Yes, the long-awaited follow-up to my review of @ZZ's Wheel Of Fortune2’s story, The Fountain of Infinite Mirror.
As I said in that review, I had a lot of knowledge of what was going to happen over the course of the story. But of course… I didn’t know everything. And that’s what this post is about.
I’m now going to talk about every little thought that entered my head while I was reading about what could happen next, but didn’t actually come to fruition.
Most of these are going to be very small, but some of them are gonna be… well, let’s just say that during certain parts of the story, I sorta let my imagination run wild.
Let’s get into it.
First off, just to get this one out of the way real quick, I expected Strawberry Fields Forever or James Dean to appear at some point. Obviously, Berry was referenced. But she didn’t actually appear… and that’s a bit surprising.
Speaking of characters I really thought would make an appearance… Anna. And Snake Pies. And Ella (Ella was mentioned, but she didn’t appear). And Jessie. Wait what the fuck, Jessie didn’t appear?! At all?! There wasn’t even a reference to her?!
That’s goddamn surprising. ZZ has been rather vocal about their love for Jessie. Every single chapter, I was expecting some reference to her. There were even references to characters like Joseph frickin Sylver, and Hector and Kojiro, who haven’t even appeared in the stories they’re from yet… which was not something I was expecting at all.
I feel like it would have been really easy to include some reference to her, especially through Joshua… but hey, maybe ZZ felt that she didn’t deserve a tiny reference, and that if she was going to be included, it should be via a big reference, or nothing. What do I know?
Also, I really thought there was going to be a Julie Jenkins cameo, or at least a reference to her. But there was a Jasper Jenkins cameo, so hey, partial credit?
Oh, and I was absolutely convinced that there was going to be an AU-Beaufort. Mainly because ZZ specifically told me that there would be. But then I looked back at our messages and… they literally never said that. I guess I just… hallucinated that? Or dreamt it? And then convinced myself it was real? Or ZZ is somehow gaslighting me in the most effective way I’ve ever seen? Or maybe ZZ has a real life version of House of Memories? All equally likely, btw.
Okay and that about does it for characters I expected to appear.
Let’s move on to the more interesting ones.
First of all, I thought House of Memories would be used waaaaaaaay more. Personally, I hate amnesia-based abilities since they essentially provide a way for a character to get away with anything with very little consequence (which I know is hypocritical because I’ve used amnesia as a plot device in multiple stories… though I like to think that The Zombie’s amnesia is different from HOM’s)… however, while reading, I was thinking it would have been potentially pretty interesting if Roman repeatedly got caught being suspicious by Josephine, and kept having to use HOM on her, which would in turn only make her more and more paranoid, eventually causing her to snap and attack Roman… which, well, that didn’t exactly happen, but she did get more and more paranoid and attack, so… again, partial credit.
Second, I definitely thought Thaddeus Benton was going to blink, at least one time. I feel like it could have been cool if there was a recurring plot detail of Thaddeus’ voice occasionally sounding off in his ear, telling him things like “this relationship with Jacob isn’t gonna work”, “these people are going to find out your secret and reject you”, or “you’re my son and you’re going to follow in my footsteps whether you like it or not”. This would have made Roman grow progressively more paranoid until he eventually felt he needed to do something drastic like run away with Jacob. He did end up running away with Jacob… but for a very different reason.
Partial credit…?
Nah lol that’s a bit of a stretch…
And lastly, and this is by far the most in-depth theory, I thought Panic Room was going to take one of Jacob’s eyes.
We’d already seen early on that Panic Room likes Jacob, that it wants Jacob… in the really-wants-to-kill-him” way, not the waffle making way. It even likes him enough to go out of its way to try and spike him in the heart of its own accord. It only makes sense that, given the chance, it would go for what it can get from Jacob.
Let’s say, during some kind of… intimate moment between Roman and Jacob, Roman is otherwise occupied and isn’t paying a great deal of attention to what Panic Room is doing. Let’s also say that Panic Room decides to take advantage of the fact that Jacob is right there and try to sate its hunger… so it takes one of his eyes. It would have done more, but Roman and Jacob are able to stop it in time.
Panic regarding The Ghost is of course at an all-time high, and Jacob is of course really fuckin scared… but thankful that Roman was there to protect him. Everyone is, actually. Even Josephine maybe starts to ease up on him for a little… at least for a bit.
But Roman’s just freaked out… he almost lost Jacob because of his own inability to control his Stand.
And then Gambling Man appears to him… or, at least, some kind of freaky half-Gambling Man thing (since he only has one eye). Now, obviously, I didn’t know about Gambling Man at the time, but I figured there’d be some kind of Jacob fear Stand… which ended up being Gambling Man. And this pseudo-Gambling Man tells Roman that he’s in pain, that he’s incomplete, that existing like this is a curse… and that Roman needs to kill Jacob in order to finish him.
Roman would ignore this, of course… he can’t take Jacob’s other eye… but it gets harder and harder to ignore. Panic Room’s already trying to get him to kill Jacob… and now Gambling Man wants it, too… and it’s getting in his head. And finally he snaps.
I think that could have been cool, but I do see why it’s not necessarily feasible. I’m not really sure what got me started on that whole train of thought, but for some reason I got it really stuck in my head that Roman would end up with one of Jacob’s eyes while he’s still alive. Maybe because it would have satisfied the Jacob Missing Eye Curse™. I saw Roman with an ability to make people lose eyes, and a Jacob who still had both eyes, and… well, come on. It seemed obvious.
And… yeah. I think that’s about it. Those were some of the more notable thoughts and theories that went through my head while reading The Fountain of Infinite Mirror… for anyone who’s interested in this.
Obviously, I’m not claiming that any of my ideas are better than canon TFOIM… these are just some plot details I thought could happen.
Aaaaaaaand thank you for reading! I hope you guys have a great rest of your day. Chapter 71 of Platinum Blonde will be out... uh, soon-ish.
Prince 💖