Darth Wiki / Precious Things

Precious Things is a planned series by Ryudo 33. It's somewhat autobiographic, a ficcionalized version of events that really happened, based on the lives of a family the author knows and lived with. Although based in a drama setting and the characters having very dark backstories in general, it shares a fair number of comedy and black comedy as well. The chapters are imaginated as "seasons".

The protagonist is Sue Collins, a middle-aged woman living in a large unnamed city, described as the largest of the country she lives in. She lives with her son, Bryon, and her mother Violeta until Violeta eventually dies in Season 4 finale and Piero, her adoptive son, arrives to live with them in Season 6. Although the cast around them is always rotating, some characters eventually stay for the rest of the series.

The title is a reference to a Tori Amos song, which several characters in the series, including both Bryon and Piero, are fans of.

Characters:

Sue Collins

"I always said that I have a limit. Like a glass full of water. When the water overflows, I will break you, no matter what."

The main character of the series, Sue is a former Idol Singer of Country Music who became disillusioned with the medium in general, tired of producers trying to sleep with her and decided to live a normal life, much to her mother's chagrin and frustration. She gave birth to a son, Bryon, and has adopted Leo, her former husband's son; however, in a sad twist of fate, her father dies and, not long after, Leo dies too, in a car accident. She decides to live with her mother, both coping with the recent losses. And this is only the prologue of the entire story.

• Abusive Parents: Had these and arguably was one of these, especially with Leo.
• Antagonistic Offspring: Was one to Violeta, despite caring for her until the end of her life. In a twist of fate, Bryon is one to her as well.
• Anti-Hero: Of the Good Is Not Nice variety. She can be as helpful as possible, but is definitely a very difficult person to deal with.
• Alcoholic Parent
• Artist Disillusionment
• Broken Bird
• Casting Couch: Was a victim of and Bryon is possibly the result of this.
• Cynicism Catalyst: After her mother's death, she simply stopped caring.
• Decoy Protagonist: While she remains important, Season 4 eventually revels that the main character is Bryon.
• Education Mama: Was one of these.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After all her suffering, she finally finds fame as a successful enterpreneur.
• Face–Heel Turn: Sue finally loses it in Season 8. Fortunately, it's followed by a Heel–Face Turn shortly after.
• Good Is Not Nice
• Hair-Trigger Temper: She's really prone to bouts of anger.
• Her Heart Will Go On: After Albert dies.
• Jerkass: Sue Collins never plays nice.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold
• Ice Queen
• Idol Singer: Formerly.
• The Lad-ette
• Lady Drunk
• Mama Bear: Despite their antagonistic relationship, God help you if you mess with Bryon (and later, Piero).
• My Beloved Smother
• Outliving One's Offspring: After Leo dies. Fortunately, both Bryon and Piero are alive and well in the end of the series.
• Parents as People: She genuinely loves his son above everything - and, despite the fact he's a grown man, she'll protec him to death no matter what. However, Bryon's backstory chapters reveals that she was rather abusive to him in his childhood, both physically and psychologically, and he'll still bitter about it. That, and the fact she still is rather verbally abusive towards him, made him really resentful towards her.
• Pet the Dog: For all her Jerkassery, she was willing to adopt Piero when his mother died and, despite Matthew's complete distrustfulness towards her (being Bryon's mother and all), she takes pity on him and wants them to at least make a truce.
• Really Gets Around: In contrast to her son's initial Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality.
• Villain Protagonist: In Season 8.

Violeta Hernández

Sue Collin's mother and Bryon Collin's grandmother, Violeta was a Cool Old Lady who dreamed of being an artist in her youth, and wanted her daughter to be a successful singer. When she realised this wouldn't happen, her hopes were in ruins, at least until Bryon's birth; in fact, she wanted to be Bryon's mother and tried every single thing possible to separated him from his mother and raise him alone.

• Abusive Parents: Her mother. Arguably, was one of these too.
• Broken Bird
• Cool Old Lady
• Evil Old Folks
• Former Teen Rebel: She was the kind of girl that threatened to shot a guy who was disrespectful to her. In the 1940s.
• I Was Quite a Looker
• Manipulative Bitch
• Morality Pet: Her grandson.
• My Beloved Smother
• Pet the Dog: Despite everything, she genuinely loved her grandson, possible the only person she loved in all of her life.
• Racist Grandma: And homophobic, too. Though this eventually changed over time, especially with the revelation of Bryon's sexuality, which she eventually accepts very well. She even wishes a happy birthday to Piero in season 4, just four months before she dies.
• Redemption Equals Death
• Stage Mom: Was one to Sue.

Piero Milano Collins

"I'm pretty sure it will flop very hard."

Piero's backstory is... complicated. But basically, he's Bryon's adopted brother. Both dated for several years, beginning in Season 3. In Season 5, he and Bryon became bitter enemies, but they made a truce and became best friends for life. After his mother's death in Season 7, he becames oficially Bryon's brother, since Sue adopts him.

• Adorkable: Especially when talking about History and mythologies in general.
• Allergic to Love: In contrast to his brother's Single-Target Sexuality.
• Anti-Hero: Classical Anti-Hero off and to.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Piero has a lot of knowledge and could be a great teacher about art and movies, but he spends a lot of time... procrastinating.
• Bookworm
• Cain and Abel: The Abel to his biological sister's Cain.
• Cloudcuckoolander
• Covert Pervert
• Debt Detester
• Driven to Suicide: But fortunately Bryon saves him.
• The Eeyore
• The Fatalist
• Happily Adopted: By Sue.
• The Heart
• Hidden Depths: It's not explored in early seasons, but Piero is genius of marketing and promoting.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Sue.
• Interrupted Suicide: Fortunately Bryon talks his way out of it.
• Lonely Rich Kid: And, after season 7, not even "rich" anymore.
• Miser
• Morality Pet: For Bryon.
• Money Fetish
• Neat Freak
• Not Blood Siblings
• Older Than They Look
• Parental Abandonment: His mother died in his arms in season 7 and his father is kind of a dick.
• Real Men Cook
• Ridiculous Procrastinator
• Something about a Rose: Piero's motif.
  • The Tragic Rose: His tattoos are a homage to his late friend, Wilhelm, who commited suicide.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside
• Trauma Conga Line: In early season 7.
• Tritagonist
• Vain Sorceress: A male, more benign version. He greatly dislikes the idea of growing old and dying, but doesn't seek out destruction and mayhem while trying to reverse that.

Bryon Collins

"The world is a chess board, in which people are the pawns. And I'm a damn good player."

Sue's only biological son, Bryon was a Adorably Precocious Child Prodigy who, at the age of three, knew how to read and write. Just like his mother, he began to sing in TV shows at a very early age. However, several health problems ensued and Bryon was forced to abandon his life as a young celebrity. Not long after, he became very fat and was victim of severe bullying at school and home. As he grows up, the once sweet, adorable kid becames a unscrupulous, deeply calculating, manipulative and bitter young man. This eventually changes over time, especially when he meets Piero and after his grandmother dies.

In season 9, he does a Face–Heel Turn again after Matthew humiliates him in front of Piero.

• Abhorrent Admirer: A male variant of the trope, since he considers himself to be "deformed and hideous".
• Adaptational Heroism: Leonardo, his counterpart in Pequenos Terremotos, is much, much nicer than him. Which is ironic, since Leonardo suffers a much worse fate while Bryon is arguably a Karma Houdini by the end.
• Adorkable: He's a complete dork and genuinely cute. If you don't reject or mess with him, of course.
• Affably Evil: He will utterly destroy you without hesitation if you double-cross, reject or mess with him somehow, but Bryon is genuinely nice and sweet. In contrast to his mother's Good is Definitely NOT Nice.
• All of the Other Reindeer: His childhood was cruel to say the least.
  • Interesting, after reaching adulthood, he believes himself to be a case of this, expressing resentment that people distrust him for being fat and having facial paralysis, when in truth the distrust has nothing to do with this, and everything to do with his manipulative and sadistic personality.
• Animal Motif: Butterflies.
• Anti-Hero: Begins as a Nominal Hero. He softened a lot later on, moving to Unscrupulous Hero, but god help you if you anger him. After Season 9, he steps back into Nominal Hero again, bordering on Villain Protagonist.
• Anti-Villain: Of the Woobie variety, since most people he really got to know were horrible people. Most of his victims, however, had it coming.
• Antagonist in Mourning: He is genuinely sad when Albert Sirio dies, mostly because his mother's love for him. Also, it's heavily implied he deeply regrets killing Matthew's boyfriend.
• Antagonistic Offspring: Sometimes, towards his mother.
• Ax-Crazy: He hides it well, but Bryon is completely batshit crazy - and proud of it.
• Berserk Button: Don't ever ask what happened to his left eye.
  • It's not focused on too much because of their complicated relationship, but Bryon will not take it lightly at all when someone badmouths his mother. Only he can do it.
  • Also, don't ever tell him he's a good person.
• Big Ego, Hidden Depths: Despite his massive ego and narcissistic personality, he'll never abandon a friend in need and, as long you don't push his buttons, he's genuinely nice and generous.
• Big Brother Instinct: Inverted because he's the younger brother, but if you mess with Piero, you're dead.
• Break the Cutie: His backstory in a nutshell.
• Broken Bird: Life was not kind to him. At all.
• Chronic Villainy: Despite multiple efforts to reform himself over the years, or at the very least put his talents to use for a higher cause than himself, inevitably Bryon always slides back into villainy. He believes it's because he is misunderstood and feared for being "fat and deformed", when in truth it's his love for Manipulative Bastard-style mind games and penchant for Sadism.
• Cloudcuckoolander
• Crocodile Tears: Occasionally uses this as part of his schemes.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Inverted. After Violeta's, and later, Jayme's deaths, he definitely decides to become a better person..
• Dark and Troubled Past: And how.
• Diagnosis of God: He was diagnosed as a severe type of Bipolar Disorder. There's also traces of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

• Disproportionate Retribution: Towards people that simply annoyed him.
• Duality Motif
• Earn Your Happy Ending: In the Series Finale, not only he and Piero are very rich, it's implied he's finally dating someone.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: As a result of surgeries and a very messy hair treatment, he's bald since Season 5. In Season 9, his hair grows again.
• Eyepatch of Power
• Freakiness Shame
• Formerly Fat: He's still pudgy at least until season 9, in which he loses a lot of weight, but until his early teenage years, he was morbidly obese.
• Harmful to Minors: His backstory.
• Hates Being Touched
• Hates Everyone Equally: A defining trait of him.
• Heel–Face Turn: After a fashion. Does a Face–Heel Turn in season 9.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath:
  Bryon: "I don't give a fuck to your privacy!"
• I Have Many Names: More like "I have many online personas, which I use when it's convenient".
• It's All About Me: Since Season 9. He's not actively malicious towards anyone (unless they try to harm him first) but neither does he care about anyone else.
• Jerk Justifications: A rare case of arguably entirely valid ones. He didn't want to be that way, it was entirely forced upon him, and seriously legitimately not his fault. He generally did what he could to keep it at bay.
• Karma Houdini: Gets away with Matthew's boyfriend's murder in Season 9 and eventually gets everything he wanted.
• Love Makes You Evil AND Crazy: If only Matthew had listened to what he wanted to say...
• Manipulative Bastard
• Madden Into Misanthropy: His experiences have given him a chronic distrust of other people, and an obsession with revenge.
• The Mad Hatter:
  Piero: You're insane!
  Bryon: Yeah. Completely. And you know it since the first day you knew me. You know what? I love being insane. I pity anyone who isn't.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Bryon doesn't know who his father is. Even in the Series Finale, this question remains unanswered.
• Mask of Sanity
• Momma's Boy: And he hates it.
• Must Make Amends: Towards Matthew, especially in Season 9. It backfires spectacularly.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Kills Matthew's boyfriend in Season 9.
• Narcissist: Dear God, and how.
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Until he embraces Then Let Me Be Evil.
• Not Good with Rejection: Not good would be an understatement.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: His fast-talking, quirky, and airheaded demeanor hides a ruthless, calculating man.
• The Ophelia: In Season 7, his health and mental state degrade seriously. This comes after Matthew's former boyfriend dies, Matthew rejects him, Piero's biological mother dies, Sue is robbed and humiliated by his own nephew's family, his surgery got wrong and Matthew rejects him AGAIN. This series of events has left him very distressed, and it takes him a lot of effort to recover and begin making up to his family for the grief that came with his madness.
  • In Season 9, his Ophelian tendencies go to Hell, he embraces Then Let Me Be Evil and kind of becomes a sadist, manipulative bastard again.
• The Paranoiac
• Prematurely Bald: Since Season 5, because of his faulty genetics and chemotherapy though his hair grows again in Season 9.
• Progressively Prettier: A realistic version of this; Bryon was known as a fat, short and baldy guy with an asymmetrical face due to his facial paralysis. Then everything changes in Season 9 (though he's still short).
• Psychopathic Manchild: He acts very mature most of the time and seems to have very high class tastes. However, he also is prone to fits of anger and jealousy. He can be childish and unreasonable when he doesn't get what he wants. This, too, has changed over time. However, in Season 9 he drops the "manchild" part and becames a deeply calculistic sociopath.
• The Resenter: It tooks a lot of time for him to forgive his mother.
• Revenge: Towards Matthew. Subverted. His "revenge" consists of actually helping him; double subverted when Matthew humiliates him publically.
• Sadist: Some unsettling dialogue shows that he genuinely enjoys causing and watching people's suffering.
  Bryon: "I like to fuck with people's lives. They suck."
• Serial Killer: By the end of the series, Bryon has a body count of at least five people.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Bryon is probably Mattsexual. Justified because he had never experienced something like this before (Piero was more like a brother to him since the start, and this was one of the reasons their relationship didn't last).
• The Sociopath / Sociopathic Hero: Occasionally referred to as such in early seasons, though he doesn't hit the requirements for the psychiatric diagnosis. He was more like a Noble Demon.
  • While he's never explicitly called a sociopath, it's made repeatedly clear that he trusts no-one but himself, and doesn't believe that anyone would want to help another. Granted, this was probably brought on by his past, and he's still capable of empathy, since he does help the others a lot until Matthew humiliates him in Season 9.
• Somebody Doesn't Love Raymond: Despite being loved by his closest friends and admired for his knowledge about films, what hurts him the most is that Matthew hates him. This eventually leads to his Face–Heel Turn in Season 9.
• Stalker with a Crush: Subverted. He does have a (massive) crush on Matthew, but does not stalk the "target" in question because "it would spoil all the fun". In Season 9, after being humiliated by Matthew, he does, however, stalks him as part of his Revenge and doesn't even hide his intent of killing him.
  • Stalker without a Crush: However, he does stalks basically everyone and has a database consisting of data of basically every person he met. To quote Piero: "Bryon knows about everybody's lives!".
• Straight Edge Evil: In fact, one of the first signs of his Heel–Face Turn (of sorts) is when he begin to drink regularly and smoked weed with his mother.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Though whether or not he's truly a devil is up to you.
• Tragic Villain
• The Unfettered: Bryon doesn't care one whit about the cost of ensuring his personal survival, and deals briskly and brutally with anyone or anything that poses a threat to him.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: And though he doesn't admit it, really, really deep down, he still is. Just look at his actions towards Piero and his closer friends, especially Andrei, Gustav and Enrico though he was just manipulating the latter.
• Villain Protagonist: Moreso in early seasons and Season 9.
• Wicked Cultured

Albert Sirio

• Hair-Trigger Temper
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: When he was beginning to be nicer and regreted his actions, he got sick and died.
• Killed Off for Real: In the beginning of Season 9.
• Pop-Star Composer
• Record Producer: Of the Record Producer From Hell variety.

Rita Gardavis

• Cloudcuckoolander
• Demoted to Extra: After being part of the main cast in Season 6, she suddenly appears only in two or three episodes in early Season 7.
• Erudite Stoner

Matthew Phelps

"I'm not open to dialogue with you."

Introduced in Season 5 as a mere background character, Matthew was reintroduced in Season 6 as a Nice Guy who helped Bryon to cope with his trauma of possibly being diagnosed with a tumor. Actually, as revealed later, they've met several years before, but Matthew doesn't remember it. Became an Ascended Extra in Season 7, where things... don't go well for him. After several traumatic events, he became Bryon's one-sided Love Interest, and later, Arch-Nemesis.

• Asshole Victim: Though whether or not he is this, it's up to you.
• Bastard in Sheep's Clothing: Matthew seems like a nice, worldly, funny, charming man, but is in fact a ruthless jerk.
• Beard of Sorrow: In Season 7, though he shaves it in Season 8.
• Cynicism Catalyst: After his former boyfriend's disease (and eventual death).
• Despair Event Horizon: After he gets robbed and beaten by unknown assailants and his boyfriend is killed (by Bryon, no less), he loses all of his hope.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Near the beginning of Season 5, before his proper introduction in the next Season.
• Erudite Stoner
• Fate Worse than Death: After another Trauma Conga Line, Matthew realises that life is utterly meaningless and nobody has nothing to lose. He is Driven to Suicide and barely survives, entering into a Angst Coma instead.
• Jerkass: Especially towards Bryon.
  • Jerkass Woobie
• The Lost Lenore: Never really got over his former boyfriend's death. Or so he likes to pretend; he never gave a damn about him and in fact cheated on him a lot.
• Oh, Crap!: His reaction when Sue reveals she's Bryon's mother is priceless. It even leads to a Handshake Refusal when they met some days later.
• Perpetual Poverty: He tries to get rich immigrating to another country, but it was illegally and Bryon gets him deported by reporting him to legal authorities.
• Properly Paranoid: Thinks that Bryon wants his blood for several reasons and is deathly afraid of him. It wasn't the case before, but as of Season 9, he is right.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside
• Stalker without a Crush: He starts to stalk Bryon's social media profiles, thinking that Bryon is defaming him somehow. Interestingly, he's aware of the Irony of stalking his supposed stalker.
• The Stoner
• Used to Be More Social

Examples: