YMMV / Arc of a Scythe

• Abandon Shipping: Scythe Goddard and Scythe Rand was initially one of the most popular pairings in the fandom, given that Rand is the only female apprentice of Goddard and is extremely loyal to him. However, come Thunderhead, the ship lost quite a few supporters due to Rand gaining unexpected feelings for Tyger whose body was taken over by Goddard, Goddard not reciprocating her feelings and being rather ungrateful towards her, and Rand even beginning to resent him for it. By The Toll, the ship pretty much sunk entirely after Goddard became rather abusive towards her. Naturally, Rand finally has enough and kills him to be reunited with Tyger.
• Badass Decay: Poor Rowan pretty much gets nerfed. At the end of the first book, he kills three (well, technically two) extremely deadly and corrupt Scythes in a Curb-Stomp Battle. In the two books after, he's pretty much kidnapped on a regular basis and often has to rely on other characters to bail him out. It gets so bad that his status as a legendary Scythe killer, Scythe Lucifer, can almost come across as an Informed Attribute.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Scythe Rand, despite having a large fanbase, has some detractors regarding her rather flimsy Heel–Face Turn. Some liked the revelation that she actually has some standards, is willing to stand up to Goddard, and find her hidden love for Tyger to be oddly endearing. However, some hate how she basically gets off scot-free for her earlier atrocities and think it doesn't make sense for her to be horrified by Goddard's actions since she showed absolutely no problem with killing hundreds of people earlier on, making her come across as quite Unintentionally Unsympathetic.
  • To a lesser extent, there's Tyger. Although the majority of the fandom do seem to like him for his friendship with Rowan, his ditzy yet fun-loving attitude, and his tragic death, there are a few who feel like he really should have known better and criticize him for easily falling for Scythe Rand's lies and not believing Rowan, who's literally being held hostage, when he tries to tell him the truth about her.
• Broken Base: In-Universe example. Scythe Anastasia's gleaning method is as controversial among the fans as it is in universe among her fellow scythes. Some view her choice to give her victims a month to put their affairs in order as considerate and merciful, while others see it as a cruel mental torture she misguidedly inflicts on them.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • In Scythe, after having to deal with the corrupt, sadistic, and outright despicable Scythe Goddard and his apprentices (sans Scythe Volta) for the entire book, Rowan brutally killing them in a near Curb-Stomp Battle after finally having enough of their evil is extremely satisfying. Although in the sequel, Goddard and Rand turn up alive and well (well, sorta with Goddard), it's still a satisfying moment nonetheless.
  • Happens again in The Toll, when Scythe Rand finally has enough of Goddard and stabs him through the heart, leaving him only able to express shock and horror as he dies a second and final time.
• Complete Monster: Curate Mendoza is an ambitious, manipulative Tone Cult curate who wishes to use Greyson Tolliver's position as "The Toll" to control all Tone Cults worldwide. Tiring of his failure to control Greyson, Mendoza convinces a violent cult to kill Scythe Tenkamenin, with the resulting attack leaving countless innocents and cultists dead. Mendoza is uncaring when Greyson has the cult's curate killed for the attack and tries to manipulate him further. When Scythe Goddard order the genocide of the Tone Cults, Mendoza tries to start a war with the Scythedom, which Greyson banishes him for. Mendoza then goes to Goddard and convinces him to spare some cultist and kill Greyson so Mendoza can take over the cults and enact more brutal attacks on Goddard's rivals and help the vicious Scythe expand his bloody reign.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Rand is a tenuous yet popular Dark Action Girl who sometimes has her more nefarious actions overlooked in favour of her willing to stand up to Big Bad Goddard and her love for Tyger.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Scythe Chomsky, surprisingly. Although he's the least characterized out of Scythe Goddard's apprentices and is even Killed Off for Real at the end of the first book, many felt that he was a waste of a perfectly good character and wished they could have seen more of him. Neal Shusterman has even dubbed his fans "Chomsky-ites".
  • Scythe Morrison didn't have this status back in Thunderhead, where he was nothing more than a Professional Butt-Kisser to more powerful Scythes, but after he got an expanded role in The Toll, he slowly built up a fanbase for showing off a surprising amount of Hidden Depths and becoming Greyson/The Toll's bodyguard.
  • Jerico "Jeri" Soberanis only appears in the final book of the series, yet became a fan-favorite among readers due to being a positive depiction of a gender fluid character, sticking with Citra through thick and thin to stop Goddard, and having a surprising amount of badassery for a ship captain.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Scythe Goddard, despite being nothing short of despicable, is shown to be a charismatic and manipulative Visionary Villain who knows exactly how to get what he wants at the expense of others.
  • Scythe Rand as well, being a natural Deadpan Snarker and The Dragon to Goddard who revives him thanks to a long-winded plan and is shown to have some surprising Hidden Depths to boot.
• Love to Hate: Scythe Goddard. He's a massive bastard whose sadism, pettiness, false politeness, and thirst for power make it very easy to want to see him be taken down, yet he's also a very effective villain because of it.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Scythe Rand, real name Olivia Kwoon, is the witty and clever second in command to Scythe Goddard. After Rowan decapitates Goddard and nearly kills Rand, she starts working to make Goddard High Blade. Recruiting Scythe Brahms to help her, Rand has Brahms organize two nearly successful assassination attempts on Scythes Curie and Anastasia. Rand tricks Rowan's friend Tyger into believing that she's training him to become a Scythe, falling in love with him in the process. After having Brahms glean Rowan's father to lure him into a trap, Rand reveals that she had been getting Tyger into peak physical condition so she could graft Goddards head onto his body. Rand and Goddard then stun the Scythedom with Goddard's revival in order to ensure his rise to High Blade. After Goddard spurns her affections and embarrasses her in front of Brahms, Rand releases Rowan, pinning it on Brahms so Goddard will kill him. After Goddard becomes High Blade, Rand acts as his second in command, trying to reign him in and ultimately kills Goddard in order to revive Tyger.
  • The Thunderhead is the Benevolent A.I. that oversees the world and protects humanity. The Thunderhead continuously counteracts the plans of Scythes Goddard and Rand, utilizing subtle clues to guide people and sidestep its inability to interfere with the Scythedom. Fearing that Goddard may cause society to collapse, the Thunderhead started a plan to stop him and ensure humanity's survival. The Thunderhead has Greyson gain the trust of thousands of Tone Cultists, and has Nimbus Agents start building spaceships on the Kwajalein Atoll where Goddard can't stop them. It then has Scythe Anastasia expose Goddard for destroying the Thunderhead's space colonies, publicly ruining him and causing him to order the Genocide of the Tone Cultists in his rage. The Thunderhead, planning for this, uses Greyson's connections to transport the bodies of the Cultists to the Atoll and load them onto the ships. The Thunderhead then sends the ships off to establish colonies on other planets, ensuring that humanity will live across the universe.
  • Gleanings' "The Mortal Canvas": Scythe Af Klint is a polite, art loving Scythe who believes that post-mortal art lacks the soul of mortal-age due to immortality making people complacent. Af Klint approaches the art class of Ms. Cappellino and challenges her students to create the best piece of art possible in the next two weeks, with the best artist gaining a year of immunity. The students fear that the loser will be gleaned, a fear Af Klint feeds by gleaning a barista in front of them and creating a public spectacle out of the competition. Through the fear of gleaning, one student creates a truly meaningful piece of art which is hailed as the last piece of mortal-age art, exactly as Af Klint hoped. After the competition Af Klint reveals that the competition was a way of bringing Ms. Cappellino satisfaction with her life before it ended before gleaning the grateful teacher.
• Memetic Loser: Rowan receives a couple of jokes at his expense for constantly getting kidnapped despite being a feared "Scythe killer" and having accomplished relatively little by the series' end compared to Citra, who did most of the work taking down Goddard and the corruption within the Scythedom. Jokes about him being a "simp" for Citra are also fairly common.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Scythe Goddard is revealed to have crossed it a long time ago when he destroyed the Mars and New Hope Colonies, killing hundreds of people, just because it would have robbed him of power within the Scythedom. Also, it's revealed that he left his own parents on the Mars Colony when it blew up. And he just gets worse from there.
  • Scythe Brahms crosses it when he gleans Rowan's father and forces his family to watch, clearly intending to keep gleaning them. Before this he seemed to be a one off character who wouldn't show up again but this shows that he's much more important and heinous than he initially seemed.
  • Scythe Rand arguably crosses it when she kills Tyger to spite Rowan and revive Goddard, previously having tricked him into thinking that he was training to become a Scythe. Although she does feel horrible remorse for this after she realizes she was in love with him, it doesn't make what she did very forgivable.
• Salvaged Story: Although Scythe Constantine already had his fans, him being further fleshed out in Gleanings as a mole in Goddard's Scythedom training Citra's replacement as a rebellion leader definitely makes him a more complicated, competent character compared to the relatively passive goon he was in the series proper.
• The Scrappy: Scythe Fields, of "Never Work With Animals" from Gleanings, for being a smug and entitled Jerkass who thinks he's way cooler than he actually is and treats everyone around him like garbage, gleaning them for the pettiest of reasons and generally just being a lousy excuse for a human being. While this is by design, having to read through his POV can be grating due to how unlikable he is. Not to mention, his story is seen by many as the worst in the book (by virtue of being too weird and disconnected from the rest of the book/series in its subject matter), and the fact that the story is one of Gleanings' longest means that readers had to put up with him for FAR longer than many of the other original characters.
• Squick: Part of Scythe Rand's status as a Base-Breaking Character comes down to how one interprets her relationship with/feelings for Tyger Salazar. Tyger is 18 as of Thunderhead... but Rand is described ambiguously as being in her early-to-mid 20s. The ambiguity of the age gap between them, as well as it being unclear when exactly Rand met Tyger, means the relationship is seen by some fans as being pedophilic/bordering on sexual grooming, which casts a very dark cloud over the dynamic, even in its most morally sound/generous interpretation.
  • Worsened by the fact that Rand makes explicit pedophilic remarks towards Rowan in the first book, ogling him over his improving physique at the ripe, young age of 16.
• The Woobie: The second book can basically be seen as half Scythedom politics, and half an incredibly detailed account of Greyson Tolliver's life falling to complete shambles, through very little fault of his own, bar some extremely bad foresight on his part. Averted in the third book, where things get a bit better for him, and eventually skew more towards Earn Your Happy Ending.

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