rebel--hearts

[rebel--hearts]

CHAPTER 4: THE SCHISM OF THE SCHOOLS

From "A Complete History of the Endless Woods and Beyond"

Third Edition, Published by the Camelot Historical Society

The Great War between Good and Evil marked a turning point in magical history, culminating in the unprecedented Villain Exile of 224 A.E. (After Enlightenment). Following the conflict, the known villains were banished to a magicless isle, permanently altering the balance of power in the Endless Woods.

The School for Good and Evil, established centuries prior, had been governed by two immortal brothers whose true names have been lost to time. Historical records refer to them simply as the Twin Masters, who maintained an uneasy equilibrium between the forces of Good and Evil for over a hundred years. Their reign ended in tragedy when one brother slew the other in what scholars now call the Night of Fraternal Betrayal.

The surviving School Master, forced to bear an eternal mask as punishment for his fratricide, retreated into solitude in the School Master's Tower. From this vantage point, he observes the Storian—the magical pen that writes all fairy tales—as it chronicles the fates of students. Whether this surviving brother represents Good or Evil remains one of history's great mysteries.

The School's student selection process underwent a significant change following the Great War. While children from villain families on the magicless isle may enter through an annual lottery system (limited to 120 slots), a curious tradition emerged roughly 200 years ago: every four years, two children are taken from villages beyond the fairy tale realm. These pairs invariably consist of one child of conventional beauty and virtue, and another marked by peculiarity and perceived malevolence.

Perhaps most notable is the complete dominance of Good in fairy tale outcomes over the past 150 years—a phenomenon scholars attribute to the surviving School Master's punishment. Every villain has met their demise without exception, marking the longest period of uncontested Good victories in recorded history.

[Footnote: This historical account draws from surviving documents and eyewitness testimonies. Some details, particularly regarding the Twin Masters' early reign, remain subject to academic debate.]

#schoolforgoodandevil#idontknowhowtousethis #sfgae#au

[rebel--hearts]

no caption

[rebel--hearts]

4: folktale

Rhian knows very well what Arbed House is for. He knows that they’re there because they’re trouble, all of them; from Aric and Japeth, crazed and cold-hearted, to Kei, strange and serious, to himself. Overly ambitious. Overly vicious when it comes to what he wants.

He’d like to think they’re more than that. Of course people like Aric and Japeth might not be— they’re Evil to the core, both of them, and Rhian would gladly have had his brother shut up here forever if it were his choice. Some people can’t be fixed. Some people are meant to be alone.

But he’s not. He’s King Arthur’s son: he must be Good, he must be meant for glory, something greater than this. Mother cannot have trusted him with that knowledge for nothing.

But you can never truly escape your nature— and what if Rhian’s nature is to be Evil? What if they’re right?

“Do you think we’re really Evil?” he asks Kei, one night, whispered when Aric and Japeth have been shut away in solitary confinement for some offence or another; it’s not uncommon, these days. “I mean, do you think we're really all that they say?”

Kei blinks slowly at him. “I don’t believe in Good and Evil,” he says quietly. “But I believe in you, Rhian. I believe you can be whatever you want to be. And if you want to be Good— you can.”

Rhian sits up straighter, getting his feet tangled in his blankets. Kei’s mouth curves into a vaguely amused, vaguely indulgent smile. Rhian flushes, despite himself.

“You don’t believe in Good and Evil?”he questions hastily.

“Those are things for people like you, aren’t they?” Kei returns. “No. I’ll be happy with whatever I get. You know I’m not getting a fairy tale.”

“Kei,” Rhian says softly. “That’s not true.” Of all the people here Kei is, perhaps, one of the kindest. Strange, yes. Different, yes. But he has never had the heart to be cruel, at least not intentionally.

He could be a hero if he wanted. He’d be a better hero than Rhian; Rhian who is selfish and ambitious and hungry. Rhian who would never admit any of these things, though he’s already catalogued all his faults in his head.

“People like you,” Kei repeats. “You don’t get it, do you?” His voice, more than anything, rings with resignation. “You and I have to see the world in very different ways. You know what I see in fairy tales? Blonde-haired, fair-skinned princes and princesses and villains alike. People who look nothing like me. You get to worry about whether you’re Evil. I worry about whether I get a spot in the story at all.”

Rhian flinches back, unconsciously, and Kei’s dark eyes flash with something unreadable. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re Evil, Rhian,” he says. “You’ve been good to me. Not many of the other boys are.”

“Because you're kind,” Rhian blurts. “Because you’re— you’re meant for something more than this. You’re nothing like the rest of them.” And he hasn’t been particularly good to Kei, either; more like he’s allowed Kei to get swept up in his dreams, swept up in his story.

“I don’t want anything more than this,” Kei sighs. “Rhian. I’m happy to follow you. I am. But I have my own measures of who I want to be, what I want to do. If you’re talking about a fairy tale— why should I want to be included in a world that clearly doesn’t want to include me?”

And Rhian has always prided himself on his silver tongue, his golden words— but he finds himself not quite knowing what to say.

“My parents believe in it,” Kei admits. “I’ll give you that. They wanted me to be the best of them. To be the Good son, the golden son, to send me off to the School. I mean, after Agatha… after a dark-skinned princess, and her fair maiden of a witch… anything’s possible, right? But I aged out. And then they sent me here. Better to be Evil than to be nothing.”

Kei’s lips curl into something bitter, something quietly angry. “They were wrong about me,” he says. “Are you going to be wrong about me, Rhian? Are you going to hold me to your ideals?”

“No,” Rhian breathes. “That is— no, Kei. I believe in you. I do.” It’s only fair. It’s only right. Kei has been so kind to him.m, has trusted him this far. Has believed in him for so long.

“My grandfather,” Kei says abruptly. “He was one of the best people I ever knew. He lived life like he’d come right out of the fairy tales, you know. Back home, they tell stories about him. Shita-kiri Suzume. Ever heard of it?”

“No,” Rhian admits. The words themselves are foreign; they only seem familiar on Kei’s familiar tongue.

“Storian didn’t care for him,” Kei shrugs. “But we do, all of us who aren’t born lucky enough to get the chance. Shita-kiri Suzume is the story of the tongue-cut sparrow who he saved. This is how people like us live on, Rhian. Folk tales. Folk histories. Different places have different stories. But all of us, all of them, they’re remembered.”

He turns away from Rhian, fumbles for the match-box on his nightstand; strikes it to light a candle between their beds. By its wavering flame, he unlocks a hidden drawer at the foot of his bed, and comes up with an old, battered notebook.

“Records go against the spirit of it,” Kei confesses, oddly vulnerable. “But I’m scared I’ll forget. And I don’t know how to tell them, I was never good at it.” He smoothens the cover out with a great deal of care before he hands it over to Rhian.

“This is who I am,” he says. “Who I want to be. Maybe you’ll understand. Maybe you won’t.” He shrugs. “I don't need you to. But… it would be nice, if you could.”

Rhian flips through the pages of the book: Momotaro. The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Straw Millionaire. At the very back, a line of foreign characters followed by its translation: Shita-kiri Suzume. The folktale of Kei’s grandfather.

All these stories, all these memories. All these people who would never be remembered by the Woods.

“I want to,” Rhian says, sincerely. “Understand.”

Kei’s eyes glitter in the flickering shadows. “Make the effort,” he says, “and I’ll be impressed, Rhian, I will.”

And then he blows out the candle, leaving the room dark. “But it’s late,” he says. “Maybe tomorrow I’ll tell you a folktale. Maybe I’ll tell you about my grandfather. But for now— go to sleep, Rhian, we’ll still be here tomorrow. We’ll be here as long as it takes.”

[rebel--hearts]

[rebel--hearts]

[rebel--hearts]

SGE modern au character headcanons

SOPHIE

pink everywhere.

has three piercings on each ear (did it cause she can’t decide on one pair of earrings to wear)

wears the most obnoxiously extra pieces of clothing to school

because of that, has gotten dress coded so many times until it got to the point where the teachers got tired of dress coding her

has tried to dress agatha up before (ended up having a huge argument over it)

heels on the daily (wore sneakers once and everyone’s brains exploded)

head of student council (cause cmon)

goes shopping with tedros after school sometimes (mostly thrift stores but tedros treats sophie to expensive clothing brands every now and then)

has the typical teenage girl locker

brings a really tiny backpack to school cause she leaves all her books in her locker

has a bunch of guys falling over her

ran for prom queen twice and won for both but got bored of it the next year and decided to not run again

nominated agatha as prom queen back in junior year and made sure she won

follows agatha to the skatepark sometimes to be her personal cheerleader and to check guys out (she finds them surprisingly cute)

thinks the cheerleading team is overrated

ties her friendship bracelet to her bag (claims it clashes with her outfits)

secretly steals agatha’s clothes when she’s home alone cause they’re really comfortable (agatha knows but sophie always denies it)

took ballet for 13 years but then quit

[rebel--hearts]

sge modern au character headcanons

AGATHA

wears baggy clothes 24/7

owns at least o n e of tedros’ hoodies

only ever wore a tight dress once on an extra fancy date with tedros

sneakers galore

member of the photography club with kiko!!

has a necklace with the letter “T” on it

really good at skateboarding

has tried to teach tedros how to skateboard once but he has no sense of balance whats so ever so she gave up

skates a lot with hort and they teach each other new tricks (they hangout at the skatepark too after school during her off days sometimes)

has a bunch of bruises on her legs from falling off her skateboard and getting hit by it (sophie puts bright pink hello kitty bandaids on them that do NOTHING but agatha’s oddly fond of them)

has a bunch of pins on her backpack and loses them constantly but somehow finds them in school the next day

gets highkey flustered whenever tedros comes and greets her in the halls between classes

top student in her grade (duh)

has a beaded friendship bracelet that she made for her and sophie when they were younger (sisters can have friendship bracelets too okay)

has had a rumour that she and hester dated for a while back in sophomore year spread

[rebel--hearts]

Choosing to believe that Tedros got so caught up in his stupid crush on Normal Girl™ that he forgot about that letter from Sophie and accidentally put it through the wash in that waistcoat, like when u leave a tissue or receipt in ur jeans. and that's why it never gets mentioned again sorry post altered halfway through as I'm informed he told Sophie "you write nice letters" in the supper hall, but as I don't think about or engage w Tophie willingly, I forgot. ANYWAY, point still stands coz that sounds like something someone who is just realising he put Sophie's letter through the wash would say. What was in the nice letter? We don't know and neither does he coz he found it in bits in his inside pocket like ten minutes before

[rebel--hearts]

bits n pieces. mostly ted as I am wont to do

[rebel--hearts]

10 years since Agatha and her trophy husband were published, whatcha know about that

[rebel--hearts]

The implication that the age range of first years at SGE is 12-16 is so funny because that is... QUITE a significant gap in development. Imagine being a sixteen year old Evergirl, with a twelve year old Everboy in puppy love with you, desperate to ask you to the ball while you want to go with someone your own age whose voice has broken fucjdh... No wonder there was so much squabbling over dates. Maybe the boys had to put off the proposals for so long to make sure they were all age appropriate 😭

[rebel--hearts]

I find the time discrepancies in the SGE fairytales so fun... if you look at them in terms of their real-world dates, everything gets so batshit so fast. MOST of them are grimm's and therefore roughly 1800s, but not all of them. Dot is from the 1400s kinda time, bc that's when the Sheriff starts popping up in Robin Hood stuff. At his oldest, Tedros is probably from the 1100s (chetrien de troyes, marie de france, & geoffrey of monmouth wrote major arthurian works around here that form the basis a lot of the SGE stuff) and at their newest, Agatha and Sophie are probably from the v. early 1900s (gavaldon is industrialised, with a mill/factory; there's been 200 years of kidnapping and most of the tales are from the 1700s at the earliest). Even pushing them as close together as possible still only puts Tedros in the 1400s (gawain-poet and thomas malory) and the Readers in the 1800s (the earliest reader fairytales are 1700s and it's been hundreds of years). They have like a 400-500 year gap between them!! The people closest to Agatha and Sophie are Kiko and Hort, from 1904 when Peter Pan was first conceptualised (which could be extrapolated to explain why the two of them don't find Agatha and Sophie as off-putting as everyone else). I think it would be really interesting to lean hard on the idea of each of the kingdoms kind of being stuck persistently in their own time period, in order to provide consistent settings for stories, and how hard it is to impart any kind of change because of that. Which might explain why most of the students at SGE were so single-minded. So even if we don't take it all the way, fashions, music, culture, atittudes, beliefs must still vary massively between kingdoms...

[rebel--hearts]

ik I've kicked this abt in scott street a bit, but I wish the camelot years had touched more on the whole once and future king, 'there are people that fully believe arthur is gonna come back to life and defend england camelot in a time of peril' thing. one of the most common arthurian legends. bc I think it got mentioned very briefly a total of Once in QFG, then ignored, but can you imagine, like... hello nine year old child experiencing grief for the first time, your dad's not really dead he's going to magically come back and save us in a time of danger :) I am not doing irreparable damage to a child's understanding of death btw :) I'm normal. I feel like it's not that much of a step from tedros's canon paranoia about what arthur would think about everything he does, bc if he half-believes (or secretly just does believe) that arthur might come back and save them, that moves from one thing to... quite another. tedros would just end up looking over his shoulder his entire life.

actually, slight rewrite where tedros is just that little bit more ill-adjusted and entirely believes his father isn't actually dead, and agatha (raised in a GRAVEYARD) and sophie (dead as hell mum) are like '????????!!????!!?????', but it doesn't have much bearing besides a weirdo character quirk and a few jokes, UNTIL QFG, and tedros starts being useless because he fully believes (and is being validated in that belief) that arthur is gonna come and save them, so he shouldn't do anything to get in the way. so he's just waiting. and he has to have an arc where Tedros Has To Unpick The Fact He Never Actually Accepted His Dad's Death And Come To Terms With The Fact That Arthur Is Not In Fact Coming Back, Sorry Hon :( You're King Now. You Really Are.

and this works even better with 'unbury me'. like. tedros thinks this is it! when they go there, they'll dig him up, and then arthur will be there and alive and save them all! and he'll be like 'good job son your did it'! and tedros thinks that once arthur's back he can go back to being a prince, and then he doesn't have to have all this pressure on him or agatha, so he's like BANKING on it, so hard. and agatha is attempting the whole way to make him understand that it's just... not happening, but he's ignoring her out of desperate delusion, obviously, and then ofc. arthur is not there and he is dead. (unbury me can be metaphorical, as it sort of was). now it is time for tedros to step up into the stupid fucking job he was signed up for at birth, bc someone has to, and arthur is dead and not coming back.

[rebel--hearts]

Tfw thine scrungly was born unto the kinge and quene of camaalot yn the yere off our lord 1373

[rebel--hearts]

surprise! I'm not dead! anyway, the SGE series is about fairytales, but it's also about how the school system is fucked up.

you have to fit these specific archetypes if you want to succeed. you have to conform to what the System wants of you, you have to force yourself to fit that mould. if your peers don't like you, you won't succeed.

if you fail, that's it. no second chances. the standards you have to meet are completely arbitrary. and they say, of course you'll use these skills once you leave school. (no, you won't.)

cliques are not just accepted, but encouraged. if you're good, you can't be friends with someone who isn't, because they're dragging you down.

the system is run by a very powerful man who has no qualms exploiting you. he will use you for his own gain, to make his school look better. you cannot escape this.

if you succeed then maybe you get to be a hero. but if you're a hero, then maybe you die. but if you fail, then you die anyway.

[rebel--hearts]

I love tedros and sophie because they always act like they're a divorced couple only talking through their lawyers, despite being seventeen and never having been married in the first place. there's a certain 'where's my alimony teddy' je ne sais quoi. spiritually sophie is in the doorway of her mansion in one of those silk robes telling the police why, I've not seen my ex husband in months, is there something wrong? :( what a pity while tedros is trying to chew through his binds in the basement

[rebel--hearts]

The End of Ends and the King of Kings: The Case for The Last Ever After As The Superior SGE Ending

I mean. I don't think this is an unpopular opinion, but I did want to have a chat about the two 'endings' of the franchise, bc I find it fascinating. I haven't done one of these bad boys in a while... this is basically a big batshit ramble but it does touch on some interesting things so I'll post it anyway. This is mostly about Sophie.

Putting aside the immortal evergreen can of worms marked 'AGATHA SOPHIE TWINS' for a moment (or forever, bc I'm sick of talking about it and my opinion on it is TL;DR: bad stupid twist esp bc it meant nowt in later books, BUT Agaphie always had zero appeal for me so I have the questionable advantage of apathy on the entire thing), the ending of TLEA was... objectively better.

I, hag wot I am, remember the release of the The Last Ever After and a little bit of the fan spaces as they were at that time. I remember it patchily, but to vaguely set the scene: it is 2015 and you are VERY sure this is the last book in the series, since the tagline is The End Of Ends and it's being billed as such. The two major ships are Tophie and Tagatha, feat. Agaphie (but like, only really on fanfic.net, not the website as much to my memory?). Hophie is like... not taken that seriously. Most other ships barely exist. The fanbase is majority young teenagers, and mostly when you're young you take stuff at face value, and therefore most fans only considered the ships they were very explicitly presented with... unless you're a bit cleverer or a bit more in tune with the world/yourself than the average 12 year old, and remember that gay people exist. So, with this being the Last Book, the main question was: who's getting Tedros? (#feminism #trophyhusband #sexylamptrope #reversebechdelFAILED).

Like, a lot of people hoped it was Agatha, and were fairly sure it would be, but if Sophie didn't become Queen of Camelot, what would she do? Could they live in a weird polycule? (No. it's 2015 and this is a major publishing house). Would Agatha and Sophie become Deans? Twin School Masters like the School Master and the Good Brother? (as we then knew them, bc they only got names in TLEA. Do not say anything to me about Fall of SGE. I know.) Would Sophie become Rafal's Queen to match Agatha, permanently? (Everyone should have known this was not feasible the second rafal's face started falling off in book 1 bc soman has done many things but he never dropped the ball on making it clear rafal was a creep. in the main series idk about the prequels I didn't read em.)

Because it was a middle grade book and middle grade books cannot upset their readership too much (plus this was when one direction was big and teenage girls were hacking airport security and crap, no one was taking chances), it has a fairly conventional ending. Agaphie is put down like an elderly dog via a Sader Ex Machina, which was a bit harsh really. Arguably Soman could have just ignored it and left Agaphie shippers the sandbox of arguing with Tagatha shippers and fanfic, but no. Fly high. What else... Tedros finally stops dithering, pulls a fast one on Sophie, and reclaims agency and self-determination for Token Boy Characters everywhere. He goes back to his happy existence of clinging to Agatha's leg and getting dragged along behind her as she walks. Agatha is a little bit worried about being Queen but she has gained Self Worth and Agency this book so she'll be fine right! And fuck, at least she has something nice that isn't going to get blown to smithereens. (quests for glory (2017) is taken out the back and you hear a gunshot but pumpkinpaperweight says it's unrelated). Tedros has found his mother again and it was a reasonably miserable struggle to square himself with it, that was actually done pretty well. Merlin... Was There and he was funny comic relief for the kiddies. Hort got hashtag rejected, teaching men everywhere that there Is Only One Tedros, And Copycats Don't Get Shit. *paper is passed to the front* oh sorry haha it's about not chasing an impossible toxic beauty standard, because it won't make you happy in the long run, or solve your problems. my bad guys. Everyone has a nice crisp completed character arc, and they're actually good ones too. Lesso is dead and so are a few other people, but no one too major, bc again, middle grade. (I note here that although people were sad Lady Lesso had died, in general the atmosphere around Lesso in 2015 was not the same as it is now and therefore it wasn't like, that big a deal at the time, it was just like "damn :(" more than anything). Callis suffers the fate of important OP mothers to protagonists everywhere, and also dies. At least she can beat Rafal to the afterlife and be there with a hammer when he wakes up.

But Sophie? Right up until the last few pages, it looked like she was going to go to Camelot. It really did. And Tedros was so right to think that was gonna be weird, bc it would be so weird. Sophie being somewhere where she has to be inferior to Agatha all her life?! Don't make me laugh. She needed her own individual ending... and Soman actually wrote her a really good one!!! It was a positive riff on the concept introduced in book 1, of Nevermore, Paradise Alone, in that Sophie could be happy without the conventional Ever romance she destroyed herself repeatedly in the pursuit of, but not be utterly alone, bc she still had Agatha and her friends, and now some students. She adopts the Deanship of the School for Evil, which works incredibly well considering she was reforming Evil with her Lunchtime Lectures even in book 1, and it gives her influence, power and purpose, without her having to ursurp Agatha and impose herself upon a man who has not loved her since halfway through book 1 and will not be made to pretend to. (#tedrosagencyarc #tedrosgirlbossera). Also, I think it was a very good move to make her and Agatha have a day's ride of physical distance between them, to crack that weird codependence they have going on, and force them to develop separate lives where Agatha is not constantly worrying about how to defer to Sophie, or what Sophie will think. (Say what you will about Tagatha but Agatha used up all her deferential spirit on Sophie and has never spared any on Tedros. She will exercise her Woman's Right To Tell Tedros To Shut The Fuck Up. *tedros voice* mine lady wife is passing incensed with me, prithee good lord that I may perish, etc etc etc. he does argue but you can see him getting worse and worse at it throughout the books as he slowly realises a) it's useless b) she's like nearly always right).

So, that's all good right! It's a good ending! Everyone has a completed character arc and a happy ending, even if it's not conventional. All three books closed off. Nice! It--

SON OF A BITCH.

I'll only talk about OTK for brevity's sake. (I have never been brief in my life).

SGE has, for a while, had a Thing about needing to be smarter than readers. Not pinning this as a personal flaw on Soman's part, I actually think it's really just a product of the media environment that we're in right now. Creators get really really weird about fans guessing endings or plot twists. There is a preoccupation with being shocking and subversive. I don't think this is inherently really bad, since who DOESN'T want to impress their audience? But as it is these days it's a bit... extreme. Think Marvel not giving their actors entire scripts so they can't spoil things, or Sherlock and Westworld trying to outsmart their fanbases, or... Game of Thrones. Lol. All this to say, these books read like Soman desperately wanted to blindside readers with the Camelot Years, and especially the ending of One True King, but kind of couldn't, because it was a middle grade fairytale book and he can't kill off Tedros because the book says 8+ on the back, and it's not the done thing in mainstream middle grade. This meant that he had to resort to random bizarre plot points in order to make the path to the ending surprising, since the ending was pretty much predestined. That meant King Teapea, and the crystal ball, and the many, many deaths, and the Putsi bank, and the wizard wishes. And bc everyone was so stressed from the journey there, the ending seems nice and relieving, like an oasis. We got a wedding we expected to get two whole books ago! Yay!

...except we didn't, bc Tedros's freak magic grandpa DIED and stole the spotlight before the ceremony and then the book ends!

(as an actual ending scene it's fine and well written, I just have beef with merlin, and think the ending as a whole is. questionable. the ending ending is a perfectly servicable scene)

If you look too hard at the OTK ending as a whole, bits start falling off. Questions that have just not been answered are left. And it's not like TLEA, where it didn't really matter what Hester or Beatrix were gonna do, because we had no expectation of anything they should be doing. Here, the Coven started QFG looking for a School Master, as a key plot point in the new trilogy. It was sort of maybe implied it would be Nicola? At least I felt it was. But by the end, there is no School Master, the plot point is dropped, the Coven's quest is incomplete, and Nicola, despite QFG heavily insinuating she'd be important, is irrelevant. Sophie is now not Dean (it's... Manley?? Ok boring. and we don't even know who Good's is, it's probably Anemone) and is riding off into the sunset with Hort, whose wolf bit... died? Idk. Tedros is apparently a-ok with his dad sending him to be executed, and being executed in general. He's literally seen the abyss but he's chill w it. (Again; middle grade. Soman did a big scary concept, then couldn't make it scary, bc it was too scary for the kids. Fair is fair. Fanfic can fill the gap I guess.) Agatha's there, getting sidelined at her own wedding in a fairly OOC wedding dress, #storyofherlife. The Coven are doing the Sherrif's job or something, it's weird. Nicola has a kpop boyfriend. It's all weird.

(Tedros and Agatha get a much more balanced ending in TLEA, too; while both endings have a bend towards Sophie and are from her POV- which is fine if you think Sophie is the main character, which Soman seemingly does- Agatha gets almost no narrative attention at the prep for her own damn wedding, and considering Tedros got his head hacked off not too long ago, everyone seems a damn sight more concerned about other things. They're much more present in the ending of the School Years compared to the Camelot Years, ironically, considering they practically are Camelot. Figure that out.)

If you remember the promotional material for Quests for Glory (oh! I know, eons ago), they did trailers for various characters who were implied to be important, in rising order of importance. (These were really good btw. We were losing our minds. It was so fun). Tedros was billed as most important, which was the biggest fucking lie in the world, because he is STILL a supporting character in the CAMELOT YEARS, which should have been called the Sophie Years. But Nicola, Kiko, Bogden, Willam, Beatrix, Reena, and Kei were all on there, and hardly any of them ended up being important in the slightest. Bodgen and Willam were there for nothing but foreshadowing; even Willam being the brother of Tristan/Yara had no bearing. Kei was just there to obsess over Rhian and then die. Reena, Kiko, and Beatrix and Nicola were shunted into the Knights of Eleven alongside the other sidelined female characters who didn't have a job (Guinevere, Dean Brunhilde, The Coven, Maid Marian, Queen Jacinda). There is a whole scarf's worth of loose threads in the end of OTK, where these characters are introduced for one minor purpose, or are hangovers from previous books, and are either hastily killed off, or just simply purposeless.

I understand that Soman was just... obliged to do a lot of stuff in the OTK ending, (imagine if the wedding hadn't happened at all, that would have been my final straw) but really it's less the fanservice and bizarre choices, and more that entire loose threads are left dangling, and Sophie's ending, that piss me off so bad.

and that tedros wore a white and gold suit to his wedding in magic medieval fantasy world. for all the movie's faults at least they had confidence that tedros could slay...

Ppl argue that Sophie's ending is a 'learning to love yourself before you can love anyone else' kinda thing (in which case soman needs to stop taking plot pointers from rupaul), and her learning to settle for a man who isn't a perfect image of Tedrosesque Princeliness, which is a fair enough interpretation, but it is just... nowhere near as interesting as the TLEA ending? Her endgame being Hort is so... naff. Hort should have had a chance to develop as a person beyond his obsession with Sophie. The end of TLEA WAS his chance! But it doesn't happen, and he falls into the spike-pit trope of like, slightly stalkerish guy gets framed as funny and harmless and therefore gets the girl. It's not even consistent; he improves a bit, then he gets trolleyed and suggests offing Agatha, and then Sophie calls him a sad soft boy and for some reason we're meant to like, believe that, even though he's been acting a bit of a dick for no real reason. Also, I didn't even think many people cared about Hophie like that?! I didn't think Soman cared about Hophie like that! And I do not understand why Sophie couldn't have had Hort and the Deanship? Couldn't they have gone back to school and had one of those funny unethical Teachers Dating relationships, at the very least? The Deanship was her perfect ending! To take that away and replace it with Hort just seems so... idk, flat. I was so dismayed when Sophie started dismissing the role and talking down about it / letting Rhian convince her it was a lower purpose in QFG and ACOT; should have seen it coming that she'd ditch it. It's disappointing that the Deanship and the (albeit dysfunctional) love of Agatha, the Coven, Tedros, etc weren't seen as enough for her; they should have been. Love, purpose, food made no sense to me; she already had the first two! It makes so much more narrative sense for Sophie to be alone, but alone and happy, because it bucks the trends of villain's ultimate loneliness being a punishment! That was the whole thing! She was offered companionship in Camelot, and love from Hort, and she said no to both, because she chose solitude herself, and rewarded herself with it. It makes the originally less-than-ideal Paradise Alone into something she can like, because that's what Sophie does; when classic Evil isn't fit for her purpose she changes it to make it work for her! That's why she has to be Dean! She is New Evil! She is the advent of Evil relevance and progression! And that's why it's ok that she's also doing dumb shit like building statues of herself and making kids do menial tasks for her; it's funny, and it's making a point of her triumph. She's not punished; she's rewarded, with power and purpose and friends that love her. Why wasn't that enough?!

(Not to mention that Manley undid everything, so her brief stint as Dean was literally completely erased. Ugh.)

This is a mad ramble, but the point is; the OTK ending is so messy, and I genuinely am a little bit surprised that Soman's editors let it get through with so many holes in it? Just on a narrative level; no School Master, no Deans, no relevance for Nicola, no follow-through on most quests. I know that Soman clearly thought he couldn't rehash the ending of TLEA in OTK, which to some degree I agree with, but the ways he chose to differ were not ways I liked, and he didn't even tie up the things he'd set up in earlier books. If we do ever get that 'adult' third trilogy Soman keeps going on about, (which I sincerely doubt we will, and also hope we won't), perhaps we'll have a final 'official' ending, again... but I sincerely doubt it'll be anywhere near as good as the original ending, and the one I still like to consider the 'One True' ending. ha ha. alright go away I'm done