TMSG/Teach Me Something Good
Characters:
Jumping over to something separate from OFAV! The only connection that TMSG has to OFAV is through Stefan, which isn't really much. The tone is pretty different, less goofy and a bit more grounded in reality. I still kind of imagine a lighthearted and floaty atmosphere with this story, though. I don't want it to get too dark or heavy. Noland's backstory stuff is probably about as heavy as it gets. (As a side note something I originally planned to happen near the end of TMSG was SO... HEAVY... AND REALLY CRUEL TO NOLAND so I decided to nix it from the story. Maybe I'll talk about that sometime, haha;;;)
Teach Me Something Good is about Noland's first year as an English teacher at some fictional high school in Pennsylvania (Northwest High School if we take this to be the same universe as Nerdy and Jock but WHO KNOWS!). He's 30, so idk what he was doing before this............ BUT WHO CARES!!! It mostly centers around the friendship between Noland and his student Chrystal. Some themes that are explored are the boundaries and differences between teachers and students/adults and teenagers, and coming of age/learning to view things from a more mature light (???? WHO'S MATURE. NOT ME. SO WHAT WOULD THIS STORY EVEN BE ABOUT.) Idk, the main thing is that through their friendship, Chrystal and Noland both learn things about how to treat people who aren't you.
I SHOULD QUICKLY NOTE THAT TMSG IS NNNNOOOOOT ROMANTIC. I think it's mildly possible for Noland to develop some sort of feeling for Chrystal (SORRY IF IT'S CREEPY I KNOW I KNOW) but noooothing romantic happens between the two of them. And the feelings Noland develops are more parental than romantic. And he's noooot attracted to her physically. Idk if I'd ever mention explicitly in-universe anything about Noland having a crush (?) on Chrystal (because who would he tell?????? he wouldn't.) Noland does express a degree of discomfort over the possibility of growing too emotionally attached to a teenager, though Chrystal is a lot more comfortable being friends with Noland on a personal level. In this sense she's less concerned about adult-teenager boundaries because she feels like she's on the same level as Noland mentally, but she does grow to be more cautious of them as she learns that teenagers really aren't adults yet. ALL OF THIS SAID, the two of them do become genuine friends with one another before Chrystal graduates that year.
I'm not really sure what role Prue plays in TMSG, but from Chrys's perspective Prue probably comes off as an annoying adult who doesn't take Chrystal seriously. Maybe she acts as a kind of foil to Noland as an adult who's really put together (versus Noland the Haphazard Mess of an Adult).
Prue and Noland/post-TMSG
Characters:
- Prue
- Noland
- Prue's parents (present)
- Noland's parents (childhood, present)
- Janie (childhood) (she's in the bottom-right of that image)
Prue and Noland's story basically picks up where TMSG left off, but since Chrys graduated she's not in it. It's also slightly more heavy in tone...? Or it has potential to be. Interactions between Noland and Prue are almost always gentle and respectful, but I'm more willing to reveal darker (??? i am not dark) stuff about them here than I am in TMSG.
I think the post-TMSG timeline does a lot to humanize and expand on who Prue is as a person and show that she has her faults and shortcomings as well. Idk what the plot here is, I think it's like..... Prue and Noland writing books together or something............ Prue's a published author, and Noland's trying to be a published author (???) idk. Prue's family also come into play in the present somehow???? Idk I'm really confused about this story haha;;; I RECENTLY DECIDED HER PARENTS ARE DRY CLEANERS BECAUSE THE CLEANERS MY DAD GOES TO ARE THIS CUTE OLD KOREAN COUPLE...... (lazy stealing from the real world)
but yeah this story is MAINLY JUST.... PRUE AND NOLAND BEING DEVOTED TO ONE ANOTHER WHILE NOT NECESSARILY BEING IN A RELATIONSHIP........?? I guess I should say that Prue's openly in love with Noland, while Noland's more or less given up on relationships after his drama with Stefan and being confused over Chrystal. They do sometimes kiss and hold hands and sleep in the same bed (not sex), but they never explicitly call themselves a couple (mainly on Noland's request because he doesn't see himself as in love with Prue).
I also go into backstory stuff with Noland, like growing up in conservative Georgia, feeling ambivalent about his mother (interplay between smothering affection and careless/casual (?) scorn). There's also a thing with Noland in high school and his first exposure to romance through his friendship with this "bad girl" called Janie (?????? nothing makes sense). Idk I guess a theme here is him struggling to maintain impossibly-high innocence for the sake of pleasing his mother despite experiencing new, normal emotions that happen during puberty. And also to show this kind of distance he feels between himself (a fairly quiet and internal person) and his hometown community (very open and strongly values interpersonal connection). Like Stefan and Gabe's backstories, this would canonically be reflected in hindsight (b/c he goes back to his hometown with Prue at some point for some reason), but I'd also like doing more comics/whatever from Noland's POV at the time this backstory stuff takes place.
There's also backstory stuff with Prue in college, but idk what it'd be. I thought it'd be kind of interesting to explore what it's like to be somebody's "side girl," (especially from someone like Prue's perspective who's fine being on the side because she has the capability to be comfortably apathetic (?) toward both her lover and her lover's "real" lover) but honestly I don't even have a clue of where to start from;;; IDK ANYTHING ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS! I SHOULD STOP MAKING STORIES SURROUNDING RELATIONSHIP DRAMA...!!!!
Unlike with Noland, Stefan, and Gabe's backstories, I feel like this would straight up take place from Prue's perspective during the college backstory (rather than in hindsight). I'm not sure if this stuff would come up in conversation between Prue and Noland.
