"Bree... Do you like Conner? 'Cause you always look at him."
"W-what? No. It's not what you think."
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Bree's obsession with the Bailey Twins mystery may or may not have evolved into a small crush on Conner Bailey. Just a small one.
The histor...
Hello! ^_^ It's really been a while. I'm sorry that this has just been sitting here and I'm glad that people are still reading this, or find it nostalgic. It was comforting to write this during secondary school and I had a lot of fun reading your comments and interacting with everyone :D
So I'm here to announce my half-chatfic, half-prose fic Message In A Bottle. It's a loose sequel to my Conneree chatfic Invisible String, but it focuses on Alex, Fred, Danielle, and Eugene instead.
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We all know and love Alex Bailey. I've given her a new background to match with her development in the original TLOS canon. After breaking up with Rook, Alex isn't sure if she's ready for romance, but a certain flirty blond changes everything... or does he?
We have Fred, best friends of the twins, popular and playful but hides his own feelings, and definitely hasn't been crushing on Alex for years now.
Then we have Danielle, always by Bree's side, sweet and easily excitable, and definitely hasn't been crushing on Fred since middle school.
And then there's Eugene, transfer student who debuted in Ch 13 of FOTR, guarded but witty, affectionately teases Dani, and definitely isn't bothered by her longtime crush on Fred.
(Also everyone is bi.)
The reason I'm making a post here, on FOTR, is that the characters originated from FOTR. Especially Fred and Dani who've been around for legitimately six years. I don't want to carry out the storyline I made for them when I was twelve because... it was cliché and just sort of boring LOL. I didn't use these characters to their full potential, which was understandable because I was a new fanfic writer then. But now that I'm older (18 at the time of writing this) and have more experience, I want to carry on.
TLDR: Message In A Bottle is the ending I would've wanted to give the cast now (as an 18yo.) Thus, you can treat MIAB as a sequel for the characters and their development and their relationships. I can't write the OG ending I set out for them (esp for Fred and Dani) because I don't identify with it anymore.
False Obsession Turned Real is like my middle school / highschool baby. It has its special, nostalgic (if not, naïve) tone of writing to it because I was the characters' age when I was writing it. I poured my teenage feelings and experience into this. The original vision of FOTR, with its epic fluffy romcom and cliché teen drama, although precious to me, is unfortunately not something I can write any longer. I grew out of it, and I don't want to taint the hard work my younger self did, so I'm leaving it as it is.
I wrote endgame teen Conneree in Invisible String. Perhaps I didn't realize it then, but it was a sort of redemption for FOTR. I wrote FOTR Conneree up till Book 3, and since FOTR is supposedly canon compliant (yes I hear your Fredlex screams), I suppose you can fill in the gaps. If FOTR is the foundation of Conneree, then canon is their development, while IS gets them into the friendship/ mutual crushing/ eventual dating era.
The Invisible String- Message In A Bottle verse is a plain highschool AU with no magic. Conner and Alex's dad doesn't die, they don't move away, Goldilocks and gang cameo as a popular band, etc. It's two steps to the left from the FOTR verse since the magic side hasn't really been touched. Alex was portrayed as a shy middle schooler in FOTR, and you'll get to see that middle schooler grow up to become a high schooler in MIAB.
Throughout the history of FOTR, people have been screaming about Fredlex and multishipping. I kept on joking about a Fredlex AU, and now Fredlex finally gets addressed in MIAB :D (no promises on endgame though).
I think in the end, I got unexpectedly attached to my characters even though they were born from the mind of an immature tween, and while I can make up more nuanced characters now, I keep on looking back to the characters I made for my first real ambitious piece of multichap fanfic. I am a sentimental person haha.
By the way, I wouldn't have written MIAB if it wasn't for all of your comments on here and Invisible String! :D it's been a good two years and it's really nice to see comments still popping up, showing that there are readers still invested in the story :) so from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for all of the support throughout the years! You guys are excellent commenters and you make me laugh so much :D
First chapter drops tomorrow on 25th August 2022! Hope to see you there :) <3 <3
