If You Follow Selmers To The Poetry Society Meeting In Night In The Woods, This Is Her Poem. I Loved

A guide to designing wheelchair using characters!

I hope this helps anyone who's trying to design their oc using a wheelchair, it's not a complete guide but I tried my best! deffo do more research if you're writing them as a character

"sge character syndrome meaning their personality is barely existent" is the bEST THING IVE EVER IN YEARS OMFG HELP AHSHFBASFHAHAHAHAH

Random rotsg thoughts (no spoilers)

In the main series Rafal is always so wannabe edgy and mysterious and in rotsge he's just a mildly angsty teen and I love the difference

Also I love all the new teachers? There aren't many but i can definitely imagine some cool fanart of them

Also the students but they suffer from the sge character syndrome meaning their personality is barely existent 💀💀

But also the illustrations and cover slap so hard, even though I kinda miss the style of the older books

I'm also vibing with the different rules in the School, like it's interesting to see that it changed so much

But i guess it's got a sliver of lgbt representation so yay?

Rewriting the Entirety of SGE: The School Years

All of this is solely up to my own preference. Yes, some parts may be messy because I am inexperienced. I don’t even know what a plot is. Here we go.

I didn’t have any major problem with Book 1 until Agatha’s Glow Up, so we’re starting there.

Canon: Agatha realizes she was beautiful all along and literally two minutes later Tedros falls in love with her.

However, I think it would’ve been so much more impactful if she simply changed her perspective on her “ugliness” from a negative light to an objective standpoint.

We already know that Agatha is badass, so I think she should view herself that way. Insecurity is nothing if she amounts her features to the raw human ability that they possess. Her frame is tall and skinny because she’s athletic, her big eyes serve her the purpose of seeing. Agatha may not be pretty, but every bone in her body was made so that she could eat, breathe, laugh, fight, do parkour around School for Evil.

It’s obvious that Ever Girls only care about their appearance because they want to impress boys (in School for Girls, they are shown as letting themselves go). Agatha is characterized as having no interest in boys, and therefore she doesn’t need to be pretty in the first place. Now, I know that princesses need a prince in order to have their fairytale, but Agatha already thinks that’s bullshit – why not go against it?

Also, this is extremely minor, but I’d rather have Agatha have some kind of deformity, like a cleft lip or crooked spine. It would really sell the idea that she was different. As a kid, even if Soman screamed in my face that Agatha was canonically ugly, I couldn’t imagine how she could be if the features she was described with were SO normal. Of course, her deformity remains throughout the book, because that is Not Cool if it’s magically removed.  

I’ve said this before in my I Don’t Really Like Agatha post, and I’ll say it again. She is ungrateful for the opportunity she could have at School for Good. I’d literally kill to be there, I’d sit through every mind-numbing, subtly sexist class about smiling and posture just so I could practice magic, and I’m sure a lot of people think the same.

[edited: didn’t mean to sound so callous, it’s only an opinion]

Agatha isn’t even using this to expand her power. She uses her wish a total of 2 times in this book, and it’s not like she didn’t have time to use it. It’s disappointing.

So, imagine that Agatha just GRINDS in her school-work. Sure, she fails the challenges related to Strategic Blushing and Matching Outfits, but everything else she excels. At first she just didn’t want to be turned into a plant, she was only studying to survive. Now, it’s more than that.

Agatha is introduced as having a fondness for villains, and it’s apparent that beauty is irrelevant in their success stories. Although she is hurt when Sophie alludes to how she’d “fit in” with the immature, trigger-happy Nevers, she can apply those values of dismissing outer appearances while still being Good. It’s not as if Agatha is greedy or deceitful. She saves the Wish Fish, forgives Sophie countless times, and doesn’t do anything outright vicious. There’s no reason to question that she’s NOT a Never. She can be ugly and an Ever at the same time, wasn’t that the original message?

Hypothetically, she gains more knowledge and strength in spells and potions and such, and just like Sophie, even if everyone doubted her, she could rise through the ranks. There’s no point in worrying about your looks when you’re the most powerful girl in school. (Did I make Agatha too close to Evil? Maybe. But she doesn’t need to push people down to bring herself up, she’s just a natural like that.)

Also, if she needs a boy to ask her out to the Snow Ball, she 100% hates that. She could just talk to Dovey, are they really gonna fail the baddest bitch there?

No. They’re not.

Okay, here’s the biggest part that everyone will hate me for. No Tagatha. At least, not until TLEA.

When Agatha comes out of the Groom Room having just kickstarted her self-esteem and everyone’s drooling, Tedros is attracted to her instantly. I guess that’s fine. Reasonable. But consider this:

Agatha doesn’t love Tedros back.

When Tedros asks her out at the Circus of Talents, she declines. Because if she really knew her own worth, she wouldn’t say yes before making friends with him first. That’s only fair. Actually, I’d say a part of insecurity is settling for any guy who gives you attention (aka Tedros). Y'all are gonna hit me with the damning “We accept the love we think we deserve”.

EVEN IF SHE BELIEVES SHE DESERVES HIM NOW, IT DOESN’T MEAN SHE’LL JUMP AT THE CHANCE TO DATE HIM. THAT’S MESSED UP.

Okay, I know Sophie threw her bitch fit because Agatha was being a hypocrite and dating Tedros. So, tweak that and have Sophie throw a bitch fit simply because Tedros asked Agatha out in the first place. That still makes sense with her entitled selfish personality.

In the stupid war of Evers and Nevers, (which was like, strange considering they’re kids but they’ll have a similar conflict for the next two years), Tedros and Agatha are not together. You could throw in a bit of “Tedros wants to prove to Agatha he’s a hero” but for god’s sakes we are NOT putting in that little chauvinistic “how dare a princess question me”. That one line gave me a bad feeling about Tedros — foreshadowing for AWWP? And it’s crazy that Soman wrote that, along with his lack of brain cells. Are you trying to make readers bully him in memes and instagram group chats? Not from personal experience.

Oh, and this is more of a complaint. But, why did Soman make Sophie bald, pockmarked, and toothless in her transformation of embracing Evil? I thought this was about breaking stereotypes.

The Evil stigma that’s drilled in their heads about being pretty and in general taking care of yourself, is completely inane to me. I can’t believe that Sophie’s “trickery” of Tedros was so revolutionary. None of the Nevers, in 200 years, thought of that?

Instead of her beauty regressing, I’d actually want it to be heightened. It’s what set her apart from the Nevers the moment she walked in. It should be the icing on top of the cake. When Sophie is at her peak of power, she’s a princess. Who could kill you.

If you’re worried about reducing women to be pretty objects or seductresses, stop. It’s okay. Sophie has other powers like summoning ravens, wasps, locusts, bats, using her singing voice for torture, and she is skilled in curses and death traps. In short, the Hot Evil Lady trope works for her. (I think. Someone correct me.)

At the end of SGE, Agatha chooses Sophie over Tedros. Needless to say, Tedros feels betrayed. If you wanted to make him an idiot, with anger issues, daddy issues, and an inferiority complex, this is the easiest way out. He’s under the misguided impression that Agatha belongs with him simply because 1. He loves her. 2. He’s the prince of Camelot, damnit. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?

Not to mention that his father pressured him not to make the same mistake. And Tedros thinks that School for Good is his pool of suitors since Arthur married his classmate Guinevere? There is no line of logic in this man at all, did you miss the part where Guinevere cheats and runs away? Maybe Ever Girls isn’t the only place you should look! There are thousands of other girls in the Woods and you intend to find your soulmate at 14?? Goddamn. 

In conclusion, Tedros’ hurt feelings continue to AWWP. Easy.

And if y’all gonna come for me about how Tedros is easily swayed by looks (he’s convinced that Sophie and Agatha are in the wrong schools for half the book) I’d want to make him a bit smarter. I know that’s impossible.

In canon, Tedros turns on Sophie because her true colors showed, and her witchy phase gives him that confirmation bias. He goes feral with testosterone and heroism, as we know.

I’d like him to understand that just because his solely physical attraction to Sophie grew when she’s evil and pretty, it doesn’t mean that she’s not any less dangerous. If Tedros, of all people, learns the difference between appearances vs reality, it would really drive the point home.

All right. You’re still here?

Here’s some extra headcanons you could add in here and here.

In the meantime I’ll think of more.

If there were any hard-hitting themes I was supposed to include, please tell me, I usually gloss over them while reading. 

But anyway, thanks for reading this far.

Beatrix my beloved ❤️ My approach to social media is I disappear for months on end, drop an absolutely stupid good artwork, then return to the void from which I came

If you're ever worried about whether your writing is too self indulgent, I just want you to remember that Sharknado had 5 sequels. I'm only partway through watching Sharknado 6: It's About Time, but already they've traveled through time and ridden a pteronadon into a Sharknado so they could use the magic teleportation portal inside of it to travel forward in time to King Arthur's time, where they are currently battling a Sharknado full of fire-breathing dragon sharks with Excalibur, which is a chainsaw sword that calls lightning. You're fine. In fact, be a little more self indulgent if anything.

💐

Dont mess with agatha

Just a quick sketch, the gargoyle scene in book one, but modern au

Escape from Divinity Masterpost

Hey you wanna watch a series of OC Animatics set to music that tell a cohesive story about a nun and a demon(?) escaping from magical cultists and going on the run and struggling to hold hands and crying a lot?  Maybe?  This is that.

what i like about this, it shows how fcked up the school system really is. Not just millicent, but the other mogrified students too.

Like how fairies are put into school for good, and wolves for school for evil. Because they didn't fit the criteria. or rather- They were "too evil" to be good, and "too good" to be evil. It puts the kids with neutral alignment in a dangerous place.

On another note, I want this to be adressed with nicola. Will she fail and become a mogrif? will something change? is the mogrifying students going to end?

mogrifs is such a terrifying concept- considering they are literal KIDS who didn't know any better. KIDS.

why i care about millicent of maidenvale so much

idk why im making this post i just feel like there hasnt been much millicent content for a while and if im gonna have a tumblr blog dedicated to her i may as well create some

so. the thing about millicent is she barely has any canon content. shes the least fleshed out of the main evergirls, and all we really know about her at first glance is that shes a ginger. thats honestly why i started obsessing over her in the first place, because im a ginger as well and ive always felt a kind of joking solidarity with ginger characters (until it kinda… stopped being a joke uh oh). but throughout the series we learn bits and pieces about her, such as:

- she is never paired with a prince and in fact never expresses interest in boys, at the wish fish pond when everyone sees a picture of the boy they like, she sees nothing, which is attributed to a “foggy mind”

- she is described as “obtuse” and ends as the lowest-ranked student in the school for good, despite reena and beatrix trying to help her raise her grade

- her defining trait seems to be how much she cares about her friends (her yearbook quote is “sisters before misters” which is probably lighthearted but i think it’s telling)

and i know that these details were probably just thrown in randomly by soman, because he barely gives his main characters consistent characterization let alone his background characters. but to me all of these random pieces paint a really interesting picture.

millicent, in these ways, is the opposite of what a student at the school for good is expected to be. sure she’s conventionally pretty and cares about her appearance and seems to be just like everyone else, but there are also a lot of ways she’s different. she has no interest in princes and doesn’t develop an interest at any point in the series. she prioritizes sisterhood and friendship in an environment that is inherently competitive. and she fails all of the school’s lessons despite apparently working really hard to pass. i personally headcanon that she failed the snow ball because she didn’t find a date.

when you start dissecting everything we know about millicent, you get the sense that it’s not that she doesn’t belong in the school for good, it’s that the school for good is not structured to accommodate for her. we know that her problem is not her being lazy, because beatrix said she worked really hard to raise her grades, it’s just that in the end she couldn’t grasp the information. we know that her problem is not her being cowardly, because she ends up sacrificing her life in battle to save her peers, which is just about as brave as you can get.

and i think that this tells a really interesting story about a character who is not supported by their school system. the school for good is shown to be a place that is not very accepting of different types of people, as shown by how agatha is treated. but i think millicent is a much more subtle example of this. she failed school not because of her character but because of factors out of her control. and i think it can be up for fanon interpretation what these factors are. could this somehow be a commentary on the way real-life schools don’t accommodate for differences, mental physical social etc, among their students? im not sure soman intended it that way but it does add another layer to what we know about the schools in the books.

either way millicent means a lot to me because even though she doesn’t stand out as much as agatha, so much of her character exists in defiance to the person she is expected to be and, presumably, the person she was raised to be (as a princess). in the end, she sacrifices herself to save her friends, and we know her friends have been the most important part of her life this whole time. she does not sacrifice her sense of sisterhood at any point in the series, and although she struggles a lot, there’s something so heartwarming about her maintaining her values the whole time.

in conclusion millicent is a perfect character 2 me and i wantd to tell you why

"I'm far from home, I've lost my only friend, everyone here hates me, and all I want is a way to find some kind of a happy ending... But you can't even tell me the truth. My ending is not about what Good I do or what's inside me. It's about how I look.

I never even had a chance."