MARIUS LAURENT

he casually stopped by to be on copious amounts of drugs and then spirit away into the night

so yeah

this is the plot ready set go



idk friend-o we are writing expies what do you want from me. BUT BEING SERIOUS . . . i have told you that james is misguided and committed to convincing both marius and marley that they should escape with him to mexico and this is actually true. ta da. he would prefer very much to flee the country, especially since things are getting more and more tense within the operation and they also did nearly kill him. (even worse, he can understand why they wanted to.)

that being said —

— i do not personally believe marius or marley knows that happened (aka information has been selectively omitted to avoid causing disloyalty), so from his side i expect it seems distressingly like james up and bailed. even tho james feels he did not as far as he is concerned, i expect there will be a lot of Plot Device Lying in order to draw out tension, and that james is choosing not to confide the actual events that led to his leaving out of one-half desperation and the other-half concern that something might happen to either of them.

"aww qt"

but formally marius and marley are made of metal where james is made of glass so clearly he's just make-believing they are more vulnerable than he is. i figure for the now we will work with this as the core dynamic alongside weird unhealthy romance and mentor-ship and boundaries. in the present he is running, not explaining himself and operating largely in survival mode. what i'd like, personally, is for marius to take a leap and take advantage of the fact he's in need (even if he doesn't fully know why, he knows james enough to osmosis-deduce that it is serious) but i sincerely doubt you don't already know that from ten miles away. as i've said, his drug addiction is absurdly easy to exploit and he's not "fleeing" with as much dedication as it might deserve. in that, james does periodically wonder if he's being manipulated, and yeah the fact he has to wonder is more or less proof his judgment is not good.

so

let me know if you have additional thoughts bc tbh this is entirely bc only u like these novels and i am truly #humbled —

MARIUS LAURENT

hey rhapsody! i've been keeping an eye on marius because i loveeeee those kinda unnerving but charming and charismatic bad boys but was going to hold off plotting with you until i had a revolutionist to offer, but now that i'm strictly limiting myself to two characters (lmao), i'm going to try to make this work 🙏

so here is valencia, and basically she's a probably depressed prosecutor trying her best. i don't know that these two would necessarily know each other particularly well - because in the event thread i had val not see through the disguise for now (sorry for calling your smile suspicious, marius ;~; ).

i do think that they might at least recognise each other's names on paper or might have met a few times in passing? i guess we'll see how the thread develops for now but i was thinking maybe it's plausible that marius might recognise val or she might think his voice is familiar but won't be able to place it immediately? or we can just play it by ear for now and see how it goes!

alternatively, i had the idea that val wants to ask marius a few questions because there's a small discrepancy in a pathologist report that was, for example... a politician ruled suicide idk, maybe there's an indentation in the... wrist bone that was unlikely to be self-inflicted, idk. maybe their mutual friend/acquaintance, maybe flynt (i'll spare dandy the tag for now), notices something odd about the scene and points it out in passing so valencia goes fishing for more evidence?

anyway, i'm sleepy and idk if any of this is coherent but!! let me know what you think <33