed his bare wrist and he flinched as if he hated me so much he couldn't bear to touch me, however briefly."

NO THAT'S NOT WHY HE'S FLINCHING YOU DUMBASS.

"Jacob Fonteroy annoyed me in so many ways - his condescending attitude, the smirk that he seemed to reserve just for me when he most wanted to get under my skin, his blatant displays of wealth being just a few of them - but all of these would have been bearable if he hadn't been so annoying handsome as well."

SO YOU THINK HE'S HANDSOME DO YOU.

"You just hate me because I beat you in that test/support the opposing side in the war/destroyed your chances in the big competition but guess what, Jacob? I don't care about your opinion!"

Jacob's big brown eyes under their unexpectedly soft lashes widened and for a moment I felt a shred of remorse. He almost looked... upset? Could it be that I was mistaken about him all along? Then the expression was gone and replaced by his customary expression of cool indifference. I huffed to myself, pushing down an unwelcome feeling of disappointment and turned away.

"Wait- Esmerelda!" It was Jacob but I had no patience to listen to him.

YEAH YOU REALLY DON'T CARE ABOUT HIS OPINION AND HE DEFINITELY HATES YOU.

I made up these examples in 5 seconds flat and what I'm really getting here is that I should totally write a romantasy book about Jacob and Esmerelda which lbr would get snatched up for publication immediately because I'm a white woman who writes fanfiction but the point is that you have definitely read these examples several times over in different books. They've become a kind of enemies-to-lovers indicator in the same way that if you want to write a villain in a Hollywood blockbuster you make him a posh Englishman with a moustache and a vaguely homoerotic partnership with a Russian mob boss called Volkov.

It's really insulting to readers. They've probably picked up the book partly because it's enemies-to-lovers so the author has decided they need to reassure them right from Chapter 1 that THESE PEOPLE ARE INTO EACH OTHER. THEY'RE NOT ACTUALLY ENEMIES. DON'T WORRY. But the point is, firstly that this writing is unbelievably lazy but also it's not enemies to lovers! It is not actually normal to spend all your time thinking about how your deadly enemy looks/smells/whatever. If you start Chapter 1 with the characters already acknowledging to the reader some kind of attraction then half the fun is gone. This acknowledgement should come somewhere in Book 2 of the trilogy and be accompanied by TOTAL HORROR. Please actually give me enemies before you give me overt literary markers of sexual attraction. I miss subtlety and understatedness in the depiction of romance. I miss attraction and compatability being shown through dialogue and the odd unevaluated long glance or raised eyebrow. Trust me, authors, you do not need to be so explicit*. It's very boring.

*totally unrelated to whether the book has explicit make-out or sex scenes - that's different.

[drinkyourvillainjuice]

Secretary's DYVJ OC

Or, a study in character design by the secretary.

Hello my audience of fools and creatives, this is how me, the Secretary, designed past characters for Drink Your Villain Juice. I've designed a couple of the beloved gamers such as random one-off heroes (hello, Portrait, my beloved), and the one and only Wil (which some of you really love).

The background:

We have a free spot on the SCUM team, which is essentially a super-violent villain team doing very atrocious team for what appears to be no reason in particular. While this isn't entirely true since tragically people have motivations to hurt others (even if it's just fun!), SCUM attracts, well, scummy people and also people who may or may have no other choice than to choose these sorts of groups. They may be groomed into a role, forced to rely on violence to keep certain people at bay, or might just have been repeatedly failed by the systems than they were supposed to be protected by.

With this free spot in mind and the other characters already having fixed roles, we need a character to fit a specific niche.

The niche is secret for the audience, but essentially, we need a female character that counterbalances the other female characters within the team + illustrates a typical trope of villain characters. As you might have noticed, many of the characters within the story kinda play on tropes: Surpass is super(wo)man but a jerk, MC is a trope on the chosen hero being a villain, etc.

I'm pretty interested in making a character who might unironically have some sort of sex appeal going on. So let's brainstorm:

The base concept:

I think female characters within superhero fiction often have to rely on sex appeal to keep an audience engaged. It's rare to find a character like this within TV or comics or books that has any sort of depth to them - but the thing is, this is a one-off villain so how do I give the audiences the tool to discern the character's backstory. I have a couple of ideas:

Lack of armor and mask: This is a reckless character. She lacks foresight in protecting herself. Maybe she doesn't view herself in a good light, and maybe she doesn't even care if her face is shown to the world. Maybe she lost too much to care about her body being hurt and her face being plastered on every wall - or maybe that's exactly what she wants to punish herself.

Collected jewelry from her victims: A means to intimidate, really. If this is someone who has lost it all, gaining these small possessions mean that she holds controls over somebody. It might be tied to her power - or not! - but it is obviously tied to her psyche. Maybe she was riding the high life and it came crashing down, or maybe it's a physical manifestation of all the lives she had taken in the past as a physical mark on her body.

Trashy expensive clothes: To really solidifies the concept of someone who has lost it, maybe anchor the physical manifestation of the character by trashed wealth. Clothes that are too expensive or reserved for special occasions are being torn apart. They are mish-mashed because the character is holding down to past wealth despite the lack of coordination. What if she is also taking the clothes of the female victims? Could she be green with envy that someone is living the life she wanted to life or had lived?

With these three characters point, let's move to appearance.

The physical manifestation of her psyche, and what it means to be her:

She is an attractive woman down on her luck. She fits the specific standard of beauty within the region. She wears clothes and jewelry that are expensive, but obviously aren't hers by the way they don't fit. Her clothes are poorly mended clothes, showing that she tries to put forward a tidy image, with blood that doesn't seem to wash out, implying not everybody gave their clothes willingly. She also has too many necklaces, bracelets, and rings, especially wedding rings. If someone shone a light on her, people would be blinded by the dazzling. She wears too much makeup, caking her features, and it hides her real emotions from the cracks and drip of sweat that she is obviously exerting. Her lack of armour reveals a body that isn't honed for combat or physical exertion, implying that whatever makes her able to keep going is more psychological than physical. She may be a tad overweight, and "letting herself go" would most likely be what she would say about herself, but someone with a keen eye might be able to grasp that she is comfortable in this new life. She carries herself with a lack of confidence that makes herself appear as arrogant. She doesn't flinch, she doesn't get scared, she doesn't run - but she is clearly despondent at whatever her fate might be.

It would take a miracle to fix her, but by that point, she might have killed too much to go back.

Tying it all together with a knot:

I opted for the name Spring Breaker. Spring Break is a time for young people to go out somewhere sunny and get tanned - or at least, that's what I've learned from Jersey Shore. I think this character might be a past college student, having ignited during her spring break, and losing what was making herself. Her power should also be based on water. It would make sense with the theme of womanhood being a failed state for her since water is often seen as a feminine and passive element. But she isn't passive, she only has an image of it to probably protect what she holds on to - which is her appearance. Maybe, her power could involve drowning people which a lot of sirens, which one could say that she is, are known to do to take the riches of sailors.

So what about a young woman who was on spring break and was involved in someone's death by drowning. She might have pushed them into the ocean, or maybe have forced them underwater, due to her envy for their wealth. She ignited with the ability to constantly relive that trauma that ruined her life. In a way to punish herself, she names herself Spring Breaker, lacks a real civilian or mask identity, and puts herself in situations where she finds herself forced to drown people. She also wants to go back to before, when she was able to buy expensive clothes and have the jewelry she liked, but every time she grabs someone's chain and puts it on her neck, she finds herself back in the pool causing her downfall.

Her place as a villain:

Spring Breaker is an infiltrator in SCUM. She is what one could be best described as an assassin, taking out targets in the surroundings of the fight, and slowing going toward the fight. She takes out people from the back and makes her way forward. Her power is simple: she coats anything she touches in a thin film of water, dry drowning those with the misfortune to be grappled by her. Her ignition gave her the compulsion to steal valuables - or maybe she had it all along but now has a very good excuse - which enables her ability to rob people. Her costume changes based on what happened last time. She might wear a two-piece swimsuit with a feathered boa one time, or a see-through babydoll dress with lace underwear, or maybe a full-length gown with three bullet holes she couldn't mend around the abdomen. In every case, she leaves behind her drowned and drowning bodies, stripped of valuables.

She is obviously a bad person, but it's hard not to pity her by the way she sulks around. Some may say she should be put down for her own good, but others think she should taken out for the bodies left in her wake. Spring Breaker thinks it's a bit of column A and column B.

Final notes:

i think i can fix her