#p haley

WE THE NORTH WEEK 2K21 - DAY 001

↬ happiness = judy ↫

first of all a disclaimer: manips are not my forte and idk why i decided that this year, i was going to tackle them. bc that is seven days, seven manips - send help. don't judge me too harshly on them. back to the main show. my main otp that is not written by me. the og otp if you will. i was going to do something a little different for this prompt, i was going to just encompass the site as a whoel because wtn is my happy place the place. a place that was very helpful during a pandemic and isolation and none of that fun stuff. but also during every other time since i've joined (six years ago) that didn't feel right though so i changed my theme. judy is my ship. i've been doing wtnweek since i joined and judy has featured in every single one of them so honestly this really shouldn't have surprised the majority of people here. i mean i'm not quiet about my love of judy. this is how much i love this ship. it has all the elements that i want from a ship. fabulous writers ( @ellectricmuse & @charlieweasleyy ) like seriously. they have one of my fav themes of light and dark and it is so refreshing to see it be the girl that is the one embodying the dark and not the boy. they balance one another, they're so authentic - both chars remain themselves when they're together (like this thread gave me anxiety bc i knew james would get in shit i also knew exactly where to find it and what the title was but that's besides the point). both characters are so well thought out, they're so beautifully written and they compliment one another so well. but what makes it such a great ship is that i read their individual threads when they're not in one together. james and prudy can stand alone without one another and i think both characters know they could manage it. personally i think their lives would lack so much if that were the case so don't you ever make it so i will hunt you both down. its just such a treat reading these threads, i instantly track when a new judy thread drops even without knowing what its about bc it doesn't matter. they're my otp ofc i'm going to read. i can't wait to see them go through the next year. remember, elle and haley, when you're planning things someone else is always reading and i'm fragile be kind to me 😉 i had a little tiny goal when i joined the site, outside of what i wanted with my own chars and ship. and that was to get connects with james and prudy. it might have taken some time, but i got them and it just makes me so happy. i track their threads, i like listening to elle and haley talk about them. and i could probably talk and talk and talk about this ship but this already got long enough. seriously though, ready james and prudy, you won't regret it. they deserve so much love and attention

WE THE NORTH WEEK 2K21 - DAY 006

↬ innovation = haley ↫

i picked this early on and then i thought i wasn't thinking about this right and then i realized i was and so i came back to this. i did not fit all of @charlieweasleyy's characters on here because i could barely fit the four. have you ever noticed how muscians suck in the image department, no? just me? okay then. moving on

*barney stintson voice* have you met haley? i'm sure you have because she's everywhere and she's friendly and lovely and honestly one of the best people (even tho she got me in a lot of trouble this week). i thought about putting haley for relevance a time or two while i was struggling with that prompt BUT i feel like she paves the way which lead me back to keeping her characters in this position. buckle up bc this is going to get long again.

lets get this party started (haley can correct me on anything i say that's not accurate)

James was one of my first favourite characters on the site, which everyone knows because you've heard me gush about him every appreciate week in june since i joined and prob at any given moment elsewhere. and i love what haley is doing with him, the story that she's telling with him, the way he's changing and the way he's seeing the world is evolving and its not because of the fact that he's married to prudence. but its because of the way the world sees and treats him, some times its got me cheering while reading and other times i feel incredibly sad about it. he's not the only black character on the site but he's the most involved in the social issues (i could be wrong and if i am, apologies) and i am excited to be joining haley with that. everyone got their characters involved in BLM last year, but since that moment i've heard haley talk about how she wants to keep doing things like that with james. i've wanted an activist character for a while now (i get that itch specifically around june yearly because of a show i watch every june) and i felt like james' estrange cousin was my best opportunity.

Then there is Hakim, who admitted i wasn't as aware of (as well as i could have been) until i made his sister Pari. and haley came at me with all these thoughts and head canons of the family and everything that she'd thought about with hakim which, i played myself because i love this character so much more now and all he does is hurt me. she popped into a group chat of the siblings and proposed a ramadan thread idea and then another but followed it up with like 1298742190 other links so that we could be informed while we were writing it. those links came in during the span it took me to find a single article. and it helped me flesh out pari a bit more and figure out how i wanted to shape her as a mix of tradition beliefs and non traditional. i just love this family and he's one of my favourite characters to read.

Mitch is a character i know i would struggle with, that rang true more so when we were not a site in canada. (idk if you've all seen my little breakdown about the *voices in your head* concept but sometimes separating me from characters isn't always easy. ) but she does it with such grace and respect, mitch could be seen as just a one dimensional character because we all seem to just write off conservatives. not to mention haley made a cop during the current climate. while i think that is valid at times, political stance doesn't always equal personality or mean that a person embodies everything of that political party (maybe its a privilege of living in canada where our conservatives are progressive idk dont @ me, let me gush in peace) and i think that's well represented in mitch. he has his beliefs, he has put his foot in his mouth and he married someone that can call him out when needed. but he's such a good person despite in his faults or in spite of them. the way haley approaches him is lovely. i can't wait to see the growth with mitch over the next few years, some of what i know, others which i don't which is always exciting to see unfold.

Sierra, i've loved them for a while like love love loved them and i could not think of ways to get plots with them that would span more than a thread and i was frustrated. one day we will get a ship (i tried with sierra but alas the stars did not align but that's okay) having them become part of tez's little crew has been one of my favourite things, i love the dynamic between them. but i did have a brief moment in 2040 where i had a friends to lovers sort of ship with sadie who was trans and haley didn't even think about it, like it was just a natural decision for her. which is the way it should be. so i was not at all surprised when sierra became non binary in like six hours of the news breaking and how haley just went about that whole process in a day. and i haven't been able to stop thinking about it and how its got me thinking about something similar.

a lot of things i've seen in haley's writing has inspired me to be more like haley. to take more chances. i wish i could think like her so i think my goal for year six is going to be simple. i'm going to approach it with:

WWHD?

WE THE NORTH WEEK 2K21 - DAY 004

↬ sadness = henlia ↫

*cries and cries and cries... and then cries some more*

honestly. this whole story. the path of henry and talia, of the bell-armstrongs and armstrongs to get to this point was such a great story, it was such a great rallying amongst players to figure out how to get it donewhen characters were left in a lurch. talia went through some revamps, henry switched a couple of jobs. but they found their final forms. the badass record exec and the wholesome author, both raising such a great family as part of a great family.

family dynamics are underrated a lot in rp but its not underrated at all on wtn which i think is great. that the site builds off more than just romantic relationships. (i know i'm raving a lot about elle this year but she deserves it) but this was a ship that was essentially something she was doing on her own with a couple of people who would step in to write henry when he was needed. henry would be there with friends and family too. he helped develop plots, helped to get them to where they needed to be so that there was no scrambling. so there was no waiting for someone to take an ad when the bell-armstrongs were left without a patriarch. and i think that's something so lovely about this site as well.

i think there are two reasons that henlia is sadness for me this year. its not only because henry died and that everything thread i read or am apart of breaks my heart with the emotional depth from everyone involved. it hurts so much to read talia, hudson, sienna, vince, nick and samson. it hurts my heart to write tez having to watch it all unfold with vince and emilia. they were my pain prompt because it doesn't hurt the same way when something is so immensely sad and the way it just makes you want to cry, it just breaks you. and this isn't something that's going to go away, its going to stick with these characters and shape them. a son, a brother, a father, a husband, a good man. all of it, affected so many people on the site. i personally have three at least, who will feel this in some way for years to come.

i was on the edge of my seat with zelda/henry/simon and then it got sad and i cried. and then there was the talia/zelda thread which ruins me. my heart hurts. dont get me started on the bell-armstrongs thread (i cried just this morning at 5am) or the cortez-armstrong one. elle, devv and kat, are doing something so good with the brothers too i just can't. i know emma has some out there that i haven't ventured to yet. and there's so much more. i’m in for the long run with plot and it’s shock waves.

everyone has written such beautifully sad posts about this, but talia really makes me hurt. and i think this is because i've spent a couple years at this point writing henry, falling in love with henry and falling in love with how much henry was in love with talia and how much she loved him. he technically wasn't my character, but i call a third of him mine, he's in my drop down menu. so there's this connection that i have to him and its sad to see him pass on. one of my favourite things to write with henry was his love for talia, its the kind of love you want for yourself. which tbh i played myself because it made this hurt all the more. i've known this was coming, to some degree but it didn't make it any easier at all. i feel like i'm going through the stages of grief along with these characters.