hm. alright. this is inspired by my horror at the idea of them adapting AWWP as it currently is into film, bc if they do that it will be a train wreck.Â
(note that despite some recent hints towards them wanting to do a second film and maybe making preparations for it, I think it’s unlikely anything will be set in stone until they know how the first film performs. to put it bluntly; how can you make no.2 if no.1 bombs? apparently it’s quite common to start drafting a second season/film without actually knowing if you’ll get one, shadow and bone did it) Â
this is kind of messy and maybe a bit bad but like, this has been lurking in my drafts for months now and I keep telling people about it and then not finishing it so. also I’m not being paid for this am I, I’m literally writing this on tumblr on a friday afternoon on my laptop w frog stickers on. I’m listening to florence and the machine. what do you want from me man. I’m just gonna say stuff.
I think it might make sense if the schools aren’t necessarily split into Boy/Girl, they’re split into Evelyn Sader’s regime/not Evelyn Sader’s regime. Sader calls them Boy/Girl bc she kicked all the boys out but like, a few girls escaped and managed to get across the bay, most notably Hester and Anadil.Â
Tedros went and stole the Storian to keep it out of Evelyn Sader’s hands when she arrived to take over, bc he knows a little about her, mostly that She’s Bad shjsjs. (Given the Sader family are quite famous I feel the Endless Woods native students would be aware of her, especially bc of the scandal when she was fired the first time) So Tedros takes on the School Master role bc at the end of the day, the SM protects the Storian which is what he’s tryna do. Only bc he does it in such a dramatic way, bc… he is dramatic… Sader has the perfect opportunity to spin it against him
Beatrix is spying for Tedros on the inside of Girl whilst fervently pretending to be loyal to Evelyn Sader, (cmon, she has sense and I feel like she could both appreciate the idea of the supposed feminism / empowerment and also accept that Sader has completely yeeted off the end and gone into the “crazy misandrist TERF” side of things)
maybe Dot is also in Girl, upset that Hester and Anadil basically ditched her when they fled to the other side of the bay (it was an accident but she doesn’t know that. they keep trying to sneak in to get her but it’s not working. so there’s the coven conflict provided without the weight thing)
Tedros still harbours resentment over being ditched by Sophie and Agatha, but it’s more like, insecurity over being abandoned by people he thought loved him (again) lmao which is exacerbated by Evelyn Sader’s Very Fun Hedge Garden Where Guinevere Is Drowning Him In The Font.Â
He’s just like *through gritted teeth* “haha it’s fine guys don’t worry we have *eye twitches* bigger problems don’t worry about it”. I don’t think him completely losing it over being left behind and attacking Gavaldon trying to off Sophie is exactly gonna make anyone like him any more is it. So he can suppress it instead and pretend like he doesn’t care, which is equally unhealthy!! yay!! oh my god tedros go to therapy
“it’s a surprise tool that will hinder us later!”
INSTEAD he can lose it over the fact Dean Sader swoops in and gets hold of Agatha and Sophie before he can. He was trying to get into Gavaldon bc he wanted them to help get rid of Evelyn, since he’s fairly sure them going home has thrown everything off balance. Dean Sader intercepted them before he could (even tho the barrier was literally broken by Agatha wishing for HIM) and he’s fuckin raging about it
But Evelyn turns to Agatha and is like “yeah he lost it over you leaving him behind isn’t he toxic smh” , like making them believe the book situation even though it’s not strictly the case.
because everyone in Boy are teenagers and idiots, they decide that the Trial is the best way to get Agatha and Sophie back and wrest control from Sader (it’s…. not…. but they’re dumb and let Tedros make the decisions so it’s on them really)
but then they make the mistake of waking up the male teachers and they’re like “where the hell is the storian” and tedros is like “what idk it was right there” but it’s too late and he gets chucked in the dungeons bc like, meddling with the storian is The thing you’re not meant to do. even tho he legit does not know where it is
(Yara/Tristan as a sort of double agent tried to both keep it out of Evelyn Sader’s hands but also restrict it from writing the end, but ultimately it didn’t work and sader found it :/)
not sure the teachers should condone aric beating the shit out of tedros but maybe they’re all too scared to tell him no idk.
so most of AWWP can now continue as it does in the book, with Agatha believing Tedros has gone off the deep end over it all and Sophie thus being convinced they’re better off leaving him. yeah you know for someone who doesn’t like reading misunderstanding I sure do LOVE writing it HHH
I think I might have to slice the school master’s tower scene bc it gives tedros too much time to explain what’s actually happening; instead, he makes an ill-judged attempt to get into Girl (bc he’s tedros) gets caught and only just escapes, giving Sader another thing to stack against him.Â
that adds so much drama to those creepy dreams bc Agatha has seen nothing of him except glimpses across the bay and when he tried to get in, during which he blew up half the ex-Purity stairwell with a very badly cast stun spell
The only thing that is making S&A uncertain is that Hester and Anadil are on Tedros’s side, and part of what finally convinces them that Evelyn Sader is the bad guy here is when Hester takes Aric’s knife for Agatha in the Trial
(like they don’t TRUST Sader but they also fully believed what she said about Tedros and now they’re like “…oh no we got it wrong didn’t we” when they clock that Hester was on their side all along)
(yeah Aric is there I guess bc Tedros n Co let him in in the hope that he could help them take down Dean Sader and they’ve slowly been realising that he’s Actually Crazy, Oh God How Do We Get Rid Of Him)
Yara/Tristan nobly tries to be the one to catch and incapacitate Aric in the Trial but :( doesn’t work out too well. then again this is my rewrite so maybe they don’t have to die after all!Â
Aric can get his ass kicked by Tedros bc he deserves it. I know we need him for TLEA but that doesn’t mean he can’t get stomped first
Not sure how to go about the Filip thing, I mean. it’s probably less she HAS to be a boy and more that it’s the best disguise they can get hold of I guess? I think I’d like it to be a bit more like Sophie goes in intending to spy on them and find the Storian but by about a week in she’s like “…oh shit… we got this wrong… Sader was lying all along…” but she’s stuck there, so now she’s trying to work from inside both schools to sort this out (without clueing Tedros in to who she is bc despite the fact he’s not as mad as they thought he’s still sulking about it) and it’s… not working but she’s trying. can get some more of sophie’s witchy cunning though?
And with Filip, Tedros is like “wow this is so great I finally found a genuine friend who’s not hanging on over my wealth/looks or abandoning me over losing the Storia– FUCKING SOPHIE??” bc then maybe we could get a fun parallel between hort and tedros there. they could form like a weird pseudo trio maybe, and in the end hort is mad bc like, he was trying to form attachments that Weren’t Sophie and got kneecapped, F for Hort, and Tedros is mad bc a) he still doesn’t trust Sophie, why would he, last time he saw her she tried to trick him into killing agatha and then tried to kill HIM and b) she was having him on. again.Â
tho I am not opposed to the tedros bi implications remaining in there, obvs.Â
I would probably meddle with the trial a bit so that Tedros is trying to find Agatha for like, Not Killing Reasons and Agatha is trying to avoid him for the same reasons she does in the books and it’s a big mess. he does not realise that evelyn sader convinced them he was going to try and kill them bc like, no one told him wtf, and he’s like ?!?!?! when they absolutely leg it. lmao dramaÂ
I guess just generally remove some of the weirder plot points and dialogue, but I think if you just skew it more towards the schools being evelyn sader / not evelyn sader and mess with Tedros’s motivations you can make it less… bad. Like if it’s more about the manipulative nature of Evelyn Sader and lots of misunderstanding and less leaning into the bizzarre gender stuff it could be saved
oh and make it clearer that sophie is like, FULLY manipulated into being w Rafal like make it clear that is BAD. I’d prefer it to be less motivated by jealously for Tagatha and more by like personal insecurity and want for power and agencyÂ
Tedros's first POV is low-key so funny. It's an immediate trauma dump. There's no buildup. It's just like "fun fairytale gym scen-- TEDROS WAS ONLY 9 WHEN HIS DAD DIED"
like does he worry about this all the time? did we catch him on a bad day? We can come back later if you want mate
I feel like sge needs more ships. Tagatha and hestadil are basically the only big ones and while nicophie and hophie have some traction those four are basically it as far as popular ships go...
Aaah absolutely! I made a post about exactly this actually lmao, here it is
I was talking abt this in a group chat the other week, but I think it’s really unfair how Agatha’s wish to go back to Tedros in AWWP is like, demonised, and she’s made to look selfish?? Bc I feel like… of COURSE she wants to go back to him. It feels like a no-brainer. From the middle right to the end of book 1, Tedros was nice to her and valued her and treated her like a princess (literally not figuratively hh) and we KNOW Agatha gets attached to people who pay attention to her and like her, bc no one ever did– which is why she’s so loyal to Sophie, even though Sophie kinda sometimes treats her badly hh. So when she gets back to Gavaldon and Sophie goes back to being her old self, but ALSO steals Agatha’s story and ballgown and pretends like it was her who was the Princess, while Agatha has to go back to being the weird town freak… of course she’s gonna wonder if she should have chosen Tedros instead?? Like how can she be expected to go back to being an outcast when at Good (and with Tedros) she had self-worth, whereas Sophie is happy to let her go back to her previous life and steal her narrative? :|Â
The way that the sge movie seems to paint Sophie as a victim pisses me off to the nth degree
She is supposed to be evil and vain and looking down on everyone from the beginning. She looks down on Belle for feeding the homeless woman in the square because the woman was fat, she refuses to eat the food Honora makes for her despite her making Sophie’s favourite because she hates the woman. She makes friends with Agatha initially only as a good deed, treating Agatha as a means to her own ends and not as her own person. She feels no guilt over upsetting Radley who just wants to be her friend simply annoyance that she may not be taken to the school for good because of it. She does deeds she thinks are good such as placing a mirror in the church bathroom so people can go back to the pews looking good and she donates soap to an orphanage. Everything she does is based on the delusion that she is too beautiful and by extension good for her village. Her actions are clearly driven by her vanity and arrogance.
The movie makes Honora seem like an evil stepmother thus making Sophie’s dislike of her appear rational. The movie also changes how the girls first become friends so that it seems to be a genuine friendship on both parts. Because the girls only find out about the school that day, any “good” deeds Sophie does before this day become genuine to an audience. Visually as well, Sophie’s appearance is downplayed immensely: her dress appears to be hand made but not to the quality the original Sophie would want, the duller pinks of the dress make it seem dirty which makes Sophie appear less vain. Especially as her hair doesn’t appear to have had anything done to it nor does she appear to be wearing any makeup. This setup creates a character that is sympathetic to an audience with no vanity, no duplicity and no reason for staying in what is portrayed as a very unpleasant town.
Because of this setup, Sophie being sent to the school for evil makes no sense to an audience and even seems to merely be an admin error the staff are too scared to fix. This creates sympathy for her in an audience as this situation appears to not be her fault at all and looks horrible for her. Additionally Agatha blames Sophie’s action on Rafal and his “blood magic” (which was incredibly unnecessary) thus absolving her of any blame or responsibility for her actions.
All of this combined makes for a completely different character that appears to be a victim of circumstance instead of the original intention of her being this 100% evil girl who has been able to hide behind her beauty and the misconception that beauty makes people good
