#paximagus

[rockofcalifa]

I’ve got three pages, 1.3k words written... I just introduced nikola but now i have to write some boring shit RIP

it’s on a google doc if anyone wants to see. but i’ll post it all next month at the end of the 30day challenge thing

[rockofcalifa]

During this trip to NYC I

- finally visited the MUJI store

- got a sense of where manhattan-located events take place in Maram's story

[rockofcalifa]

lmao ok i post this shit way too much but like i made my kids again now that they’ve had another year or so of development (with the top being the ones i just made and the bottom from a year or so ago) and tbh.. they actually look older... wild

[rockofcalifa]

Maram’s story exists solely to be made into a mafia au. I am abandoning the dystopia bullshit. This is real. This is the 1990s? This is NYC. I’m standing in line for the post office so I’m going to articulate these concepts sorry for no readmore I’m on mobile.

Lenore Crafa is the leader of a crime “family” of which she is the last biological member. One of her fronts is a little restaurant and Maram, an artist with no money, gets a job there. Maram sees some dramatic criminal activity going down and even intervenes to some positive end and Lenore is seriously impressed. Lenore’s looking for a successor and the only options at the moment are Nikola (the kid of her lieutenant who she’s starting not to trust) and Iyobosa (the kid of one of her allies in another area… he’s just ok). So she starts to take Maram under her wing. Maram doesn’t like this bc they’re not comfy with the whole crime aspect but they have to go along with it for their own safety especially since Nikola’s dad is out to get them.

The funny thing is, Maram learned about the job opening at the restaurant from Nikola, who was/is dating Maram’s sister.

Pascal works in forensics at the nypd and she’s Maram’s roommate. She’s continually being blackmailed.

Anyway Maram’s like, as long as I’m heading this crime syndicate, I might as well turn to legitimate business… and that kicks off a storyline almost exactly like the one from the original story. Complete with three coups.

[rockofcalifa]

wow i was having such a blah day until i was practicing piano and i got a flood of new paximagus ideas. long story short maram initially doesn’t know what they want to do with their life. #relatable. also any government shadiness is on the dl, which i know is falling into /another/ trope i.e. Horrible Discovery About The Government Trope but i think it’ll work out better in the long run. usually YA hero’s first solution isn’t Policy Maneuvers 

[rockofcalifa]

ok so I haven’t been on here in two days having deleted tumblr mobile to make room for submarine pictures on my phone

i visited penn today and the whole paximagus crew would fit in at the b-school, the ambitious, well-dressed little shits that they are

it’s funny imo how vastly different the paximagus crew and the gerard squad are

[rockofcalifa]

So I’ve been thinking a lot about that “hate at first sight” post where the first time they see each other they know they’re going to duke it out on some windswept plateau while the fate of the world hangs in the balance. And so I’ve been trying to decipher both how Maram and Nikola met and how their final confrontation might play out.

Long ramble beneath the cut

I’m pretty sure they’ve known each other from a very young age. They’re in the same “school district,” were possibly in the same daycare as well. Which would mean “hate at first sight” wouldn’t even be possible, because they’d be literally babies. But “first sight” doesn’t have to be literal, right? Maybe they get pitted directly against each other (at age 9 or 10 maybe), either they have a difference of opinion or there’s a competition. Maram’s there thinking the interaction will be polite, friendly, and sportsmanlike but Nikola is of course completely ruthless so Maram’s like all right, we’re doing this and Maram comes out on top of whatever argument or wins whatever competition and from that moment on they realize it’s going to be like this forever? Or does that sound unrealistic for little kids. This initial realization would launch them into a state of perpetual competition and trying to best each other, accounting for the fact that the two most ambitious youngsters in their year are in the same district. What do you think?

 Alternatively, it could be “hate at first sight” between Maram or Nikola and our secondary villain, Iyobosa (one year after them, also v ambitious but a theological conservative/zealot). I don’t think it would be canon for Maram and Iyo, because they become good friends, and for Nikola and Iyo it wouldn’t matter because I don’t use their POVs (although im pretty sure nikola is the one that ends up killing iyo sooo it wouldn’t be far-fetched).

 THEN there’s the subject of Maram and Nikola’s final showdown, if there is one. It COULD be that they peacefully go their separate ways at the end of their elected? terms, or they don’t have terms at all and co-rule until they die. (Some background: after the fall of the theocracy both of them want All the Power but they compromise and Nikola becomes something similar to an interior minister while Maram is foreign minister. Nikola wants to keep but revise the religious establishment while Maram wants to abolish it and become completely secular.) It’s entirely plausible, with their differences in opinion, that some grand confrontation could eventually result.

 Consider the following, possibly canon scenario. Before the theocracy was toppled, Maram’s country and another country had sort of a North Korea-China relationship. Maram’s country wasn’t exactly a client state, but “China” was its only trade partner. “China” is generally disliked by most countries. After the coup, “China” gets upset that Maram is introducing policies trying to enter the mainstream international community, and “China” cuts off all trade with them. However, the condition the “mainstream” introduces to enter into trade is that all remnants of the theocracy must be abolished, meaning they want Nikola removed (Nikola is claiming to be the new prophet… its complicated and silly). So Nikola thinks they can get on the “mainstream”’s good side (not that they care that much) by going to war against “China.” (Background: their country’s main trade is weapons manufacturing, which are traded with “China” for everything else.) Maram thinks this is crazy, especially since “China” is essentially starving them, so a biiiig difference of opinion/schism happens.

 What would they do about it? Nikola is totally down for some casual murder, but they know they have to be careful and discreet about things because the government is trying to be legitimate and transparent and stuff. On the other hand, Maram wants to avoid violence and illegalities if at all possible. They too had their fair share of “casual” murder as a young politician, and it turned out that was an awful experience so they’re determined not to do that again. I think, in the end, it has to be Nikola that dies. What I imagine is a tense cabinet meeting dissolving into a furious yelling match. But then Nikola’s sister Phuong (who is def on Maram’s side, and possibly has unrequited feelings for them. haven’t decided. But they have a strange relationship) pulls out a gun/laser gun and straight up kills Nikola then and there.

 So, I guess the conclusions that can be gained from this snafu of an email would be

-         No hate at first sight between maram and nikola

-         No epic ending to the story either

-         So I guess all that musing has been in vain

:(

[rockofcalifa]

I tried stained glass :0