#not to mention iirc the first draft file leaked and Theresa lifts the curse in that version too

[glamnessaaumisc]

A Rant about TVTropes and Theresa

Does something ever irk you so much that you feel like you need to vent it out to the worldwide internet? Because that's exactly what's happening to me. I don't even know why. I can just look away, but it just irks me. Keep in mind this is the dumbest rant I've ever considered writing, but it makes me feel better so here goes:

Everyone knows Empress Theresa is a really bad book, right? Theresa is a terrible character and a massive narcissist like her creator. There is a chapter where she cruelly torments 9 lawyers, including a single mother of 2, until they withdraw a lawsuit against her.

What irks me is that whoever wrote the TV Tropes page about Empress Theresa (in addition to its mention in the Karmic Overkill trope article) got some details wrong about this chapter.

In the book Empress Theresa, the following is said in Chapter 17:

"The reality hit [Connie McKesson]. Any vehicle she entered would not move. I wasn’t going to allow her to go anywhere except on foot." "I zeroed in on the Lamper Building and found the eight lawyers...I found them, and Steve ’tagged’ them with T’s, and ’hit’ them with X’s...When they left the building to go home they found out one by one that no vehicle would move with their butts inside. They were forced to walk to a nearby hotel."

So she curses Connie McKesson and 8 other lawyers and makes it so they can't use vehicles. What happens after they withdraw their lawsuit?

"I took the X’s off the nine strips of mat board and the nine lawyers could use vehicles."

So after the lawsuit is withdrawn, Theresa lifts the curse on all of them. Now how does TV Tropes describe this event?

According to the Empress Theresa page:

"Theresa instead sabotages the life of the lawyer and makes it so any motor vehicle with her inside will inexplicably stall and fail...Theresa never reverses this either, so this is presumably just something this woman has to live with forever now,"

And according to the Karmic Overkill page:

"Theresa responds by putting what's effectively a curse on the lawyer who took the case, making it so that any motor vehicle with her inside will inexplicably stall and fail...And since there's no indication that Theresa ever reverses what she did, the poor woman presumably has to deal with this problem for the rest of her life."

According to TV Tropes, Theresa curses only one lawyer and never removes the curse even after she withdraws the lawsuit. This is wildly different from the source material, where Theresa curses nine lawyers and reverses it for all of them when they withdraw their suit. I am unsure what version of the book the person(s?) who wrote these passages read, or if there even are any other versions of the book out there, but it sure as Hell isn't the version I'm reading.

I really don't know why this annoys me enough to write such a long post about it, but it just...does.