… is Thaddeus Lacer attracted to the Raven Queen? Have I somehow missed the clues until reading this from Chapter 202:
A combination of wonder and pleasure crossed his face as he sucked in a deep breath.
Siobhan realized that even his positive expressions were almost always tinged with irony, weariness, or pessimism, because his face looked different—younger—now that, for a moment, they were absent.
“You’re here,” he breathed. His hands flexed and twitched as if he had been about to make some aborted movement. Then he tucked his hair behind his ears very deliberately, the opposite of the flustered preening that she’d seen Damien do so many times. “Would you like to come in?” Professor Lacer asked.
You are onto something: I distinctly remember finding it strange that S was looking so closely at Lacer’s beard that she saw short hairs crossing each other or some such…
She did also pay so much attention to his opinions and facial expressions that her interaction with him in ch 203 made me feel like she conned him in an extra personal way.
I am so looking forwards to the awkwardness and drama no matter what form their relationship takes
She’s got it bad. How could she not, though, it seems like everyone has a crush on him…
And then, this ridiculous man *gives her a ring. * Her ring. The one thing she’s been wanting for almost a year.
Additionally, THE EYE CONTACT. Maybe someone else can add their opinions on it, but all these two seem to do is let the rest of the world fade away while they stare into each other’s eyes.
I mean, it manifests as a crush a little bit, and there’s bits of that in there too, but I interpreted it as closer to him just generally being starstruck by his favorite celebrity just showing up out of the blue on his doorstep in the middle of the night. He’s basically been at the forefront of the Raven Queen fandom for the better part of a year now, and has a weird parasocial thing going, where she has been his most major interest outside of work.
He’s projecting his own imagined version of the mysterious figure of the Raven Queen just as much as everyone else is, it’s just that his imagination created a very different person from that of most others and views her as a potential equal and colleague that he has been pining for in a non-romantic way for a long time.
Despite their mutual awkwardness, and how enjoyable it is to see Lacer as a tsundere, I hope nothing romantic actually develops, because that is a pretty concerning power imbalance and age gap.
If I read that one particular passage right, S genuinely did collect newspaper articles about Lacer when she was a child, though we don’t know why. And his name was the first one out of her mouth when asked for the most important figures of the past 50 years at entrance exams, before even knowing him. I interpret it as there still being a pretty large dose of hero worship going on.
So they’re both kinda meeting their favorite celebrity for the first time.
Before chapters 202 and 203, I would have agreed with you 100%. The attraction and tension is there for sure though.
I have no idea if anything will come out of it other than fun awkward scenes, especially given the age difference and Lacer being Sebastian’s teacher. PGTS is very far from a typical romance story and the characterizations are complex so I think this will be an (uncomfortable?) added factor to interactions between the two.
They are abnormally attentive to one another, certainly, though I would say it’s more intellectual attraction than anything else. And of course, S is delightfully oblivious to anything on the romantic spectrum, so she’s likely to miss the signals - including her own. She did, after all, visit him in the middle of the night, wearing what I imagine was a rather seductive ensemble, without sparing a thought for how that could be completely misinterpreted…
I was listening to SOL last night to try to sleep, and I had forgotten that Siobhan thought this:
Professor Lacer handed her a steaming mug, into which he had added neither sugar nor cream, then took a reluctant gulp of his own brew. His exaggerated grimace and the little involuntary shudder that ran through him was…almost cute.
Sebastien turned her attention to her own coffee. ‘I must be sleep deprived if my mind could make a connection between the word “cute” and Thaddeus Lacer,’ she thought. ‘There has never been a man who matched that descriptor less.’
or romantic, maybe?