u/Bildungsroman_WIP

The Crescent City and Zootopia parallels are getting suspicious

Spoilers, obviously.

Tell me why both have:

• A giant city where “everyone lives together peacefully,” but every species secretly hates, fears or politically outranks the others
• Neighbourhoods specifically designed around who lives there
• An underestimated female investigator: JUDY and BRYCE
• Her sarcastic, emotionally constipated male partner: NICK and HUNT
• A mystery drug that makes people violently feral
• Powerful government officials manufacturing chaos from inside the system
• Aggressive prejudice disguised as "civic harmony"

And the DISTRICTS?

Zootopia has Tundratown for Arctic animals, Sahara Square for desert animals, the Rainforest District, and Little Rodentia, where everything is literally built to mouse scale.

Lunathion said, “Great idea. Let’s make it politically horrifying.”

The wolves get Moonwood and the Wolves Den.

The Fae get Five Roses, ruled by the Autumn King.

The Viper Queen controls the Meat Market from her own Den, because apparently every functioning metropolis needs a reptilian crime lord with better intelligence than the police.

The mer have the Istros River and the Blue Court.

Humans are pushed into Asphodel Meadows, have no Head of their district and therefore no actual voice in city government.

And the dead get the Bone Quarter.

The segregation is so committed that dying does not release you from the zoning laws.

Then we have the characters.

Judy gets Nick: a sarcastic, distrusted, street-smart fox with emotional damage.

Bryce gets Hunt: a sarcastic, feared, government-owned angel with emotional damage and enough wingspan to violate local building codes.

The formula remains:

Woman who refuses to quit + man who pretends not to care but would commit several felonies for her + forced proximity + conspiracy.

Then there’s Mr. Big and the Viper Queen.

Both are terrifying underworld bosses operating from species-coded territories. Both have armed employees. Both know more about the city than law enforcement. Both could have you murdered before lunch but might help the heroine because she amused them.

Gazelle and Juniper?

Famous performers representing the glamorous, progressive face of their supposedly harmonious cities while everything behind the scenes is one badly handled press conference away from civil collapse.

And the villains?

Bellwether is a powerful official secretly using a drug to make predators turn savage so she can weaponize public fear.

>!Micah was a powerful official secretly using Synth to create violent monsters while manipulating the investigation from within.!<

Zootopia said:

“Predators are being drugged!”

Crescent City said:

>!“Perfect. Add demons, angels, witches, shifters, political corruption, state-sanctioned slavery, generational war and 600 more pages.”!<

Is Sarah J. Maas copying Zootopia? Hell to the NO.

I am simply saying Lunathion is Zootopia where everyone is hot, immortal, heavily armed and one bad night away from committing a felony.

Thank you for attending my completely stable literary analysis.

What is Shopify’s newest Sidekick extension feature and how can I use it?

A cat called Spaghetti scaled over the wall of the café she lived at to sneak inside. She was looking for a dry place to nap and took refuge under one of the tables. The couple who owned the café, fed and kept her whenever she sauntered in. Spaghetti was actually the travelling companion of an old Italian woman who had been a tourist in the seaside town with salty air. 

Since the old woman breathed her last on one of the café’s chair’s, the cat was left stranded with no claimants. Luckily for her, she sustained herself on the scraps of seafood the owners liked to serve and decided to make it her new home.

“Where is Spaghetti?”, old Arnold called out to no-one in particular. Sweet old Arnold, the nearly 80-year-old café owner, had decided to adopt the cat as his own. He paced by the window expectantly, oblivious to the fact that Spaghetti had already creeped in.

His wife Brinda, who was tottering down the stairs to open up the café, huffed,“How’d I know? That devil’s a cat, it’ll be here when it likes, Arn’ Why dontcha finish your tea?” Brinda had had it with the cat. All her life, she’d managed to steer clear of pets. Until a guest decided to kick the bucket in their café.

“If not for the old bastard…”, she muttered under her breath, wincing with each step she took.

Her bad knee was acting up because of the weather. It was to rain, she now knew and so the wretched cat would come. She shuffled down the stairs, praying for a good turn out from the fishermen that day. 

* * *

“What didja father catch? I wouldn’t serve these crabs for free, boy!”, Brinda yelled, the moment she walked into the kitchen.

This was her daily ritual. She would totter down in a huff, swing the sign around to ‘OPEN’ and pace towards the office to decide the menu for the day. She’d employed the fisherman’s son to help her run the café. In addition to bringing her fresh catch every morning, he waited tables and cleaned. If the catch wasn’t to Brinda’s liking, she would scream.

“Brinda? Brinda, who you screaming at, hon?”, called Arnold from above. He’d stuck his face out from the top of the staircase and was peering down to inspect what caused his wife’s whistle to blow. “The fisherman's caught pebble sized crabs. How am I to sell it, ol’ man?”, came her retort, slicing through café like a katana. Even at 72, her voice could reach the furthest corners of the house. 

“You’re gonna drive them away, I tell you!” he spat back adding, “Looks like imma have to come down there to show you a thing or two!”.

“Show me wha?”, snarled Brinda, shuffling to the kitchen in a rising fury. Her knee and the foresight of rain had spun her mood out of control. “In my café…what does he think…can’t even walk straight…wants to cook,” she said, letting a huff with each pained step. She would bite back at the first chance, she resolved internally, as waves of anger swept through her. He couldn’t have the café and a cat. At such an old age, both of them were allowed only one fixation. 

Arnold knew his wife hadn’t been too pleased with the idea of a pet. In fact, his frail health had accounted for her sullen sacrifice. Sitting in the living room upstairs, he heard the crack of cloudburst shaking the café below. He assumed it was the noise of pots and pans thundering against each other. Curious to see the weather downstairs, he then decided to join Brinda down there.
 
“You okay, there?”, Arnold asked the boy, when he saw how sheepish he looked. “Yessir, sorry sir. The sea is stormy today so pa couldn’t go too far out”, he said. Ah, it had been a cloudburst after all. “S’okay, it’s fine,” he said comfortingly.

“It’s fine now, is it? Who do you think is going to pay his pa if no-one eats these crabs?” Brinda said. She was harsh but she had a point.

“Brinda, have you seen the clouds ousside? Let me bake some cakes. Serve them with some tea. People won’t be in the mood for fish today.”, Arnold told his wife.

She still looked pretty mad. He’d bake her favourite lemon cake and brew her favourite ginger tea. He would even massage her feet. Keeping Spaghetti really made him want to get up more. He hoped Brinda saw that.

“When was the last time you baked?”
“Three days ago.”
“For the cat you mean?”
“Yes, Spaghetti likes baked fish.”
“You’ve also started talking to it now?”
“Yes. I mean, no. But we understand each other...”
“You old fool, get out of my kitchen!”

The next line of defence coming from the old man was drowned out in thunder. The sky looked like a bottle of ink had tipped over into the clouds, making them look menacingly angry. Bolts of lightening kept shooting out of the inkiness, raising the hair on all their hands. 

Husband and wife immediately looked at each other. A storm was coming. 

“Get the windows”, yelled Brinda.
“And the doors,” reminded Arnold.
“Boy! Go up and check all the latches,” hissed his wife.
“Start a fire,” suggested the old man.
“Lookout for the cat!”, spat Brinda, revealing her soft spot for it.

Spaghetti, who’d spent all this time napping under a table, woke up to all the commotion. She ran across the kitchen towards the fireplace. It crackled as flames rose to lick at all the pieces of wood they had been fed. The cat arched her back and curled herself into a ball. She thought of her life back in Italy.

Living with the other old lady had never made Spaghetti as happy. She loved Arnold instead, who fed her, stroked her and let her in-and-out as she pleased. He especially baked for her, rubbed her belly until she purred and never turned her away. What else did someone with nine lives even need?

Although she bristled at the sight of it in front of her husband, Brinda fed Spaghetti table scraps too when she thought no-one was looking. The couple continued to bicker, subduing with a sweetness after spotting the cat near the fire. As Brinda weighed out ingredients for a cake, begrudgingly giving in to Arnold’s idea, he put on tea to placate his wife.

It was time for a hot drink, especially when it was storming outside. 
 
***

I can look at a book that’s 600 pages long and think, “I’ll finish this in a 3days.”
Then I end up spending three weeks reading 70 pages because life happened. And finding the book while listening to it on Storytel on my daily commute.
But somehow, I develop extra cerebral muscles to finish a different 600-page book in less than 2 days because my brain decided DOPAMINE? NEED MORE.

ADHD much? Or happens with you too? 👉🏻👈🏻

This might be the weirdest way to describe them, but Crescent City reads like prestige American television, while ACOTAR feels unmistakably British.
Crescent City is all neon cities, office politics, texting, coffee runs, guns, conspiracies, and characters who process world-ending trauma by making sarcastic comments and immediately getting back to work. Every chapter feels like it’s setting up the next episode, each character as fleshed out and juicy as you want.
ACOTAR, meanwhile, has the energy of people in ancient estates quietly making terrible emotional decisions over tea. The pacing lingers. Characters brood professionally. Half the plot could probably be avoided if everyone just had one honest conversation, but where’s the fun in that?
Even the humor feels different. Crescent City has that fast, quippy, “we’re in danger but let’s banter anyway” American rhythm. ACOTAR is drier, moodier, and somehow makes centuries of yearning feel like a perfectly reasonable personality trait.
Same author. Entirely different accents in my head.