#brendannotes

[brendan-block]

Sebastian Brett

Nicknames: Seb, The Brettalion

Age: 40

Height: 6'2"

Hair Colour: Blonde

Eye Colour: Blue

Nationality: British-American

Sexuality: Homosexual (closeted)

Occupation: Detective Inspector

Face Claim: Alessandro Preziosi (Body Double: Josh Holloway)

Voice: Dermot Magennis (Alessandro's official English dub actor)

Back when he was still a rookie officer, Sebastian Brett took it upon himself to look into Brendan Block and his past at the request of Miranda Cotton. This came after her numerous reports on the man's increasingly violent and abusive behaviour went unchecked by his superiors--even after Brendan was accused of murdering his ex-wife and Miranda's younger brother. At the time Brett was partnered with fellow officer and senior detective inspector Rob Pryor, whom Miranda initially went to for help. When Pryor learned that Brett was now investigating Brendan personally, he threatened him to stop poking around in his friend's private affairs. Brett subsequently became suspicious of his partner, and after a bit of snooping and later trailing Pryor outside of work, he learned that he was not only friends with Brendan, but was secretly being paid off to stalk his victims and keep his crimes hushed up. Brett personally saw to it that Pryor was removed from his position on the force, and later went on to aid in catching and arresting Brendan for Miranda's murder.

Brett has no idea that Miranda's death was faked in order to save herself from Brendan and get justice (of a sort) for her murdered loved ones. He is, however, aware of that fact that Brendan's freedom was purchased by a powerful crime syndicate, and he's been working ever since to send Brendan back to prison for the murders he actually committed.

Have a sample quote:

"As I'm sure you and all the other patrons here have been made well aware, Mister Block, an innocent young woman was brutally assaulted tonight and left for dead behind your establishment. The least you can do is act like you give a shit. Especially since, according to several witnesses, she was your date for the evening and you were the last one seen with her before the attack -- loudly arguing, in fact, over her rejection of your sexual advances. That really doesn't paint you in a good light, does it. Least of all when I consider our very colourful history together."

IMPORTANT NOTES: Brett is actually a canon character from Secret Smile whom I've basically decided to turn into an OC (of sorts? I suppose he's more accurately just "canon-divergent", but idk), with some inspiration taken from Leon Kennedy (Resident Evil) and Alec Hardy (Broadchurch).

[brendan-block]

Here's some old notes I wrote about my backstory for Brendan, including his traumatic childhood as Simon, his years at university, the affair with his professor, etc; everything that led up to Simon becoming Brendan.

As with almost all of these old drafts I'm finally publishing, this needs a rewrite and is unfinished. For now I'm posting it as is.

Simon becoming Brendan is not the result of him getting beaten into a coma by his then-girlfriend's husband. He is not brain-damaged. It is the culmination of everything that happened to him up to the point of his affair with his university professor.

The violent death of his parents was extremely traumatising. He actually doesn't remember all that much of what their life was like before the fire, except for the occasional flash he gets. On that day he loses not only his parents but also his grandmother, because she's too mentally unstable to care for them properly. Things aren't looking good for them, but then, finally, they get a ray of hope. People from the church  - people they know with faces they recognise - come to take them away. These are the people that Brendan remembers as his prominent caretakers - not his loving parents. These children don't really know them like they think they do and what should have been a happy home and the rebuilding of their lives, becomes a horrific nightmare. Brendan literally has the whole "disobedience must be punished" beaten into him (and even now it's still something he repeats A LOT and it's one of his number one excuses for doing what he does) until it's fully ingrained in him and he comes to believe it fully that he deserves the pain these monsters have wrought upon him.

What he doesn't believe, however, is that his sister should be held to those same standards. Brendan completely blames himself for the fact that his sister nearly burned to death and is permanently scarred over half of her body, because the last thing his mother ever said to him was to save her and protect her, and he couldn't get to her in time. It was a firefighter that saved the both of them. In Brendan's eyes his sister is a goddamn saint for putting up with him at all after what he's done to her and he's determined to protect her. But he can't and he fails her, over and over and over again, every night the monsters come and snatch her out of her bed. He does catch one of the caretakers once in the act of raping her and it is because of that, that he never forces himself on anyone (despite admittedly being tempted at times).

When they eventually leave the village, Brendan goes off on his own. He doesn't want to be with his sister anymore and he can't bear to see their grandmother when he feels like she abandoned them. He needs to get away from them and the shadow of everything they went through and go where he can just breathe and be someone else for awhile. So he goes traveling to all these places he always wanted to go, but none of it is anything like he saw in the brochures or in the books he read as a kid. It's not fun or exciting. It's just lonely. He's lonely. He doesn't know how to interact with people anymore. For years it was always just him and his sister locked up tiny rooms until they were brought out for service or dinner or for appearances' sake with the other villagers (since, after all, they were the late Laird and Lady's children). Most of his attempts go south quickly. Women either laugh at him or flat-out ignore him, and most men attack him because he either talked to a woman they were with or simply because they don't like how weak and timid he is.

At university things aren't much better. He stops talking to people altogether and stops trying to make friends and just keeps to himself. Most people don't seem to want anything to do with him anyway, so he just doesn't bother anymore. Until he meets Jeanette. Jeanette is (was) one of his professors, a beautiful golden-hair goddess in his eyes, and the very first person in a very long time to be kind and patient with him. She gets him to open up again and because of that Brendan quickly falls in love with her. Jeanette in turn becomes horribly attracted to the broken soul she finds in him. Both are fully aware of the fact that Jeanette is the wife of a fellow teacher, but they have an affair anyway. It's through this affair that Brendan learns the sort of man his other professor really is. He's exactly like the caretakers from the church, except instead of hurting innocent children, this man directs his abuse at his wife; at the woman Brendan loves. He tries to come to her defense, but just like with the men he crossed paths with in his travels.. just like when he was a child.. he is weak and lacks the skill to fight. He fails Jeanette (much like he believes he failed his sister) and they are brutally beaten for it.

When he wakes up he is alone. Jeanette is not there. Neither is her husband. But then nurses and a doctor come in and they’re telling him he’s been in a coma for several months. He has messages waiting for him from Jeanette. Their relationship is over and she’s gone back to her husband. He can’t understand it. How could she go back to him? But then he starts thinking about it. He thinks about the men in his life, of the things he experienced with them, of the things they said to him, the things they did to him. He wasn’t like them at all. These [UNFINISHED]

[brendan-block]

BACKSTORY NOTES: The first time Brendan and Matthieu had sex

(WARNING for a brief mention of ultra violence as well as some questionable consent leaning towards dub-con; this post is directly related to this post.)

(This is in need of a proper rewrite, but for now I'm posting this note as-is.)

While out on a contract mission together in Paris, Brendan finally got fed up with Matthieu constantly leaving him emotionally/sexually frustrated and refusing to make their relationship clear, so he stormed out one night and got the attention he needed from a hired prostitute. Matthieu caught them in the act, violently killed the prostitute (via cutting their throat to the point of near decapitation), and took right over fucking Brendan.

As bad as that sounds (and mun is well aware), it was exactly what Brendan intended for, because he set the whole thing up so Matthieu would catch them, hopefully get jealous, and force him to act on his feelings. (So the whole thing was kind of.. manipulated into happening, even though Brendan had no real way of ensuring Matthieu would act to his wishes.)

[brendan-block]

During his university days at Sorbonne, Brendan would make a point of visiting a small bookshop every morning just outside campus. This shop was Le Jardin du Livre ("The Book Garden"). His initial interest in the place sparked from his love for reading and the shop's name; he loved the fact that it "sounded a bit fairytale". But the main reason he chose to visit every morning was the elderly shop owner's pet, a rabbit named Bouton. Brendan asked each visit if he could buy the rabbit, but the shop owner refused and eventually gave Bouton away to a relative.

[brendan-block]

Brendan and Barty’s History

AKA here’s the context around Brendan’s ‘happy birthday’ post to Barty, for anyone curious. Because the Mun forgets sometimes that not everyone’s aware of their “connection”. (Also, they're both my muses!)

Brendan met Barty Lockhart and his family shortly after moving to Hastings. Barty’s husband Gilderoy found Brendan wandering the streets lost and alone during a nasty rainstorm and invited him into the safety of the Lockhart family Estate to wait it out. Brendan was immediately attracted to Gilderoy and only became all the more intrigued after being introduced to Barty--because despite having silver hair and a few extra wrinkles on his face, Barty was every bit Brendan's doppelganger.

It didn't take long for Brendan to charm his way into bed with the couple and it took even less time to get himself kicked out. Unbeknownst to Brendan, Barty was an alien (specifically an AU version of the Tenth Doctor) and as such had special powers, including telepathy and psychic sight. Both of these abilities suddenly kicked in one night while they were having sex and Barty was able to "see" the monster Brendan truly was. Out of fear for his own safety and his family’s, Barty put a stop to everything immediately and forced Brendan to leave the Estate. Because they couldn’t reveal the truth about Barty’s powers, Gilderoy explained simply that Barty had got a “bad feeling” from Brendan and, trusting in that feeling, it was better they terminate their relationship and Brendan’s stay in their home.

At that time Brendan didn’t have a job or anywhere else to go, so Gilderoy, feeling bad about how things had ended between them, gave him money and set him up in the apartment Brendan still calls home to this day. The building itself belonged to the Lockharts at that time (it now belongs to Matthieu, unbeknownst to Brendan, but I digress..) and they regularly rented it out to people in need. For the first few months Brendan was allowed to live there rent-free, and behind Barty’s back he even continued to have a sexual relationship with Gilderoy on the side. When Barty eventually found out and ordered Gilderoy to end the affair, Brendan confessed to being “in love” with Gilderoy too and ordered him to leave Barty instead.

Gilderoy chose Barty over Brendan and this ultimately is what began the feud between them. Because Brendan didn’t appreciate having his latest toy “stolen” from him and losing the cashflow that came with it. But rather than seek a violent revenge against them, Brendan chose to get a job so he could continue living in the apartment the Lockharts had given him and used his monthly rent payments as a way to stay close to the family and antagonize them (particularly Barty) to the fullest while unsuccessfully trying to “steal” Gilderoy back.

Years passed. Brendan quietly took control of the Lockharts’ apartment building, paid the other tenants to quietly leave, and transformed their old spaces into holding cells for the people he secretly kidnapped and tortured to death as a serial killer. The basement in particular was given special attention and turned into a twisting maze with a torture chamber and furnace at its center to dispose of corpses. During all the “reconstruction” on the building, Brendan also met, fell in love with, and married a man named Gamma. What began as a happy and genuinely loving marriage quickly fell apart in the face of Brendan’s violent and jealous nature. Brendan told no one of his husband’s existence and kept him hidden away in their apartment, regularly beating him within an inch of his life for daring to get too close to the windows.

 When Brendan suddenly stopped paying rent and blocked all contact with the Lockharts, Gilderoy (reluctantly) went to his apartment to investigate. He found a broken and clearly beaten Gamma there instead and rescued him without hesitation, taking him back to Barty at the Estate to be cared for and kept safe.

STILL TO ADD: Brendan gets revenge on Gilderoy for taking Gamma by kidnapping and torturing Barty (..including severing one of Barty’s hands).

Reference links for the kidnapping/torture thread:

https://bartyjoonyah.tumblr.com/post/165527826852/

https://bartyjoonyah.tumblr.com/post/166833798137/

https://glockhart.tumblr.com/post/167023587485/

Reference links for the aftermath thread:

https://bartyjoonyah.tumblr.com/post/167674814792/

https://bartyjoonyah.tumblr.com/post/167730911887/

https://glockhart.tumblr.com/post/167768335610/

[brendan-block]

Miranda's Apartment Building

In-story Location: Everdeen Road, Acton, London.

Real Filming Location: 28 Churchfield Road, Acton, London, W3 6EB, UK. Located next door to CSS Electrical Distributors Ltd (through which I found the flat!)

[brendan-block]

Backstory: The Diamond Song and Brendan’s Turtle

Feel free to skip this because this is entirely about Brendan and Matthieu.

(Also this has apparently been sitting in my drafts for three years, whoops. Finally posting it because I was trying to find it earlier among my notes and realised I’d never actually put it on the blog and now I’m fearful that tumblr will just eat it like it’s done with other drafts of mine.)

During their first mission together in Paris, Brendan and Matthieu had to stay in a small apartment directly above a jazz bar/cafe. When staff and patrons left for the night Matthieu decided to show Brendan his skills on the piano downstairs, after casually mentioning that he could play courtesy of being forcibly trained as a child. That night he played an original composition he called “Diamonds”. Brendan later put some simple lyrics to it (like.. years later, after they eventually started dating) that weren’t necessarily fitting to the title but fitting to them personally.

Viens avec moi (Come with me..) Ma petite tortue (My little turtle) Mon petit pour tu (My little “for you”) J'ai besoin de toi (I need you) J'ai envie de toi (I want you) Viens avec moi (Come with me..)

The third line “mon petit pour tu” is not grammatically correct but it is intentionally so (the rest might not be perfect either, but that’s because my French is not perfect), because it’s also an in-joke between Brendan and Matthieu that’s tied to the previous line “ma petite tortue”. When Matthieu laughs, his head wobbles ever so slightly and the first time that Brendan noticed this it made him think of a bobble-head turtle, much like the toys some people like to keep on the dashboard of their vehicles. Thus Brendan referring to Matthieu as his “little turtle”. Brendan has a hard time remembering and saying the word “tortue”, though, because he instinctively for whatever reason wants to make a ‘puh’ sound instead of ‘toh’ after “ma petite”, changing “tortue” (turtle) to “pour tu” (for you). It makes Matthieu laugh every time. It’s because of all this that “Diamonds” has the alternative name of “The Turtle in the Ocean of Diamonds”.

NOTE: I think the reason I let this post sit for so long (and forgot about it) is my being indecisive as to what animal Brendan would affectionately associate to Matthieu and occasionally refer to him as, as an alternative to the more traditional French “mon canard” (my duck). I’d always intended to change duck to turtle, but the more I thought about it the more I worried it might come across as unintentionally offensive because of Matthieu’s disability making him physically slow (I’m sure the misunderstanding would be highly more likely to occur between characters in-thread than anything happening OOC, but.. my brain won’t let me not worry). The alternatives to turtle were frog and bat, the first because of Matthieu’s love of frog soup, the second because of Matthieu’s vampiric blood-drinking of his murder victims. Bat obviously won, but I still imagine Brendan referring to Matthieu as his little turtle from time to time.

NOTE: I did actually compose a small tune on my old piano to be Matthieu’s “Diamonds” song (because I’m that Extra) and even recorded it, but I’ve gone through several computers since then and no longer have a piano or have access to the recording or even remember the tune. My headcanoned “stand in”, however, is Temple of Dreams by Jonathan Fritzén.

[brendan-block]

BRENDAN’S MAIDS (aka ‘the triplets’)

Babette: dark red lipstick, messy ponytail

Nanette: light pink lipstick, loose curls

Suzette: dark pink lipstick, tight bun

[brendan-block]

-

A part of me legitimately wants to go through all of the smut threads on this blog to see if I’ve ever actually wrote Brendan having a Thing about not yelling his partner’s name during sex, but I also clearly remember this bitch fucking SCREAMING Kilgrave’s name at least once, so I already know that isn’t true.

*sips tea*

[brendan-block]

Taynuilt is pronounced “Tay-Nult”. The i is silent.

MUN’S NOTE: I keep mispronouncing Taynuilt as “Tan-Wilt” (and have for YEARS and will probably keep doing it forever..), because 1) I thought the y was silent and 2) the way I taught myself how to remember to spell Taynuilt was from associating the ‘-uilt’ with the word quilt (”kwilt”).

[brendan-block]

-

It’s that time of night where my mind likes to wander places and right now I can’t stop thinking about Brendan and Kerry (Miranda’s older sister). Specifically, I keep thinking about the fact that Brendan had Kerry change her appearance to look like Miranda after they started dating.

Brendan always went on about how similar they were to each other, especially in looks, and about how he was the only one who could compare them in bed (because he’s a nasty creep).

So of course my brain goes, “What if he imagined Miranda every time he was in bed with Kerry? WHAT IF HE CALLED OUT THE WRONG NAME?”

And then I remembered.

In the two instances in the movie where Brendan is shown having sex (technically he’s only shown once and that’s with Miranda; the second instance where he’s with Kerry is simply heard, but I digress..) Brendan never calls out his partner’s name.  Though to be fair, I don’t think he knew Miranda’s name at the time? She’s not shown telling him at least. But if we go by the book, he knew her name already. He knew who she was before they’d even met because of a mutual friend.

Regardless I’m wondering now if it’s a Thing of his not to call out names during sex.

[brendan-block]

All these years I thought Brendan’s grandmother was nameless in the book and so I just headcanon named her Nancy for my roleplay. It’s in all my notes, everything.

I’m currently re-reading the book for the first time in a very long time and it actually mentions her name. Once. During the trials at the end of the book.

It’s VICTORIA.

[brendan-block]

Backstory Notes to Self (so I can finish a headcanon post later, or I might not. I might just leave this in its unedited glory)

The Dungeon is located beneath Chateau de Chauveilles in Lyons-la-Forêt, NOT the abandoned facility outside Marseille. Originally it was, but I scrapped the idea. The facility is where Brendan and Matthieu were reunited after Matthieu kidnapped Brendan to keep him from getting assassinated by Parrain. Brendan was moved FROM the facility TO the Dungeon to be tortured. What happened with protecting Brendan? Matthieu decided to take the opportunity presented to him and punish Brendan for leaving him. It’s how Brendan ended up with severe burn scars all over his arms because Matt loves to use iron-hot chains in his torture methods.

but I digress because that’s not what this is about. (except I end up talking about it later in this post again anyway because I can’t help myself)

The Dungeon is one giant underground torture chamber, not unlike the torture chamber Brendan built for himself beneath his apartment building because Matthieu was Brendan’s mentor and obviously Brendan learned a lot from him. The Dungeon contains several iron-bar cells to house victims. One of those cells is specifically known as The Cage. It’s the only cell with a name and it has only ever had one occupant -- Brendan.

(cut because this post got LONG)

Brendan was forced to live in the Cage after he “won” the obviously-fucking-rigged competition to become Matthieu’s apprentice torturer for the Organisation (and starting the one-sided rivalry with weaselfaced bitchbaby Satini. because Brendan give zero fucks about Satini but anywayy). Brendan lived in the Cage (usually chained to the wall or hanging by his arms from the ceiling) until the start of his training. For weeks, possibly months. Every day during the wait Matthieu brought in men, women, children, sometimes even some of Brendan’s fellow recruits, and forced Brendan to watch as he slaughtered them, always demanding afterwards for Brendan to “Tell me why I’m doing this.”. Every time Brendan said that he didn’t know, Matthieu would beat him severely. Brendan did of course eventually figure it out. Matthieu wasn’t looking for some divine answer to explain the evil in him or justify his actions or soothe any guilty feelings he might have (because fuck knows he has none). He was, in his own way, baring himself to Brendan in hopes that Brendan would accept him and what he had to teach him (because for Matthieu it was never just about taking Brendan as an apprentice and teaching him the art of torture; he wanted a companion/friend/lover of his own choosing).

Still undecided if I want to scrap the idea of Brendan living in The Cage before his training. Because I also love the idea of Matthieu just.. pulling Brendan aside after the competition and being all “I’m terribly sorry but we seem to not have anymore rooms in hq and there’s no hotel vacancies in town or hostels or bnbs, and don’t bother asking around because I own everyone in this city and if anyone dares say you can stay with them I’ll fucking kill them and SO I GUESS YOU’LL JUST TO HAVE TO COME LIVE WITH ME WHO HAS NO ULTERIOR MOTIVES WHATSOEVER AND IS NOT LONELY AT ALL AND DESPERATE FOR YOU TO LOVE ME PLEASELOVEMEBRENDAN.”

For certain though he did live in The Cage for several months after Parrain’s failed assassination attempt on him. Matthieu kidnapped Brendan and put him down in The Dungeon to protect him, but they’d long broken up by this point and it was the first time they’d seen each other since Brendan left, and they were still pissed about the breakup so Matthieu turned around and tortured Brendan by burning him with iron-hot chains. Matthieu hurt Brendan the same night he saved him from getting killed; the reason Brendan stayed in the Cage for months afterwards was because Matthieu had to nurse Brendan back to health (he finally feeling some guilt..) while also keeping Brendan hidden from his wife, so Brendan couldn’t be moved into the Chateau properly.

[brendan-block]

In the book, Miranda says that she and Brendan were together a total of 8 days and briefly mentions what they did during that time.

Day 1: They meet up for drinks. Day 2: They go out to the movies. Day 3: Miranda invites Brendan to her flat for the first time, where they also have sex for the first time. Day 4-6: They continue to meet up at Miranda’s flat and have sex. Day 7: Miranda finds some of Brendan’s things mixed in with hers around her flat, suspiciously like he’s moving himself in. She doesn’t get a chance to talk to him about it. Day 8: Miranda comes home from work to find that Brendan’s inside going through her things and reading her private diary. He confesses to taking her spare keys and letting himself into the flat. They fight, Miranda tells Brendan it’s over between them, and Brendan storms out.

NOTES

--When Miranda says their relationship is over, Brendan tries to convince her to give it some time instead of ending things so suddenly, because they’d been happy together and to him every day they spent together was wonderful and special. Miranda then says to herself, in her head, that their time together meant very little to her at all (to which I’m laughing because my muse is both hurt and offended as I’m reading it), but she refuses to say it to Brendan’s face because she doesn’t want to fight, but that backfires when she laughs in his face instead (she didn’t intend to and feels bad for it as soon as she does it, but hey it happened).

--Miranda repeatedly mentions how her time with Brendan had been so short that they barely knew each other at the time that they broke up. All she knew about Brendan was what little he’d told her about himself -- that he was between jobs, that he was taking a course on psychology, and that he spent several months travelling around Europe. The only thing Miranda mentions having told Brendan about is her being an interior designer.

[brendan-block]

The Criminal Underground

[THE IMPORTANT PLAYERS]

THE ORGANIZATION (CORSICAN MAFIA)

Parrain (BOSS)

Lord Matthieu de Chauveilles (UNDERBOSS; Assassin; Torturer; Recruiter)

Brendan Block (Matthieu’s apprentice; Assassin)

Antoine (Head of Security; Enforcer; Matthieu’s personal guard)

Grimm (Assassin; Enforcer; Matthieu’s personal guard)

LECLAIR SYNDICATE

Victor Leclair (BOSS)

Sophie de Chauveilles (Victor’s daughter; Matthieu’s wife)

Margot (Member of Security; Sophie’s personal guard)

ITALIAN MAFIA

 Marco Satini (BOSS; Deceased; assassinated by Matthieu)

Vittorio Satini (Marco’s son; Matthieu’s rejected apprentice)

RUSSIAN MAFIA

Natalya Volkolov (Ex-Assassin)

Justine Volkolov (Natalya’s daughter)

JAPANESE MAFIA

Hideyoshi Tanaka (BOSS)

Fujiko Tanaka (UNDERBOSS; Hideyoshi’s sister)

NOTES

----[BTS] Antoine’s appearance and description (a bald, heavy-set man with tattoos covering half of his face, who uses a cane as a weapon) was taken from Matthieu’s original design.

----[BTS] Originally Sophie was going to be a sex trafficking victim that a much more openly abusive Matthieu saved through marriage, rather than being an heiress of a rival crime family that he was forced to marry. She was also going to have an affair with Brendan behind Matthieu’s back as revenge for her husband’s violent behaviour and because of her knowledge of his repressed feelings for Brendan (originally Matthieu was never romantically or physically involved with Brendan and struggling with his sexuality).

----Matthieu is the one who sent the Parrain’s daughter to find Brendan and take back The Black Book, setting into motion the chain of events that would lead Brendan back to Marseilles and into his possession. Matthieu never wanted to reclaim the book (and in fact gave it back to him later). He’d been secretly searching for Brendan ever since Brendan left him and the Organization, but after finally tracking him down he couldn’t go to him personally without exposing the fact that he’d covered Brendan’s escape. Instead he sent the Parrain’s daughter to confirm Brendan’s location, while also intending for Brendan to kill her, because Matthieu was secretly having the Parrain’s children killed off and she was the last one he needed eliminated. Brendan, of course, acted as predicted and killed the girl, sending her severed head back to the Parrain as a gift and furthering Matthieu’s plot. The only reason Matthieu has not made his final move to kill the Parrain and become Head of the Organization himself is because he wants Brendan to take over as the new Second-in-Command. Unfortunately with the way things are between them now he knows that Brendan won’t accept it. Matthieu won’t make the move without him.

----When word got out that Matthieu was looking for an apprentice, Boss Satini sent his son Vittorio to enter his competition in hopes of strengthening the ties between their groups. Unfortunately the competition was nothing more than a setup -- not for Vittorio, but for Brendan. Matthieu never intended to pick anyone other than Brendan. It was never just about taking on an apprentice; Matthieu became obsessed with Brendan after seeing him on news footage of Miranda Cotton’s murder trial during one of his stays in London, and he immediately wanted to possess him as a companion of his own choosing (and thus, in his own way, running from the arranged marriage he was soon to be forced into). He bought Brendan’s freedom and recruited him as a soldier for the Organization for that purpose. The apprentice competition was merely his way of forcing Brendan to “willingly” enter his personal service by winning and thus “proving” himself to Matthieu as a worthy companion.

Vittorio went on to join the Organization later as a contract killer after his father was murdered. He wants revenge against Matthieu, not because he knows Matthieu is the one who betrayed and killed his father (and he does know), but because of his rejection. He feels that he should have been chosen instead of Brendan and that Brendan “stole” the position that was rightfully his, not realizing he’d been played and neither understanding Matthieu’s intentions behind the apprentice competition to begin with.

----Brendan and Matthieu met Natalya, Hideyoshi, and Fujiko while on assignment, the details of which I have yet to decide (this will be updated later). Nat is the first in their circle of friends to retire from the business in order to make a better life for herself and her family.

----Justine is the teenage daughter of Natalya. She first met Brendan and Matthieu when she was a baby and they have been a part of her life ever since. She views them as her uncles and refers to them as such. While Matthieu has continued to keep in contact with Justine and Natalya since his split with Brendan and Brendan's subsequent defection from the Organization, Brendan has kept his distance in order to keep them safe from the price on his head.

----[BTS] Originally Justine was going to be a ten year old street urchin who had been kidnapped and forced to become a child slave to a crime lord that Brendan and Matthieu were contracted to assassinate. She was going to witness the murder, but rather than kill her off Brendan and Matthieu were going to rescue her and give her a better life with Natalya. Natalya in this scenario wasn’t a fellow assassin of the mafia, but a regular contact and friend; a young woman who couldn’t have children and who had previously been a victim of sex trafficking that Matthieu saved on a whim, borrowing heavily from Sophie’s original design and backstory.

[brendan-block]

WHO WANTS TO TALK ABOUT THE KNIFE  SCENE IN SECRET SMILE? I DO.

So here’s some Movie VS Book stuff under the Cut~

So I haven’t slept and I’m rewatching Secret Smile for the first time in a long time. I’m at the ending and I’m noticing some new things, as I do when I’m sleep deprived.

First off, I don’t care for the movie’s ending. So much of it makes zero fucking sense, but at the same time I can clearly see where they took inspiration from the book. There are elements there DIRECTLY taken from the book, but it makes LITTLE TO NO SENSE when they completely changed the ending and how some of those elements factored in.

The knife has me hung up right now.

In the movie, directly after Brendan rapes Miranda (which again, never happened in the book and was added for unnecessary drama), Miranda escapes into the bathroom and Brendan gets up and stumbles over to the kitchen counter rather than directly follow her out into the other room. This is because the drugs Miranda put in his drink earlier have finally taken effect and he can’t walk straight to save his life. So on the counter there’s a knife that has been conveniently left out by Miranda, and when Brendan get to the counter one of his hands lands directly on the knife’s handle.

Now see the above photos. Because I would like to point out here that his fingers never actually grasp the knife. Whether he intentionally put his hand on it, though, is debatable. To me it sometimes looks like he was trying to catch himself and stop from falling into the counter and in doing so his hand landed on the knife for plot convenience (because of course it did). But at other times it also looks like he was going for the knife on purpose and that he was seriously considering killing Miranda with it, as the scene was most likely intended to look like. Was him touching the knife really an accident or did he briefly think about killing her? I don’t know! What I do know, is the knife with his fingerprints on it becomes a crucial piece of evidence against him when he gets framed for Miranda’s murder, along with all the blood she planted in the bathroom and on his car keys.

When I think about it, the thing with the knife doesn’t make much sense. How did Miranda know that Brendan would absolutely go and touch it, intentionally or not? Yes, she’d seen him be physically violent before but never with a weapon. So what guarantee did she have? But that is, of course, assuming that Miranda ever intended for the knife to be the murder weapon. Perhaps it was never part of her plan.

In the book, she stages a break in at her apartment and uses the knife to badly injure herself to make it look like Brendan attempted to kill her. She then has Brendan’s latest girlfriend, Naomi, take the knife with her blood still on it and plant it among Brendan’s things at his home for the police to find. Here the knife was absolutely meant to be the intended murder weapon. If I remember correctly, what specifically happens is Naomi wraps the bloody knife in one of Brendan’s shirts and puts it right on top of the trash outside his home. The knife was also taken from Brendan’s home to begin with thanks to Naomi, so that it was guaranteed to have his prints on it, and both Miranda and Naomi only ever handled it with gloves. There was also something about Miranda’s hairbrush or clippings of her hair planted too? I don’t remember. It’s a bit more complex and still not all that realistically plausible, but it makes more sense to me than “I’m just going to leave this knife on the counter and hope that Brendan considers killing me with it long enough to actually touch it”.

I wonder what she would have done if he actually came into the bathroom with it. Movie!Miranda, I’m not sure how well she’d of fared even with him being in a drugged state, because he easily grabbed her and overpowered her multiple times and could have easily killed her at any of those times before he ever passed out. Book!Miranda, though, I don’t doubt would have probably up and snapped his wrist, ripped the knife out of his hand, and then turned right around and stabbed him with it. She was so ready and prepared to kill him by the end of the book and I’m here for it. I still want that showdown.