Characters / Viridian Saga

Due to a heated academic disagreement concerning, among other things, the true authorship and nature of the work, and in the interest of providing accurate encyclopedic information matching each and every interpretation of Viridian Saga, the following page will offer a reading in accordance to the mainstream Green Booze Rebranding theory.

Andi

Andromeda "Andi" Slate

• Audience Surrogate: Andi, who progressively comes to grip with the fact that something in the town is weird and is the only character Genre Savvy enough to guess that something is off with Riley.
• Beast and Beauty: Clever reconstruction as Riley looks perfect in human form, so this isn't some sort of martyr choice for her. Well, there's still the whole risking her life thing.
• Book Worm: At least when The Phantom of the Opera is the book in question, anyway.
• The Chosen One: Andi is the only one who might one day come even close to stop Cthulhu from causing the Apocalypse. This is due to her natural charm and knack for beautiful Did You Think I Can't Feel? speeches; a nice change from the usual boring Audience Surrogate who uses work or skills during three hundred pages of boring conflict, because she immediately solves many problems simply by ´´being there´´. Yes, you read well, she´s awesome like this, even when not lifting one single finger. To make it worse, she is the only one able to do that in the entire town. This is just how boring and unexceptional every other character is.

• Comically Missing the Point: Much snark has been had about the fact she misinterprets her favorite novel and sees the Phantom as some kind of romantic savior for Christine despite the whole kidnapping and stalking thing. Her romanticized view of the Phantom makes it easier for her to accept Riley.
  • On the other hand, this ties into Beast and Beauty above. Andi loves Riley because he understands her pain just like the Phantom does with Christine. In the end, this is reciprocated, but in the original novel, the Phantom's foreign origin and clearly sensual behavior made him too risky a love interest and she ended up with the very blond-haired and reserved Raoul. Those implications disappear in our century, when Andromeda can end up with Riley, while Vik, the Indian Love Interest, cancels the racism by being portrayed sympathetically and outgrowing his Hindu superstitions.

• Meaningful Name: Andromeda is a goddess of Atlantis. On the other hand, the anti-fans have snarked that Andi Slate is a boring blank slate of a character.
• Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: Yes. Yes, she did.
• The Ditherer: Andi, with very good reasons. While critics have found it strange and think this is supposed to make her an audience surrogate (keeping silent on important matters a la Nick Carraway), Andi is a teenage girl who suddenly attracts the attention of a Cute But Psycho Alien King and her Unlucky Childhood Friend in a town where her mother keeps asking her whether she is fine while she is not and she visibly chose not to speak about it. Also there's this stuff with the Woman Scorned who tries to destroy the world... because of reasons and the bell keeps ringing at 3:35! Life is not easy for Andi but haters will never show sympathy.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Andi pushes it a bit far with all the "most ordinary girl in the world" stuff, at least after the hundredth time she insists on this onwards... You could argue it makes her all the more relatable, because she isn't one of those expansive aggressive sex-crazed modern heroines, but a somewhat more clever and rational person who is capable of discerning her own faults, and knows that she can't do anything when she isn't competent and needs to ask adapted help like a real person in a real situation.

  • This happens only when the "real person" is an angry teenage girl with horrible self-esteem.

• Light Feminine Dark Feminine: The Light, (being seemingly innocent, humble and restrained) to Ms Epistola's Dark, who is... well, Ms Scarlett Louise Epistola.

• Oblivious to Love: It doesn't click that Vic likes her as more than a friend even after he asks her out.

• Shrinking Violet: At first, anyways. She does not consider herself pretty enough to wear bikinis and hides them under baggy T-shirts.
• Too Dumb to Live: While the extent to which both Riley and Andi herself later berate her for getting attacked feels excessive to the point of Victim-Blaming, it's true that wandering around alone, in a bathing suit, in a shady and unfamiliar part of town was... probably not the most cautious and sensible thing to do.

Riley

Riley Bay

• Anti Anti Christ: Riley's destiny is to bring about the end of the world. But because Andi is part of the world, he instead resolves to protect it.

• Break the Haughty: His Earn Your Happy Ending consists in renouncing everything he held dear for a girl he just met. It's heartbreaking even when what he wanted to do was mostly destroying the world. In some rare moments after this trope (partially) took effect, he becomes "an adorable little puppy, afraid of what [others] will say".
• Byronic Hero: Riley is Cthulhu in disguise. He cannot bear the thought that a mere girl could be Spanner in the Works and challenge his position. Thus, in the name of his own sense of self-worth and superior intellect, he chooses to study her. He maybe eventually considers neutralizing her given his reaction in the end of the teaser.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones

• Love Redeems: By the end of the first book, he likes two things in the world. Andi and cookies.
• Mad Artist: He is in love with the idea of bringing Apocalypse upon earth. His description of it is really poetic.

• Meaningful Name: He is from the House R'lyeh (which as Andi points out sounds like Riley). Additionally Riley Bay is a secretly a sea creature.

Vik

Vivek "Vik" Mayank

• Big Brother Instinct: To the point it gets kind of... annoying. This makes him a foil to Riley who ends up recognizing that Andi is just a diminutive creature in need of protection, but a bit more strong than he thought.
• Bollywood Nerd: He's an Indian who is really into accident cultures and mythologies.
• Brain Washed And Crazy: After he gets manipulated into joining the cultists. Although one has to wonder how much was actually brainwashing and how much was just the cultist pointing out what a bitch Andi was to him.
• But Not Too Foreign: He does have an English accent.
  • His very Indian given name, Vivek, gets shortened to the very American-sounding Vik.

• Teacher/Student Romance: Has a thing for Scarlett Epistola which she takes full advantage of to get him to join a cult
• Token Minority: It even gets Lampshaded when horror movies come up.
• Unlucky Childhood Friend: Andi sees the relationship between herself and Vik as Like Brother and Sister, unfortunately Vik doesn't see it that way... and his growing jealousy over Riley and Andi's relationship makes him very easy for Scarlett Epistola to manipulate him.

Uncle Neil

Uncle Neil

• Parental Substitute: More or less the role he fills for Riley, given that other than Chole and some random cousins, most of Riley's family is asleep.

• Noodle Incident: Basically every time the man talks something awesome is alluded to... and we never get the specifics to just what happened or he'll begin to explain a past event and be cut off.

Bree

Bridget "Bree" Fifan

• All-Loving Hero Apparently, she projects this image but she lives up to it and a wonderful Good Bad Girl way that only Serra Elinsen could hate.

• Big Eater: In a large amount of the scenes in which Bree appears she is eating something.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing Downplayed. She once agreed with Andi to leave Andi alone, resulting in her being almost assaulted. Andi forgave her the week after.

• Jive Turkey: When talking to Jamal. Based on this brief dialogue one can assume Elinsen has never heard an actual person use slang ever or that her understanding of "urban slang" came from poorly written 70s movies.
• Never My Fault: When Andi gets aggressed, she doesn't seem to feel guilty that she let her friend get away and drink at a college party and rationalizes it by saying Andi asked her to and blaming her for not giving news! Victim-blaming, anyone?
• Totally Radical: Bree is awfully fond of using the word "Wicked" as an adjective, which has a tendency to make her sound like she's from the '80s.

• Quirky Curls: Bree has naturally curly red hair and is a fairly high energy and upbeat person.

Scarlet

Scarlet Epistola

• Foil to Andi.
  • Both want The End of the World as We Know It because they were scorned. Both came to progressively discover their power of attraction through the novel. Both like Vivek a lot. Both are perfectly unfazed by Cthulhu's threats. In the end, Scarlett even hints that scorn would turn Andi into someone like Scarlett herself.

• Hot Teacher: She is well aware of the fact and uses it to her advantage.

• Meaningful Name: Epistola means "letter".
• Mind Rape: more or less what Riley and his "family" do to her in the end
• Stripperiffic: Scarlett Epistola becomes increasingly so as the story goes on. Justified, since she leads her cult via seduction.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Andy worries that Vik is being led astray by her and that they might be having one of these in essence they are but only because Scarlett seduces Vik to help her get her hands on The Necronomicon and to do her bidding.

• Villainous Underdog: She's a human being trying to bully Cthulhu. It works out about as well for her as you'd expect, but props for sheer gutsiness!

Chole

Chole/Cthaeghya

• Genki Girl: If the tutu and the excited way she greets Andi are any indication.

Jamal

Jamal

• Jive Turkey: See Bree's character entry. If there were any indication Elinsen has never seen a black person before, this is it.
• Token Black: Probably the only black guy in the story (except the rapist).