Reblog to make him lose another 200 billion, like to make him lose 1 billion
for the people doomblogging in the notes:
this isn’t a “drop in the ocean fine” situation, 200 bil is already over half of his fortune lost… and he’s not even done losing money yet! he’s got a ton of lawsuits left to go through, owes Google money for trying to rent-dodge, destroyed Twitter’s remaining brand value by rebranding to X, is playing lawsuit chicken with Microsoft as a direct result, and will have to pay off Twitter’s debt… and shows no signs of even pausing to consider the stupidity of his decisions, especially as he’s already plotting out loud to make a paypal alternative that breaks multiple international laws.
whatever he has left is nowhere near enough to cover the debt he’s currently in and unless he somehow gets it forgiven or magically earns more than he’s losing, there’s a countdown over his head running down until the IRS personally comes after him.
unless his last remaining braincell wakes up and he hits the brakes, we might actually see someone speedrun going from richest man in the world straight to poverty, and you better believe i wanna see that :D
The killer’s identity in a mystery/thriller/horror needs to mean something.
I think a lot of folks read a couple Agatha Christies and came away with all the wrong lessons. So let me clear this up for you: the mark of a good murder mystery is not that the killer is completely impossible to guess.
The response you are looking for from a reader is “ohhh, of COURSE! now it all makes sense!”
You are NOT looking for “wait, what? who the fuck is this guy?”
Introducing a walk-on role on page 5 and then patting yourself on the back for “foreshadowing” it when he’s revealed as the killer is stupid, actually. Not only is that not really playing fair with your reader, it also fails to say anything interesting.
Look: The cozy mysteries where the victim is an asshole and everybody in town could plausibly be the killer because everyone has motive? That entire construct is saying something. It’s a form that follows function.
The reason why “everyone in the slasher thought the killer was the weird guy who’s in love with the final girl, but actually it was the rich/popular guy” is such a common construct is it is taking an expectation we have in society about who is trustworthy and inverting it.
If your killer is the weird creepy old dude, that delivers a message about your world-view.
If your killer is the rich handsome prep, or the scorned lover, or the trans person, or the quiet religious one, or WHATEVER, that is sending a message whether you intend it to or not. So you’d damned well better pay attention to the message you’re sending and be willing to own it, or else change gears and put a different killer in the hot seat.
And, yeah, you absolutely can have the take-away message of your piece be “there is no meaning to this, the killer is not significant in any way” but if that’s what you’re going for, you have to commit to it and build it up through the narrative, not just tack it on at the end for a surprise shock value twist.
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