#lesbiancoded

Oh I’d love to :D

The MAIN ones (as far as rivalry goes) are Rue/Amary and Geran/Fennel, but both their rivalries are pretty… Tame? Like they’re mostly just like roommates that don’t get along. Out of the main cast the only relationship that’s a REAL rivalry as in actually on different sides, enemies to friends to lovers and all, is Daisy and Tulip. But since Tulip isn’t main cast she doesn’t get quite as much focus and in all honestly she’d probably be a bit of a discousey character lmao. So I’m just gonna focus on the first two for right now, I’ll talk about them together

These two relationships are intended to serve as mirrors to each other, sort of the same thing but flipped around. I mean, there’s the obvious, Amary and Geran are both heirs that think they’re straight. Heirship is sort of a big theme I use for this story, to be an heir is to live up to something, Amary and Geran may be LITERALLY heirs but every character in the story is living up to SOMETHING in some way (A lot of the time that’s parents) but for these two heirship also comes with conformity, as in they’re both pretty much extremely conforming to the roles they’re expected to fit into even though neither of them are happy. But they’re not expected to show that they’re not happy.

That’s where Rue and Fennel come in, they’re characters that DON’T conform to this type of stuff, making their respective roommates reject them because of a combination of resentment for themselves and conditioning to believe their behavior is wrong. Amary is obsequious and has been taught to follows rules blindly, and because of this Rue’s rebellious attitude and questioning of authority is seen as overly brash to her. Geran is convinced that he has to be strong and strong people can’t be emotional, because of this Fennel’s openness with his feelings is taken as. Both Rue and Fennel are depicted as the ones in the right but they can also be extreme. It’s good to be open with your emotions but not good to let them consume you, you should rebel and question authority but certain rules, e.g. dark magic, are for your safety.

Rue and Fennel CONSTANTLY challenge their respective roommate’s worldview and that threatens their entire identity, because all they have is the fact that they’re heirs. And of course a big part of that is the fact that… Well, both the heirs in question are just gay. Basically Rue and Fennel pull Amary and Geran respectively out of their bubbles of expectation through force, intentionally or otherwise, and show them it’s ok to be whoever you want to be. But still their acceptance of this is a journey, and their rejection of it is what manifests in a rivalry.

Step one for both Amary and Geran was realizing they were wrong about their roommates. For Amary, that was seeing how Rue’s defiance of orders completely saved the day, how Rue isn’t brash, she’s incredibly bold and resilient. For Geran, it was learning about how Fennel actually feels (by literally being forced to empathize, thank Gallica) and learning that he’s actually incredibly strong for bearing everything. Realizing they were wrong about ONE person is part one of realizing they were wrong about a lot of stuff, including themselves. But it’s also an important first step because now they RESPECT their rival/love interest, they don’t see them as a nuisance, they fully acknowledge them and have more of an incentive to now prove themselves. That’s what a rival should do!

I’ve been describing how they’re similar, but aside from the same themes both the relationships are actually pretty different with very different beats to them. Amary and Rue are the protagonists, their arc is a lot more streamlined and clear, they have a very obvious phases that sort of chronicle what part of the story it is (Hating each other>Tolerating each other>Frienemies>Friends>’’Gal pals’’>Officially dating). Meanwhile Geran and Fennel aren’t even in the main four, but they’re still prominent characters that get a lot of focus, so the relationship progression is a bit messier, not from a narrative standpoint but from a highschool romance standpoint.