The Devil You Know

"And in the woods a thousand more, where bluebells nod and wave, seem gently whispering to the breeze, and all their fragrance gave."

- William Forsyth Kirby

Truck stop Icarus - damn boy, what happened to you?

Alehouse Persephone - it's always warm where you go and cold when you leave

Train station Odysseus - wherever you're trying to go, you're probably on a detour

Drunk tank Pandora - what can of fresh hell did you open?

Office Cassandra - she fucking told y'all that it would end like this

- it’s always warm where you go

and cold when you leave

Characters must make choices.

Characters should often make bad choices before they make good choices.

Character choices should drive the vast majority of the plot. Characters reacting to having random stuff thrown at them is far less interesting than characters reacting to the stuff they've thrown after it's ricocheted around and comes bouncing back toward them.

If a character refuses to make a choice, there better be consequences for that too, and you better have a damn clear way of showing those consequences to the reader and the character.

sideways

out of a rock

upside down in a freakin LAKE 

 out of an Indiana courthouse

out of ANOTHER

GODDAMN

TREE

When You Look at Dr. Grace

When You Look at Dr. Grace

Think about it throughout PHM Ryland never talks about having a family he mentions having a girlfriend once in the book all we really know about her is that they moved in together briefly and that she had a lot of stuff.

Let’s say after Ken and Barbie break up. Ken decides to go out on his own and stumbles upon the real world. There he learns about science and becomes completely invested in that pathway. He either eventually figures out how to become a human or he stays a doll which could explain why he was the only one to survive his hyper sleep (and so he can live with rocky longer)

It could explain why he so heavily believes in non water based life so much because he WAS a non water based life form. Water doesn’t exist in Barbieland it’s all plastic.

Furthermore this could explain why he decided to become a teacher being a doll previously it’s only reasonable to assume he’d enjoy kid’s presence the same way Barbie does.

He also loves the beach and we all know that Ken’s previous job was beach

In the Barbie movie the CEO of Mattel states “we’re not worried about Ken…. Ever.” Meaning that it’s likely they wouldn’t care at all if a Ken left Barbieland and perused an education became a scientist and eventually a school teacher.

All this to say imagine Simon and Grace getting into some kind of fight where Simon is like

“You have no idea what it’s like to live your life forced to be a cog in the system. Knowing that what you want doesn’t matter, nobody caring about who you are not even your name matters”etc. etc.

and the entire time Grace is having PTSD flashbacks of this:

And then responds with: