#dream bpr

I hate to say it, but Citrine was always going to die at the end of their senior year. I've had some variation of her & Hib's tragic love story bouncing around in my head since I was at least 14, and that was absolutely not helped by my adolescent love of John Green books. What can I say? I live for the melodrama and tragedy and intensity and clumsiness of those types of stories, and I wanted one in my BPR. Is it the most nuanced thing I could have written? No. Was it self-indulgent and very fun? Absolutely. 😇

While writing this gen and solidifying the lore of the Dream family, a question kept popping into my head. What happens if two people who are meant to be together are somehow prevented from doing so? It's starting to become clear at this point in the story that the Dreams are part of something bigger than themselves. Some sort of prophecy or cosmic will. What would have happened if our Gen 4 heiress had been born to Hibiscus and Citrine? How would the world have changed? Would it have impacted the story? This is a BPR after all, we need a certain amount of generations before we can conclude the story. Or do we? Jasmine seems to be waiting for something, or someone, to arrive. But even she isn't sure when that will be. While we're at it, what is her deal? We'll explore that in much more detail next gen.

Speaking of things that were or were not meant to happen, I had always planned on Hibiscus having a child with Topaz. I tried to leave it up to interpretation how much of their story was fate course-correcting after Citrine died vs. an intentional coupling. They have a shared bond through her, but that shared bond might not be the best thing to foster a marriage on. To be honest, I didn't intend for them to have as much chemistry as they turned out to have. In my mind, they were always better as friends than lovers, and Hibiscus was always meant to be with Citrine. Their whole relationship/marriage/baby montage at the end of this gen was meant to feel rushed and strained, because that's how Hibiscus and Topaz feel. There is real love there, but it was always going to be complicated by Citrine. I'm very excited to explore their dynamic more in Dandelion's gen and let you guys peek behind the curtain into some very honest and raw conversations.

Not to mention, Hibiscus hasn't found out that Andromeda was somehow responsible for "cutting Citrine's thread" before her time... Yet. I left what happened during her visit to the three seamstresses a bit vague, but I'm curious if anyone picked up on what happened. I'll expand on that pretty immediately in gen 4, so don't worry too much if you've totally forgotten what I'm talking about.

Lastly, I wanted to touch on Hib's friend group. Midna and Tamber were literally a reference to the "All or Nothing" webseries/tumblr meme that became a core part of this site's lore back in the 2010s or whenever. As somebody who identifies as being somewhere on the Ace spectrum, I knew I wanted to very briefly touch on my own feelings as a young person working through that identity. And then the dynamic between her and Tam kind of just wrote itself! They are still very happy living in San Myshuno together along with Tam's other partners. Maybe someday I'll do a side story about their adventures together. Cherry and Cranberry are happily married with one daughter and another kid on the way. They live in San Sequoia where Cran is a track coach at the city college and Cherry is a professor at San Sequoia University. I'd like to post some gameplay of them at some point, bc I want people to know they are happy and thriving but there probably won't be any room in the official story for them.