(sometimes) sadness

SARA AND FELICE. AAAAHHHH. Admittedly I am part of the problem here. I get distracted by a forbidden gothic romance and go galloping in the wrong direction. Whoops.

There’s an interesting push-pull with Sara and Felice that I think sometimes gets glossed over in terms of talking about how strong their friendship is. And they do have a strong friendship, but the fault lines are so interesting. Felice idealizes Sara as inherently authentic and true to herself, while ultimately Sara is trying to figure out who she is as much as any teenager.

I also think you can focus on the part where Felice tries to socially mentor Sara and help her fit in, and what that actually is like. We get a few glimpses of it in the show but it’s the kind of thing that can be developed more in fic. I kinda want to think of how Felice’s mom could haunt these scenes. In the moments where Felice is mentoring Sara and perhaps experiences frustration with her, does Felice find herself snapping out some social rules her mother once recited to her, and feel weird once she realizes that she’s done that? Or could Felice be trying to heal herself by mentoring Sara socially in a way her mom never did for her?

And then, there’s the Manor House girls, and you and I have talked about the microaggressions there. It’s not that the relationships between girls in YR are better because the girls don’t fight—it bugs me sometimes when I see people claim this. It’s that the tensions are realistic and ever-shifting, and sometimes exacerbated by the part where girls don’t always speak up about what’s bothering them, or know how to talk about it.