#The Revenge Game

[ash-and-books]

Rating: 1/5

Book Blurb: A wickedly comic feminist mystery about the dark side of a hopeless romantic's seemingly perfect love story—for readers of Jessica Goodman and Kara Thomas.

Alyson is a romantic, and sometimes it gets her into trouble. Like last summer, she thought her co-worker was into her, when in reality he found her flirting pathetic.

Then she meets Brenton Riggs Jr., and right away she knows that their connection isn’t just in her head. When he swoops in to save her one night from a less than savory party encounter, she falls head-over-heels. Finally, someone Alyson likes who likes her back!

But when she finds out about the King’s Cup—a competition the guys at their boarding school started to see who has the most sexual prowess—she’s put on edge. Does Brenton really want to be with her, or is he just trying to win? Then Alyson and the other girls at the school start a competition of their own: The Queen’s Cup. It’s all about reclaiming their power. But as the competition heats up, Alyson’s relationship begins to fall apart—and it isn’t long before the cracks in her perfect love story start to show through.

Review:

A hopeless romantic soon finds herself in the middle of a terrible game: King's Cup, in which boys track points of how far they can go with girls.... so she invents Queen's Cup to get revenge, the only problem is she's not sure whether or not her new boyfriend is participating in the game. Alyson is a hopeless romantic, some might call her desperate, for a boyfriend. When she is rescued at a party by her handsome new english partner, she think's its a sign that her luck is changing. Riggs is everything she could ever want, a hot lacrosse captain who is not only sweet but the perfect boyfriend. The only problem is that she's stumbled upon a sexist game that the boys in her school have been playing, a game called King's Cup, in which boys tally and track points to see who has the most sexual prowess. Alyson and some other girls come up with a game of their own, Queen's Cup in which the girls will reclaim their power. Yet the longer the game goes on the more Alyson begins to question her relationship with Riggs. Is he just playing her or is he actually a good boyfriend? This was a bit of a hard one to get into for me. It was a young adult feminist mystery but it just kind of fell flat for me. I wasn't that invested in Alyson as a protagonist and the mystery was meh at best. Honestly, it just didn't live up to the potential that I thought it could have had and it just felt a bit juvenile and one dimensional with the bad guys. Overall, it just wasn't for me unfortunately.

*Thanks Netgalley and Random House Children's, Delacorte Press for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

[bookcoversonly]

Title: The Revenge Game | Author: Jordyn Taylor | Publisher: Delacorte Press (2023)

[koyoriin]

"for all of my life, a stranger i remain"

https://twitter.com/koyoriin https://patreon.com/koyorin https://instagram.com/koyori_n https://bsky.app/profile/koyorin.bsky.social

[hysterotic]

Please make more of those twitter threads of the Toman characters 😭 my ass was HOLLERING at all of them ☠️

meowww here’s how it feels to have tkrv guys in ur tl

[drownedkiwi]

And if I said lucanis's and spites major conflict comes from lucanis shutting down and refusing to experience life out of fear. That lucanis not fulfilling their deal is out of refusing to live and not revenge. That spite desperately wants lucanis to live. What then

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: Best form of Revenge

Alien: What is the best way to get back at someone you despise?

Human: Why are you asking me?

Alien: Because humans are renowned for their ability to plan elaborate revenge schemes against those who have slighted them.

Human: On behalf of the human race I am offended by that.

Alien: I have witnessed you slowly drive your co-worker insane by moving everything in their office one inch to the left every day for 3 months.

Human: To be fair I only kept doing that because they refused to pay me back my $1.50 I loaned them for lunch.

Alien: *Stares at human with mocking eyebrows

Human: Fine, I see your point.

Human: Alright, here is what you do….

Alien: Wait, do you not wish to know why I want revenge?

Human: No.

Alien: Really?

Human: Yes.

Alien: Oh….okay.

Alien: So what should I do?

Human: Ignore them.

Alien: What?

Human: Ignore them, diminish them; make them feel beneath your notice.

Alien: That seems rather childish for an elaborate revenge plot.

Human: That is because I haven’t expanded it.

Human: If they come to you to gloat about something they did, anything, ask them who they are.

Human: When they explain who they are and how you should know them, still act like you have no idea who they are.

Human: If they continue to persist about how you should know them simply, and this is important, shrug and say “If you say so”, and then leave.

Alien: How is this revenge?

Human: Because in their eyes now they will think that they need to prove themselves somehow for you to notice them.

Human: Like a kid trying to win his drunken father’s affection.

Alien: That’s rather dark.

Human: So is revenge; keep up.

Human: Now they will continue to come back to you day after day trying to win your notice and you will continue to dismiss them or give them the bare minimum attention.

Human: If you want to get further under their skin start talking up someone else in their presence; someone who you would consider more of a rival then they are.

Alien: How would that work?

Human: Like this. *In mocking alien voice “Yes, yes, I’m sure you’ve done rather well for yourself; but not as much as Thomson on the 3rd floor. That bastard has been upselling me all week and I’m convinced he’s the one stealing my parking space.”

Alien: What good will that do to bring in someone else?

Human: By actually acknowledging someone who your target thinks is beneath them, they will further become enraged as you’ve just reinforced how little they appear on your radar.

Alien: And that works?

Human: Indeed.

Human: You need to treat your displeasure towards someone as gift to them, for you have deemed their existence worthy of acknowledgement.

Alien: Alright, I guess I could give it a shot.

------------------------------

*Two Months later

Human: So how’s the revenge going?

Alien: I’m not sure.

Human: What do you mean you’re not sure?

Alien: I mean they came up to me today and offered to have sex with me.

Human: Oh….in that case they must be very desperate for you to notice them.

Alien: What should I do?

Human: If you want to keep up with the revenge have sex with them, then afterwards don’t speak with them.

Human: If they come up to you and demand an explanation say that the sex was so bad you wanted to forget that moment by never speaking with them again.

Alien: ……………….

Alien: Who broke you to make you so devious?

Human: *Grins as they sip their drink

Human: I’m human; we were made broken.

[bisexualchaosdemon]

Thinking about Andrew Minyard becoming a household name once he joins the pros. Thinking about him defying every single person who thought he would never amount to anything. Thinking about him spending his whole life being tossed aside as worthless, only to become Andrew Minyard, best goalkeeper in the NEL and Olympic gold medalist.

[ghost-bxrd]

Prompt:

It’s not that Jason forgot, per se.

But between smuggling a toddler out of the League of Assassins, trekking halfway across the world, and finding a suitable hiding place that’s also child friendly… well, it kind of slipped his mind that he’s supposed to be… dead.

Something that comes back to bite him in the ass when he takes Dami out for some ice cream and just so happens to run into non other than Brucie-fucking-Wayne

[pirateprincessjess]

This pinball machine, Revenge From Mars, has one of the coolest gimmicks of all time! It projects holograms onto the playfield! (Also, I made that shot on the first try while narrating this video, and I’m incredibly proud of myself)

[thelvadams]

10 YEARS OF METAL GEAR RISING: REVENGEANCE

first released on February 19th 2013

[tampire]

Heidern and Leona have their revenge on Rugal and Goenitz in King of Fighters XV

[mikashida]

revengeance raiden my beloved

[acecroft]

SAW 3D (2010) dir. Kevin Greutert

[atlas-of-galaxies]

dig two graves

[nelkcats]

The correct meaning

Danny didn't know that the first thing he would do when he retired from being a hero would be to open a flower shop, but he found that flowers brought him peace. Maybe it had something to do with commemorating the dead, or with his lack of a headstone, but flowers were soothing.

Ghosts never messed with them, they were almost sacred in the Infinite Realms, and with the help of his friends he researched the meaning of all of them. Besides carrying a small dictionary because he didn't have a photographic memory.

Unfortunately, he couldn't open his flower shop in Amity, his parents made the whole thing very awkward and he didn't know if he would be able to make a bouquet that would go to that cemetery, a cemetery where he didn't belong.

So he opened his store in Gotham, where his sister was staying. He bought a small place and went about tending to his plants. He tended to anyone and gave them a little bouquet depending on what he saw in them. Ivy seemed delighted.

Jason didn't know what to think of hid bouquet with orange lilies, lavender, hyacinths and gardenias. It was certainly an odd combination, and he didn't know why the florist looked so determined to give him the bouquet, but he accepted it, the boy looked happy about it before going back to work.

A week later he gave him a different bouquet, and Jason wondered if he was going crazy, was the florist flirting with him or had he read too many books?

[drenched-in-sunlight]

*SoTE spoilers undercut

This is a continued discussion in light of Marika's newly discovered tragedy. It changes so many things about how we look at the story thus far but more importantly - the DLC story trailer, especially this scene:

think about how Messmer knows, very acutely, that at one point his mother could have been cut up and put in a jar. and that his other kins were not so lucky....... it gives that scene such a tragic edge.

he wasn't doing this just for the violence. this is his answer to Marika's love and all she has done for him. yeah it's not right, it's not justified, but as something done to avenge for the kind of pain she went through? it won't be logical nor right but it's something he will do again without hesitation.

the infirmary in Shadow's Keep shows that he's trying to care for and save whatever left of her people. their people.

the line he said in his armor set description hits different when you consider all that. he wants to be the heir to all her sorrow and all of her pain. wishing that he could alleviate even just a bit of the burden of her grief and survivor guilt.

i wonder if, when Marika hid him in the Land of Shadow, fearing people will judge him for the malevolent snake he carried, she raised him in her home village? this will explain why the Tree Sentinels guarding the village drop two Blessing of Marika - the blessing that specifically stated Marika made it for Messmer's sake and him alone. it will also explain how he knew of his Mother's tragic past and took it upon himself to carry out her wish of vengeance for her people.

(also if you wanted to get to Marika's village, you have to perform the O Mother gesture before her statue in his Shadow Keep, implying he's guarding the way to her home village as well.)

One other thing I like is that in the story trailer, the heroic music sounds like it's for Miquella. and it is, in a way. it is his boss music, but the lyrics has "Ave Marika Aeterna" (Hail, Marika The Eternal).

Given that the boss arena is where Marika - the sole survivor of a whole village, walked through to salvage the remains of her people, making them the symbol of her divine ascension, I wonder if that OST is actually for her - the God, the woman whose story is finally realized in this DLC, and those female voices singing in honour of her are the spirits of her fallen kins: cheering on their last hope for justice. Through this girl, those people who had been wronged and died there will live on eternally.

All this of course seems like such a charitable take on all this, after all Marika ended up being just like the oppressors who used to put her people in jars, but I think I just want to appreciate how the environmental storytelling of this DLC is simply amazing. and once you consider that this is, in the end, Marika's story, everything will make a lot more sense.