Was thinking abt Tedros's talent and why he never had one in the books (thank Kate for making me wonder abt this stuff) and...it would've been really funny if Tedros has a Talent but no one knows he does because it has nothing to do with fighting or swordplay or being the future of Camelot.
Like his Talent being something like proficiency with musical instruments or singing. Talking to birds or other small creatures. Growing plants. Tedros being a disney princess would've been his peak character trait and also hilarious.
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.
“can you draw me this” “draw that” uno reverse, why don’t YOU draw ME something, what about that huh
i cant do 30 day challenge for the life of me. so i combined some related prompts and drew em,, yeahh
DAY 2 and 4: Summer Day and Swimming
they got some hella painful sunburn, but hey, they havin fun :DDD
DAY 21 and 28: Myths and Flowers
FLOWER CROWNS!! i just squeezed in the myth,, pretty accurate i must say
DAY 27: ROAD TRIP
10 minutes later:
Both of them can drive, they take shifts.
DAY 12, 18, and 23: Rain, Tears, and Comfort
The lineart and color was done by the AMAZING and TALENTED Gennn.ni !! Check em out on instagram or just click the link owo
school for good this, school for evil that. where's my school for the morally grey?
I had a dream a couple of weeks ago that Sophie was the only one kidnapped, and Agatha literally broke out of Gavaldon and trekked through the Woods to go and rescue her, and she pulled up to the Good reception desk (my subconscious did not remember there was not such a thing) looking like absolute shit with mud and twigs and everything all over her like 'hi I think my friend's here I'm looking for her' and whoever it was behind the desk (possibly Anemone icr) was like
But then Dovey started trying to gaslight Agatha into believing she was meant to be there as a student (typical) and Tedros was there briefly but then I gained full consciousness rather than partial consciousness and thought 'well that's not the plot of 2013 hit novel The School For Good And Evil'
Little Boy Blue
two of my irl friends thinks tedros is so bad- and its so hard to defend him TCY made him worse-
tedros is a misogynist pig and this fandom is tone death to how tagatha normalizes abusive relationships
i remember putting this on the back burner because i REALLY didn't want to piss people off but never mind op speak your truth.
in my own personal opinion, i wouldn't say they're ab//sive but there is toxicity in their relationship between books 4-6 that just got brushed over or handled completely incorrectly. i liked their relationship in the third book bc they actually learned how to properly communicate but forgot in book 4 and onwards. as much as i love tedros, he did not not unlearn his misogyny at all, it just shows up at the most random moments. like at one point he's like omg agatha my feminist queen my equal my not like other girls alt girlfriend! i'm so glad she doesn't suck up to me and tell me lies to make me feel good <3 and then came book six where he complained about the exact things he liked her for??? nah i'm just going to say this is soman's inconsistent writing and lack of thought in writing their relationship problems. like why completely subvert something established to make them argue when you could use their miscommunication problems to make them argue and then solve it?
i also didn't like how they just pretended the six month ignoring thing didn't happen because wtf that was just horrible to read and besides other characters joking about it, neither tedros nor agatha brought it up besides that mere apology in the celestium. and even after that they didn't properly communicate. like i really wanted to see them resolve their miscommunication problems and tendency to shut each other out and handle their problems on their own. but no, we brought back the sexism thing and made tedros a complete misogynist to develop his relationship like ?? what was the reason ??
i think there's more i could say but i haven't read/reread the books in a solid year so it's not fresh in my mind but yeah here's my take on it. i love them lots but these were pressing things i noticed in regards to op's post.
YOU 🫵
look at my fish
okay you can keep scrolling
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