#tangentially but I’ll always sneak it in there. Obviously

[cabeswaterdrowned]

Yes Ronan’s flirting technique would be dubious with anyone else but have to say he really does quite well with tailoring the flirting / wooing game for Adam specifically. Very correct call about taking him to the Barns so Adam can swoon over it and see Ronan in that space embodying the things about it he admires, and then he assigns him research and calls him smart because he saw how that worked on Adam when Gansey did that and also has freshly witnessed Adam’s teacher kink when it comes to his dad’s murderer. All I’m saying is he was taking notes on things that weren’t Latin.

[fictionerd]

Good to see you, friends!

Whether you’re reading this on Drive the day of the episode (Well kinda), or if you’re seeing this posted in the big surge of posts after the protest I bid you welcome. I’m going to try and untangle the unsorted sequence of events for this episode. I’ll admit that the unclear progression of events is as much frustrating as it is intriguing at times. We eventually get to a point where we see it all tie together, but while we’re in the throws of a storyline it’s hard to grasp what’s going on. So without further putting it off let’s try and get down to thee. Addition: I’m going to be posting all the recaps I wrote during my week away from the site throughout the next week rather than all at once. So here’s Boogiepop episode six.

Synopsis: Okay, the best I can tell the earliest thing to happen in the sequence of events this episode involves a character I’ve only mentioned offhandedly once: Kazuko Suema. She had agreed to help one of the girls who were tangentially involved in the Manticore stuff and spoke briefly with Kirima Nagi. She has or seems to have some knowledge of the true nature of BoogiePop and is known for being interested in Psychology. Good, now character brush-up is out of the way on to the events of the episode in chronological order to the best of my ability..

Suema is studying with Touka (Aka Boogiepop’s host) when our crazy counselor buddy Rin’s cousin drops by to have a chat with her. The girl is worried about her cuz who seems to no longer be worried about anything. Before he’d always had something weighing on his mind, but lately he’s seemed as though he’s no longer afraid of anything. He’s also been away from home at night which further worries her especially since she’s found mysterious dark stains on his clothes the next day. Stains that seem suspiciously like bloodstains. Suema’s curiosity is caught by the situation, much the same way it was with the girl involved in the Manticore stuff, and so she agrees to help.

Suema then proceeds to sneak into Rin’s office after-hours and finds a picture of Suiko, the girl who houses Imaginator who supposedly committed suicide. Before she can find anything else, though Rin comes to the office with two girls in tow. They’re talking about some mysterious “thing” they’re doing and how “everyone else” has done it”. After some reluctance both girls agree and strip off their shirts (Why this is necessary given what he does I don’t know). Jin seemingly uses Imaginator’s power to adjust the roses he sees in each of the girls which alters their behavior and outlook

Time for speculation: I’m guessing that since Jin is doing this with multiple students at a time, what he’s doing is trading and balancing different parts of the rose between the various students. Though there is also some mileage in the idea that he’s simply stripping the thorns from the roses signifying him taking away their worries and fears. Since the girls who exit his office in this scene do say that they no longer feel afraid and like they could change the world for him.

Having been exposed to some supernatural fuckery naturally what Suema latches onto is the sketch she found of the girl who committed suicide. She decides to come to ask around school about Suiko with help from Touka, but they are put off by the crowd of new students coming in as well as Touka straight-up fleeing when she sees twintail girl from the Manticore arc. Twintail Girl (Niitoki) approaches Suema and they have a brief conversation about why Touka is avoiding her. The logical excuse is that Keiji from Episode one had once rejected Niitoki in favor of Touka, but there’s also the possibility it’s because,

Any further conversation on this topic is curtailed as we see our pal Anou at some point in the middle of his plot thread from last episode arriving at Shinyo for the first time. He has a weird episode where his mind is trying to remind him that he still has emotions and he can’t process it because of Spooky E’s brainwashing. He gets rushed off taking Niitoki with the group.

Suema is left confused and looking for answers in her own head. She can’t get the image of Suiko out of her head. She finds she has trouble trying to understand the mind of some one who would commit suicide. Then as fate might have it who does she run into on the roof of the school clearly contemplating leaping off but Orihata the weird girl who’s in league with the big bad mystery organization.

Suema does her best to talk Orihata down, but it’s kind of a stock speech ending on the note of how the act of suicide is ultimately useless and how she can’t jump now because Suema found her. While the logic of Suema’s arguments is shaky at best it manages to get Orihata to back away from the railing. This is when the two conversations that DOMINATE this episode start bleeding back and forth and I’m going to try and summarize their contents.

Orihata asks Suema what she thinks of Boogiepop. I’m going to copy down the meat of Suema’s response verbatim (or as verbatim as I can get it)

“Imagery like reapers and stuff like that is pretty common. It’s typical adolescent imagery. Everyone’s anxious about something, so sometimes they feel like they want everything around them to be destroyed. Adults say irresponsible things like, those periods of anxiety are just a phase and we’ll all get over it, but it’s never that easy of course. That’s why Boogiepop exists. I think that’s why the exist. To protect an unstable heart and keep it like that.”

Orihata’s response to this is that she doesn’t believe they’ll protect her. She changes the subject to Masaki. Though she doesn’t give his name she explains the broad strokes of the situation. That she thinks he’s in love with her, but she doesn’t feel she can do something like that (Translation: She doesn’t think she deserves it). How she’s doing nothing but causing trouble for him and if things keep up the way they are he’ll end up hating her. She states outright that she’s not supposed to let anyone hate her, and Suema puts her foot down. She tells Orihata that no one goes through life without someone hating them. That it’s just part of living and she needs to let go fo the idea that she can’t let that happen. She needs to break free of these rules she’s set in place for herself. To allow herself to simply live to be free of the chains of “common sense”. She needs to fight against that self-defeating attitude of trying to ensure that no one hates her.

Little does Suema know, of course, that these rules may not be self-imposed. This is speculation again but I believe it’s been hinted that Orihata, being made by the Towa organization, was given strict orders to be liked and go as unnoticed as she could.

As they part ways Orihata asks Suema if she should fight even if it means she’s fighting against Boogiepop and Suema tells her to always fight.

With ALL that out of the way we finally reach the FIRST EVENTS WE SEE at the top of the episode which pick up from Spooky E finding Orihata (aka Camille) sitting in the park. He gets the low-down on how she’s here to see a guy. Assumes is because he wants to sleep with her and tells her to hurry it up so she can focus on their mission. Her job is to find Boogiepop for the organization. He grabs her by the throat (In one hand, seriously the dude is freaking massive) and threatens her, but that’s when Masaki shows up. He takes on the hulking brute and even manages to get a hit or two in, but it ultimately ends with Spooky E revealing he has no balls to be kicked and Zapping the memory of their encounter out of Masaki’s head.

The boy wakes up lying on the bench with his head in Orihata’s lap. He remembers they’re supposed to be celebrating and asks Orihata what he can do for her. At first she asks him to get information about Boogiepop since he’s popular with the local girls. She tells him the “Boogiepop is a grim reaper who kills girls while they’re at the height of beauty” rumor and He’s utterly confused. Especially when she then asks him to BECOME Boogiepop.

She explains that she’d heard from other people that Boogiepop is actually a defender. That they protect people, and this is why I think this conversation happens after the one with Suema. Since there are very few people in the story who would characterize Boogiepop that way, and only Suema has interacted with Orihata to our knowledge. Basically what this amounts to is Orihata asking Masaki to protect her, to keep her safe. At least that’s my interpretation. She obviously doesn’t like the situation she’s in with Towa and wants to be free to love Masaki, but so long as she’s under their thumb she can’t do that. When she suddenly realizes what she’s asking Masaki she takes it back and apologizes. As she turns to leave Masaki grabs her arm and says he’ll do it. He doesn’t fully understand, but if there’s something he can do to help then he’ll do it.

Thoughts: Phew that was a lot to get through. I should note that the conversations Orihata had with Suema and Masaki were interwoven with each other in the actual episode. We saw a snippet of one that bled into a snippet of the other. The episode actually ends on Suema telling Orihata to Fight no matter what. I am left pleasantly confused by this whole ordeal as per usual with this series.

I want to also note since I didn’t in the actual synopsis that when the cousin comes to speak with Suema near the beginning of the episode it seems that Touka switches to Boogiepop mode. There’s a definite difference in how the seiyuu voices Boogiepop vs normal Touka. A sort of methodical formality and weariness to her tone contrasted against the more energetic Touka. There’s this switch-flip moment where the voice changes and it takes a second to realize it’s Boogiepop suggesting Suema help the girl and not Touka. Very nice.

Shit this series just keeps getting better and better. Well I believe that’s all I have for the moment. This series is honestly hard to write about. It’s intriguing and the basketweave timeline can be a bitch to puzzle through. I don’t feel like snarking it since it’s legit good, and I don’t really have any deep insights to give because I still don’t have enough of a full picture to really comment. Still I don’t wanna just drop posting about it because, again, it’s GOOD! Seriously my synopsis of the episode’s contents are no substitute for watching it yourself. If you aren’t already I HIGHLY suggest checking the series out.

Until next post keep talking fiction, friends. I’ll see you soon.

[omgkatsudonplease]

lily!!! thanks a ton for offering to write me a birthday ficlet! i have two prompt options for you to choose from (courtesy of my personal prompt generator wife, robbie): 1. "we met each other on a sunday morning, both doing our walk of shame" au OR [cont.]

[cont.] 2. "i’m obsessed with a food blogger who writes about cheap ways to be gourmet in your 20s and i flirt with them over comments but they never post pictures of their face and ALSO there’s a really cute grocery bagger at the store down the street who teases me and always asks to join me for dinner and i definitely want to say yes" au. all ships fair game (though ofc i'm partial to victuuri, milasara, & phichimetti). thank you lovely!!! appreciate you tons!!!

okay so this is a belated bday ficlet for the super lovely @extranikiforov​! (ilu rae im just a butt who has no concept of time) i’m going to uh... hahaha okay this is prompt 1, phichimetti, and tangentially related to the mayo jar fic that @sinkingorswimming​ wrote for me:

Christophe has heard of him, of course -- no one who likes figure skating and Instagram hasn’t heard of Phichit Chulanont and his excellent little videos of him goofing around on the ice to various strains of pop music. He’s probably personally responsible for at least 85% of the plays on the one video of Phichit dancing to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” and somehow managing to nail the moves whilst having knife shoes strapped to his feet. 

But it’s one thing to know about the legend, and it’s another to meet him in person. And it’s another to run into him sneaking out of his neighbour Viktor’s apartment at six in the morning. 

“Seems we had the same idea,” he remarks cheerily, and Phichit nearly jumps a foot in the air at that, dropping his paper bag as he does. Christophe bends to get it, handing it back to him. “Visiting a friend?”

“I suppose,” says Phichit, and then frowns as he looks him up and down. “Wait. I’ve seen you around. You’re Yuuri’s Saturday Night.”

Christophe raises an eyebrow. “Saturday Night? Is that all you know about me?”

Phichit opens his mouth to protest further, but Christophe laughs, shaking his head as he takes out the key to his own apartment and fiddles with the door. 

“Want to grab brunch?”

Phichit snorts. “In your apartment?”

“Well, I’m amenable to going to Panin’s, but I do need to put on clothes that aren’t obviously from last night,” replies Christophe, gesturing to the rumpled date-night outfit that Yuuri had half-torn in his eagerness to get them off of him. 

Phichit looks him up and down, hums, and nods. “I see your point,” he says. “But Yuuri might be worried if --”

“Nonsense.” Christophe waves an airy hand. “You know he sleeps like the dead when he’s very tired out.”

“No thanks to you.” Phichit snorts again, but then his expression grows a little downcast, a little sheepish. “I’m... I’d be down for eggs and pancakes,” he says, his cheeks flushing a little darker at that. “But do you think I’d need to change, too?”

Christophe looks him up and down as briefly as he can. “Very Holly Golightly of you,” he declares. “I’m sure it’ll be quite the statement.”

Phichit laughs at that. “Right, breakfast at Panin’s in last night’s party dress. I’ll be accepting my Oscar now, thanks.”

Christophe smiles. “I like it,” he says, and vanishes into his apartment.

“So,” Christophe continues, half an hour later in a booth at Panin’s Diner on the corner. The city is starting to wake around them, cars and trucks honking and moving through the streets outside. Phichit stirs some whipped cream into his hot chocolate, and raises an eyebrow. 

“So?” he echoes.

“I’m just Yuuri’s Saturday Night to you?” Christophe prompts. Phichit laughs, resting his chin on his hands. His smile is as indolent as the Sunday morning outside, slow and sweet and a little worshipful. Christophe’s never been one for religion, but maybe there’s some hint of God in the way Phichit’s eyes sparkle. 

“I mean, I’ve heard other things,” Phichit replies, now idly licking his spoon and setting it back on the saucer. Christophe has barely touched his own coffee, but he’s more than alert to the way Phichit’s tongue dances along the steel edge of the spoon. “All good things, I’m guessing. I’ve always suspected Yuuri was a bit of a freak in the sack, so thanks for confirming that.”

Christophe feels his cheeks heat up, and he slowly slides his face into his hands. “How much did you hear,” he mutters. 

Phichit takes on a distinctly breathless tone. “Oh, big boy, don’t stop, right there, mm, yes, like that, harder, yes!” It attracts a couple curious stares from other diner patrons, and Christophe isn’t sure whether to try to shut him up or evaporate on the spot, but either way he looks around and beams widely at the rather bemused server headed their way with breakfast.

“He’s really into the hot chocolate,” he explains, and Phichit bursts into laughter. 

“So, big boy, I have to say, congratulations. I think you’re the first Saturday Night who’s ever gotten my poor roommate to think of someone other than Viktor Nikiforov for a couple hours at a time,” he teases. The server sets down their plates then, and almost immediately flees back behind the counter. Christophe can barely bring himself to be embarrassed at that. 

He opts instead for smothering his fluffy pancakes -- Panin’s are some of the finest in town -- with maple syrup and whipped cream. “I’ll be accepting my... what’s the equivalent of an Oscar for good sex, then?” 

“The... Golden Dildo,” declares Phichit, layering whipped cream between each layer of pancake and grinning from ear to ear. “A really big one, too. Yuuri once complained to me in this very booth that one of his Saturday Nights lied to him about being a grower.”

Christophe nearly spews out the pancake bite he’d just eaten. “What a disappointment that must have been,” he remarks. 

Phichit shakes his head. “He was betrayed.” 

“Hm. Speaking of betrayal, though -- ” Christophe’s eyes narrow. “Why were you sneaking out of Viktor’s place in a cocktail dress?”

Phichit shrugs. “Why does anyone ever do anything?” he wonders innocently. 

Christophe waves an accusatory fork at him. “Does Yuuri know you’re test driving Viktor for him?”

Phichit gapes. “Test driving!” he exclaims, laughing. “That’s one way to put it. I rather prefer the term ‘loosening the mayo jar’, but yours is classier.”

“I can’t believe I’ve finally lived to see the day where five-time world champion figure skater Viktor Nikiforov is referred to as a mayo jar, but here we are.” Christophe shakes his head. “What a strange world we live in.”

“Strange indeed,” agrees Phichit. “Considering that Viktor Nikiforov’s hot neighbour is screwing my poor, sweet, introverted dancer of a roommate.” He waggles his fork back at Christophe. “You’d almost think there was some big cosmic mix-up going on around here.” 

Christophe raises an eyebrow. “You think I’m hot,” he states.

“I’ve known you were hot for a while,” replies Phichit. “And I was surprised to see you show up sometimes on Saturday night, but hey. Hidden depths for everyone.”

Christophe wonders if this is the emotional equivalent of a punch to the solar plexus. He leans back in his seat and finally takes a long sip of his coffee. It’s not nearly as bitter as he’d like it to be. 

“Let’s make a deal,” Phichit says suddenly, setting down his fork and knife and folding his hands conspiratorially. “You and I know better than anyone that those two idiots we call our roommate and neighbour are... how do I put this lightly?”

“Emotionally constipated but pining after each other?” asks Christophe.

Phichit snaps his finger. “Precisely. And you and I also know we’re both very hot and would like to try this out, too.” He gestures between them. 

Christophe nods. “Viktor has... mentioned a couple times that he’s had his eyes set on his partner’s roommate,” he remarks. “He’s also then wondered if that makes him a bad person, but he doesn’t want to cheat, etcetera, etcetera.”

“It’s not cheating if we all agree to swap partners for a night,” Phichit points out, and then his eyes light up with some stroke of divine inspiration. “What are your thoughts, big boy, on a key party?” 

Christophe vaguely wonders if Phichit actually knows his name, though he also has to admit, he doesn’t mind being called ‘big boy’ in that tone of voice.

He takes a bite of his pancake. “Tell me more,” he says, and Phichit grins.

[blacknovelist]

Hie, if you are still taking asks for your AWESOME ageswap BNHA AU, I have an ask that I would like to see your novel length answers for: What do you think would happen and Canon!All Might & Ageswap!Deku's reactions would be in the combined world if a villain somehow managed to kidnap Canon!Deku & Ageswap!Toshinori? And the kidnapper managed to snatch Canon!Shouto and Ageswap!Engi as well? I can imagine that between the two, only Ageswap!Shouto would join the others them.

BUDDY, MY PAL, FRIEND, ANON, LIGHT OF MY LIFE……… ageswap is absolutely 1000% of the time always a thing (In general, BNHA AU’s are, haha) and I’m so glad you asked because in general I’ll take any excuse to take things and just go

I can’t believe you came here wanting me to talk for ten years gghlsnfiskfj

I’ve been looking for things to overthink and analyze lately and u, my friend, are officially an enabler of my awful rambling tendencies. You, every other anon and person that’s ever asked me about anything and also @guardianlioness​, because naturally she’s my partner in crime for Ageswap and the moment I showed her your ask we absolutely ran with it. 

(–> As context for anyone jumping into the Ageswap bandwagon, here’s the tag. Generally speaking the way the Ageswap meets Canon thing works is that Ageswap 1-A gets mysteriously transported into canon and end up having to stick around while they figure out how to send Ageswap 1-A and whoever came along, like Inko and some Ageswap teachers, back to their universe again. 

There’s actually also an AU of an AU in which, through means unrelated to our favourite class, both universes get fused together, which is the Ultimate Combo Verse and was 100% mostly lioness’s idea and it’s frankly just great. Basically, everything is the same, everyone exists as both kids and adults at the same time. During this fusion process, Ageswap 1-A ends up needing to stay with canon 1-A. That’s relevant because Lionesss suggested that this whole situation take place while Ageswap is staying with canon, but mostly tangentially bc it can work out without that anyway. I just wanted to mention it.)

So like…. there’s several ways and reasons for all our kids to be brought into trouble like this, and it means there’s like, thousands of ways for this scenario to play out (with a billion little details to change)and god i love it. We figure in this case, it would be while they’re all in one universe, as opposed to some situation where a baddie is going cross-dimensional to kidnap everyone separately or something. The way it’s been settled is, someone probably used the Quirk Trigger drugs on them to make the boys’ powers go out of control, so that it would be easier to kidnap them. It would take a lot of planning, and just getting a hold of the drugs would use up a great deal of resources probably! 

It would also be the easiest part of the entire situation. 

Listen, if anyone decided it would be a good idea to take these kids? There’s at least like, 40 reasons why that’s a terrible idea and most/all those reasons are not above working with each other and in various configurations to create even more reasons why it’s a terrible idea. Buildings leveled, oceans split, mountains shattered… there’s few things more dangerous than a dad on a mission, let alone the group of dads we have going on here (going by adoption and blood technically it’s the Dad Trifecta, but obviously canon Aizawa is also in on this so it’s actually the Dad Quartet). 

Basically, this whole thing is the apocalypse upon us, my dude.

That’s not even getting into the 1-A’s. Worse still, that’s not even counting Inko Midoriya. That right there is the destruction of the universe as we know it.

The rest under a cut becauseeeeeee who knows how long I’m going to go on about this? I sure don’t.

To be more specific to the nature of your ask because I’m a terrible terrible person who loves going on about things that you didn’t actually ask about, we’ll start with our Dad for All’s. Ageswap Izuku is a mad strategist, even though at this point in the shared timeline both he and canon Toshinori would be retired from the world of heroics, and against these guys? The plans he comes up with are absolutely ruthless. He’s got no time for things like mercy when his alternate self and his nephew and the young version of one of his best friends and even his own son have been taken. Any semblance of pity has been launched all the way to goddamn andromeda at this point, it’s not coming home any time soon.

The plan itself absolutely includes copious amounts of explosions, stealth, sneaking around, lots of research, possibly punching a man or two into the stratosphere, freezing things, burning things, shattering a few eardrums, finding the boys, making sure they’re okay, wrecking the place, and making several people regret being born and coming up with this idea in the first place, at a minimum. Not necessarily in that order (need to make sure everyone who cannot fight is out of danger first, after all)

For a moment, as canon Toshinori watches and helps plan, he wonders (in a good way) what kind of monster he’s creating with canon Izuku if this is what his pro-counterpart is like. 

As for canon Toshinori? Well. He’s not so much a strategist or planner as Ageswap Izuku is, but this is his universe, his home turf. He’s got the advantage of connections with people, like canon Naomasa, the police department on a whole, and his hero agency. If there’s so much as a whisper as to where their boys are and why they’ve been taken, someone along the grapevine is gonna hear it and pass it along. Plus, of course, he helps Ageswap Izuku when he can!

Also, you know who we’re talking about here. Of course retirement and mortal wounds aren’t going to stop these dumb old men from going out into the field and bringing their boys home. (“Oh, punching this would be bad for my health? I’ll kick their asses instead”)

Ageswap Todoroki, of course, has a hand in planning everything. Besides, who else is gonna freeze and burn the shit Izuku asks him to, right? He’s more familiar with how Ageswap Izuku tends to plan and strategize in general, which helps. He’s good at keeping a level head, which provides a handy perspective for everyone.

Canon Aizawa is like Toshinori in that he’s got a homefield advantage, but also, he’s far more familiar with the underground/underworld workings of the villain-hero scene, so while Toshinori has got contacts, Aizawa has the means to contact people as well as going out into the field to gather intel himself. As well, he’s familiar with what they need to look out for as far as clues and research go, which is vital to Ageswap Izuku’s planning and also the finding of the boys in itself.

Overall, though, I think Ageswap Todoroki and canon Aizawa are the ones to help keep a lot of the calm among the adults directly involved, reminding them not to get overly frustrated and that they’re going to find the boys no matter what - not to say the kids aren’t doing their part not to freak out over things they can’t do shit about yet, and also not to imply that there isn’t anyone else involved as far as teachers and pro heroes go. And that’s also not to say they’re not absolutely fucking livid and furious about this situation and that they’re not among the first ones on scene to start wrecking shit, because of course they are.

No one touches their boys.

Canon Endeavor, though… mind you, of course he’s gonna be involved - someone dares to kidnap his boy, he’ll teach them to think twice. His experience and connections mean that they can’t really say he can’t be involved, so he too does his part. I don’t know if this would be before or after Lifetimes or some other in-verse variant of it though, and that’s admittedly important bc in AU context it would also be relevant to whether or not he’s trying to change or not, you know? Regardless, he’d probably not be very involved in the planning itself, outside of offering small bits of his thoughts and things - he can’t get a read on Ageswap Deku, but he’s aware that Deku is/was the number one of his world, and gets that he’s deserving of respect, to some degree, so he’s cordial to them all on a whole (though canon Toshinori tries not to be around when he’s around and vice versa).

Though, also, since I imagine this mess would be something they might want to keep out of the public eye, there’s also only so much canon Endeavor can do openly, too. He probably does a lot of red herring things and calls his work relating to finding the boys by some other name, and I guess in that stream he’d help by just, making sure no one finds out abt the kidnapping by keeping the press and media distracted by whatever he’s doing (and by doing it very, very far away from where and what the others are doing. It rubs him wrong, but he’s still doing his hero work so hell. Fine. He’s the only one that can do this anyway, so of course they’d come to him about it. Or, that’s what he tells his ego because he can’t argue with them about it).

As far as the rescue mission itself goes, everyone gets deployed. And by “everyone”, I mean both 1-A’s, possibly the Inko’s (because I’m sure we all remember this very serious and official ageswap post), their teacher-parents, several other teachers, the Naomasa’s (because of course ageswap Nao is in on it), and canon Endeavor. 

And by “rescue mission”, I mean “UA and Nedzu decided that it would be good experience for their heroes in training to go on this unofficial mission for a kidnapping that has not been disclosed to the public At All to avoid any sort of big legal fuss and here are a few teachers/pros to supervise pls don’t kill anyone :)” because, you know, everyone knows better than to get between “everyone” and their mission to save the boys. 

(When everyone comes home mostly safe and sound the world collectively breathes a sigh of relief, because it looks like the end has been saved for another day.

also because a mountain range or five haven’t been wiped off the map in some fit of fury and rage or anything like that.)

[mateotorrezjr]

again, but better → christine riccio

special shoutout to st. martin’s press via netgalley for providing me with a copy of the book to review, all thoughts expressed in the following discussion are my own.

if i were a person that used half stars, i find that this is a book that would a perfect time to utilize them. as it stands, i don’t, and while from a purely objective standpoint this is a solid three star book, i don’t rate books objectively. i rate them from a purely subjective standpoint based solely on my enjoyment, and so i had to settle on a solid two stars.

before i descend into a ramble i want to acknowledge that i don’t think it’s inherently wrong for an author to draw on their own personal lives for a character, in my opinion while this is a novel it does teeter on the edge of semi autobiographical. i don’t even think that it’s wrong for a book to serve as wish fulfillment for an author or for a protagonist to be any kind of analog for an author. it gets into a weird territory when you can start to draw those connections perhaps, but to judge the whole of the book in that way i do believe to be a mistake. my relationship to the author, as tangential as it is as i haven’t watched her youtube content regularly in a few years, is not universal and there are plenty of readers that won’t come to this story with the same baggage that i did. if there was anything about the self-insert, semi autobiographical nature of the book it was the use of references. for a bulk of the novel the references seemed to be used entirely to make the reader that the book was taking place in 2011, it felt more like a crutch and one that riccio refused to abandon as the book went on. judging by how lackluster the bulk of the descriptions we did get i can understand why the references were used as a crutch. i’m not sure that at this point the “world building” could have been strong enough without that reliance. if the second half of the novel is anything to go by, even when presented a second chance to fix some of the lackluster descriptions the opportunity wasn’t seized.

part of the reason i felt like i needed to keep this in two star territory and not simply round up to a three were the characters. not so much individual arcs, but i found that our supporting players were never quite utilized an any kind of meaningful way? they existed seemingly as afterthoughts, which is kind of insulting as they do serve as some of the books only “diversity”. first we have shane’s roommates during her semester abroad in london; sahra and babe. babe is described as “dark skinned and curvy”, i’ve seen at least one person label babe as a black woman, and if further description of babe is provided in the book i can’t recall anything other than a mention of her hair being thick and curly. i feel like descriptions like this don’t do any service in terms of representation as “dark skinned” can refer to a multitude of ethnicities and racial identities. sahra is described as tan, and that’s about it. her name coupled with the fact that her family went on a trip to lebanon at some point in the past i assume that she’s middle eastern, but it’s never confirmed and furthermore neither of these characters are all that instrumental in shane’s life. there’s a throw away line about babe becoming her best friend, but all of those sort of references are made off the page and we rarely get to see those moments. they do get to share pleasant moments of general getting along, but nothing that would make me believe they were anything ever than simply pleasant with one another. what bothered me most about these two characters specifically if they were meant to be woc, is that both of them have moments where they are seemingly antagonistic toward shane for seemingly no reason, both times for pure shock value.

the novel also includes atticus, a gay asian [ nothing more specific is ever given to my recollection. so whether he is japanese or mongolian or vietnamese is a complete mystery to me ] and he is only ever included in minor moments of even far less significance than the ladies. presumably because the novel isn’t from pilot’s, atticus’ roommate and the love interest of the story, perspective. there is a second gay character, but he is by far and away the least important character in the story and his coming out is shoehorned in at the very end of the book in a way that feels more like a deleted scene that forgot to be removed. there is a black woman at shane’s internship, but her not getting an arc wasn’t an important to me given that she wasn’t really an important character to the story in the same way that babe and sahra could have been.

now i want to discuss the plot twist of the book that happens just before 50 percent of the way through the book, without getting too spoilery. simply put i don’t think that it was at all necessary. if anything i think that the later half, particularly the parts written between 65 – 80ish percent of the way through the book were by far and away the weakest of the novel. not only because we were retreading ground that we had already traveled, but really at no point did it feel as though any of our characters had grown.

in the interest of fairness some of the character have an excuse for the staticness of their arcs, this was a novel that was really never interested in making those characters three dimensional and was really only interested in one of the two leads. that said even they didn’t seem to have grown in a way that i think would have made sense given the circumstances. when you take into consideration shane’s goals the fact that she remains so static becomes even more painfully obvious.

shane as a character herself was also really painful to read at times during this novel. part of me feels that if you don’t fine shane interesting and compelling by the time you get to the plot twist the second half of the book doesn’t really offer you anything you can’t assume will happen, there’s very little reward for sticking through it once you’ve reached that point. that aside, shane for so much of the novel seemed to be pushing the blame for certain actions off of herself and onto the shoulders of various other characters. particularly in the first half of the novel. there’s an instance where she meticulously planned and coordinated a lie and then when confronted tried to play it off like it was an accident or she hadn’t meant to do it. i don’t think that the story really ever dealt with that situation, or even what would have been the fallout following the plot twist?

another thing i think the book failed to do was describe anything well. it never crossed into white room syndrome, i did typically have a general understanding of the layout and some of the key furniture or flooring, but there was general lack of depth. the book is set in london, but there are moments that take place in rome, paris, edinburgh, and new york city. all of these cities have distinct flavor and vibe to them, that riccio utterly failed to capture. i’m not even sure that it was a goal of the writing, and i do feel like it hurt. the setting all sort of blurred together. in terms of settings i think riccio relied on landmarks to really do the heavy lifting without thinking through how these setting could play into the story she wanted to tell in a way that was important to the narrative.

at times i found the dialogue to be clunky. mostly that a lot of it seemed to be 1) a reference to something or 2) something that could have been in any straight to dvd teen rom com situation. some of the clunkier moments were when riccio was trying to subvert a popular ya cliche. the first being a riff on the “i let out a breath i didn’t know i was holding,” line that was honestly just whatever, nothing to offense. what really made me decide that it was clunky was a line later that’s an extended scene and conversation about that big romcom moment in entertainment where two love interests have a conversation that builds to a sort of iconic tattoo worthy word like “always” or the “okay, okay” moment from tfios that ends in the most ridiculous way. to be fair, it wasn’t the worst thing i’d ever read, in the grand scheme of things for some people that moment will work. it didn’t click for me, and it’s one of the easier moments to point to and not the countless conversations that obviously occur over the course of a novel that didn’t click. y’know?

riccio also made the decision to include postcards written to shane’s parents and her journal entries, and while i do think that at times they help to make shane a more well rounded character, at least more in comparison to the characters. but i found that these journal entries were another crutch to breeze through aspects of the story that honestly should have been far more fleshed out. i feel like this approach was taken to better facilitate this plot twist that i don’t think was entirely necessary. a book can only be so long, and the way that this narrative was chosen to be told, you have to make concessions and unfortunately i’m firmly in the camp that this same story could have been told without it and that the story could have even been better without it.

how many times can i sneak that sentiment into this discussion?

it’s hard to talk about the cheating that takes place in this book without going into spoilers, but i’ll do my best to. the cheating aspect was one of the many things that halted me from becoming fully invested in this romance. i was also partially not into it because for at least the first half of the novel i think that it was really easy for a reader to see as very one sided. i don’t know if that’s me being a dumb bitch, or me being stuck in shane’s head where her running commentary and anxieties. after the first 25% i was really convinced that this mutual attraction thing wasn’t all that mutual. even when i was back on board i thought that it was very strange that shane would continue to pursue a relationship with someone that was already in another relationship, and at one point in the novel she laments about how upset she was that the dude didn’t cheat on his girlfriend with her? it’s something that’s completely and totally irrational. i think that the narrative casually ignores the fact that after the plot twist shane is technically not in a position to be pursuing a relationship. ignoring isn’t the right word, it’s acknowledged, but still tossed aside in favor of resting on the fact that because of the plot twist it changes things. it’s a very nuanced situation, and one that i don’t think that this book was honestly not prepared or wanting to handle. it’s serious ethical conversation that most ya contemporary novels aren’t trying to tackle. it’s okay. just don’t introduce them. pilot’s girlfriend is also firmly in stock character, total plot device status. we literally get to know nothing about her. also just not a fan of this idea that after three months you should be completely in love with someone or the relationship is a failure, like, i feel like that’s not the message. i also feel like the book send a weird message about pursuing people already in a relationship, that if you have a crush on someone that is with someone it can work out for you and you can get a happily ever after with them. it’s very complicated like i said, and honestly not the type of conversation this book is capable of handling.

i had a lot of issues with this book, if you are interested in my live reactions and thoughts about things i did livetweet it, so you can check that out here. i tried to keep this review centered on the larger issues that i had with the narrative. i’m almost positive thought that few of the pettier critiques i had slipped in, and i wouldn’t be surprised if i was more than a little repetitive.

all of that said though, i objectively don’t see this book as terrible. if nothing else i was compelled to finish the book, it was really easy to read and so it never felt like a chore to continue despite the fact that shane was constantly annoying me and the narrative was constantly failing to utilize it’s whole cast of characters. as i’ve stated there’s nothing inherently bad about this story. despite the fact that i’ve given it such a low rating, i do think that there are people that won’t have the same issues that i did. i don’t think that this book is for everyone, that said i think that it’s also really easy to tell if it’s not for you and even if it’s not if you do manage to get to the end i don’t think that it feels like a waste of time. as aggravated as i became that the narrative wasn’t living up to the full potential, i can’t deny that some small part of me was at least pleasantly entertained by the mess that i was watching unfold. it’s a book that while can’t support the conversations that it sparks, it does spark discussion and i think that’s certainly better than a book that exists simply as matter in the universe.