#these were all based on book sejanus btw

[sejjiplinth]

my sejanus hc list that i’ve had in my notes for years and years

— he definitely loves all animals but he is a cat person all the way!!!!!!

— his closet is sorted by color

— he wore glasses as a child (and occasionally wears them in his older years)

— he likes to sew with his ma

— his favorite season is winter because he likes to wear scarves, but he loves spring too!

— he has a bird feeder hanging from his windowsill

— would absolutely hate horror films, his favorite kind of movie is anything that falls in the romcom genre

— hates white shoes / suits (yes he was miserable in the peacekeeper uniform)

— ma put notes in his lunchbox when he was little and he still has them in a small box on top of his closet

— he’d be a sandbox game lover. animal crossing, stardew valley, anything like that

— he surprisingly has really good endurance, and it’d piss coriolanus off when they’d have to run for their peacekeeper training because he couldn’t keep up

— double knots his shoe laces because he got tripped so much as a kid

— favorite pie is either peach or apple

— probably has a fish tank

— when he’s reading he makes his own bookmarks

— actually knows how to slow dance properly thanks to ma

— he draws on gum wrappers

— is deathly terrified of any kind of flying bug (but would pick up any spider to take it outside and set it free 😭)

— he had a pet duck in district 2

— his favorite flowers are tulips because they continue to grow even once they’ve been cut

— he loves to help ma cook. whether it’s handing her ingredients, or stirring the pot while she steps outside. anything to make her days a little easier

— his favorite color is orchid purple

— he’s a collector!!!! i think he’d collect rocks, stamps, pennies, flowers and leaves, literally anything he can find because he likes to make scrapbooks for them

— can’t sleep unless he’s cold

— owns tons of graphic tees and other colorful attire as an adult because his father only let him wear formal clothing growing up

— definitely gets motion sickness

— cannot drive for shit and should never be trusted behind the wheel

— his love languages are acts of service and gift giving

— his favorite treat of ma’s is her cupcakes, especially the ones she makes for his birthday

— diary / journal ownerrrrr (the fact that he had one in his box in the movie made my heart happy, okay lionsgate you get a point from me…)

— has a piece of jewelry that he’s worn for half of his life, and it’s either a ring or a necklace (maybe both!)

— the marble heart that was in his box in the book was from marcus

— in a present day au, i can always see him being a tutor in high school, maybe even a student teacher in his early 20’s (i think i’ve actually talked about this before on here LMAO) but i don’t think he’d become a full-on teacher in the end, and would diverge his career path to eventually become an EMT

— it takes him years to get through a bottle of cologne

— since he’s canonically good at science, i think he spent a lot of his childhood conducting fun experiments (DEFINITELY the baking soda-and-vinegar volcano)

— his home would be full of the silliest decor. cat cups and colorful paintings, and he has gnomes in his lawn… he gives them names

that’s all i have for now !!!!

#sejanus plinth #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #tbosas #headcanons #come home😭😭😭😭 #these were all based on book sejanus btw #i can’t really align them with movie sejanus because they’re so different to me #but anyway #sejanus4l….

[convenientalias]

@attoliasirenides said @convenientalias so why queen of attolia?  (attempt to start a conversation about my favorite book and character of all time even though KOA is better written QOA has more Irene.                            

(Sorry I can’t respond to comments, I can only copy and paste...but anyways...let me talk about QoA for just a minute pls. I said it was my favorite book and I did not lie. Also, no one ever asks me stuff like this.)

There are a couple reasons. First of all it has to do with the time in my life when I read the books, since I read all of them months apart from each other. And of course I was shocked every time the style/POV changed. Queen of Attolia was the worst shock, since I had only read The Thief at that point, and I was probably a bit too young for it ;) so I had very mixed feelings. While there were elements I loved (which I will get to in a second) I hated how long it took Gen to get over his injury--the whole “recovering from trauma” aspect was something it took me a while longer to appreciate. And I was annoyed by the slow pace of the book. But then I reread it over and over again, and as I got older I appreciated it more and more.

I have a theory that eventually my favorite may become a different book in the series because I haven’t reread the others as much, but then there are other reasons it’s my favorite two.

So now the actual, slightly more objective reasons:

Queen of Attolia has the highest concentration of Irene. THIS IS A HUGE POINT IN ITS FAVOR. I’m just gonna say right now that I loved Irene even reading The Thief, and I was really excited when QoA made her more sympathetic without taking away her coldness and brutality, her ability to do what was necessary. If anything, it expanded on those aspects of her. I just really love female villains, and while Irene isn’t really a villain anymore, she still has everything I like about them: the power, the ruthlessness, the ability to actually effect change in the book and be a threat to the protagonist. SO cool. And she’s allowed to be those things and also be selfless, focused on her country rather than herself. And have a vulnerable side as well, and even fall in love. Without losing her edge. SUCH A GOOD CHARACTER.

Queen of Attolia also has a more coherent plot than King of Attolia. (Sorry, KoA, you’re right up there with my favorites but I’m gonna diss you right now.) For a couple reasons: One, it follows two main character arcs rather than skipping all over the place with side characters. Two, it has a clear objective: Get Gen out of his funk and end the war. Three, it has a well defined romantic subplot which ties the two main character arcs together. KoA is a good book but it doesn’t have a very centralized plot and it also lacks the epic stakes of QoA. It’s kind of like the difference in the Prydain Chronicles between, say, The Black Cauldron and Taran Wanderer: One is a game-changing tale of adventure and intrigue and the other is a character focused interlude.

KoA is focused on a smaller time frame and the development of matters at court, and showing one specific character’s rise to power: Gen. But we already know Gen is a good king, and we already know he’s going to get the court to respect him. It feels like a drawn out version of the end of QoA, with an added outsiders’ perspective. I think it’s necessary for the series (we do have to see how Gen gets his country’s loyalty), and it’s a lot of fun as a character study, but overall it’s just not as...large? It also feels more like a series of scenes than a novel, with every scene trying to outdo the last. Look, here’s Gen ATTACKED BY ASSASSINS. NOW HE’S MAKING OUT WITH THE QUEEN. But wait, wait, HE’S REVEALING SEJANUS’ TREASON! HE’S CONFRONTING RELIUS! But wait there’s more WE’RE SAVING TELEUS FROM CERTAIN DOOM. NOW WE’RE WALL CLIMBING! MY LIFE HAS BEEN SAVED BY THE GODS!

I love all these scenes but they come VERY close together. QoA has a better sense of pacing and rhythm.

QoA also feels more unpredictable. It has better twists. It has plot twists that threw me for a loop the first time round because you can see how they are set up but they still feel like they come out of nowhere. Whereas KoA has plot twists that come out of nowhere because you have no fucking clue what’s going on. Better written? I don’t see where you’re getting that.

It’s also easier to get emotionally invested in QoA. I’m going to be brutally honest here and upset half the fandom: I don’t care about Costis. He’s nice. But I don’t care about him. And do I care about Baron Erondites’ sons? Do I care about this random girl named Heiro who appears in like two scenes? Not really, no. I mean, Megan Whalen Turner MAKES me care about them, and now that I’ve read KoA I could discuss them for hours, but fundamentally I care about Irene and Eugenides a lot more than them (or than Sophos, which knocks out Conspiracy of Kings, another excellent novel). Now, KoA also does a great job with Teleus and Relius, which is great, and it did make me ultimately invest myself in Costis and Dite and Sejanus and whoever. But like. We also meet like five hundred other characters who only get a very base level of characterization because we just don’t have time. And that’s good, in that it sets up some fun and complex political intrigue. But when I’m trying to balance five different barons, eighteen attendants and six thousand other people, it’s hard for me to care about any of them individually. Oh, and btw, you know how KoA shows Gen from an outside perspective that gradually grows more sympathetic and shows him as both legendary and human? Completely fails to do that for Irene. Only QoA, so far, manages to give her that depth-though I haven’t read Thick As Thieves yet.

But moving on. I’m gonna stop dissing KoA and go back to praising QoA now. Sorry, KoA. But...you got some problems.

QoA’s portrayal of Eugenides going through a hard time and eventually getting through it is emotionally wearing and TOUGH. It’s the one book of the series where the protagonist really GOES THROUGH HELL, to the extent that when you come to the scene where he steals the magus, you feel the strongest catharsis of possibly any point in the series. And even then it’s not over-the aftermath of him losing his hand and Irene’s cruelty to him continues and has lasting effects on the series. This is the book that really shapes Eugenides out of the rough material of The Thief’s Gen. Without QoA, Eugenides is just a clever and determined trickster. Sure, he’s kind as well, and he has his own weaknesses. But QoA forces a level of pain, suffering and growth on him that none of the other books can match. It’s his personal crucible.

Also, just saying. The two best scenes of this entire fucking series are probably the proposal scene and the scene where Gen’s hand gets cut off. Megan Whalen Turner has been trying ever since (look, Sophos has a gun! GEN CAN STEAL SWORDS FROM ASSASSINS) but she hasn’t yet topped them. They’re too good. The scene where Gen’s hand gets cut off is just viscerally cruel and shocking, and it’s the first time we see Gen lose. It will never affect us that much again. And the proposal scene...well, it’s a bit more personal but I really really love Gen and Irene together and I absolutely did not expect it to happen. And I think it was that way for everyone.

So yeah. I could probably come up with about fifty other reasons it’s The Best, but basically I have a lot of love for it and I do actually think it is a better book. What do you think about it? I gather you have a love for it as well.

#queen of attolia #queen's thief #spoilers #books